Three Hands in the Fountain Read online

  ‘That’s all right,’ Helena soothed me. ‘We can take a trip. You don’t have to stand on guard outside feeling embarrassed.’

  The child had to be nourished. Besides, I was proud of the fact that Helena was high-mindedly feeding Julia herself. Many women of her status praise the idea but pay a wetnurse instead. ‘I’ll wait.’

  ‘No, ask the men to carry us to the Atrium of Liberty,’ Helena ordered decisively.

  ‘What’s at the Atrium?’

  ‘It’s where they store the overflow archive of the Censor’s records office. Including notices of the dead.’ I knew that.

  ‘Who’s died?’ I had guessed what she was up to, but I hated being shoved into things.

  ‘That’s what you have to find out, Marcus.’

  ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘The hand that you and Petro found? I’m not suggesting you will be able to trace its owner, but there must be a clerk who can at least tell you the procedure when a person disappears.’

  I said I had had enough of clerks, but we were all carried off to the Atrium of Liberty anyway.

  Like funeral directors, the clerks in the death notice section were a chirpy lot, a bright contrast to their surly colleague registering births. I knew a couple of them already, Silvius and Brixius. Informers are often sent to the Atrium archives by heirs or executors of wills. It was the first time I had shuffled into their office with my stately girlfriend, a sleeping baby, and a curious dog, however. They took it well, presuming that Helena was my client – a pushy one who insisted on supervising my every move. Apart from the fact that I would not be sending her an invoice, that was close.

  They worked in the same cubicle, swapping bad jokes and scrolls as if they had no idea what they were doing; on the whole I thought they were efficient. Silvius was about forty, slim and neat. Brixius was younger but favoured the same short hairstyle and elaborate tunic belt. It was pretty clear they had a sexual relationship. Brixius was the soppy one who wanted to dandle Julia. Silvius, putting on a show of tart annoyance, dealt with me.

  ‘I’m seeking general information, Silvius.’ I explained about the discovery of the hand, and that Petronius and I were now curious. ‘Looks like a blind alley. If a person goes missing, and it’s reported to the vigiles, they keep a note, but I wouldn’t like to speculate how long the scroll stays active. Whether they pursue the issue depends on a lot of things. But that’s not the problem. This relic is in no condition to be identified. It may be ages old, too.’

  ‘So how can we help?’ asked Silvius, suspiciously. He was a public slave. He spent his life trying to think up novel ways of referring requests for information to a different department. ‘Our records relate to whole personalities, not unpleasant portions of their anatomy.’

  ‘Suppose we had found a whole body, then. If it was nameless, and stayed so, would it be recorded here?’

  ‘No. It could be a foreigner or a slave. Why would anyone want to know about them? We only register the extinction of known Roman citizens.’

  ‘All right; consider it from the other end. What if somebody goes missing? A citizen, one of the three ranks? When their anguished relatives reach the point where they are forced to assume the person is dead, do they come to you?’

  ‘They might. It’s up to them.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘If they want a formal record of their loss, they can ask for a certificate.’

  ‘It’s not needed for any official purpose, though?’

  Silvius consulted Brixius with a glance. ‘If the missing person was a head of household, the certificate would confirm to the Treasury that he had ceased to be liable for taxation, by virtue of paying his debts in Hades. Death is the only acknowledged let-off.’

  ‘Very droll.’

  ‘A formal certificate is not relevant for the will?’ Helena put in.

  I shook my head. ‘Executors can decide to open the will whenever it seems reasonable.’

  ‘What if they make a mistake, Marcus?’

  ‘If a false report of a death is made to the censors deliberately,’ I said, ‘or if a will is knowingly opened before time, that’s a serious offence: theft and probably conspiracy, in the case of the will. A genuine mistake would be viewed leniently, I imagine. What would you do, lads, if a person you had listed as dead turned up unexpectedly after all?’

  Silvius and Brixius shrugged, saying it would be a matter for their superiors. They regarded their superiors as idiots, of course.

  I was not interested in mistakes. ‘When people come to register, they don’t have to prove the death?’

  ‘Nobody has to prove it, Falco. They make a solemn declaration; it’s their duty to tell the truth.’

  ‘Oh honesty’s a duty!’

  Silvius and Brixius tutted at my irony.

  ‘There doesn’t have to be a body?’ Helena was particularly curious because her father’s younger brother, who was certainly dead but had been given no funeral as his body had disappeared.

  Trying not to remember that I personally had dropped the rotting cadaver of Helena’s treacherous uncle down a sewer to avoid complications for the Emperor, I said, ‘There could be many reasons for not having a body. War, loss at sea –’ That was what had been given out by the family about Helena’s Uncle Publius.

  ‘Vanishing among the barbarians,’ trilled Silvius.

  ‘Running off with the baker,’ supplied Brixius, who was more cynical.

  ‘Well, that’s the kind of case I’m talking about,’ I said. ‘Someone who disappears for no known reason. They may be an eloping adulterer – or they may have been abducted and murdered.’

  ‘Sometimes people deliberately choose to vanish,’ said Brixius. ‘The pressure of their lives becomes intolerable, and they flit. They may come home one day – or never.’

  ‘So what if a relative actually admits to you that someone is not stiffening on a bier but only missing?’

  ‘If they really believe the person is dead they should just report that.’

  ‘Why? What do you do to them otherwise?’ smiled Helena.

  He grinned. ‘We have ways of making life extremely difficult! But if the circumstances seem reasonable, we issue a certificate in the normal way.’

  ‘Normal?’ I queried. ‘What – no little stars in the margin? No funny-coloured ink? No listing in a special scroll?’

  ‘Ooh!’ shrieked Silvius. ‘Falco wants a squint at our special scroll!’

  Brixius leaned back on one elbow, surveying me playfully. ‘What special scroll would that be, Falco?’

  ‘The one where you list dubious reports that may pop up as trouble later.’

  ‘Why, that’s a good idea. I might put that forward as a staff suggestion and get the Censors to instigate the system by edict.’

  ‘We have enough systems,’ groaned Silvius.

  ‘Exactly. Listen, Falco,’ Brixius explained cheerfully, ‘if something looks stinky, any clerk with all his acorns just writes it up as if he hadn’t noticed. That way, if there ever are nasty repercussions he can always claim it smelt perfectly sweet at the time.’

  ‘What I’m trying to ascertain,’ I ploughed on, realising it was hopeless, ‘is whether if anyone goes missing in Rome, you might hold any useful information here?’

  ‘No,’ said Brixius.

  ‘No,’ agreed Silvius.

  ‘The register of deaths is a revered tradition,’ Brixius went on. ‘There has never been any suggestion that it might actually serve useful purposes.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ I was getting nowhere. Well, I was used to that.

  Helena asked Brixius to hand the baby back, and we went home.

  VII

  I KNEW HELENA was remembering her dead uncle. I needed to avoid awkward questions in view of what I had done with him. I produced the excuse that I ought to check up on Petronius Longus. Since I would only be across the street it sounded harmless and she agreed.

  My old apartment, the one I was now lending to Petro, was on the
sixth floor of a truly unpleasant tenement. This block of gloomy rentals jutted like a bad tooth over Fountain Court, blotting out the light as effectively as it was blotting out its tenants’ hope of happiness. The ground-level space was taken up by a laundry run by Lenia, who had married the landlord Smaractus. We had all warned her not to do it, and sure enough within a week she had been asking me whether I thought she should divorce him.

  Most of that week she had been sleeping alone. Her unsavoury beloved had been accused of arson and incarcerated by the vigiles following an accident with the wedding torches, which had set ablaze the nuptial bed. Everyone thought it was hilarious – except Smaractus, who had been badly singed. Once the vigiles released him he turned nasty, a facet of his character which Lenia claimed had come as a complete surprise to her. Those of us who had been paying him rent for years knew differently.

  They were still married. It had taken Lenia years to decide to share her fortune with him, and it was likely to be just as long before she gave him the shove. Until then her old friends were stuck with having to listen to endless debates on the subject.

  Ropes of damp linen hung across the entrance, allowing me to skip lightly past and up the stairs before Lenia noticed me. But Nux, that frowsty bundle, scampered straight in, barking madly. There were outraged yells from the tubtreaders and carding girls, then Nux raced back out again, trailing somebody’s toga and pursued by Lenia herself.

  She was a wild-eyed, snaggle-haired fury who carried too much weight but was otherwise pretty muscular from her trade. Her hands and feet were swollen and red from being in warm water all day; her hair made a flamboyant pretence of being red too. Gasping a little, she roared obscenities after my hound, who hared off across the road.

  Lenia picked up the toga. She shook it lethargically, trying not to notice the dirt it had just acquired. ‘Oh, you’re back, Falco.’

  ‘Hello, you old bag of malice. How’s the dirty clothes business?’

  ‘Stinking as usual.’ She had a voice that could have carried halfway to the Palatine, with all the sweetness of a one-note trumpet giving the orders in a legionary parade. ‘Did you tell that bastard Petronius he could doss upstairs?’

  ‘I said he could. We’re working together now.’

  ‘Your mother was here with that pet snake of hers. According to her you’ll be working for him.’

  ‘Lenia, I haven’t done what my mother told me for at least twenty years.’

  ‘Big talk, Falco!’

  ‘I work for myself – and with persons I select on the basis of their skill, application, and amiable habits.’

  ‘Your ma says Anacrites will keep you up to the mark.’

  ‘And I say he can wind himself on to a catapult and wang himself over the Tiber.’

  Lenia laughed. Her mirth contained a mocking note. She knew the hold Ma had over me – or thought she did.

  I arrived upstairs out of breath, out of practice for the climb. Petronius seemed surprised it was only me. For some reason he supposed that having drawn up a strikingly attractive advertisement in the Forum he would be inundated with sophisticated clients all seeking his help with intriguing legal claims. Of course none had come.

  ‘Did you put our address?’

  ‘Don’t make me weep, Falco.’

  ‘Well, did you?’

  ‘Yes.’ A vague look crossed his face.

  The apartment looked smaller and shabbier than ever. There were two rooms, one for sleep and one for everything else, plus a balcony. That had what Smaractus described as a river view. It was true, if you were prepared to sit in a permanent twist on its wonky ledge. There was room to perch on a bench out there with a girlfriend, but it was wise not to wriggle about too much in case the brackets holding up the balcony sheared off.

  The only things I had thought worth taking away when Helena and I moved across the street were my bed, an antique tripod table Helena had once bought for me, and our collection of kitchenware (not exactly imperial equipment). That meant there was now nothing to sleep on, but Petro had created a neat floor-level nest for himself with some sort of bedding roll he had probably kept from our army days. A few clothes were hung on the hooks I had knocked in when I lived there. A stool was set pedantically with his personal toilet things: comb, toothpick, and strigil and oilflask for the baths.

  In the outer room nothing much had altered. There was a table, a bench, a small brick cooking range, a couple of lamps, and a bucket for slops. On the griddle sat an extremely well-scoured mess tin that I failed to recognise. On the table were ranged a redware bowl with matching beaker, a spoon and a knife. More organised than I had ever been, Petronius had already bought in a loaf, eggs, dried beans, salt, pine nuts, olives, a lettuce, and a small collection of sesame cakes. He had a sweet tooth.

  ‘Come in. Well, Marcus, my boy; this is like old times.’ My heart sank. Of course I was nostalgic for the old days of freedom, of women, drink, and careless irresponsibility . . . Nostalgia was pleasant, but that was all. People move on. If Petronius wanted to regress to being a lad again, he was on his own. I had learned to enjoy clean bedding and regular meals.

  ‘You know how to camp out.’ I wondered how soon the novelty would fade.

  ‘It’s not necessary to live in squalor as you did.’

  ‘My way of life as a bachelor was perfectly respectable.’ It had had to be. I had spent much of the time trying to lure women into the apartment with fake tales of its fantastic amenities. They all knew I was lying, but the spell I spun made them expect certain standards. Anyway, they had all heard that even after I left home my mother took care of me. ‘Ma put the fear of all Hades into the roaches. And Helena kept us very smart once she moved in.’

  ‘I had to sweep under the cooking bench.’

  ‘Don’t be an old biddy. Nobody sweeps under there.’

  Petronius Longus stretched his tall frame. He hit the ceiling and swore briefly. I warned him that if he had been in the bedroom he would have gone through the roof tiles, possibly dislodging some and killing people in the street, causing their relatives to sue him. Before he could start criticising my choice of apartment, I said, ‘I can see one startling omission from the bijou housekeeping: no amphorae.’

  A black look darkened Petro’s face. I realised all his wine must be back at the house Silvia still occupied. She would know what depriving him of it meant to him. If their dispute remained acrimonious Petronius could have seen the last of his wonderful ten-year collection. He looked sick.

  Luckily there was still an old half-amphora of mine hidden under the floorboards. I pulled it out quickly and sat him out on the balcony in the evening sun to apply himself to forgetting his tragedy.

  I was still intending to go home to dine with Helena, but somehow bolstering Petro took longer than I expected. He was deeply depressed. He was missing his children. He was missing the vigiles even more. He was furious with his wife, but unable to rant at her since she wouldn’t speak to him. He already harboured suspicions about working with me. Uncertainty about his future had started to gnaw at him, so instead of being full of anticipation about his new life he was beginning to grow truculent.

  I let him take the lead with the wine, a role he assumed with panache.

  Soon we had both drunk enough to start arguing once more about the dismembered hand. Then there was nothing for it but to brood on the condition of society, the brutality of the city, the harshness of life, and the cruelty of women.

  ‘How did the cruelty of women creep in there?’ I pondered. ‘Fusculus says that hand is almost certainly a woman’s – so it was probably hacked off by an angry man.’

  ‘Don’t be pernickety.’ Petro had plenty of theories about how brutal women were, and was liable to relate them for hours if I allowed it.

  I sidetracked him with my abortive enquiries at the Atrium of Liberty. ‘So that’s it, Petro. Some poor bitch is dead. Dead and unburied. Jointed like a roast, then flung into the water supply.’

  ‘We
ought to do something.’ It was the violent declamation of a man who had forgotten to eat, although he remembered what a wine cup was for.

  ‘What, for instance?’

  ‘Find out more about this corpse – like where the rest of it is.’

  ‘Oh, who knows?’ My head was swimming more than my conscience liked. I felt none too keen on tripping down six flights of stairs then up a few more on the opposite side of the street to reach Helena and home.

  ‘Somebody knows. Somebody did it. He’s laughing. He thinks he’s got away with it.’

  ‘He has, too.’

  ‘Falco, you’re a miserable pessimist.’

  ‘A realist.’

  ‘We’re going to find him.’

  It was now clear we were going to get very drunk indeed.

  ‘You can find him.’ I tried to rise. ‘I have to go and see my wife and baby.’

  ‘Yes.’ Petro was magnanimous, with all the despairing self-sacrifice of the newly bereaved and the heavily drunk. ‘Never mind me. Life has to go on. Go and see little Julia and Helena, my boy. Lovely baby. Lovely lady. You’re a lucky man, a lovely man –’

  I couldn’t leave him. I sat down again.

  Thoughts persisted in my old friend’s head, spinning round and round like off-balance planets. ‘That hand was given to us because we are the lads who can sort this.’

  ‘It was given to us because we stupidly asked what it was, Petro.’

  ‘But that’s it exactly. We asked the question. That’s what this is all about, Marcus Didius: being in the right place and asking the apt question. Wanting answers, too. Here are some more questions: how many more bits of body are there floating like shrimps in the city water supply?’

  I joined in: ‘How many bodies?’

  ‘How long have they been there?’

  ‘Who will co-ordinate finding even the other parts of this one?’

  ‘Nobody.’

  ‘So we start from the opposite end of the puzzle. How do you track down a missing person in a city that never devised a procedure for finding lost souls?’