Graveyard of the Hesperides (27 page)

“This is the board you show us during an aediles' inspection,” Manlius Faustus commented, letting it be known he was not easily fooled. “I wonder what you really dish up?”

The waiter looked innocent; he sensibly kept quiet.

“I shall be sending someone incognito to test you.”

“No problem, your honor. We are famous throughout the High Footpaths for our delectable pulse casseroles.”

“No need to overdo it!” Faustus chided.

From what I had heard whispered as I moved around the neighborhood, the Medusa was in fact famous for offering sex with animals.

A tiresome thought came into my mind: Was that common? Was the dog bone found at the Hesperides from some poor mutt who had been forced into perverted acts…? Settle down, Albia. Garden burials happen. When dogs die, they are often interred at the homes where they have lived as affectionate pets. And what nicer place for a hound to spend eternity than the fabled Garden of the Hesperides? A snake to bark at and bored daughters of Zeus to pat you all day long. Perfect.

Stop being distracted, Flavia Albia. You do not want to feel obliged to investigate the suspicious deaths of dogs.

I stuck with normal questions: “Tell me, young man.” He was not that young. The period I wanted to investigate should be within his working lifetime. “Have there ever been rumors of any other women disappearing hereabouts, like Rufia at the Hesperides?”

He thought about it. “Not really.”

“No?”

“I mean not with everyone saying Old Thales bashed their head in.”

“Some other rumor then? I am particularly interested in the period around when the new Flavian Amphitheater was inaugurated. You must remember. There were games for days on end. It would have been a very productive time for bars.”

The waiter grinned with gappy teeth as he dredged up a memory for me. “A pot-washer at the Four Limpets ran away with a one-legged sailor once. She was never seen again. Most people thought losing her improved the neighborhood substantially.”

I sighed to myself. “That's very helpful.” This is what informers say to disappointing witnesses. Just in case it makes them think of something more useful. It rarely happens.

I forced myself not to start speculating about the dead man, number four of the five, whose skeleton we found with a leg detached. He wasn't this sailor. Our number four had two legs, even if one went its own way in the fracas and the limb was chucked in his grave with him. That was the clincher. Most one-legged sailors do not carry their amputated pins around with them.

Don't tell me you knew one who did. He must have been a crackpot.

“I don't suppose you are old enough to remember a group that included a man with a serious limp?”

“Ten a denarius. People are always being run over by drays or walking under millstones.”

I thanked him again quietly. Yes, identifying our corpses was going to be difficult.

Let alone the dog.

*   *   *

I nearly didn't bother asking. “One more question, if you will. Did Old Thales ever own a dog?”

“Pudgy,” the waiter replied, this time not even stopping to think. “It was always coming over here and squatting on our pavement with galloping diarrhea. Hades, I haven't thought of Pudgy in years. I've upset myself now…” He shuddered dramatically. “Old Thales bloody loved that hairy thing, but trust me, it was awful.”

I tried to ignore Tiberius grinning at me. “Pudgy died?”

“It would have been old now if it hadn't! It swallowed the heel off a boot someone chucked it to play with. Choked to death. Thales sobbed for four days.”

I hardly dared continue. “I don't suppose you know what he did with Pudgy's remains?”

“Oh everybody knew. He made a big thing of it. Buried in a big hole out the back. Old Thales held a very drunken funeral in the garden, followed by a week of massive drinking. He was going to put a plaque up but he never got around to it. Well, it would have cost him. He didn't love the dog—or anyone—enough to open his money chest. Then, just before he did us all a favor and killed himself with drink, he sobered up and immediately forgot all about poor old Pudgy. Talk about a dog's life.”

“And was this around the time, would you say, that Rufia vanished? In the Amphitheater year?”

“Probably. Perhaps before. Not long.”

“You can't be certain?”

“No. I don't note the death of somebody else's horrible dog in my annual calendar.”

“Apology!”

“Accepted.”

“Why did Old Thales forget his adored pet?” Tiberius suddenly broke in.

“Picked up a new little girlfriend. Adored her even more. Didn't we all? Nobody knew what she saw in him. She was so cute … Hercules, I remember her all right! I wonder whatever became of her?”

“What was her name?” I asked, eager to identify this cute creature.

A typical man, he did not remember the beauty as well as he claimed. “Hades, don't ask me. It's been bloody years. They come and go. How can you expect me to remember one little tart's name among so many on the street? Even if she really was one of the gorgeous ones!”

End of story, so far as he was concerned.

Sighing, I turned to Tiberius. He could see I was despondent; he spoke encouragingly. “Brilliant, Flavia Albia. Pudgy. You have put a name to one of our bodies.”

“Sadly, my love, it is the one nobody now cares about.” I cursed my luck mildly, in the manner of my father: “This could only happen to me. I have six bodies from a crime scene, but all I can identify is the dog!”

Not a flicker showed on his face as Tiberius told me deadpan, “Don't forget we dug up a chicken bone as well.”

“Naturally. Darling heart, I am now working on who the chicken may have been.”

“Good to have priorities,” he answered, smiling. Then suddenly he burst out with, “Just three days now!”

The wedding.

 

XLII

Where next? The day was drawing on. Then as we returned to the Garden of the Hesperides, we saw the waiters, Nipius and Natalis, leaving for their evening shift, which I remembered would be at the Four Limpets.

Tiberius, who found them a louche pair he did not want to talk to now, strode in ahead of me, heading for his site. I managed to greet Nipius and Natalis with a laughing air, as if something hilarious had just happened. “Hello, you two. I'm thrilled to tell you that with gritty detective work, I have identified one of the corpses!” Perhaps they looked wary; perhaps they only wondered why I found it so funny. “Here's a test of your memories: Do either of you remember Pudgy?”

How fine it would be if this dead dog, who seemed quite incidental, provided my way into the case.
Good boy! Have a bone on me in Hades …

The waiters had been to the baths or a barber; they were swanning about in a reek of hair oil. Both men wore their usual green tunics, probably not laundered since I saw them last. I had forgotten how they exuded unreliability. Still, I didn't want a chickpea flatbread with no fish pickle and a small red wine, only their memoirs.

“Pudgy!” They looked at one another, then jointly assumed postures of exaggerated shock. “Old Pudgy?” cried Natalis, adjusting his pebble pendant. “Thundering Jupiter, what's that pooch got to do with anything?”

“I am confident some of the bones are his.”

“Hers,” Nipius corrected me, with a rattle of his bracelets. “She was a girlie. Ought to have been long forgotten. Hades, Albia, you do like to be thorough. Do you always make a habit of turning up every pet anyone ever shoveled away under a rose bush?”

“I like dogs … Anyway I find it satisfying to put on name labels.” I hinted I could be adding more in the near future.

“Pudgy was an awful creature. She caused such trouble—bites, fights, always in heat. Ever tried running a bar where a bitch has a long list of desperate callers but her master wants to keep her pure so he can sell the hulking offspring as purebred novelties? We couldn't move for mongrels we were trying to chase away, then Pudgy would have her great lumps of puppies. It was disgusting. Everyone loathed her, except Thales.”

“You got rid of her, though, in the end. Didn't she choke to death on a boot?”

“That's right.”

“Someone gave it her to play with?”

“Rhodina. Gods, she was a dozy tramp.” Nipius had revealed the name before apparently having second thoughts.

“Thales' girlfriend,” I agreed in a light tone, not even making it sound like a question. Since they did not correct me, this must be correct. “I've heard all about her. Beauty doesn't go with brains. She was a real looker, wasn't she? All the men were after her? So Thales couldn't believe his luck and I suppose he would forgive her anything?”

“Oh, he didn't forgive her losing Pudgy!” scoffed Natalis. “The row about his precious dog went on and on. Even when he pretended to let it go, he kept brooding.”

I had casually positioned myself in the gap between the counters, so the waiters could not leave. Holding them there, I stopped pretending to laugh about it. “What you say isn't what I have been told. The word elsewhere is Pudgy died accidentally, Thales was heartbroken, he nearly killed himself with drink—and only stopped moaning when he took up with his new girlfriend.”

Typically, the waiters decided it was more important to brag about their own information than to hide the facts. “You were told wrong then!” Natalis insisted, with some scorn. “You've been talking to those no-hoper delinquents at the Romulus or the Soldier's Rest. We worked here, we ought to know what happened.”

“Indeed you should, boys—I am happy to believe all you say.” That was a rare promise to witnesses. They were mad if they believed me. “So the gorgeous bundle called Rhodina worked as a waitress here?”

“Oh she did.”

“A hot favorite with Old Thales?”

“In his bed most nights, from well before Pudgy copped it. He was besotted. She strung him along.”

“Usual story!” I nodded. “Was she young?”

“Young and pert. He wasn't her first conquest. Nor was she his, come to that.”

“Then she accidentally killed off his dog?”

“She really did not like that dog,” Natalis muttered, with passion. “None of us did. Pass too close and it would nip you for nothing. Rhodina would not go near it. Customers who sat or stood by Pudgy never got a drink from her. We had to serve them. The dog was a big, powerful thing; Rhodina was terrified of it.”

“Well, that was why she tried to distract it with the boot,” explained Nipius. “She never intended to destroy the creature—or so she said afterward—though when it started gagging horribly, she made no attempt to help. She was certainly not sorry it died.”

“Not until Thales went up in flames.”

“So he realized it was her fault?” I asked.

“Not to start with. She very carefully said nothing.”

“So he didn't blame her?”

“Not until he found out!” crowed Natalis. Nipius giggled at the memory.

“She told him?”

“She was dim, but not that stupid. Someone in the bar must have snitched. Not us,” Nipius assured me quickly.

“I don't suppose it matters who … Then what? Was he furious?”

“Is Etna a volcano?”

I felt my eyebrows lift. “Was Thales so angry he might actually murder her?”

“Not him. Thales was always all talk and no go. He spent a long time raging at her, but he did seem to cool off.”

“You don't think that was genuine? What made him settle, or seem to?”

“She must have got round him.”

“Know how she did that?”

The two waiters looked at me pityingly. I was pointedly informed that anyone could guess.

 

29 August

Four days before the Kalends of September (a.d. IV Kal. Sept.)

Two days before the wedding of Tiberius Manlius Faustus and Flavia Albia

 

XLIII

They had no more to tell me about the dead dog or the long-lost waitress, so I let them go.

I gave up my inquiry that day. I call myself tough, but am not as strong as I would like; it is a relic of my early life. Mother had me diagnosed with rickets by the same kindly old doctor who helped her clear me of scabies. Glaucus, at the gym Father goes to, gave me exercises that I have done from adolescence, but I am stuck with soft bones.

Tiberius felt that after the long walk up the Viminal with the Three Graces, even he had had enough. We spent an easygoing evening together. We were subdued, and deliberately did not talk about the case.

The Ten Traders area seemed quiet that night too. There were fewer people out and about, as happens for no obvious reason. Just when you think you have taken the measure of a place, people change their habits. Maybe for an evening, sometimes forever. It reminds you to resist assumptions.

On that basis, I would cautiously avoid deciding yet that Thales, who had for so long been the alleged killer of his barmaid Rufia, had actually murdered his other barmaid, Rhodina. It was tempting. But why would everyone at the time of the murder fix on the wrong woman, not the victim in question?

Did two barmaids disappear simultaneously? Was that possible? People knew Rufia had vanished, but no one said anything about Rhodina. Why the difference? Either could simply have moved on to work somewhere else. A waitress with looks can always find employment; a waitress with only experience may find it harder, but she ought to succeed. If Thales was as awful as he sounded, and angry with her anyway, Rhodina might have slipped away without telling anyone. They might all have guessed why, so that aroused no comment. But why would the other one, Rufia, the queen of the bar, also go?

Stop, Albia! Let it rest. Cleanse your brain.

We retired to our room at an earlier hour than sometimes. Even the lumpy bed seemed attractive.