Does a Killer Live Here?

In “Deadly Confrontation” Miriam goes to a tenement on the edge of the Bruchium quarter to interview a person of interest in the murder of Katerina, a recent arrival from Rome who’d established a perfumery:

The tang of stale urine, fresh scats, and putrefying garbage alerted my nose that we were nearing the dingy fringe of the Bruchium quarter. Seeing a woman nursing her baby on the stoop of a mudbrick tenement, I signaled my bearers to stop so I could ask for directions. She pointed upstairs.

The hem of my tunic brushed my calves as I stepped over a drunk slumped across the threshold and climbed the steep spiral of narrow rungs. The echo of my footsteps followed me to a hallway reeking of boiled cabbage and scratched with the vilest graffiti.

I knocked on the first door.

The square-shouldered woman who answered reminded me of a Roman pillar. Despite my own height, I had to look up to meet her eyes.

A long sigh and pushing open the door, she waved me into her cage-like room. With a sagging wooden floor and low ceiling, it exhaled the stench of ripe clothing and the acrid grease of tallow wicks. It had space for only a trunk, a washstand over a chamber pot, a pallet—just a puddle of straw covered with a tattered quilt—and a scarred table with two facing chairs. The hubbub of the street along with a sliver of yellow light leaked through the high, slit-like window.

Miriam interviewed the woman. Did she find Katerina’s killer, or was this just another stop in her pursuit of justice for the young woman whom her best friend says everybody loved? To find out more, click here.