The Anio was the pretty waterway into which, according to Bolanus, some local madman habitually threw dissected human body parts.
XLVIII
I HAD NOT come to enjoy the scenery.
The first task was to familiarise myself rapidly with the area. We were perched at the southern end of the Sabine Hills. We had come out on the ancient Via Tiburtina, crossing the Anio twice, first outside Rome on the Pons Mammaeus, and then later on the five-arched Pons Lucanus, dominated by the handsome tomb of the Plautii. We were already in rich man’s territory, signalled by the thermal springs at Aquae Albulae, into which Sedina had made sure she dunked Petronius. Since the hot baths were supposed to cure throat and urinary infections I could not sec that they had much relevance for a man who had been punched and kicked halfway to oblivion, and the unsavoury sight of his wounds certainly caused a flurry of fast-exiting invalids. The feeder lakes were pretty: an astonishing vivid blue. The smell of sulphur pervading the neighbourhood was thoroughly off-putting.
Lest we turn into tourists, the Emperor had done his best to spoil the succeeding area. It was being used to quarry the travertine stone for the huge new Flavian Amphitheatre in Rome, the process scarring the landscape and filling up the roads with carts. It must be distressing the snobs who had made their holiday homes here, but they could hardly protest about Vespasian’s pet scheme.
All the way across the Campagna we had been accompanied by the high, handsome arches of the major aqueducts. Even when they veered away from the road, we could still see the great tawny arcades, dominating the plain as they strode towards Rome from the hills. They took a wide sweep, travelling miles in the process, in order to provide as gentle a gradient as possible and arrive at the city still high enough to supply its citadels, the Palatine and the Capitol.
At the point where the plain ran out and the hills started, encircled by fine olive groves and commanding unparalleled vistas, stood Tibur. There the incoming River Anio was forced to turn round three corners through a narrow gorge, producing fabulous cascades. The high ground ended abruptly in an escarpment, and the river simply fell straight over the edge, tumbling two hundred yards in its descent.
Sacred to the Sibyl Albunia, this breathtaking spot had been provided not just with the Sibyl’s elegant crag-top temple but those of Hercules Victor and Vesta as well, popular subjects for artists throughout Italy when painting landscapes in roundels to adorn the walls of fashionable dining-rooms. Here statesmen created opulent country houses, inspiring yet more derivative art. Poets haunted the place like intellectual vagrants. Maecenas, the financier of Caesar and power-broker of Augustus, had his sumptuous nook here. Augustus himself came. Varus, the legendary military incompetent who lost three whole legions in Germany, owned a spread and had a road named after him. Everywhere was dripping with wealth and appropriately snobbish. The town centre was neat, clean, and prettied up with well-positioned maidenhair ferns. The populace seemed friendly. They usually do in towns where the main occupation is overcharging visitors.
We knew Bolanus was up in the hills, so a messenger was sent to announce our arrival. Meanwhile, Julius Frontinus and I shared out the job of checking the real estate. He took the sinister mansions with private racing stadia and armed guards, the ones which were supposed to be impenetrable to strangers. Most opened the gate for a consular official with six lictors. (Of course he had brought the lictors. They deserved a holiday. He was thoroughly considerate.) I took the rest of the properties, which were fewer than I had feared. Tibur was a millionaires’ playground. So exclusive it was worse than the Bay of Neapolis in high summer.
Helena Justina had decided she would co-ordinate our efforts. Sedina helped look after Julia, in the periods when she had put Petronius down for a nap. That left Helena free to organise Frontinus and me, a task she set about with glee.
She drew up a map of the whole district, plotting who lived where, and whether they should go on our list of suspects. For various reasons, the list ended up shorter than it might have been.
‘Since the aqueduct killer has apparently been at his grisly trade for a long time, we can omit anyone with recently acquired property,’ Helena reminded us. ‘Since he kills so repeatedly, we can probably ignore all the large villas which are occupied only on a very irregular basis. Their owners don’t come here often enough. We are looking for something extremely specific: a family who use Tibur not just as a relaxing resort where they may – or may not – be staying at given times of year, and from which they may – or just as easily may not – return to Rome for major festivals. Your search is for people who routinely visit all the Games, and who have done so assiduously for decades. If they own a house with access to the river, so much the better.’
Obtaining this information was normally not difficult. If Frontinus found any property-owners at home he asked them outright about their habits and movements. People responded well. Assisting an official tribunal is a public duty – with penalties for default. My approach was more subtle, but worked equally well; I invited folk to gossip about their neighbours. I found plenty of material.
‘You both learned a lot,’ Helena said, sitting us down for a conference after a day’s hard work. Frontinus had been brought down to the farm; he was not at all shy of visiting a set of huts in a nettle patch. Helena grumbled at him just as much as at me: ‘The trouble is, your work has not thrown up many likely suspects.’
‘Are we going wrong?’ Frontinus asked meekly.
‘Don’t let her bully you,’ I grinned.
She looked upset. ‘Am I being bossy, Marcus?’
‘You are being yourself, dear heart.’
‘I don’t want to behave immodestly.’
‘Cobnuts, Helena! You can see the Consul and I are listening like woolly lambs. Tell us the score.’
‘Well look, this is a typical example: Julius Frontinus interviewed a family called the Luculli. They have a large house near the cascade, with a sublime aspect towards the Temple of the Sibyl –’
‘They are staying here at the moment, and readily admit that they all went to Rome together for several days of the last Games,’ Frontinus reported, still looking slightly nervous of Helena’s enthusiasm.
‘Yes, but, sir –’ That ‘sir’ was a sop to his vanity; he took it well. ‘The Luculli are a family who have been loaded with money for three or four generations. As a result, they have bought themselves villas in all the fashionable resorts. They have two on the Bay of Neapolis – facing each other from Cume and Surrentum – plus their yachting base on the Alban Lake, their northern estate at Clusium, their southern one at Velia, and in this area they not only own the house in Tibur where we found them, but another at Tusculum and yet a third at Praeneste – which it turns out is really their old-fashioned favourite when seeking cooler air to escape to from the heat of summer in Rome.’
Frontinus looked thoroughly quashed.
I rubbed it in cheerfully. ‘So the chances of the lucky Luculli following a regular pattern are zero.’
‘Quite,’ said Helena. ‘They are always on the move. Even if they regularly visit Rome for festivals, half the time they aren’t staying here. The person you want kidnaps his victims, then apparently always disposes of them in exactly the same way, and presumably in the same place.’
‘So have we come up with anybody suitable?’ I asked.
‘No.’ Helena looked despondent. ‘Very few fit that category. I thought we had one – a Roman, living here for twenty years, goes to Rome for all the major festivals – but it’s a woman: Aurelia Maesia. She has a villa near the Sanctuary of Hercules Victor.’
‘I remember her.’ Frontinus had done the interview. ‘A widow. Decent background. Never remarried. Came home to a family estate after her husband died, but now goes into Rome to stay with her sister whenever there is a major event to patronise. She is well over fifty –’ His tone hinted that that was a gallant estimate. ‘She was suspicious of our enquiry, but surely incapable of murder. Besides
, she stops in Rome throughout the Games. Our killer seized Asinia after the opening ceremony, then put at least one of her hands into the water supply very soon afterwards. That means if Bolanus really has found where he does it and it’s up here, the man must have returned to Tibur virtually the next day.’
‘That’s another knot in the pattern,’ I warned. ‘The killer goes to Rome for festivals – yet evidently he comes back after the opening ceremony. But he doesn’t stay here. He must go back to Rome a second time, because the torsos and heads are then dumped in the river and the Great Sewer. It’s rather distinct behaviour.’ An obvious explanation struck me. ‘Aurelia Maesia must have litter-bearers, or a driver. Does her litter drop her at her sister’s in Rome, return here, and then fetch her at the end of the Games?’
‘She uses a driver.’ Frontinus was touchingly keen to show off. ‘I remembered to ask her. She travels in a carriage, but the driver stays with it at a stables just outside Rome. She likes it to be available in case she and her sister want a country drive.’
Aurelia Maesia was no good then, but at least we had found one person who came near to fitting our profile. It encouraged us to believe there could be others somewhere.
‘Don’t be disheartened,’ I said to Frontinus. ‘The more folk we rule out, the easier it will be to spot who we want.’
He agreed, yet threw in a different problem. ‘If our man Bolanus is right that the dismembered body parts are entering the aqueducts at source then Tibur itself isn’t the place to be.’
‘Tibur is supplied from the Aqua Marcia,’ said Helena, ‘but that’s an incoming branch which ends here. The main conduit that goes to Rome starts miles away.’
‘Halfway to Sublaqueum,’ I added, not to be outdone with supplying facts. ‘Only another thirty miles of territory where we have to identify every house and farm, then ask the owners nicely if they happen to be murderers!’
IL
BY ARRANGEMENT BOLANUS reported to Frontinus the next day. I met them both at the house where Frontinus was staying. Bolanus was wearing the same ancient tunic and belt he had had on when I first met him, to which he had added a brimmed hat to guard against the weather and a knapsack for travelling. His plan was to drag Frontinus and me all the way to Sublaqueum, for reasons which I suspected had more to do with a wish to see the dam on which he had once worked than our search. But as a public servant he knew very well how to make a pleasant site visit sound like a logistical necessity.
Frontinus had sent a message to ask Petro if he wanted to be driven to the villa to help us take stock, but my partner refused quite shamelessly. ‘No thanks. Tell his honour I’d rather laze about here counting geese.’
‘Flirting with the neighbour’s kitchen maid, you mean,’ I growled.
‘Certainly not!’ he exclaimed, with a grin. I was right. He had spotted that she was plump in all the right places, eighteen years old, and given to looking over our boundary fence in the yearning hope that something masculine would glide up for a chat. I myself had only noticed the girl because I had had a perfectly sensible conversation with Helena Justina about the meagre amount of herb-plucking and goat-milking that the little madam was given to do. Helena took the view that she was trouble, while I feebly tried to argue that unseemly habits don’t inevitably end in tragedy.
Petronius Longus was turning out to be more of a typical informer than I had ever been. He just would not take work seriously. If there was a flagon to drink or an attractive woman to moon at, he was in there. He seemed to think the freelance life was about lying in bed until he ruined his reputation, then spending the rest of the day enjoying himself. If that left me doing all the work, he just laughed at my stupidity.
It was a complete reversal of his dedicated approach in the vigiles. Even as a lad in the army he had been more conscientious. Perhaps he needed a supervisor to kick against. If so, as his friend I would never be able to issue orders, so that was out. And he knew how to dodge the Consul.
‘Petronius Longus not with you?’ was the first thing Frontinus asked me.
‘Sorry, sir. He’s feeling a little off-colour again. He wanted to come but his auntie put her veto on allowing him out.’
‘Oh really?’ responded Frontinus, like a cockerel who knew he was having his tail tweaked by pranksters.
‘Really, sir.’
Bolanus grinned, understanding the situation, then quietly took the heat off by talking about our trip into the hills.
Frontinus was driven there in a fast, practical carriage, while Bolanus and I rode mules. We first took the Via Valeria, the great road through the Appenines. It climbed through gentle, attractively wooded slopes, accompanied by the graceful arches of the Aqua Claudia. At this point they followed the River Anio, though below Tibur they took a long sweep south-east, to avoid the escarpment and its sudden drastic drop in height.
The Sabine Hills run basically north and south. We started out heading in a north-easterly direction for most of the first day. The valley of the Anio widened and became more agricultural, with vineyards and olive groves. We bought a snack, then pressed on to where the river took a turn to the south and we had to leave the main road. This was near the by-way north which I was told led to Horace’s Sabine Farm; as a part-time amateur poet I would have liked to divert and pay tribute at the Bandusian Spring, but we were seeking a killer, not culture. For informers, that’s sadly routine.
We stayed the night in a small settlement before turning off the highway on to the little-used country road down the Anio valley to Nero’s retreat at Sublaqueum. Once there next day, we braced ourselves to be amazed. There was a new village, grown from the workshops and huts provided to house all the builders and craftsmen who created Nero’s villa. The place was discreet and tidy, much emptier than it would have been then, yet with inhabitants still clinging on.
The location was splendid. At the head of a picturesque forested valley, where the river collected its feeder streams and first became significant, had once been three small lakes. Nero dammed the waters and raised their levels to create the fabulous pleasure lakes around his magnificent marbled summer home. It was a typical Roman extravagance; given beautiful scenery in a private and peaceful spot, he added architecture of such astounding scope that now nobody came here to look at the views, only at the last villa complex built by a vulgar rich man. A remote, contemplative valley had been destroyed to make Nero’s holiday playground, where he could amuse himself with every kind of luxury while pretending to be a recluse. He hardly ever came here; he died soon after it was built. Nobody else wanted it. Sublaqueum could never be the same again.
Bolanus proudly advised us that the middle dam, on which he had worked, was the largest in the world. Fifty feet high, the top was wide enough to drive ten horses abreast, if you were that kind of ostentatious maniac. It was paved with special tiles, with a dip in the middle to act as a spillway so the waters could continue on their natural route downstream.
The dam was truly enormous, a massive embankment of core rubble, covered with fitted blocks and sealed with hydraulic lime and crushed rock to form an impenetrable, waterproof plaster. Very nice. Who could blame any emperor who had access to the world’s finest engineers for using them to landscape his garden in this way? It was much better than a sunken pond with a lamprey and some green weed.
A bridge high across the entire dam gave access to the villa and its glamorous amenities. Bolanus told us plenty of stories about the place’s opulence, but we were in no mood to go sightseeing.
Frontinus walked us out on to the bridge. By the time we got to the middle, I for one just longed to return to land. But if the height made the Consul sway, he showed no sign of it. ‘We have come along with you, Bolanus, since we trust your expertise. Now convince us this visit to the dam has a salient point.’
Bolanus paused. He gazed down the valley, a sturdy figure, unmoved by the importance of the ex-Consul grilling him. He waved an arm at the scenery: ‘Isn’t that marvellous?’ Frontinus
screwed his mouth up and nodded in silence. ‘Right! I wanted another look,’ said Bolanus. ‘The Anio Novus aqueduct is needing a complete overhaul. It was never helped by being drawn off the river; we already knew from the bad quality of the original Anio Vetus that the channel would deliver too much mud. I reckon that could be improved dramatically if the Emperor could be persuaded to extend it right up here and draw the waters off the dam –’
Frontinus had pulled out his note-tablet and was writing this down. I foresaw him encouraging Vespasian to restore the aqueduct. For the struggling treasury to find the enormous budget for an extension might take longer. Still, Julius Frontinus was only in his mid-forties. He was the type who would mull over a suggestion like this for years. In a few decades’ time, I could well find myself smiling as the Daily Gazette saluted an Anio Novus extension, when I would remember standing here above Nero’s lake while an engineer’s assistant earnestly propounded his theories . . .
This had nothing to do with the murders. I quietly mentioned that.
I sensed that the dogged Bolanus had another of his long educational talks ready. I shifted unhappily, looking at the sky. It was blue, with the slight chilly tinge of approaching autumn. Far away, buzzards or kestrels wheeled. Bolanus, who had a weak eye, had been suffering from the glare and the breeze. Even so he had removed his hat, in case the wind lifted it and spun it over the dam and down the valley.
‘I’ve been thinking a lot about the Anio Novus.’ Bolanus liked to drop in a vital point, then leave his audience tantalised.
‘Oh?’ I said, in the cool tone of a man who knew he was being sneakily played with.
Three Hands in the Fountain Page 25