Caveat Emptor by Ruth Downie Page A

down and make it absolutely clear that the wife of a Roman citizen and a government investigator must not take sides in local disputes. Especially disputes between politicians and their wives.
    Then he was going to find Caratius and ask the questions he should have asked today instead of listening to all that pompous speechifying. This time he would concentrate on asking him … Ruso yawned. On asking him …
    He must stay awake and concentrate. He tried to frame some probing questions, but it had been a long day. A soft fog was drifting across his brain. He found the same phrases were repeating themselves, circling lazily around his mind. He felt his eyes drift shut. He would think about it later.
    Something made him stumble on the threshold of sleep.
    He tried to repeat the sound in his mind. The more he thought about it, the more convinced he was that he had heard the scrape of the street door opening downstairs.
    It could not have been the door. He could not recall the corresponding scrape of it being closed again, and nobody would leave it open at this hour of the night. Besides, everyone was asleep. If Valens had received a night call, half the house would have heard the messenger arrive.
    Shut in a dimly lit room with a dead body, he was starting to imagine things. Julius Asper’s spirit had not just slipped out of the room and left the house. Such things did not happen.
    Probably.
    He must think about something else. Pleasant, daytime thoughts. Where would he want to settle after this was over? There would be plenty of work in the North, mopping up the medical discharges who did not want to go home. Tilla would be near to what remained of her family. On the other hand, tensions would still be high after the recent troubles. He was not sure he wanted to have his domestic life punctuated by arguments about the governor’s latest peacekeeping policy.
    Perhaps Tilla had a point about Verulamium. Of course it would depend on how the investigation went, but the Catuvellauni were friendly to Rome, aspired to civilization, and were close enough for him to keep in touch with Valens and Albanus.
    His backside was going numb. He put both palms flat on the floor, and lifted himself a couple of inches. As soon as he relaxed, the numbness returned.
    He closed his eyes and tried to picture himself in his consulting rooms in Verulamium, just a short stroll from proper baths and a decent wine shop. While he chatted about the latest play at the theater with his grateful patients, Tilla would be looking after their scrubbed and smiling children and doing things to food in the kitchen.
    He was jolted awake by a sound like someone dropping a spoon on a tiled floor downstairs.
    The lamp in the hallway had gone out. The foot of the stairs was even darker than the landing where he stood peering over the banister. The only sound was the soft sigh of his own breath: the only movement the thump of his heart. He shook his head. He was getting jumpy. He had slept badly last night. His imagination was not listening to reason. It was probably just the kitchen boy knocking something over on his way to the night bucket. Maybe the tall apprentice was wandering about in the dark, unable to sleep with a mind full of murder and prostitutes.
    He picked his way back along the chilly corridor, seeking the solace of the lamp flame.
    A dog was barking in one of the neighbors’ houses. The distant blare of the fort trumpet sounded the next watch, and he remembered that he had promised to get the unfinished letter looked at by a code expert. He had no idea how to find one, but Albanus had spent years as a medical clerk charged with deciphering doctors’ handwriting. It would be a start.
    He stepped across to take a deep breath of air at the window, then stood at the foot of the bed and began to count backward from one hundred to keep himself awake.
    He was trying to remember the rhyme for the causes and cures of gout when he heard something smash downstairs.