I cleared my throat and took a sip of warm wine. 'Yes. Well, as I was saying, with prices wildly out of control-'

'Yes, yes-'

'Well, I don't know what you or your employer may have heard about my rates. I don't know how you obtained my name or who recommended me.'

'Never mind that.'

'All right. Though you did say five times…' 'Yes, five times your daily pay!' trying to sound professionally cool while fountains of silver coins splashed in my head. Four hundred sesterces a day, multiplied by five guaranteed days of work, equalled two thousand sesterces. At last I could have the back wall of the house repaired, have new tiles laid to replace the cracked ones in the atrium, perhaps even afford a new slave girl to help Bethesda with her duties…

Mummius nodded gravely. 'It's as important a case as you're ever likely to be called for.'

'And sensitive, I take it.'

'Extremely.'

'Requiring discretion.'

'Great discretion,' he agreed.

'I assume that more than mere property is at stake. Honour, then?'

'More than honour,' said Mummius gravely, with a haunted look in his eyes.

'A life, then? A life at stake?' From the look on his face I knew that we were talking about a case of murder. A fat fee, a mysterious client, a murder – I had no resistance left. I did my best to make my face a blank.

Mummius looked very grave – the way that men look on a battlefield, not in the rush of excitement before the killing, but afterwards, amid the carnage and despair. 'Not a life,' he said slowly, 'not merely a single life at stake, but many lives. Scores of lives – men, women, children – all hang in the balance. Unless something is done to stop it, blood will flow like water, and the wailing of babies will be heard in the very Jaws of Hades.'

I finished my wine and set it aside. 'Marcus Mummius, will you not tell me outright who sent you, and what it is you want me to do?'