A body in the bathhouse Book

For all those people, who have hired master craftsmen promising good quality work, quickly completed. Then watched their house being slowly demolished by workers who are never on site when you complain.
This story is for you.
Falco's new house has a body in the bathhouse. And its only the beginning of a murder/mystery for our Roman detective.

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It started with a smell
But for Rhea Favonia, we might have lived with it.
"There's a smell! There's a horrible smell. I'm not going in there!"
I didn't need to be an informer to know we were stuck. When a four-year-old girl reckons she has detected something nasty, you just give in and look for it. My little niece would not go near the bathhouse until we proved there was nothing horrible in the caldarium. The more we scoffed and told her the hot room was only smelly because of its new plaster, the more Rhea screamed hysterically at bathtime. There was nothing visible, and the rest of us tried to ignore it. But the child's insistence unsettled everyone.
There was a faint odor. If I tried sniffing it out, I lost it. When I decided there had been nothing, straightaway I smelled it again.

Bringing up children
It had already been a hard winter. For most of it, Helena Justina had been pregnant with our second child. She suffered more than with the first, while I struggled to let her rest by looking after our firstborn, Julia. As queen of the household, Julia was establishing her authority that year. I had the bruises to prove it. I had gone deaf too; she enjoyed testing her lungs. Our dark-haired moppet could put on a burst of speed any stadium sprinter would envy, especially as she toddled towards a fiercely steaming stockpot or darted down our steps onto the roadway. Even dumping her on female relations was out; her favorite game lately was breaking vases.

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The new live-in nurse maid
Hyspale had not approved when Helena Justina abandoned her smart senatorial home to live with an informer. She came to us with great reluctance. It was made clear at our first interview (she interviewed us, of course) that Hyspale expected a room of her own in a respectable dwelling, the right to more time off than time on duty, use of the family carrying chair to protect her modesty on shopping trips, and the occasional treat of a ticket for the theater, or better still a pair of tickets so she could go with a friend. She would not accept being quizzed on the sex or identity of the friend.

At the beginning of a voyage to Britain we see a dockside farewell
"We're moving already!" Aelianus cried excitedly. Foreboding struck me. A panicky commotion was already telling me the worst: the captain had cast off and sailed out of Portus. Unluckily, he did so while Maia was still on board with us.
My sister was now straining at the rail, ready to throw herself over like a naiad crazed by too much sun and foam. I had never seen Maia so hysterical. She was shrieking that she had been taken from her children. Only real force from Justinus, who had grasped the situation in his quick style and then grabbed Maia, stopped her trying to hurl herself overboard to get back to shore. Like me, she had never learned to swim.
I leaned on the rail and stared back at the quayside. There indeed were Maia's four young children. Marius, Cloelia, and Ancus stood in a solemn line togther; they seemed to be calmly waving us good-bye. Rhea was held up in the arms of Petronius Longus as if to get a better view of her mother being abducted. An extra small dot must be Marius' puppy sitting quietly on his lead. Petronius, who could have tried commandeering a boat to chase after us, was just standing there.
"My children! Take me back to my children! My darlings; whatever will become of them without me? They will all be terrified'"
The neatly lined-up little figures were all looking quite unperturbed.

So that's how you escape from a stalker
My sister was being removed from the reach of Anacrites. Somebody had set this up, whether Maia liked it or not. My guess was Helena. Petronius and even Maia's children might have conspired too. Only Helena could have invented the scheme and paid for it. Maia was unlikely to see the real truth. Once she had calmed down and started to work this out, then I, her utterly blameless brother, would end up being blamed.

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While investigating the embezzlement at the British king's building site and the unexplained deaths Falco must still track down the bathhouse builders (and murders). Excitement, family life and dangers are all mixed into this cozy murder/mystery.

Enjoy!