Three Hands in the Fountain Read online

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Lindsey Davis

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Principal Characters

  Maps

  Rome: August-October

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  Chapter XX

  Chapter XXI

  Chapter XXII

  Chapter XXIII

  Chapter XXIV

  Chapter XXV

  Chapter XXVI

  Chapter XXVII

  Chapter XXVIII

  Chapter XXIX

  Chapter XXX

  Chapter XXXI

  Chapter XXXII

  Chapter XXXIII

  Chapter XXXIV

  Chapter XXXV

  Chapter XXXVI

  Chapter XXXVII

  Chapter XXXVIII

  Chapter XXXIX

  Chapter XL

  Chapter XLI

  Chapter XLII

  Chapter XLIII

  Chapter XLIV

  Chapter XLV

  Chapter XLVI

  Chapter XLVII

  Chapter XLVIII

  Chapter IL

  Chapter L

  Chapter LI

  Chapter LII

  Chapter LIII

  Chapter LIV

  Chapter LV

  Chapter LVI

  Chapter LVII

  Chapter LVIII

  Chapter LIX

  Chapter LX

  Chapter LXI

  Chapter LXII

  Chapter LXIII

  Chapter LXIV

  Copyright

  About the Book

  ‘The fountain was not working. Nothing unusual in that ...’

  Marcus Didius Falco and his laddish friend Petronius find their local fountain has been blocked – by a gruesomely severed human hand.

  Soon other body parts are being found in the aqueducts and sewers. Public panic overcomes official indifference, and the Aventine partners are commissioned to investigate. Women are bing abducted during festivals, with the next Games only days away. As the heat rises in the Circus Maximus, they face a race agaisnt time and a strong test of their friendship. They know the sadistic killer lurks somewhere on the festive streets of Rome – perparing to strike again.

  About the Author

  Lindsey Davis has written over twenty historical novels, beginning with The Course of Honour. Her bestselling mystery series features laid-back First Century detective Marcus Didius Falco and his partner Helena Justina, plus friends, relations, pets and bitter enemy the Chief Spy.

  After an English degree at Oxford University Lindsey joined the Civil Service, but became a professional author in 1989. Her books are translated into many languages and have been dramatized on BBC Radio 4. Her many prizes include the Premio Colosseo, awarded by the Mayor of Rome ‘for enhancing the image of Rome’, the Sherlock award for Falco as Best Comic Detective and the Crimewriters’ Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement. She was born in Birmingham but now lives in Greenwich, London.

  Also available by Lindsey Davis

  Fiction

  The Course of Honour

  The Falco Series

  The Silver Pigs

  Shadows in Bronze

  Venus in Copper

  The Iron Hand of Mars

  Poseidon’s Gold

  Last Act in Palmyra

  Time to Depart

  A Dying Light in Corduba

  Three Hands in the Fountain

  Two for the Lions

  One Virgin Too Many

  Ode to a Banker

  A Body in the Bath House

  The Jupiter Myth

  The Accusers

  Scandal Takes a Holiday

  See Delphi and Die

  Saturnalia

  Alexandria

  Nemesis

  Falco: The Official Companion

  Rebels and Traitors

  Three Hands in the Fountain

  Lindsey Davis

  For Heather and Oliver my wonderful Agent and Editor (who really deserve a dedication each): with my thanks for the first ten – and here’s to ten more!

  PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

  Friends and Family

  Julia Junilla Laeitana a baby at the centre of attention

  M. Didius Falco a new father, who is said to need a partner

  Helena Justina his partner at home and at work, a new mother

  Nux her own mistress but a good dog

  Falco’s mother a landlady; Julia’s doting grandmama

  Anacrites her lodger; a troublemaker on the make

  L. Petronius Longus a troubleshooter, but in trouble

  Arria Silvia his wife, who has just shot him down

  D. Camillus Verus Julia’s grandfather, the idealistic senator

  Julia Justa Julia’s other doting grandmama

  Camillus Aelianus who knows he wants to get married

  Camillus Justinus who seems to have no idea what he wants

  Claudia Rufina whose fortune is what Aelianus wants to marry

  Gaius Falco’s nephew, a lad about town

  Lollius his absentee father, who has turned up

  Marina a tunic braid twister, allegedly

  Rubella tough but fair tribune of the Fourth Cohort of vigiles

  Fusculus loyal (but hopeful) stand-in for Petronius

  Martinus jealous but relocated rival for Petro’s job

  Sergius whose punishments leave his victims half dead

  Scythax the cohort doctor, who likes his patients alive

  Lovers, Supervisors, Victims and Suspects:

  Balbina Milvia the cause of Petro’s trouble

  Cornelia Flaccida her mother; positively awful (and awfully positive)

  Florius Milvia’s husband; completely negative

  Anon a registrar of births; dead miserable

  Silvius & Brixius registrars of the dead; happy types

  S. Julius Frontinus yes; that Frontinus! a real person

  Satius an engineer; too important to know or do anything

  Bolanus his assistant, who knows it and does it

  Cordus a public slave hoping for a finder’s fee

  Caius Cicurrus a corn chandler who has lost his treasure

  Asinia his wife, a good girl, apparently

  Pia her friend, a bad girl indisputably

  Mundus Pia’s lover, a ridiculously poor judge of girls

  Rosius Gratus a very old man who lives out of the way

  Aurelia Maesia his daughter, who likes it that way

  Damon a slow driver with a fast reputation

  Titus no; not that one; a lad about the country

  Thurius a surly minion

  Some Other Suspects:

  250,000 people in the Circus Maximus

  Everyone else who has a job connected with the Games

  All the inhabitants of Tibur, and the nearby countryside

  The man in the street

  Jurisdictions of the Vigiles Cohorts in Rome:

  Coh I Regions VII & VIII (Via Lara, Forum Romanum)

  Coh II Regions III & V (Isis & Serapis, Esquiline)

  Coh III Regions IV & VI (Temple of Peace, Alta Semita)

  Coh I
V Regions XII & XIII (Piscina Publica, Aventine)

  Coh V Regions I & II (Porta Capena, Caelimontium)

  Coh VI Regions X & XI (Palatine, Circus Maximus)

  Coh VII Regions IX & XIV (Circus Flaminius, Transtiberina)

  The Circus Maximus Area

  The Roman Campagna

  ROME: AUGUST-OCTOBER,

  AD73

  ‘When [the water pipe] has reached the city, build a reservoir with a distribution tank in three compartments . . . from the central tank pipes will be laid to all the basins as fountains; from the second tank to the baths so they may yield annual income to the state; and from the third, to private houses, so that water for public use will not run short.’

  Vitruvius

  ‘I ask you! Just compare with the vast monuments of this vital aqueduct network those useless Pyramids, or the good-for-nothing tourist attractions of the Greeks!’

  Frontinus, tr. Trevor Hodge

  ‘Let’s have a drink – and leave out the water!’

  Petronius Longus of Falco & Partner

  I

  THE FOUNTAIN WAS not working. Nothing unusual in that. This was the Aventine.

  It must have been off for some time. The water spout, a crudely moulded cockleshell dangled by a naked but rather uninteresting nymph, was thick with dry pigeon guano. The bowl was cleaner. Two men sharing the bottom of an amphora of badly travelled Spanish wine could lean there without marking their tunics. When Petronius and I sloped back to the party at my apartment, there would be no clues to where we had been.

  I had laid the amphora in the empty fountain bowl, point inwards, so we could tilt it on the edge when we wanted to refill the beakers we had sneaked out with us. We had been at it a while now. By the time we ambled home, we would have drunk too much to care what anybody said to us, unless the wigging was very succinctly phrased. As it might be, if Helena Justina had noticed that I had vanished and left her to cope on her own.

  We were in Tailors’ Lane. We had deliberately turned round the corner from Fountain Court where I lived, so that if any of my brothers-in-law looked down into the street they would not spot us and inflict themselves upon us. None of them had been invited today, but once they heard I was providing a party they had descended on the apartment like flies on fresh meat. Even Lollius the water boatman, who never turned up for anything, had shown his ugly face.

  As well as being a discreet distance from home, the fountain in Tailors’ Lane was a good place to lean for a heart-to-heart. Fountain Court did not possess its own water supply, any more than Tailors’ Lane was home to any garment-sewers. Well, that’s the Aventine.

  One or two passers-by, seeing us in the wrong street with our heads together, assumed we were conferring about work. They gave us looks that could have been reserved for a pair of squashed rats on the highroad. We were both well-known characters in the Thirteenth District. Few people approved of either of us. Sometimes we did work together, though the pact between the public and private sector was uneasy. I was an informer and imperial agent, just back from a trip to Baetican Spain for which I had been paid less than originally contracted, although I had made up the deficit with an artistic expenses claim. Petronius Longus lived on a strict salary. He was the enquiry chief of the local cohort of vigiles. Well, he was normally. He had just stunned me by revealing he had been suspended from his job.

  Petronius took a hearty swig of wine, then balanced his beaker carefully on the head of the stone wench who was supposed to be delivering water to the neighbourhood. Petro had long arms and she was a small nymph, as well as one with an empty cockleshell. Petro himself was a big, solid, normally calm and competent citizen. Now he stared down the alley with a glum frown.

  I paused to slosh more liquor into my own cup. That gave me time to absorb his news while I decided how to react. In the end I said nothing. Exclaiming ‘Oh my goodness, old pal!’ or ‘By Jupiter, my dear Lucius, I cannot believe I heard that correctly’ was too much of a cliché. If he wanted to tell me the story he would. If not, he was my closest friend, so if he was playing at guarding his privacy I would appear to go along with it.

  I could ask somebody else later. Whatever had happened, he couldn’t keep it secret from me for long. Extracting the fine details of scandal was my livelihood.

  Tailors’ Lane was a typical Aventine scene. Faceless tenement blocks loomed above a filthy, one-cart lane that meandered up here from the Emporium down by the Tiber, trying to find the way to the Temple of Ceres, only to lose itself somewhere on the steep heights above the Probus Bridge. Little near-naked children crouched playing with stones beside a dubious puddle, catching whatever fever was rampant this summer. Somewhere overhead a voice droned endlessly, telling some dreary story to a silent listener who might be driven to run mad with a meat-knife any minute now. We were in deep shade, though aware that wherever the sun could find access the August heat was shimmering. Even here our tunics stuck to our backs.

  ‘Well, I got your letter at last.’ Petronius liked to approach a difficult subject by the winding, scenic route.

  ‘What letter?’

  ‘The one telling me you were a father.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Three months to find me – not bad.’

  When Helena and I and the new baby sailed back to Rome from Tarraconensis recently it only took eight days at sea and a couple more travelling gently from Ostia. ‘That’s not possible.’

  ‘You addressed it to me at the station house,’ Petronius complained. ‘It was passed around the clerks for weeks, then when they decided to hand it over, naturally I wasn’t there.’ He was laying it on with a mortar trowel – a certain sign of stress.

  ‘I thought it would be safer sent to the vigiles. I didn’t know you would have got yourself suspended,’ I reminded him. He was not in the mood for logic.

  Nobody much was about. For most of the afternoon we had skulked here virtually in private. I was hoping that my sisters and their children, whom Helena and I had invited for lunch in order to introduce them all to our new daughter in one go, would go home. When Petro and I had sneaked out not one of the guests had been showing any sign of leaving. Helena had already looked tired. I should have stayed.

  Her own family had had the tact not to come, but had invited us to dinner later in the week. One of her brothers, the one I could tolerate, had brought a message in which his noble parents politely declined our offer of sharing a cold collation with my swarming relatives in our tiny half-furnished apartment. Some of my lot had already tried to sell the illustrious Camilli dud works of art that they couldn’t afford and didn’t want. Most of my family were offensive and all of them lacked tact. You couldn’t hope to find a bigger crowd of loud, self-opinionated, squabbling idiots anywhere. Thanks to my sisters all marrying down I stood no chance of impressing Helena’s socially superior crew. In any case, the Camilli didn’t want to be impressed.

  ‘You could have written earlier,’ Petronius said morosely.

  ‘Too busy. When I did write I’d just ridden eight hundred miles across Spain like a madman, only to be told that Helena was in desperate trouble with the birth. I thought I was going to lose her, and the baby too. The midwife had gone off halfway to Gaul, Helena was exhausted and the girls with us were terrified. I delivered that child myself – and I’ll take a long time to get over it!’

  Petronius shuddered. Though a devoted father of three himself, his nature was conservative and fastidious. When Arria Silvia was having their daughters she had sent him off somewhere until the screaming was all over. That was his idea of family life. I would receive no credit for my feat.

  ‘So you named her Julia Junilla. After both grandmothers? Falco, you really know how to arrange free nursemaids.’

  ‘Julia Junilla Laeitana,’ I corrected him.

  ‘You named your daughter after a wine?’ At last some admiration crept into his tone.

  ‘It’s the district where she was born,’ I declared proudly.

  �
�You sly bastard.’ Now he was envious. We both knew that Arria Silvia would never have let him get away with it.

  ‘So where’s Silvia?’ I challenged.

  Petronius took a long, slow breath and gazed upwards. While he was looking for swallows, I wondered whatever was wrong. The absence of his wife and children from our party was startling. Our families frequently dined together. We had even survived a joint holiday once, though that had been pushing it.

  ‘Where’s Silvia?’ mused Petro, as if the question intrigued him too.

  ‘This had better be good.’

  ‘Oh, it’s hilarious.’

  ‘You do know where she is, then?’

  ‘At home, I believe.’

  ‘She’s gone off us?’ That would be too much to hope for. Silvia had never liked me. She thought me a bad influence on Petronius. What libel. He had always been perfectly capable of getting into trouble by himself. Still, we all rubbed along, even though neither Helena nor I could stand too much of Silvia.

  ‘She’s gone off me,’ he explained.

  A workman was approaching. Typical. He wore a one-sleeved tunic hitched over his belt and was carrying an old bucket. He was coming to clean the fountain, which looked a long job. Naturally he turned up at the end of the working day. He would leave the job unfinished and never come back.

  ‘Lucius, my boy,’ I tackled Petro sternly, since we might soon have to abandon our roost if this fellow did persuade the fountain to fill up, ‘I can think of various reasons – most of them female – why Silvia would fall out with you. Who is it?’

  ‘Milvia.’

  I had been joking. Besides, I thought he had stopped flirting with Balbina Milvia months ago. If he had had any sense he would never have started – though when did that ever stop a man chasing a girl?

  ‘Milvia’s very bad news, Petro.’

  ‘So Silvia informs me.’

  Balbina Milvia was about twenty. She was astoundingly pretty, dainty as a rosebud with the dew in it, a dark, sweet little piece of trouble whom Petro and I had met in the course of our work. She had an innocence that was begging to be enlightened, and was married to a man who neglected her. She was also the daughter of a vicious gangster – a mobster whom Petronius had convicted and I had helped finally to put away. Her husband Florius was now developing half-hearted plans to move in on the family rackets. Her mother Flaccida was scheming to beat him to the profits, a hard-faced bitch whose idea of a quiet hobby was arranging the deaths of men who crossed her. Sooner or later that was bound to include her son-in-law Florius.