Three Hands In The Fountain

I tried to look as if I understood the significance. `Are all these various conduits linked at all? Can water be transferred between them?'

`They are indeed!' Bolanus seemed to think he was teaching me logic. `There are places throughout the network where water from one aqueduct can be diverted into another if we need extra supplies, or if we want to close part of the system to work on it. The only constraint is that you have to divert downwards from a high aqueduct to a lower one. You can't lift water up. Anyway, once they get here the Claudia, Julia and Tepula share one reservoir. That might be of interest. What could also be relevant is that the Marcia has a major link with the Claudia. The Claudia arrives in Rome with the Anio Novus; they are both carried on arcades which join on one set of arches near the city.'

`In one channel?'

`No, two. The Claudia was built first. It's coupled, underneath.' He paused. `Look, I don't want to confuse you with technicalities.'

Now you're sounding like bloody Statius.' He was right though; I had had enough, of this.

`All I mean to say is that I wouldn't be surprised if the human hands that turn up in Rome had been put into the water well outside the city.'

`You're saying they enter the system way back – before the channels are covered or go underground?'

`More than that,' said Bolanus. `I bet they are slung in right at source.'

`At source? Up in the hills, you mean? Surely nothing as large as a hand could float down all the way to Rome?'

`We've, done tests with gourds. The current would bring it. We extract mounds of pebbles that have escaped the settling tanks. They arrive perfectly round, from the friction.'

'Wouldn't that friction destroy a hand?'

`It might just bob along safely. Otherwise, there may still be pieces of body out there in the settling tanks – or more remains than we know about might have arrived in Rome so pulverised nobody realised what they were.'

`So if something floated, and if, it survived, how long might the journey here take?'

`You'd be surprised. Even the Aqua Marcia, which is sixty miles long after it's meandered over the countryside to maintain a gradient, only takes a day to bring water to Rome, In the shorter ones it can be as little as a couple of hours before it arrives. Of course, friction would slow a floating object down slightly. Not much, I'd say.'

`So you're trying to convince me this maniac may be operating right out in the country at somewhere like Tibur?' `I'll be specific. I bet he dumps the severed pieces into the

River Anio.'

`I can't believe it.'

`Well, I'm just making the suggestion.'

I was talking to a man who was used to putting forward good ideas that incompetent superiors simply ignored. He had gone past caring. I could take it or leave it. The proposal sounded too far-fetched yet somehow ludicrously feasible.

I did not know what to think.

TWENTY SIX

I was able to put off making a judgement. Something more urgent needed investigation first.

I had arranged to meet Petronius back at Fountain Court.' Arriving in the early afternoon I found, first, that I had missed having lunch with Helena; she had eaten hers, assuming I must be having mine elsewhere. My second discovery was that since Petronius had dropped in to see if I was home yet, he had been given my food.

`Nice to have you in the family,' I commented.

`Thanks,' he grinned ‘if we'd known you were on your way we would have waited, of course.'

`There are some olives left,' Helena reported soothingly.

`Nuts to that!' I said.

Once we settled down, I went over what Bolanus had told me. Petronius was even more scathing than me about the idea that the killer lived in the countryside. He did not take much interest in my newly acquired aqueduct lore either. In fact, as a partner he was jealous as Hades. All he wanted was to pass on what he himself had discovered.

At first I wasn't having it. `We've got trouble if Bolanus is right and the murders take place on the Campagna or up in the hills.'

`Don't think about it.' Petro's vigiles experience was speaking. `The jurisdiction problems are a nightmare if you have to go outside Rome.'

`Julius Frontinus may be able to override the normal bureaucratic rigmaroles.',

`He'll need several legions to do it. Trying to take an investigation past the city gates is -unspeakable. Local politics, semi-comatose local magistrates, dimwit posses of horse-thief catchers, antique old retired generals who think they know it all because they once heard Julius Caesar clear his throat

`All right. We'll follow up every feasible clue in Rome first.'

`Thanks for seeing sense. – While I shall always be an admirer of your intuitive approach, Marcus Didius -' `You mean you think my method stinks.'

`I can prove it, too. Legitimate policing procedures are the ones that bring results.'

`Oh yes?'

`I've traced the girl.'

Apparently his method did have something to recommend it: that mystical ingredient called success.