She survived the pestilence and, like so many of the remnants of the nobility, found herself solitary and enormously wealthy.
Her vast estates she managed herself and she knew to a sesterce the value of every piece of property, the justifiable expenses of maintaining each, and the income each should yield. Self-indulgent as she was and moreover an inveterate gambler, she grew richer every year.
Like all childless Romans of independent means she was the object of unblushing and overwhelming attentions from countless legacy cadgers. She enjoyed the game, accepted everything offered in the way of gifts, services or invitations, and, moreover, played up to it, for she was forever destroying her last will and making a new one. Each was read aloud to a concourse of expectant and envious legatees. Each specified scores of legacies of no despicable amount, and yet more numerous sops to numerous acquaintances. In every will Calvaster, her nearest relative and favorite grandnephew, was named as chief legatee.
She kept on making wills, and, what was more, she kept on living. Naturally her wealth, her eccentricities, her amazing healthiness and her obstinate vitality were subjects of general remark by all the gossips of the capital.
One night, an hour or two after midnight, she was seized with violent internal pains, and, in spite of the ministrations of her private physician, died before dawn.
In Rome any sudden death was likely to be attributed to poison. In her case the indications, from the Roman point of view, all converged on the inference that she had been poisoned. No-one questioned the conclusion.
Calvaster was immediately suspected. The evidence against him would not suffice to put in jeopardy any one in our days. To the Romans it seemed sufficient to justify his incarceration and trial. He had more to gain by the old lady’s death than anybody else. He had been chronically in need of money and there had been much friction between him and Pulfennia on this point. She had always provided for his necessities, but had always insisted on scrutinizing every item in his accounts, and on being convinced of his need for every sesterce she gave him. She had supported him, but by an irritating dole of small sums. He had joked with his cronies about her hold on life. He had been heard to say that he would be glad when she was gone. He had bought various drugs from various apothecaries, though none within a year of her death and none used merely as a poison. Under torture some of her slaves and some of his slaves told of his having tried to induce them to put poison in her food.
Roman society promptly divided into two camps on the question of his guilt or innocence. The subject was debated with vehemence, even with acrimony. He had been a disagreeable creature from childhood and had made many enemies. On the other hand, great numbers of fair-minded people asserted that no man, however distasteful to themselves, should be convicted on such flimsy evidence.
His trial was watched with great interest, and when he was convicted and an appeal was successful and a retrial ordered, upper class Rome seethed with altercations. The case, by common consent, was tabooed as a subject of conversation at all social gatherings; feeling ran so high that it was possible to mention the matter only between intimate friends.
Naturally Flexinna and Brinnaria, Terentia and Vocco discussed the case frequently. To her friends’ amazement Brinnaria maintained that she did not feel convinced of Calvaster’s guilt.