Under Vesuvius by John Maddox Roberts

Author:John Maddox Roberts [Roberts, John Maddox]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
Tags: Mystery, Mystery & Detective, General, Historical, Fiction
ISBN: 9780312370893
Google: 0Rmfrqvv7a4C
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2008-11-24T18:30:00+00:00

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8

IT DIDN’T LOOK LIKE MUCH OF A WEAPON, lying on the table in the impluvium. A messenger had delivered it while we were occupied at the temple. Julia had taken the German girl and Leto to quarters where they could be cared for. I wasn’t going to be questioning Gaia for a while, but I hoped to get something coherent from Leto, if she could just overcome her terror.

Antonia picked up the sticker and examined it. The Egyptians had cleaned it before it was sent to me. It was made of a single piece of steel, the handle shaped like that of a miniature dagger. The blade part was triangular in cross section, tapering to a needle point and no more than five inches long. It resembled a writing stylus more than a weapon.

“He was killed with this little thing?” she said.

“It was sufficient,” I told her. “It’s all in the placement. As any legionary sword master will tell you, a puncture an inch deep in a man’s

jugular will kill him just as dead as hacking him clean in two. Same thing with this. Put it in the right place, and death is all but instantaneous.”

She twirled it in her fingers, fascinated. “I could use something like this. Most often, I strap a dagger inside my thigh when I go out, but it chafes after a while.”

“You do?” Circe said. “I usually carry mine down here.” She poked a finger into her own ample cleavage. As usual, every new thing I learned about Roman women alarmed me.

“It weighs practically nothing,” Antonia observed, tossing it high, end over end, catching it adroitly by the handle on the fall. “You could hide it in your hair. That way, it would still be handy when you’re wearing nothing at all.”

“Enough of that, ladies,” Julia said, entering the room.

“Actually,” I pointed out, “little daggers similar to this are sometimes earned by prostitutes, hidden in their hair, as Antonia suggests. They carry them to protect themselves from cruel or violent customers. Assassination is not the point. Such women know how to, ah, distract a man by stabbing him in an intimate spot.”

“You two are having a bad influence on my husband,” Julia said. “But if it’s a prostitute’s trick, doubtless Gaeto had a number of them in his slave barracks.”

“The murderer came from outside—we’ve established that,” I told

her.

“If you can rely on the word of an old cavalryman,” she said. “If he made up some details to make himself seem more important, he wouldn’t be the first.”

“I trust him,” I said. “Now what have you learned from the girls?”

“Leto is shattered and not a hand has been laid on her. Gaia is made of stronger stuff and that girl Charmian must have been made of iron to escape after the beating she took. I’ve dosed both the girls in our custody with poppy juice. I hope they can talk for a few minutes before they pass out.”

“They’d better,” I said. “I have to find Charmian.

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