Caveat Emptor by Ruth Downie

want to come with me.” She paused, as if she was hoping Tilla might promise to come no matter what she said. When the silence grew awkward, Ruso offered to leave.
    “No, you must know this too. I am to blame for what has happened.”
    Tilla looked up from stirring the pot and assured her that nothing was her fault.
    Camma took no notice. “It was my husband,” she said. “My husband put a curse on him.”
    Ruso had very little faith in that sort of irrational nonsense himself, but for people who believed in its power, a curse could stir up an untold amount of trouble. “Your husband put a curse on Caratius?” he said. “What for?”
    “No!” She was sounding impatient. “My husband was the one doing the cursing. He cursed Julius Asper.”
    For a few seconds it made no sense. Then Tilla said, “So Asper was not—”
    “Julius Asper is the father of my baby,” explained Camma. “My husband …” She stopped to clear her throat. “My husband is Chief Magistrate Caratius.”

18
    R USO WAS STILL considering the implications of Camma’s confession as he stretched his legs out across the floorboards and leaned back against the rough wall of Valens’s storeroom. At least he would not be bored during the long hours of the night. Watching over the remains of the man who was not Camma’s husband after all, he was going to have to go back over his conversations with Caratius. The ground had shifted beneath his feet. He understood now why she had said the baby was “the cause of all this.” He understood too why the magistrate had insisted that Asper was a crook and Camma a liar. Camma, in one simple sentence, had transformed Caratius from outraged victim to chief suspect.
    She had also shaken Ruso’s confidence. What sort of an investigator did he think he was? How the hell had he failed to see it when the two of them had confronted each other in Valens’s dining room? Come to that, why had neither of them admitted it? He supposed neither had thought their complaint would be taken seriously if they told the truth.
    It was possible—understandable, in fact—that the magistrate would want revenge. But a man planning to do away with his wife’s lover would surely keep the matter within his own family, or at least his own tribe. Why involve a large sum of public money and attract the attention of the procurator’s office? As for Camma’s claim that Asper had not been on the way to deliver the tax at all, but had disappeared after announcing a visit to Caratius—he would follow it up, but that would make the magistrate a fool as well as a murderer. Caratius did not seem like a fool. Still, it was obvious that he was glad to see the back of Julius Asper.
    Maybe there was something in this curse business after all.
    The room was growing chilly. Ruso reached for his cloak and threw it around his shoulders, wondering if Tilla would complain about the limewash making white marks on the wool and then reminding himself that he should be concentrating on praying for the spirit of Julius Asper. After all, hardly anyone else was likely to bother.
    In the feeble yellow glow of the lamps he gazed at the shell of a human being laid out on the bed. This man had chosen to steal someone else’s wife, and possibly someone else’s money. He had then been murdered, dumped in an alley, haggled over, and jovially threatened with having his brain opened up.
    There would be no more choices for Julius Asper.
    The silence in the room felt thick enough to reach out and touch. Even the rogue cockerel seemed to be asleep. Ruso stood up to light the grains of incense in the bowl, recited what he hoped was a suitable prayer and began to run through the things he must do in the morning. He would probably have to pay handsomely for the women’s transport to Verulamium, since he could not transfer his travel warrant and he could hardly ask the grieving widow if she had brought any spare cash with her. Before they left, he would sit Tilla