The Grove of the Caesars Read online

  Her name, Engeles said, was Victoria Tertia. I kept him talking to settle him. She was a second wife, the first having died of natural causes a long time back. This marriage was around ten years old, generally seen as a strong partnership. Victoria came from a similar background, another family in haulage, so she and Cluventius had everything in common. There were two almost adult children from his first marriage, who had been at the party; they had gone home to comfort the three much younger offspring of Victoria Tertia.

  Cluventius had become uncontrollable last night when he found that Victoria had disappeared. Fired up by adrenalin, he went crazy, sending for help, for men with tools and lights, even for dogs. At first he supervised in person. It had been dark then, so the searchers could do little except walk about with torches, calling her name. Once the husband had people looking, he seemed to run out of energy—well, said Engeles, the man had spent an evening whacking down the wine. It was his big celebration. Until then, he had enjoyed himself, never imagining what was about to happen.

  Even now, he would be unprepared for the full horror, I thought bleakly.

  “Were you at the party, Engeles?”

  “Yes, quite a few staff had been invited. Most of us have worked with them for many years. They are good people. They treat us like family.”

  He stopped in his tracks, overcome, covering his face with his free hand. I might have tried to take the long hoe but did not want to be lumbered with it. As tactfully as possible, I ascertained that in the period before Victoria Tertia’s absence was noticed, Cluventius had always been in the middle of everything. Playing the attentive host, he was always visible to his guests.

  Right. Even before I met him, I had established his alibi.

  Who did it, then? Hired assassin? Loyal henchman? Somehow the family details were making that seem unlikely. What I had been told about the body suggested an attack by an outsider.

  * * *

  They had put Cluventius in a tented bower from the party, some distance from the Grove. Two men his own age sat with him, old friends or colleagues, sensible and sympathetic. They were keeping him calm. They had had the nous not to give him more wine, but a large beaker of water. If he had been drunk from last night, he was now coming out of it, though heavily.

  I met their eyes quickly, enough to signal what news I brought. I left them to cluster to one side with Engeles while I went straight to Cluventius. He was a big man, broad, though not gross. It was probably years since he had done it himself, but he looked as if manhandling a stroppy draught-ox would come easy.

  I introduced myself in a few swift words, using the story about acting for my husband. Cluventius made no objection. Still seated, he gazed up at me, pleading not to hear the words he knew were coming.

  “Sir, you have to be brave. Think of your children. A body has been found, hidden deep in undergrowth. People who knew her have confirmed it is your wife.”

  He slumped. He could not speak. I noticed his birthday haircut still looked neat, though his birthday shave was already starting to show purple jaw.

  “Cluventius, I did not stay to look, because I wanted to let you know that at least she has been found. I am desperately sorry, but I was told by the searchers it is evident she was murdered.” I did not tell him the rest. Not yet.

  He spoke her name. It was forced out of him by the torment of knowing she must have been afraid and had suffered, out there alone in the dark. “Victoria,” he said, almost to himself. “Oh, darling.” I knew straightaway that this time it was not the husband. Cluventius would never have killed Victoria Tertia. He genuinely cared for her.

  XVI

  He wanted to see her. Almost at once, he jumped up demanding to go to where she lay. I knew better than to try to deter him.

  Engeles led us back. I went too. I knew something about murder scenes and thought I might be useful. The two friends walked either side of Cluventius, each taking an arm, slowing his mad dash, speaking in low voices to calm him. I had the sense they were men of the world who already had a good idea what we were walking into. It must have disturbed them, too, but they put it aside so they could look after Cluventius. This was a man people liked. A family who would have people grieving for them. A death that would hurt.

  I managed to ask briefly, “Cluventius, do you know why your wife left the party?”

  “She was a modest woman, very quiet. All the celebrating was too much for her. She needed to take a break. She told me she would not be long.”

  “It was like her to do that?”

  “It was like her. Just like her.”

  I had a brief vision: birthday boy throwing himself into his big evening with joyous gusto, a happy occasion but interminable rowdiness and noise, then a shy wife who was so exhausted she had to step away … She never enjoyed big occasions as much as he did. She let him have his pleasure, though; she probably enjoyed seeing him so happy. A good wife—and her qualities were appreciated by her loyal husband. This was going to be hard.

  We walked from the gardens where the party had been, leaving the trim hedges and symmetrical plantings, the tenting that was still bedecked with bunting and garlands. When we approached the Grove of the Caesars, we saw the searchers had all bunched close to the location of the find, though they were still simply standing on a path, waiting for someone else to decide what next. At the edge of the wood, we paused to brace ourselves.

  We entered the thicket. The big plane trees cast a grim shade. After the trim beds of Caesar’s Gardens, we were now in wilderness. Wet leaves were underfoot, dampening the hems of long garments. After we left the pathway, I took care not to slither and lose balance.

  Cluventius groaned. “What a terrible place!” Floundering through tangled bushes, he made an error of judgement. “My children must be brought. They have to know where this happened to their mother.”

  “No, sir!” I was crisp. “Don’t do that. They should not visit the scene while the body is present, or they will never recover. I wish you would not do it yourself. If you insist on going on, prepare yourself. She was assaulted.”

  “I have to be with her.” He realised what was about to come. It would still be shocking, but he understood. He was starting to suffer already, but he made himself continue.

  Then we reached the body.

  * * *

  I took one look, then knew she had been raped and strangled.

  The bastard had posed her. It happens. Having violated his victim, a pervert then also assaults the people who find her; he leaves the corpse in a position that is deliberately appalling. This vile man had stretched the woman on her back, arms wide, legs wide, staring up at us. In a swift move, I unwound my stole and dropped the light material across her, saving as much of her modesty as possible.

  Cluventius choked. I ordered the crowding searchers to move back, well away. The husband dropped on his heels beside the remains. I leaned down to hold his shoulder, mainly to prevent him touching her.

  One of his friends gradually pulled him upright. “Come. She is gone. This is not the wife you knew. There is nothing you can do for her here.”

  Good men, they were safe in charge. “We shall take him home.” They were called Vatia and Paecentius, work colleagues and friends of the family.

  I was angry for the woman and my heart ached for her husband. Before his friends led Cluventius from the scene, I told him, “I will stay with her. I shall make sure everything is done properly, by professionals, who will handle her gently. Go home to your children now.”

  “I want to know who did this!”

  “That will be a priority.”

  I hoped what I said was true. Once the vigiles were brought to this unholy spot, I must take it upon myself to persuade them they had to be thorough. Sometimes it was all too easy for them to say no clues, no witnesses, so no solution.

  Vatia had enough sense to make sure he told me where the family lived. His own address too: “Anyone investigating should ask us any questions first, in case we c
an spare the family.” The other friend nodded.

  * * *

  I was left alone with her.

  The wait for officials seemed unbearably long. Everyone else had withdrawn from the immediate scene. They must still be congregating on the pathway, so I heard their voices intermittently, but she and I were in solitude here under the trees. As I had promised, I stayed with her as long as necessary. It was a hard thing to do. I could easily have been very nervous.

  It gave me time to look at her. Victoria Tertia had been in her thirties. She had a round face that must have been pleasant, with equal features and a small chin. Latin colouring. Brown eyes. She was slim, not under-nourished, yet slightly built so she would have been easily overpowered. I could not see clothing in the immediate vicinity, but she still wore rings on several fingers and had an elaborate multi-curled hairstyle that looked too formal for her face. Presumably that was special for the party. She had been painted with cosmetics, though lightly, as if she had waved away the beautician, as my mother always did. Her dangling gemstone earrings looked like a gift from Cluventius to mark a special occasion.

  Fairly soon in my vigil, I defied protocol. I stooped down and closed her eyes.

  I forced myself to lift the stole I had placed on her, in order to check her injuries by eye. The vigiles would do this, but their scrutiny would be prurient. Fellow-feeling with Victoria made me unwilling to stay once they were involved, so I had to make my own examination while I could. I had already glimpsed scratches and sexual bruising. Now I reviewed these, though learned nothing further; rape is rape. It had clearly happened. She had tried resisting but must have been in the grip of someone very much stronger.

  I saw obvious finger-marks from the strangulation, crossing another wound: a long thin line of reddened flesh, partially bloodied, a scratch that told me a necklace must have been torn from her throat. It was nowhere to be seen.

  I stood under the plane trees, alone with what was left of Victoria Tertia, waiting. I heard the slight sounds of a forest and undergrowth, the rasp of dry branch on branch, the natural twitch of a stem or uncoiling of a seedpod, a few tentative bird calls, perhaps the scamper of a wood mouse. I could smell the worrying dampness that hugs the ground in forests.

  Everywhere seemed completely still. It never struck me that anyone might come to attack me too. However, I would not have been surprised to find someone had been watching.

  XVII

  In my family, the Seventh were always a byword for untrustworthiness or even corruption. There had been some past encounter, a shared mission that ended badly. My uncle, Petronius Longus, long-time stalwart of the Fourth, routinely decried the Seventh as the worst cohort. I had low hopes of their investigator.

  Ursus surprised me, however. I had heard an official clear, dry voice give instructions to whichever of the vigiles had come to the grove, telling them to start interviewing bystanders. A man then approached through the undergrowth. He was heavy-footed but sure, not blundering into ruts nor tearing at long whips of growth to keep his balance. He arrived alone. That is, he had a clerk to take his crime-scene notes, but stylus-pushers are like ghosts. Until someone in an office wants to send out for flatbreads, his clerk counts as invisible.

  The man who appeared through the trees was close to fifty, rat-mean, mint-clean. I could tell he had a military background. That was normal. He was one of those types who keep fastidious army habits for ever after discharge. It would affect everything in his daily life: food, personal hygiene, timekeeping, even relationships. Large ears stuck out sideways from a close-cropped head. He wore a red tunic, which was not required in officers, under a cloak against the winter weather. He looked to be unarmed. That was the rule in Rome. Never be too sure, though.

  Someone had told him I was there, so he showed no surprise, giving me an indifferent nod. I wished I knew what had been said. He would probably have ordered me to move, but I stepped aside anyway. I expected his methods to annoy me, so was intending to return to the more open part of the Grove. Once he began to appraise the location, I stayed, feeling intrigued.

  Without speaking, Ursus positioned the clerk, a youthful slave. He did that by taking the lanky lad’s shoulders. He placed him exactly where he required him to stand, on the edge of what passed for a clearing, where he was unlikely to damage evidence.

  First, Ursus simply stood. He looked down at the body, gazed around at the brushwood surrounding her, moved a couple of large twigs with one hand as if inspecting them for snagged fibres. He took note of the ground condition. Talking as if to himself, he decided the condition of foliage where she was lying meant that Victoria Tertia had been snatched elsewhere, assaulted, killed, and then her corpse carried here. His voice was medium-low; his Latin accent all-purpose, army-educated junior officer.

  He was sure: there was insufficient disturbance for the attack to have happened here. Nor could she have been alive and struggling as she was brought through the woods. That would have battered bushes all along their route.

  Though I had not been included, I joined in, saying, yes, this place was a distance from the event’s pavilions, where I thought she would most likely have been snatched. A respectable woman, merely taking a short break from the party, would hardly have walked so far, especially since it was dark at the time; neither would she have strayed from a path into undergrowth. If the perpetrator had dragged her there alive, we would see much more disturbance.

  Ursus took no notice of me. “Naked, suggestive pose, affront intended.” He was now slightly raising his voice for the clerk. The youth wrote it down impassively, as if nothing said was unusual enough to shock him. Ursus called out points he wanted noted. The lad seemed to know procedure, and his role in it. “Classic shaming. Aggression aimed at finders.” Ursus lowered his voice again: “Stripped elsewhere, or undressed here and her clothes taken. This?”

  As he looked curious about the modesty stole, I admitted it was mine. Ursus shook his head reprovingly. He picked it up with two fingers, then flicked it well aside. I moved back carefully to retrieve it.

  My fears about how a vigiles investigator would treat the body were unfounded. On uncovering the corpse, Ursus winced to himself. His subsequent comments were factual.

  I saw the clerk write briefly as Ursus listed that the individual had had to silence her, then carry out his assault very fast because of people in the vicinity. There would be no question of making his victim take her own clothes off. He probably kept a hand over her mouth throughout. He must have stripped her after death.

  “Her clothes will be near the path … She struggled as much as she could. He would enjoy that.”

  “Power,” I said, sounding bleak.

  “All about power,” the officer agreed, less moved by it than I was.

  Suddenly he asked, as if he had guessed the answer, “When she was found, were her eyes closed?”

  “I closed them.” Our stares clashed, but he said nothing.

  He squatted close to the body. He stared at the finger pattern of bruises that showed the manual strangulation. He even took her head between his hands, turning it. I wanted to protest, but he was neutral, professional. He removed a rule from a pouch on his belt, then even measured the fingerprints, gauging the size of the hand they belonged to—he called out the inches to his clerk. After that, he spread his own hands above the marks until he decided from their position that the perpetrator had seized his victim and strangled her from behind. “Rape was frontal.” Happening to catch my eye, he added, “She was probably dead.”

  “Don’t such men like to look into their victims’ eyes, to watch them go?”

  For a moment Ursus assessed me, wondering how a magistrate’s young wife could know such details, speaking of them with quiet experience. I let him wonder. “Some do that,” he said. “Some enjoy the experience of causing death, but some only want sex, with no argument.”

  Returning to his task, he gave the clerk a jewellery list, mentioning that one of the rings was a wedd
ing ring. He looked intently at the second mark on her throat, the long, thin abrasion. Though probably unnecessary, I spelled out that it must have been from a necklace chain, violently removed. He keenly agreed: the killer had taken a trophy. If we found him, we might find the trophy, which could be used to prove his guilt.

  I said, “I imagine the man who did this may well have a whole casket of personal items—taken from other victims.”

  “Yes,” answered Ursus, looking dour. After a moment he added, still staring at the corpse, “Yes, he has done it before.”

  The way he spoke caught my attention. I asked bluntly, “Have there been similar attacks around here?”

  “Yes and no.” He was being cagey. He saw me considering why that should be, so tried to dismiss any idea he had given me: “There will always be attacks in public places. Over the years. Now and again an incident.”

  “I see,” I said, showing what I thought of that.

  Ursus straightened up from his crouch by the body, easing his back. He continued to minimise the situation. “There is a large barracks, crammed with sailors. The Transtiberina is awash with women. Night moths. In that situation, some are bound to get knocked off occasionally. Incidents happen.”

  Too bland. Too easy. I refused to accept it. “You are implying such incidents are always random acts. A sailor gets drunk, knifes another sailor. You take that as natural. A sailor, who may or may not be drunk, falls out with a woman—he can’t do it, or can’t get her to perform what he asks, or else he hates women who laugh at him, or he thinks they are laughing—so he retaliates. Ruins her face. Smashes her. Wipes her out … I know this, I accept it happens. But two things today, Ursus: first, this woman was no night moth plying a trade; she was respectable. Married. A matron, in the gardens with her husband, his friends, their family. If this man had hidden in the bushes, watching, he knew that. Then you say, ‘He has done it before.’ Those are the words of a professional who has recognised a method.”