Three Hands In The Fountain

He seemed eager for company, though; he had little of interest to say to anyone. I managed to extricate myself fairly gently. Something about Rosius Gratus suggested he could well be up to mischief, but once I knew he could not be the murderer I needed to be on my way.

I cantered back to the road, this time seeing nobody along the track.

FIFTY ONE

The place where we would be staying lay near the various springs which fed the Aqua Marcia. Bolanus had suggested their underground position would make access for the killer both difficult and unlikely. That was not how the dismembered hands entered the supply.

But Bolanus reckoned he could provide our answer. He and Frontinus were waiting for mews arranged, at the forty-second milestone: beside a large mud reservoir where the Anio Novus began. The valley was full of birdsong. It was a bright country afternoon, in grim contrast to the dark conversations we were about to hold.

A dam with a sluice in the bed of the river helped steer part of the current into this basin. It formed a huge settling tank which filtered out impurities before the start of the aqueduct. Now for the first time in years it had been drained and cleaned out. Banks of dredged-up mud were drying all around it. Slow-moving public slaves were unloading; their breakfast from a donkey, leaving their tools in his pack: a typical scene. The donkey turned his head suddenly and grabbed a bit to eat himself; he knew how to get the better of the water board.

`With aqueducts,' Bolanus explained to us, `it's difficult and unnecessary to design a filtration system along the whole run. We tend to make a big effort at the start, then have extra tanks at the end, just before distribution starts. But that means anything which gets past the first filter can go all the way to Rome.'

`Arriving as little as a day later;' I reminded him, remembering what he had told me in an earlier discussion.

`My star pupil! Anyway, as soon as I came up here I could see we had problems. This basin had never been cleared since Caligula inaugurated the channel. You can imagine what we found in the mud.'

`That was when you uncovered more remains?' Frontinus prompted.

Bolanus looked sick. 'I found a leg.'

'Was that all?' Frontinus and I exchanged a glance. The message that had reached us previously had implied limbs of all sorts and sizes.

'That was enough for me! It was horrendously decayed; we had to bury it.' Bolanus, who had seemed so sanguine, had become appalled now he had actually seen the gruesome relics involved. `I can't describe what it was like clearing out the mud. There were a few loose bones we could not identify.'

A foreman produced them for us. Workmen like to keep a jar of interesting finds. All the better if it includes parts of old skeletons.

`I'll ask somebody who hunts,' suggested Frontinus, ever practical, as he fearlessly handled the pieces of knuckle and leg bone. `But even if we decide they are human, they-won't help identification.'

`No; but these might.' Bolanus himself was unpacking his knapsack.

He produced a small fold of material; it looked, like a napkin from one of his excellent lunch hampers. Carefully unfolding it, he revealed a gold earring. It was of good: work manship, crescent-shaped and covered with handsome granulation, with five dangling chains, each ending in a fine gold ball. Bolanus held it up between his fingers in silence, as if to imagine it hanging gracefully on a female ear.

Accompanying the earring was a string of jewellery, probably part of a longer necklace, since there was no clasp. Bright blue glass beads – lapis, or, something very similar had metal caps which joined them to small squares of delicate patterns cut from sheet gold.

`It's very unusual to find items like this up here,' Bolanus said, `In the sewers, yes. They could have been lost in the street or, anything. Coins and all kinds of gems turn up there – one work gang even discovered half a silver dinner service once,'

`It looks as though somebody threw them into the water to get rid of them,' I said. `What girl goes tripping along a remote riverbank in her big city finery?' My companions were silent, leaving it to me to comment on girls.

Depressed by the conversation, Frontinus walked back towards the river. `Should I- have the bed of the Anio dragged?' he asked glumly as I followed him, sharing his low mood; `I could send my allocation of public slaves; may as well use them for something.'

`In due course, maybe. But for now we should avoid any obvious official activity. Everything should look normal. We don't want to scare off the killer. We need to lure. him out and then grab him.'

`Before he kills again,' Frontinus sighed. `I don't like this, Falco. We must be close to him, now – but it could go badly wrong.'