Three Hands In The Fountain

`Oho!' I scoffed,, as if I thought that was the first step to enforced retirement. 'Some people who get hit very hard on the head have a personality change afterwards.' He seemed to have avoided that; it was a pity, because any change in Anacrites' personality would have been an improvement.

'I brought Anacrites so you and he can have a little chat.' I went cold. `You'll have to sort out a decent business for yourself now you're a father,' my mother instructed me. `You need a partner – someone to give you a few tips. Anacrites can help get you on your feet – on days when he feels fit enough.'

Now it was me who felt sick.

Lucius Petronius, my loyal friend, had been surreptitiously showing the dismembered hand from the water tower to my brothers-in-law in a corner. Those ghouls were always eager for anything sensational.

`Pooh!' I heard Lollius boasting. `That's nothing. We fish worse out of the Tiber every week -'

Some of my sisters' children spotted the grisly item and crowded round to see it. Petro hastily wrapped up the hand in a piece of rag; I hoped it was not one of our new Spanish dinner napkins. It made an intriguing parcel, which caught the eye of Nux, a determined street mongrel who had adopted me. The dog leapt at the parcel. Everyone snatched to save it. The hand fell out of the rag. It landed on the floor, and was captured by Marius, the extremely serious elder son of my sister Maia who just happened to come into the room at that point. When she saw her normally wholesome eight year-old sniffing at a badly decayed relic, apparently supervised approvingly by Lucius Petronius, my favourite sister used some language I never thought she knew. Much of it

described Petronius, and the rest' appertained to me.

Maia made sure she snatched up; the flagon of fine olive oil which was her present from me from Baetica and then she, Famia, Marius, Ancus, Cloelia and little Rhea all went home.

Well, that cleared some space.

While everyone, else was sniggering and looking shifty, Petro threw a heavy arm round my shoulders and greeted my mother with affection. `Junilla Tacita! How right you are about Falco needing to buckle down. As a matter of fact, he and I have just been outside having a long discussion about that. You know, he seems feckless, but he does recognise his position. He needs to establish his office, take on some lucrative cases and build up a reputation so the work continues to flow in.' That sounded good. I wondered why I' had never thought of it. Petronius had not finished his oration. `We found the ideal solution. While I'm taking a break from the vigiles I'm going to move into his old apartment and give him a hand as a partner myself.'

I beamed at Anacrites in a charitable way. `You're just a fraction too late for the festival. Afraid the job is taken, old fellow. Bad luck!'

THREE

When we slapped the parcel on to the clerk's table, Fusculus reached for it eagerly. He had always had a hearty appetite and thought we had brought him in a snack. We let him open it,

For a second he did think it was an interesting new kind of cold sausage, then he recoiled with a yell.:

`Urgh! Where have you two infantile; beggars been playing? Who does this belong to?'

`Who knows?' Petronius had had time to get used to the dismembered hand. While jolly Fusculus still looked pale, Petro could appear blase. `No seal ring with a lover's name, no handy Celtic woad tattoo it's so swollen and misshapen you can't even tell whether it came from a woman or a man.'

`Woman,' guessed Fusculus. He prided himself on his professional expertise. The hand, which had four fingers missing, was so badly swollen from being in water that there were no real grounds for his guess.

`How's' work?' Petronius asked him yearningly. I could tell that as a partner in my own business his commitment would be meagre.

`It was all right until you two came in.'

We were at the Fourth Cohort's guard house. Most of it was storage for fire-fighting equipment, reflecting the vigiles' main task. Ropes, ladders, buckets,, huge grass' mats, mattocks and axes, and the pumping engine were all ready for action. There was a small bare cell into which cat burglars and arsonists could be flung, and a utilitarian room where those on duty could either play dice or beat all Hades out of the burglars and fire-raisers if that seemed more fun. Both rooms were normally empty at this hour, The holding cell was used at night; in the morning its miserable contents were either released with a caution or marched off to the tribune's office for a formal interrogation. Since most offences occur under cover of darkness only a skeleton staff was on duty by day. They were out searching for suspects or sitting on a bench in the sun.