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But you don’t think so?’
    ‘Nor would you, if you had seen him,’ I replied. ‘His hands are chained behind his back. He could not have arranged the noose around his neck.’
    Junio was goggling at me. ‘No wonder you were talking about murderers,’ he said. ‘That does seem proof that something criminal’s afoot. Yet the land-slaves have gone off to work as usual, apparently thinking that it was an ordinary day?’
    I nodded. ‘I don’t imagine that they knew there’d been a murder here – and that is something which I can’t understand. I know they don’t all sleep in the same slave quarters as the domestic staff. There are so many of them now that Marcus has converted a barn on the estate for them just opposite the rear entrance to the house. But the overseer comes in, and still they get food from the kitchens and all that sort of thing. So how could this have happened without their knowing it?’
    ‘Unless the killer is a member of the household, possibly? Took the food across to them and managed to convince them that things were just as usual. In that case, is it possible he’s still somewhere about?’ He glanced uncomfortably round the room. ‘I don’t like this, Father. Let’s get out of here ourselv—’ He broke off suddenly and looked into my eyes. ‘Dear gods!’ I saw the horror dawning on his face, just as I felt it rising in my own. ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’
    ‘Minimus!’ I said.
    He nodded. ‘I have sent him off searching the back court on his own! Come on!’ He was already leading the way towards the door. ‘We’d better go and find him before someone else does.’
    I hastened after Junio as fast as my old legs would carry me – through the vestibule, into the peristyle garden and out towards the back. This time we did not stop to skirt the rooms but hurried directly down the central path.
    Past the fountain, through the inner gate and out into the courtyard where the slave quarters stood. I led the way inside and looked around. ‘Minimus?’ I shouted.
    But it was already clear that nobody was here.
    The room was exactly as I’d seen it earlier – neat and ordered and empty as the skies. I glanced at Junio, who was staring at the rows of tidy sleeping-spaces on the floor – obviously surprised to find the place so undisturbed. ‘No one left here in hurry,’ he observed. ‘But there’s no sign of Minimus.’
    ‘Perhaps he’s in the courtyard – in one of the other outbuildings, maybe?’
    We hurried out again, scouring the empty stables, the barns, the storage sheds, and still calling Minimus at every step. I even went back into the inner yard and checked the open amphorae in the ground. But there was no sign of him and no answer to our shouts. The echoes mocked us, bouncing off the walls.
    I was about to suggest to Junio that we go back into the house, in case the boy had followed him inside and we had somehow missed him as we left, but I was suddenly conscious of a distant sound behind the right-hand boundary wall. I glanced at Junio and raised a warning finger to my lips. It was ridiculous. A moment earlier we had been shouting loudly for a slave! But it suddenly seemed vital that we did not make a noise.
    There was a little gateway that led out of the court into the orchard which adjoined the house. When I looked at that gate earlier the bolt had been secured, but I could see from where I stood that it had been opened since. I gestured to Junio, who followed the direction of my pointing finger with his eyes.
    He saw the bolt and nodded. He repeated my finger-to-the-lips routine, held up a hand to indicate I should stay where I was and started to inch silently towards the gate. He had been born to servitude and had acquired the knack – which as a slave myself I’d never quite achieved – of moving absolutely silently. I could only watch him and admire his stealth, though my heart was in my mouth as he placed one noiseless hand upon the latch