Falco 09 - Three Hands in The Fountain by Lindsey Davis

Author:Lindsey Davis
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2010-04-11T17:03:20.342000+00:00

'You are being yourself, dear heart.'

'I don't want to behave immodestly.'

'Cobnuts, Helena! You can see the Consul and I are listening like woolly lambs. Tell us the score.'

'Well look, this is a typical example: Julius Frontinus

interviewed a family called the Luculli. They have a large house near the cascade, with a sublime aspect towards the Temple of the Sibyl -'

`They are staying here at the moment, and readily admit that they all went to Rome together for several days of the last Games,' Frontinus reported, still looking slightly nervous of Helena's enthusiasm.

`Yes, but, sir -' That 'sir' was a sop to his vanity; he took it well. 'The Luculli are a family who have been loaded with money for three or four generations. As a result, they have bought themselves villas in all the fashionable resorts. They have two on the Bay of Neapolis - facing each other from Cumae and Surrentum - plus their yachting base on the Alban Lake, their northern estate at Clusium, their southern one at Velia, and in this area they not only own the house in Tibur where we found them, but another at Tusculum and yet a third at Praeneste - which it turns out is really their old-fashioned favourite when seeking cooler air to escape to from the heat of summer in Rome.'

Frontinus looked thoroughly quashed.

I rubbed it in cheerfully. 'So the chances of the lucky Luculli following a regular pattern are zero.'

`Quite,' said Helena. Whey are always on the move. Even if they regularly visit Rome for festivals, half the time they aren't staying here. The person you want kidnaps his victims, then apparently always disposes of them in exactly the same way, and presumably in the same place.'

`So have we come up with anybody suitable?' I asked.

`No.' Helena looked despondent. 'Very few fit that category. I thought we had one - a Roman, living here for twenty years, goes to Rome for all the major festivals - but it's a woman: Aurelia Maesia. She has a villa near the Sanctuary of Hercules Victor.'

`I remember her.' Frontinus had done the interview. 'A widow. Decent background. Never remarried. Came home to a family estate after her husband died, but now goes into Rome to stay with her sister whenever there is a major event to patronise. She is well over fifty -' His tone hinted that that was a gallant estimate. 'She was suspicious of our enquiry,

but surely incapable of murder. Besides, she stops in Rome throughout the Games. Our killer seized Asinia after the opening ceremony, then put at least one of her hands into the water supply very soon afterwards. That means if Bolanus really has found where he does it and it's up here, the man must have returned to Tibur virtually the next day.'

`That's another knot in the pattern,' I warned. The killer goes to Rome for festivals - yet evidently he comes back after the opening ceremony. But he doesn't stay here. He must go back to Rome a second time, because the torsos and heads are then dumped in the river and the Great Sewer.

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