Caveat Emptor by Ruth Downie Page A

his widow.
    Asper was beyond help, but it might still be possible to trace the cash. “The money that he was carrying with him was marked,” he said, improvising. “It can all be identified. So if you have it, or you know what happened to it, I suggest you hand it over now, because if you try to spend it you’ll be in even deeper water than you are already.”
    The man looked at his wife. “Two denarii, weren’t it?”
    The wife’s nod was a little too hasty.
    The man reached for the keys dangling from his belt. “I’ll fetch it.” As he headed off somewhere to find his takings, he called over his shoulder, “I don’t suppose there’ll be compensation?”
    “No,” agreed Ruso, who had hoped to flush out considerably more than two denarii, an outrageous overcharge for a very shabby room. “I don’t suppose there will.”
    When the husband had gone, the wife abandoned the small creatures on the spit, placed her reddened face alarmingly close to Ruso, and whispered, “Sir! Sir, please, I beg you—just take two denarii. Take whatever you want. Please.”
    Ruso loosened her grip on his arm. “I’m not asking for a bribe,” he said. “All the procurator wants is the money that Asper had with him when he went missing.”
    “But it’s not there, sir!” She dropped her voice and mouthed almost silently, “He didn’t have no money.”
    “But—”
    She nodded toward the door. “I told Grumpy that, just to shut him up. The man said he had a friend what would pay the bill, and he looked honest, and I felt sorry for him, and—”
    She broke off as her husband came back into the room carrying a shallow wooden box. He placed it on the table and lifted the lid to reveal a series of compartments for different denominations of coin. “Two denarii, sir,” he reminded Ruso. “Taken in good faith by my wife, who has got me and her into all this trouble and caused you a whole lot of bother because she can’t bloody say no.”
    Ruso was conscious of the wife’s eyes on him as he scooped up seven or eight small silver coins. He began to flip them over in his palm. He dropped three back into the box, picked one out, then flipped over a couple more before holding a second one up, squinting at it, and pretending to find what he was looking for. Then he tugged open his own purse, found enough coin to make up the value, and placed it in the correct compartments of the box before closing the lid.
    “Oh, thank you, sir!” gasped the wife.
    “How do you tell?” asked the innkeeper, looking as though he had just seen some sort of magic trick and was not sure he believed it.
    “It’s confidential,” Ruso told him.
    “So what happens now?”
    “I’ll examine the body and report to the office,” said Ruso. “They’ll have to decide whether they believe your story. Whatever happens, you’ve lied repeatedly and wasted official time. Do you two have the faintest idea what the penalty is for getting in the way of a procurator’s inquiry?”
    A tear slid down the woman’s cheek. The man was twisting a fistful of tunic into a knot as he said, “No, sir.”
    “I didn’t think so,” said Ruso, who had no idea either. “But if you’re still lying, it’ll be even worse. So is there anything else you want to tell me before it’s too late?”
    In the silence that followed, Ruso reflected that he was sounding like his father. “The name of the boatman would be a good start.”
    Finally the woman said, “It was Tetricus, sir.”
    The innkeeper muttered something under his breath that sounded very much like “Stupid cow.”
    “Tetricus,” repeated Ruso, guessing Tetricus would not be bringing them any more business and wondering if he was one of the boatmen who had denied all knowledge of Asper and his brother yesterday. “Where can I find him?”
    The woman glanced at her husband, then said, “He’ll be out on the river, sir. But after dark he lodges somewhere behind the grain warehouse on the corner.” The