To see the previous installments, click on the following links: #1, #2 , #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10

I left the tablinum with Marcus, heading towards the peristyle. As I crossed the threshold, I was once again enveloped by that eerie stillness that could not conceal the weight of the crime. The fountains still murmured, but the sound of the water seemed a distant echo, almost unreal. We walked in silence, while my gaze was lost among the columns that cast irregular shadows in the light that fell plummeting from the impluvium. The garden, with its carefully arranged flowers, offered a beauty that was alien to the tragedy, a beauty that at that moment became grotesque. The air smelled clean, as if they wanted to erase not only the blood, but also the very memory of the murder.

“Show me where the body was,” I asked quietly, my tone charged with a gravity that needed no explanation.

Marcus, even more tense, stopped by one of the rooms leading to the peristyle. The room was his own, the room he shared with his wife. He pointed to a corner near the door, where I could still see the ghostly shadow of the corpse. I knelt slowly, touching the floor where the body of Lucius Flavius Crispus had lain.

“It was here... by the door of my room, my cubiculum,” Marcus said in a trembling voice, his apparent composure cracking barely perceptibly.

“What did you see when you found it?” I asked, not looking at him, keeping my gaze fixed on the floor, as if the stones of the peristyle could offer me answers that words did not.

“He lay on his side, almost shrunken,” he replied. “One hand rested on his chest... and the wound, that damned wound...” His voice broke again. “It was in the heart, direct and sure. A short sword, a gladius. My sword.”

I looked up at him, catching the intensity in his eyes as he spoke those last words. His sword. I knew well what that implied, but I let the silence weigh for a moment before continuing.

“Your sword? How could it have ended up in his chest?”

Marcus looked away. “I don't know, Hispanus. My gladius has always been in storage. A remnant from my legionary days. There was no reason for anyone to take it... no one but me has access to it.”

The scene Marcus was describing flashed vividly in my mind: the body of Lucius Crispus, lying on the marble floor, his robe torn, the trickle of dark blood escaping from the fatal wound, soaking into the stones of the peristyle. The assassin had used a precision that only someone trained could have achieved. I looked again at Marcus, a man who had served in the war under Titus, a man who understood well how to kill with a single blow.

“Do you think it was a deliberate act, or an outburst?” I hinted, with the softness of one who throws out a question seeking to bring hidden truths to the surface.

Marcus shook his head slowly, his gaze lost in the ground he had just pointed at me. “I don't know... I don't understand. I had no enemies here. He was a guest, one close to my family. Why would they have done this to him? Why with my sword?”

Logic and emotion clashed on his face, and for a moment I wondered if it was his fear that prevented him from speaking more freely, or if the truth itself was slipping through the cracks in his memory.

“The murderer knew what he was doing, Marcus,” I said finally, rising to my feet and looking again at the layout of the peristyle, where everything seemed too orderly. “A wound to the heart... quick, precise. And with your sword. This was no simple crime.”

The silence that followed weighed like a slab. I knew Marcus was caught in a web of doubt and suspicion. But I also knew that to unravel the truth, I would have to look beyond words and gestures.

To be continued

Header Image:

The Vettii House, open to the public after its restoration. Source: elmundo.es/Andrew Medichini