Graveyard of the Hesperides

LVII

Next morning, Tiberius and I rose early. We went out to grab a fast breakfast at the snackery. Lepida was not there but her daughter was clearly waiting to give me a message. She spoke almost angrily. “My mother says to tell you this. That woman you were asking about has left town.”

I did not believe it.

Tiberius was going to the Hesperides. It was the last day of work. They were planning to connect to the aqueduct, fill up the canal and inspect it for leaks, then he would be handing over the finished bar to its owner in the afternoon, before he stopped work and left for the wedding. His last instruction was that I was not to question Julius Liberalis by myself.

Before he left me, he teased, “We have never mentioned the appropriate fact that the Golden Apples of the Hesperides were a wedding gift to the goddess Hera.”

“The Apple of Discord caused the Trojan War,” I retaliated mildly. “Was that golden bauble not brought to the wedding of Peleus and Thetis by an uninvited guest? Who have your planners missed off their invitation list, darling-and are they likely to send us any fruit?”

Tiberius stopped. He looked back at me. Simultaneously we chorused: “Laia Gratiana!” His ex-wife.

I said in a sweet voice that I would leave it to his discretion whether the baleful Laia should be hurriedly asked. Tiberius winced, muttering as he went over to the bar that he needed a drink.

I sat on by myself for a while, making notes quietly. It was project-end for me too. I had one last day to solve this case. New leads had appeared but there were still far too many unanswered questions. To organize myself, I made a list:

• Where has Rufia been? Why go? Why pretend to be dead?

• Is it Rhodina among the bodies? Why no head? Where is it?

• Are the corpses the Egyptians? Who wanted to kill them? Why?

• Who did carry out the killings? Who ordered them?

• Who dug the graves?

• Why sever a leg?

• Where are Rhodina’s children?

• Who damaged the building site? Why?

• Why did Menendra search Rufia’s room? What was she looking for?

• Who tried to burgle Annina and her husband? Why?

• Who attacked Gavius? Was it to silence him?

• What else did Gavius witness after the Egyptians went into the bar?

• Is it about sex? Extortion? Gambling? Or is it lentils?

• What part did Thales play in the killing? Was Liberalis present? Was Rufia?

Well done, Flavia Albia, ace investigator! Even for you, that is some list to have left over on your deadline day.

As I was putting my notes in the pouch at my waist, along came Macer of the Third Cohort. I called him over, saying I had news. “By the way, I saw that you released Menendra.”

“I let her men go too. Nothing against them. They produced alibis for the mews burglary and the stabbing. Your watchman maintains they were not who he found breaking up the bar, so that clinched it.”

“Were the alibis fake or believable?”

“Flavia Albia, I don’t have time for testing alibis. People give me one, I go with it … Believable, I thought. Those musclemen are just two nice boys who sell barley.”

“Not very nice boys-but around here, who is?” I told Macer how Morellus had tracked down identities for the five dead men. I made it sound matter-of-fact to avoid jealousy, but Macer accepted being upstaged. It must happen frequently. He had never heard of any Egyptians getting into trouble around the High Footpath; there were none in particular on his watch list now.

He was just going over to the bar to see Tiberius, who had asked him to report on illegal gambling. I went too.

“So this is your next fantasy motive for the murders!” he joked, although he did see that betting rackets could explain a lot. He gave Tiberius quite a reasonable overview.

Gambling for cash was illegal. Most law officers tolerated it on a small scale, so long as it led to no trouble. Most bar landlords were capable of handling any quarrels that sprang up over dice or the draftboard. The vigiles had other things to do. The big worry was organized, gangster-led syndicates. From time to time, the higher-ups ordered a crackdown. Occasionally that even worked-temporarily.

Tiberius told him I had learned that Old Thales made a huge profit from gambling. Macer was not surprised. Once Liberalis opened the bar again, he would keep an eye.

Mention of Liberalis prompted me to say he was one of my murder suspects. Since he had an appointment with Tiberius that morning, to sign up for his aqueduct access, Macer and I hung around until he came. Once the formalities were done, Tiberius took the water-board official off for a polite thank-you drink, while Macer and I kept Liberalis back for an interview. We steered him out to the street, where we all leaned on the counters that Appius and the marble crew had now repaired.

“This is how it is, sir.” Macer opened the preliminaries, making it an official vigiles matter, full of fake respect. “I am going back to my station house now, and if you take the hard option, you’ll be coming with me. You will be placed in my cell until you are driven mad by the bare walls and the horrible sounds of fellow suspects under torture. Then you will find you are ready to talk about the night six deaths occurred. Trust me, you really will. The soft option is you can stand here in the pleasant sunlight and tell me what you know. You are known to have been present,” Macer announced calmly. “We have a witness.”

He had made that up. Anyone familiar with interrogation would have asked him, “Who is it?” When the question failed to come, Macer discreetly winked at me. Liberalis was an amateur and Macer was on to a winner.

“Someone was waiting at the Romulus to see one of the waiting staff safely home,” I embroidered. I was thinking of Gavius and Rhodina, though of course she didn’t need an escort home; she was sleeping with Old Thales. “Liberalis, you were seen.”

“This is your last chance,” Macer solemnly promised. “So own up.”

“If not,” I pressed the unhappy witness, “your smart new bar will have to reopen without you.”

It was his dream. Rather than miss a single day in his beloved bar, Liberalis chose to weaken. “Other people did it. I had no part in what happened.”

“Come on.” I jumped on him at once. “We want the people who carried out the killings. Help yourself by helping us.” I had one final lure: “We know Rufia survived. She is here in Rome. She will be arrested, on suspicion of involvement in murder. Nobody else who knows the truth is left alive. From all I hear, she’s clever. So when we question her, she is bound to protect herself by claiming you did everything. Do you want that to happen?”

It worked.

“Yes, I was there,” Liberalis finally confessed. “But only afterward.” From a hardened criminal that would be a lie; from him, probably not.

Leaning on his bar counter, he stared at a pothole, transfixed by memories. Macer and I eased off the pressure. In his own time he spilled it all.

“I came back. I came back after normal closing, because I had an idea there was gambling that night. Thales used to hold events, by special invitation, after shutdown. It was the year the Amphitheater opened. We were profiting from the endless games. He would look through the next day’s program, then take bets. You couldn’t do it at the arena, not openly.”

“So you came for betting. What did you find?” I nudged when he fell silent.

“I shall never get over it. I was so frightened I wet myself. It was the most horrible, disgusting sight.”

“Tell us everything you saw.” I spoke quietly, but I was firm. Macer listened. A typical laid-back inquiry officer, at last he chose to show genuine skills-at this point, patience.

Liberalis forced himself to continue. “It was late. I was alone. My mother thought I had gone to bed; I crept out of the house without her knowing. Nobody was in the Vicus Longus, no one was in our street here. I walked straight indoors, all innocent. I thought there was a meet, as I told you. I could see lights beyond in the courtyard, which seemed usual. But the place was much too quiet. Nobody was serving drinks. I should have gone home again. But I didn’t, I stupidly kept going. I went through the passage and into the garden.”

“Who was there?”

“Only Thales. He was all on his own.” Liberalis paused. He looked traumatized. “Apart from the bodies. I had never seen anything like it. Dead people, lying in a row, all close together, under our pergola.”

“How had they been killed?” demanded Macer.

“Throats cut.”

“Lot of blood?”

“Enough to make me sick.”

“Five men and one woman,” I prompted. “She was Rhodina?”

Liberalis nodded. He licked his lips in that nervous way he had. Twined his silver points of hair between anxious fingers. “She had no…” He could not say it.

“No head.” I was clinical. “Was her head lying there?”

He forced himself to remember the scene. “No. No, there was no head there. Just the rest of her body. Revolting.” He looked as if he might vomit right now.

Somebody had taken her head away already? Strange. “You knew for sure who she was?”

“Rhodina. She was pregnant. Anyway, Thales said, ‘This is that poor cow Rhodina. She won’t bother me again.’ I knew she had been nagging him; she wanted a future. He didn’t like anyone to tie him down; he wanted to be rid of her.”

Macer leaned sideways, staring at Liberalis’ hairy calves below his tunic. The vigilis said, matter-of-fact about it: “Well look at that! I do believe the poor scared sod is so upset, he’s weed all over himself again!” Liberalis writhed. Macer encouraged him to keep talking: “Publius Julius Liberalis, you sorry man, did one of the dead fellows have his leg cut off?”

“No. Oh, don’t make me remember it!” He was going off into hysterics. Any moment we would lose him.

“Sure?”

“They were lying with their legs toward me. I would have seen!” So the decapitation and leg amputation were separate incidents.

I breathed in and let it out, a demonstration of staying steady. “Calm down. Unburden yourself and you may feel better. You have decided to cooperate, remember. So what happened next?”

“Thales had just finished stripping all the clothes off them. He stood up, looked around, and saw me. I couldn’t believe his attitude. He treated the scene as if it was nothing extraordinary. He seemed to think I should have been expecting it. He told me he was waiting for navvies who were coming to dig the graves. I could help if I wanted to. I refused. So he said, ‘Bugger off home to bed then.’ And I did.”

“So simple! Could happen any night in any bar … Who were those navvies?” demanded Macer.

“I don’t know. A man was sending them.”

“What man?”

“Never said. I don’t think Old Thales knew the diggers, but that man was sending them. Thales called it his contribution.”

“What for?”

“Thales never told me.”

“Didn’t you ask?”

“Too risky to know. I didn’t want to end up lying dead under the pergola myself.”

“Thales cannot have killed six people all alone. So, somebody else, someone you never saw, must have helped him?” I pondered. “Someone who arranged the bodies in a close line afterward, out of the way of the gravediggers-but the actual killers left the scene before you came? Then another person was sending diggers?”

“That sounds right.”

“You are quite sure you hadn’t seen anybody in the street as you approached?”

“No. Most of the bars were dark then. I might have heard people indoors at the Brown Toad, but that never closes.”

“What happened to the pile of clothes?” Macer snorted. The vigiles have their preoccupations. In a way they are right; at the time those clothes would have been clues to the victims’ identity. Still would be, if they existed.

Liberalis went white at this memory.

“Six very bloody tunics and a pregnant girl’s bust-band!” Macer chuckled. “They must have been sopping with blood?”

“We washed them. In the public fountain. Hung them on the trellis to dry overnight.”

“You are joking me? Why not chuck them or destroy them?”

Liberalis confessed meekly: “The next morning, I was made to get rid of the evidence. Thales told me to go over to Agrippina’s Granary. I took the clothes to various secondhand stalls there and sold them.”

“Jupiter! What did you do with the money?”

“I had to give it to Thales.”

“You sound a right little slave baby then! Did you always jump, whatever that bastard said to do?” No answer. “Is this all you know about the crime?”

“Yes.”

“Really? Didn’t Thales explain to you what had gone down here?”

“No. I never asked. I did not want to know. I had nightmares for years, seeing those bodies. I still do.”

“And next time you came here,” I said, sounding hard, “all the bodies were gone? Was absolutely nothing ever said about them?”

Liberalis shook his head.

“Never?” asked Macer.

“Never. Thales never talked about it.” He paused. “I didn’t even know they were put here. I assumed they would have been taken away and buried so they would never be connected with us. I would never have had work done … I was horrified when the workmen started finding bones.”

We all breathed.

“And what about the other barmaid? Rufia?” I asked.

“I never saw her again after that night.”

“She wasn’t here when you walked in?”

“No.”

“She is still alive. Did you know that?”

“Not always.” He shook his head. “I found out from Thales’ papers, after he died.” Seeing how traumatized he was, I guessed it was Liberalis who panicked when our workmen turned up skeletons, so he was the person who sent a message to warn Rufia. Detecting his hysteria, perhaps she thought she had best come back to supervise.

“What did Thales tell you about her disappearance?”

“Only what he said to everyone. ‘The bitch has gone.’ He never explained it.” That did match what Nipius and Natalis had told me about Thales, right at the beginning of my searches.

“And you never questioned any of this?” Macer nagged at him, showing amazement. “You never told anybody what you had seen? I am puzzled, man. Why not? Why ever not?”

The answer was so tame it seemed quite truthful: “I never wanted to annoy Old Thales,” admitted Liberalis. “He was going to leave me the bar one day, but he could change his mind. I kept quiet so he would let me have the bar.”

“It came with a large sum of money?” I suggested.

“It came with some.”

“Profits from gambling?”

“Could have been. I was not privileged to know about the finances.” That had always been his story: he was a young man, forced to stay out of the business arrangements. He sat in a corner dreaming of the day it would all come to him-but had no real idea of anything.

It could not be true. No one hankering after a legacy is ever so vague about what it comprises. People make sure they find out.

“But you always knew there was cash? I am wondering, Julius Liberalis, whether your hopes of a fortune might in fact have lured you into murder?”

For the first time, the only time, he stood up for himself. “In that case,” Liberalis put to me, “if I murdered anyone, wouldn’t it have been Thales?”

He had a point. I nodded in acknowledgment.

“I was surprised when the will was opened,” he maintained, looking innocent. “The amount of the money was all new to me. I only knew about the bar. It was the bar I had always yearned for; I dreamed of being a bar owner. That is all I ever wanted: the Garden of the Hesperides.”