The Grove of the Caesars Page 8

  The investigator pursed his lips hard. He refused to comment.

  “Are others like this already on your case list?” I persisted.

  “This is unique.” He was lying.

  “So, you are not saying, ‘Here we go again. This is another of his’?”

  “I’m not saying anything at all to you!” Suddenly things changed. A complete breach abruptly opened between us. It might have startled me, but I had dealt with the vigiles before. “You are a woman. You have no right to interfere with due process. This is my crime scene,” declared Ursus. “Leave it now.”

  I stood my ground. “I told the husband I would ensure his wife’s body was treated with respect.” Seeing no reason to antagonise the vigiles, I added, “I know you are professionals. But Cluventius was agitated and I made that promise.”

  “I won’t throw her on the back of a cart!” Ursus snarled. I waited. “We will cover her and carry her gently. No ghouls will get to gawp at her. I’ll have our cohort medic see if he can tidy up the obvious before she goes back to her family.”

  I tossed my head, but he saw I would trust him to do that. Now I would leave.

  My relatives were right. The Seventh were hard-core, stubbornly unhelpful bastards. I believed everything my uncle had told me: the Seventh put themselves too close to the wrong elements in the local community, they took bribes to look the other way, they ignored any suspicious acts that would cause them real work. None of them was reliable, so I had better not tangle with this one, let alone trust him.

  Of course, Ursus would decry me too. I was an interfering menace, a female, an amateur whose interest was dangerous. No one had asked me to be here. I needed to be kicked out and kept out.

  To me, that only proved the Seventh Cohort’s lack of judgement.

  * * *

  Without another word, I turned away, beginning to walk back to the gravel path. When I heard Ursus and his clerk following, I quickened my step. I passed through the remaining searchers and the vigiles who were asking them questions. I could tell the conversations were useless, as casual as caupona gossip. No one was pressing. No one was volunteering facts. No one took notes or details of whom they spoke to. The search team Cluventius had brought out here wanted to go home to recover. The red-tunics looked half-hearted, as if determined not to inconvenience themselves with finding answers.

  I spoke to nobody. I went around the area where the party had taken place, moving steadily though I refused to rush. I felt thoughtful but sour, full of bitterness. I was angry for Victoria Tertia. When women were destroyed by men, it had that effect on me.

  As I went, I folded up my stole into a small square, then shut away the light material in my satchel. I had remembered that Fania Faustina, Tiberius’s sister, had given it to me, when she came to Rome for our wedding: someone else who was suffering for being a woman. Miscarriage was the best we could hope for there, if not already too late. I would keep the stole, though probably never wear it again.

  I was upset. That need not be bad. You need to react. You need to care. Then you do things right.

  I was already intending not to let this go.

  * * *

  At our site, Larcius had the men on light tasks, things that did not involve strenuous demolition or noise. They were all subdued. In part this was because of what had happened to Victoria Tertia. But there was another reason.

  Now we had a mystery of our own. The men nervously owned up to me: they said that during the night Primulus and Galanthus had disappeared.

  XVIII

  “Both gone? How did this happen?”

  Serenus, Sparsus and Trypho looked uncomfortable. Some masters’ wives, worse women than me, would have blamed them for losing our madcap newcomers. I yet might, but I wanted to hear the story first.

  The beginning made sense. As I had prophesied to Gratus, the Cluventius party was a private affair, with little visible to the public. A procession of litters had disgorged well-heeled guests, then parked up in a temporary enclosure that no one else could access. Our lads had been able to hear a hum of activity that lasted all evening, with music, declamations and much happy laughter. The caterers had probably taken their own share of food and drink, but never siphoned off any to outsiders. Anyone who tried to approach was firmly shooed away.

  In the end, bored and disconsolate, the workmen had retired to the grotto site, where they dived into their own feast while they sat around gossiping. The two dancing boys had become even more disappointed than the builders and, soon, even more bored. When new music started up, they improvised a few steps together. The men stared at first, then found the lads’ antics too lewd.

  “Juno, I hope they kept their clothes on.” I knew that at the Emperor’s banquet the serving boys who writhed among the guests had been painted black but otherwise were naked.

  “It was bad enough as it was. They didn’t need to strip!”

  “Oh, go on, Trypho, surely you’ve seen it at the baths.”

  Instructed to stop their wriggling, Primulus and Galanthus had left the work site, saying they wanted to practise their moves. They would go among the trees to see if they could dance with wood nymphs.

  That went down with a bunch of builders the way you would expect.

  Nobody knew how far along the grove’s paths the boys had wandered, or how long they cavorted under the trees. The others forgot about them.

  Once the commotion over Victoria Tertia’s disappearance started, our dancing sprites were guiltily remembered. Thinking that if trouble was abroad, they had better be fetched back, the workmen had searched for them as best they could, given the darkness and other people looking for the woman.

  I sighed. “Did you think Primulus and Galanthus intended to do a runner?”

  “Oh, no!” Serenus assured me, self-righteous as a teenager. “We would never have let them go off by themselves if we’d thought they was up to something. We could see their little feet twitching as soon as the music started, so we just let them go and play, like a pair of nagging kiddiewinkles.”

  “Maybe they honestly got lost,” I said, while thinking anxiously that maybe the same man who grabbed Victoria Tertia had grabbed them.

  Larcius decided to discipline the others. “You were wrong there. You should have kept an eye on them. Those boys are not used to being out alone, especially at night.”

  “They have no sense of geography,” I said more soothingly. “Let’s presume they simply went too far and could not find our site again.”

  “That was what we thought,” said Trypho, sounding relieved. “We kept telling ourselves they would turn up again soon.” After a moment, he added gloomily, “I never liked it here.”

  “Well, bear up!” I answered heartlessly. “The boys might have made friends with a ghastly ghost or two who would scare you, Trypho. Or perhaps they are cuddling the plane trees, and leading dryads into terrible habits.”

  “We thought you wanted to lose them,” Larcius hinted.

  “Sort of.”

  But the dark pall of responsibility wound itself around me. I made the men conduct a daylight search, calling the boys’ names loudly. With a bad conscience, I joined in. We told a group of gardeners to watch for them. I had visions of the pair falling asleep in a rubbish cart, being carried way into the countryside before they woke up, then ending their days smothered under mounds of compost or even burned alive on a bonfire … Most of the vigiles had already returned to their station-house, but we found a couple loitering, so I asked them to keep an eye open.

  We could not find them. We did our best.

  My concern was genuine. I really did hope no harm had befallen Galanthus and Primulus. The longer they were missing, the more it looked as if they had run away. Still, if they did flit off on purpose, I was sorry they had only given us such a short trial first.

  The dark worry stayed with me. I was too wise to hope we might ever have changed them for the better. I knew if we had been more welcoming, they would only have taken a
dvantage. They would have been as light-fingered as they were light-footed, not amoral but positively immoral. They were impossible to like; they would never have liked us.

  All the same, Primulus and Galanthus had been given to me, so they now felt like unfinished business. I had the workmen put up notices, asking for sightings. Then I abandoned the hunt for them, though I did so with regret.

  * * *

  After that, I had no reason to stay in the Transtiberina. I wanted to be at home if Paris came with news from Tiberius. I said I was leaving, so Larcius told Sparsus, the apprentice, to escort me to the river; then he changed his mind and decided to send Trypho as my guard. Trypho was bigger, more experienced, and known to weigh in with his fists if faced with any kind of bother.

  I squared up to the clerk of works. “Come on, Larcius. Truth time. A woman was murdered in the Grove last night—but even before it happened you and the lads were obviously being careful. The vigiles agent said there have been previous attacks.” I was stretching what Ursus had told me because I had drawn my own conclusions. “Own up, Larcius. You’d already heard that women disappear in the Grove, hadn’t you?”

  They all looked shifty. To some extent this was normal. They were builders. Builders on principle tend to look as if they are hiding something. Given how much can go wrong in construction work, this is wise.

  “Now then, Flavia Albia.” Larcius tried to defend their position. “That fellow of yours told us you would be like this! Faustus said he wouldn’t even let you come across with any lunch baskets, like you sometimes bring for him. To tell the truth, we didn’t know how we ought to play it when you turned up of your own accord the other day.”

  “You and Faustus discussed what goes on?” I was furious.

  Larcius looked nervous. “It came up in conversation. We had checked around. When we first started here, people in the area told us what happens. You know how he is about protecting you. Faustus decided he wasn’t going to let you come because it’s too dangerous, but if you knew you would be straight in, wanting to get justice.”

  “Justice for what? For whom? What exactly happens here? Cough, Larcius!”

  “Bodies of murdered women have been turning up in the Grove of the Caesars for years.”

  XIX

  By now the situation they described came as no surprise. I made the workmen all sit down and tell me. “You may as well talk to me. You are not going to do much work today—and don’t worry, I’ll convince Faustus I learned about it from the vigiles.”

  They were relieved the secret was out in the open. Typical men, they were yearning to gossip.

  They had been working at the grotto for a couple of weeks now. They had spent the usual time talking to gardeners, snack-sellers, water-carriers, even scavengers, who wanted to pick over the loose rubble. Passers-by came to stare at the site, because people always like to watch. Even though no big hole was involved, knocking down a large pile of rocks was fascinating. “You always get some know-all who tells you your job,” Larcius grumbled. “Never mind that an architect has spent time and effort drawing up a set of plans, then a surveyor set him straight, redoing his nonsense with proper working drawings.”

  “And the building inspector tries to change it all,” I sympathised.

  “There is a wealth of professional knowledge out there, Albia,” Serenus supplied drily. “You wouldn’t believe how the most unlikely-looking people know all about how to build a wall, how deep your footings need to be, what mix you ought to use for the mortar, where to buy the best bricks and so forth.”

  I smiled, leading them on again. “Or sometimes you even have a client who actually knows what he wants.”

  “Yes, but he’s only the person paying for it. What’s he doing having an opinion? The man in the street knows better!” chortled Larcius.

  “So, good try, lads—but let’s drag the subject back on track, shall we? You have talked to these folk, even the idiots who say where you are going wrong. And what have they told you?”

  The workmen all pretended to be mystified as to why I was carping—but then they did stop messing about and told me.

  Attacks had been occurring not merely for years but for decades. Bodies of women who had been assaulted and murdered turned up, usually in dense undergrowth in the Grove of the Caesars, but sometimes in plain sight in the formal gardens. Normally gardeners found them, or someone walking a dog or otherwise taking the air had a nasty shock. Some corpses were fresh when found. Others had remained hidden until they were decomposing.

  “Are they buried?” If they were, the graves were so shallow, it counted for little. Animals frequented the area, so bones sometimes turned up far from original dump sites.

  It was assumed the women concerned were prostitutes. Most victims had never been reported missing. Only a proportion were ever identified. No one had ever been arrested for the crime.

  “Let me guess,” I growled. “A naked female corpse is reported, but the Seventh Cohort of Vigiles, publicly paid shysters, don’t try very hard to solve the case?”

  Larcius defended the Seventh. “I expect it’s almost impossible, if they don’t even know who the victim is. People told us that these bodies turn up out of the blue, unknown women, sometimes looking like immigrants. No one knows who put them there, of course, so nobody can say how they ended up in that situation—being done in, I mean.”

  “Well, if they were good-time girls, it is obvious,” corrected Serenus, the literalist.

  “Thank you, Serenus! The vigiles could try harder,” I said. “The man I saw today was so tight-lipped he would not even admit that it had ever happened before. From what you say that’s nonsense.”

  “Well, it does reflect poorly on him, I suppose.” Larcius was still being generous. “If he can’t ever catch the killer.”

  “He might do, if he thought it was worth bothering!”

  “Oh, go on, Flavia Albia, you know they try their best,” Larcius reproved me. I wondered if he had family in the vigiles, or they had once saved his house from burning down. “They don’t like it any more than we do. They have hearts. Anyway, the officers all want to be known as the man who solved a famous set of crimes.”

  At that I did nod agreement. I can be fair too.

  I made the mistake of mentioning that I might venture to the Seventh’s station-house to ask more questions. The workmen thought I should not go so gathered themselves together, intent on shepherding me home. “You stay in the house,” said Larcius. “You don’t need to keep coming into the Transtib to see us. I can let you know what’s going on.”

  So much for Tiberius leaving me in charge of his men; they thought they were looking after me. They were wrong. I gave Larcius a look, so he sent me a wise one back, almost admitting the situation.

  “I’ll go home,” I said, sounding meek enough. “Trypho can take me. The rest of you can abandon the nymphaeum for today. Go and finish Fullo’s snack counter so at least that’s done. You can start afresh here tomorrow, when the disturbance has died down.”

  They were wasting their effort, trying to protect me; I could feel myself being drawn in to investigate. I was sure Tiberius would support me eventually. Since we had first known one another, he and I had solved intriguing crimes together. But the men were right; he would be anxious about me investigating a serial murderer on my own. If I took it on, I would need to find the answer before he knew I was doing it.

  I let Trypho march me back to the Aventine. There, I went indoors to report to Gratus that we had lost Galanthus and Primulus.

  To Larcius and the lads, I might look like an obedient wife, but if there was still no news from Fidenae, I would assess what I had learned today. Being alone always leaves you free to think.

  XX

  Glumly, I described to Gratus how we had lost the dancing boys. My sharp steward immediately shared my own thoughts: “If there was a murder last night, they may have seen something.”

  “Yes, and I hope ran off scared.” I could easily
imagine those two watching, wide-eyed and fascinated, while a woman was attacked. I doubted they would have called for help. And if they were excited, they might have given away their presence to the killer. “I hope they did run off,” I said frankly. “I wouldn’t wish the alternative upon them. A man who is angry at women may become just as angry at beautiful long-haired lads who prance around in suggestive poses.”

  I would not make a second journey today; the Transtiberina was too far. I confided in Gratus I would hide until the workmen left tomorrow, then sneak over the river. Gratus said, since we were running out of helpers, he would come with me. I was fretting to be on my own, the way I used to be. I pretended I wanted Gratus to sort bed linen. He said Suza would have to do it. I expressed doubts as to whether Suza knew the difference between a sheet and a bolster case. He said, time to learn, then.

  Suza appeared, so Gratus and I buttoned our lips before he served lunch. There was still no sign of Paris.

  After I had picked at a few olives to keep the cook happy, I went to my room. I kicked off my shoes as I made it plain to the dog I was staying; Barley grumbled but moved over and let me have a narrow space on the bed. I lay down, absorbing what had happened that morning.

  I could not ignore this. A long series of women had been assaulted over the years while men simply convinced themselves a solution was impossible. If there had been only one perpetrator, he must now feel invincible. He would not stop. He would attack more boldly, as if the gardens and the Grove were now his by right, those quiet walks becoming his own loathsome playground and graveyard. Nobody had yet suggested he might be showing off or taunting the authorities, but Ursus had given the impression this was a man who enjoyed the act of killing. So, as long as he was left free to continue, women would remain at risk.