Nero cut his throat with a razor, but he was supposedly hiding in a garden trench at the time, where there may have been no elegant options; to be skewered on a dibber would have lacked the artistry he coveted. The traditional method in private life is to enter a warm bath and open your veins. This death is contained, relaxing, and reckoned to be more or less painless. (Mind you, it presupposes you live in a grand home with a bath.) For a senator, such an exit from disaster is the only civilised way out.

But it had not happened here.

`My master took poison,' said the steward.

V

TO INTERVIEW seven senators, I needed help. I returned home and summoned the Camilli. They had to be found first. I sent out my nephew Gaius, a lad about town recently returned from having his habits reformed in the country. It had not worked. He was still a layabout, but agreed to be my runner for his usual exorbitant sweetener. Trotting off to the senator's house to ask where the lads were supposed to be, he soon rousted out Aelianus from a bath house then rounded up Justinus, who was out shopping with his wife.

While I was waiting I did some budgeting, wrote an ode in my head, and replanted some flower tubs little Julia had `weeded'. Helena pounced. `I'm glad you're here. A woman called for you.'

`Oh good!' I leered.

`One of your widows.'

`Sweetheart, I promise you: I gave up widows.'

`You may do this one,' Helena assured me cruelly. `Her name is Ursulina Prisca and she is about sixty-five.'

I knew Ursulina. She had been badgering me for a long time to take on an extremely complex wrangle involving her estranged brother's will. She was half crazy. I could have coped with that; most of my clients were. But she talked a torrent, she smelt of cats, and she drank. A friend of hers had recommended me. I had never worked out who the friend was, though I would like to have strong words with them.