I became drowsy, thinking wryly of the irony that my husband was so anxious I might take risks while investigating murders, while all the time I had unwittingly discovered a crime that looked more innocent. But it wasn’t; there was money in fraud. I was even proposing to profit myself from the unearthed artefacts. That would dangerously aggrieve the people who had created them. They might want to silence me. The silencing process could be just as dangerous as getting in the way of a serial killer. Tuccia might be a fatal enemy.
More troubled than I had expected to be, eventually I dozed. I had occupied this bed alone for years, yet after a few months of knowing Tiberius, his absence was almost unbearable.
I heard the music downstairs come to a close. Later I heard Gratus and Fornix crashing home, the worse for wear. Drax, the yard watchdog, barked at them; Barley, on the floor in my room, only stirred irritably. I lay with one arm across the space where Tiberius ought to be, as at last I sank fully into sleep.
XXXIV
Every informer knows you can wake up on a hundred mornings ready for your trade, yet nobody wants you. On the one day you are desperate for a lie-in, some idiot will disturb your peace. If your luck is worse than average it will be Sosthenes, a fountain-designer, who insists that your staff drag you out of bed, a time-consumer who loves to talk, a no-hoper who has so few commissions he need not rush away, a fright who fibs that he won’t keep you long so you can wait for your breakfast until he has left (he has already had his own, so he’s all right; he recommends a snack bar that you know is rubbish).
“We met!” he cried triumphantly. “I am the special water-supply adviser to the Seventh Cohort of Vigiles.”
“I wouldn’t boast of that on the Aventine. The Seventh’s name is mud here.”
Although he worked with the Seventh, so must have seen them in action, he looked surprised.
Sparsus, the apprentice, had been sent to show this pain to the house. Even Sparsus had the sense to stick the man in our courtyard, then run. Gratus said he had been told to fetch a bucket of steam, with a lid to make sure that he lost none of it on his way back to the site.
“Does that young man have no common sense, madam?”
“Yes, but he leaves it safe at home under his pillow, in case somebody steals it.”
Gratus laughed. I knew he liked working at our house.
* * *
When it came to designing fountains, Sosthenes was top notch. He told me so. There was no other evidence.
I decided I had better take an interest because Tiberius would, since Tiberius loved waterworks. Sosthenes was in line to create the nymphaeum at the Grove, so he was a contact to be nurtured by our firm.
Somehow I squeezed in a question. “Are you an architect?” This was the one professional my husband would hate. All builders think architects are nuts.
“I have architectural knowledge,” hedged the visitor. Got it. He never finished the training. “My sphere is ephemerals: statuary, hydraulics, mosaics, high-class marble work. All naturals for a nymphaeum.”
He had been promised the commission, for what that was worth. Had he tendered? No, the new-build programmers were not bothering with the formal submission process. Oh, really? That told me six other designers were probably being led on in the same way; quite likely none of them would be awarded the work. Some bureaucrat had told this dreamer he was first choice, on which flimsy basis Sosthenes was deep in preliminary drawings, site surveys and estimates. Chance was, he would never even be paid for his time.
The figures were looking good, he claimed, though I felt sceptical after he mentioned they had been put together by Spendo, the dwarf with a face like molten rock who, according to our clerk of works, produced prices so high that clients’ eyes watered. So the nymphaeum might be too expensive to build—or at least expensive enough for the decision to be tangled in bureaucracy where delay is often drawn out into permanence. From what I knew about imperial projects, they had oodles of money but no ethics; just when a professional believed they would be using him, someone changed their mind and everything was cancelled. Since the altered mind might belong to our emperor, only the brave complained. They probably ended up building public toilets in provincial towns.
Being drowsy still, I let Sosthenes talk. For a deadbeat entrepreneur, he was full of theories. A tricky one was that Tiberius had said he fancied a fountain in our courtyard. “Good choice!” cried Sosthenes. “Good stuff! Good spot!”
Of his own accord he had out a folding rule and was measuring a wall. I mentioned that if he put his folly there he must move the dog kennel. He approached it. Barley, who in reality preferred to sleep in our bed, growled at him from the courtyard steps. “Good dog!” pleaded Sosthenes. She growled louder.
“We do not have a water connection,” I demurred. That ought to fix him. “We have to send a slave out with buckets to collect all our supplies. Tiberius Manlius knows we cannot have a home fountain.”
“No problem,” claimed the designer, becoming bold. “You can be fixed up with a link. The Aqua Appia comes in at the end of the Clivus Publicius, but it is too low for your purposes. Not to worry. The Aventine boasts a siphonised branch of the Aqua Marcia, the coldest and clearest water in Rome. Tell Tiberius Manlius to order the pipes, then I shall organise the job. I know all the aqueduct-works boys—they will bump you up the queue if it’s for me.”
“Good idea!” It really was—like most things you instinctively try to avoid. At the moment Dromo was supposed to be our water-carrier, which made our supply erratic. “But we cannot afford your fantastic font right now.” I spoke with my usual determination. To Sosthenes, clients were reeds who would bend to his current, even though it was hardly surging. This was the first time he had met me. An education. “Is that why Larcius sent you up here? To nobble us with a niche? I do not think so!”
I was right. Larcius had more sense. Suddenly I was back in command of my home. After much blather, the designer accepted I was serious: no sparkling wall fountain. None, despite his claim that my husband had approved the idea.
I said I would talk to Tiberius, implying he would end up crushed by wifely power. Only he and I knew it was not my style.
Sosthenes came clean. Larcius had sent him as a witness. The designer had had a sighting of my lost dancing boys.
On the afternoon after Victoria Tertia was murdered, Sosthenes and Spendo had gone to the Grove for Spendo to measure up and price Sosthenes’ working drawings for the hypothetical nymphaeum. To their surprise, Larcius and the men were absent. They subsequently learned that this was because I had instructed the men to leave the site that day while things settled down following the death. I had brought them back over the river to work at Fullo’s Nook.
“Is that,” asked Sosthenes, hopefully, “a bar with scope for water features?”
“No. No space, and after paying us for his worktops, Fullo will have no cash. Get on with your story.”
Although the grotto site was closed, Sosthenes and Spendo had climbed over the barriers then clambered about, making notes. While they were there, my two dancers turned up. The two professionals spoke only to one lad; for some reason the other was being carried around by his brother.
“What was wrong with him?”
“They never said.”
“Did you ask?”
“No, I wasn’t particularly interested.”
Assuming these lads had no business at the building site, Sosthenes told them to leave. He claimed he had “politely shooed them away,” though I gained the impression he was more aggressive. Designers are not tough, but the boys would have been unused even to wimps telling them to clear off.
“Did they ask for Larcius?”
“Not by name. The one who talked merely asked me where the builders were. He sounded curious. He never said the two of them had any connection with you.”
“Had they been hurt?”
“Not obviously. They looked like a couple of long-haired urchins, up to no good. The flopp
y one might have been in a fight, I suppose. The other was just shifty.”
“See any wounds?”
“No, but they seemed whacked.”
“Scared?”
“Could be. Very unhappy. They were looking over their shoulders as if someone might be coming after them—little thieves who had been caught in the act, we thought. I didn’t want them pinching anything from the nymphaeum site.”
I remembered that the workmen had taken away all their tools. But maintaining site security meant preventing loafers hanging around, so I said nothing.
“When Spendo came over, they were scared of him all right!” exclaimed Sosthenes. “One look, and they fled fast enough.”
“Yes, I gather he is unusual … Where did they go? Which direction?”
“Back the way they came, I think.”
“Which was?”
“Through the gardens.”
“Sublician Bridge direction? Towards the Naumachia? Portuensis Gate?”
“I couldn’t tell. I didn’t care really, so long as they left.”
I thanked him for coming to tell me, but I prepared to dismiss him.
The only good thing to come out of this story was that why ever they had gone missing, Primulus and Galanthus had at least tried to come back. Alone in the Transtiberina, the inexperienced boys would not know their way home to the Aventine. They had tried to find the builders, but when that failed, they could have wandered off anywhere. At least on the day after the murder they were still alive.
“Larcius gave me a message for you,” Sosthenes ended. Was it an apology for sending him? No chance. “He says better not go over to the Grove again. That pervert who keeps nabbing women, he did another last night.”
XXXV
Warning me off had fixed it: I was going to the Grove.
I skipped breakfast. While I was putting on walking shoes, Sparsus came back to the house, needing further instructions about the “bucket of steam” he was supposed to obtain. I explained. I was kind about it. Well, fairly. It was time he started thinking twice before accepting ridiculous errands.
At least I could brush off objections from the others by saying I had him as my escort. Also, as we headed over to the Transtiberina, I could pick his brains. I hoped this vague young man had brought them with him today.
“What’s happened, Sparsus? The fountain-fiddler said there’s been another murder.”
“Yes, the Pest has only gone and killed another one!” Sparsus was glum, wanting to feel excited, yet depressed by such terrible things happening so near to their site.
“Tell me, please.”
“We only heard from a pedlar who came by to sell us flatbreads. They found another corpse in Caesar’s Gardens.”
“Who found her? When? Who was she? What had happened to her…?”
“Hold on, Albia! I only know what the bread man said, and he was mostly ‘Do you want chickpea spread or honey?’ Some gardeners found a dead body. It’s over in the main part of Caesar’s Gardens because the vigiles are there, a lot of them this time. They have a space roped off. Running about like daft red rabbits. Larcius told us to keep out of the way.”
“Good thing.” It sounded as if Julius Karus was involved. More men. Crime-scene protection. Pointless agitation. Trampling evidence. Anyone who showed any interest would put themselves in line to be his suspect. I knew how his mind worked. “If they come across to question you, be helpful. If it happened last night, you were at home on this side of the river, so they shouldn’t bother you as witnesses.” I phrased it carefully. Best not to pre-empt Karus playing the idiot and harassing them. However, I did not want him trying to pin any deaths on my men. “You’ve nothing to tell them, Sparsus, so just be patient with their little games. Otherwise, stay out of their hair, let them get on with it.”
“Are you going to stay out of the vigiles’ hair?” Young Sparsus was beginning to show signs of the satire the others possessed.
“No,” I confessed. I added coldly, “Because this is my job, Sparsus.”
I did not tell him that sometimes my work felt about as useful as being sent to a hardware shop for a bucket of steam.
He would not have picked up the joke. He still dimly thought such a bucket could be had, only he hadn’t managed yet to find the right tool shop.
* * *
Soon after we entered the formal gardens, we located the find scene. I sent Sparsus to the building site. By myself I walked quietly up to the roped-off area, where I stood in silence, close to the vigiles who were guarding it. I had given these grim-faced hunks a nod. They even responded though they, too, made no comment. I watched as a covered trestle was carried towards us, then placed on a cart and removed by a small guard party. It was an open-sided cart that seemed already to contain buckets of something. As they came by us, I almost requested a sight of the body. But there was no point. I knew what would have been done to the woman. I felt too sick on her behalf to stare at her remains.
The cordon stayed in place. Within it, I could see other men, bent over, scrutinising soil, plants, foliage around the bases of minor statuary. While they searched among clipped box and along earthen paths, I did nothing until eventually I made out Karus. Very politely, I asked the vigiles if I might go and speak to him. At once, they lifted up their rope for me.
It struck me that I had not mentioned who I was or how I had an interest, yet I felt they knew.
* * *
I might have expected Karus to have given orders: If that interfering woman turns up, keep her out. I certainly thought he would himself rebuff me. He must have had a theory: keep them guessing—if they believe they know the rules, change the rules. So he let me come right up to where he was standing with another man, whom I had not seen before.
This was where the body must have been found. A low fence with criss-crossed diagonal slats ran alongside the path; a stretch had been pulled open to access flattened foliage where the dead woman must have been lying. Behind the fence was the normal arrangement of small ornamental trees set among a variety of shrubs, with plants that would be starred with flowers in a warmer season. Due to the time of year, everything was bare. Normally birds would be everywhere. None came today.
Julius Karus stood with his arms folded, watching moodily as the vigiles kept searching. His companion looked nervous; perhaps he was edgy because of Karus. Intelligent, then.
I nodded, a grim greeting. Karus slightly nodded back. The stranger only stared, wondering about me, yet apparently lost in his own awkwardness at having to be here. I waited for them to speak first. The silence was heavy, joyless and sombre.
I had come in a cloak so I wrapped myself deeper in its folds. In the end I had to break the spell: “I assume it’s another the same?”
Having made me speak first, Karus released the story easily enough. “Two.”
“What?”
He relished my surprise. “One fresh today, the other only scattered bones.” The bones must have been in those buckets I saw on the cart.
They knew who the first victim was. Karus told me the gardeners had been ordered to conduct a full search after a woman had come to the station-house last night to report a friend missing. She had heard about Victoria Tertia, so was anxious, especially as she had to confess that her friend, who was younger and had two children, had come out after dark to earn coppers as a prostitute. Normally this witness would have been sent away to wait longer before bothering the vigiles, but Karus rightly jumped on it.
He must have been at the station-house. As soon as the woman came in, he took over. By sunrise he had the entire gardens staff out walking in lines on a grid pattern. When they had first started, there must have been a good chance he would catch the killer unawares while he was still involved with the victim. But Karus had been unlucky. There were no sightings.
The man standing with him was the superintendent of Caesar’s Gardens and the Grove. Berytus by name, he was older, not far from the end of his administrative career. A saggin
g, thread-veined face, with heavily pouched eyes. Extremely uncomfortable at this scene.
Some of his staff had discovered a woman’s corpse not long after they had begun their search that morning. Almost simultaneously others nearby came across skeletal remains. A decomposed body had once been buried at the back of an arbour, but due to the winter dieback of foliage, weathered bones could be seen, partly exposed by animals.
A long-ago attempt had been made to hide the older corpse. The new one had been left at this spot last night, where anyone strolling on the path might glance over the border fence and see her.
“Unfinished business!” said Karus, with lip-smacking relish. I could tell he enjoyed shocking the superintendent. “The perp meant to play with her before he finished.” He let the other man work out what that could mean, if he could in fact imagine that such things happened.
“Was this one posed?” I asked, remaining expressionless.
“No. But naked. The men are hunting for her clothes.”
While the superintendent brooded miserably, Karus and I discussed the situation as professionals. We presumed the killer’s intention had been to move his dead victim away from the path before he had finished with her, probably to shift her from Caesar’s Gardens into the sacred Grove where there was more cover; he may have meant to do so in daylight, had the presence of searchers not stopped him.
“Did the people who found her know her?” Both men looked surprised at my question. I managed not to sigh. “If this woman regularly came here for her trade, surely the gardeners might recognise her?” Berytus confirmed they did, which was how the vigiles knew this was the missing woman. The group who had found her were now in shock. It was not the first time corpses had been found by gardeners, though, not by a long way.
I glanced at Karus. Sometimes the person who claims to have discovered a murder is secretly the killer. Karus shook his head slightly, so he knew this too; he was warning me to say nothing in front of our companion. I duly kept quiet. Besides, gardeners had been set the task of searching this morning, so that seemed to rule out the killer-discoverer theory.
The Grove of the Caesars Page 16