Petronius surveyed the object. `It has obviously been in the water a long time.' His tone was apologetic. `We've been told it was found blocking a pipe in a castellum on the Aqua Appia, but it could have got there from somewhere else.'

`Most people are cremated,' Fusculus said. `You might get: some dog digging up a human hand at the crossroads in a village in the provinces, but bodies don't get buried raw in Rome.'

`It smacks of dirty business,' Petro agreed. `If someone, possibly a woman, has been done in, why hasn't there been an outcry?'

'Probably because women are always being done in,' Fusculus explained helpfully. 'It's their husbands or lovers who do it,, and when they wake up sober the men either collapse in remorse, and come straight here. to confess, or else they find the peace and quiet so welcome that raising an outcry is the last thing they consider.'

`All women have nosy friends,' Petro pointed out `A lot have interfering mothers; some are caring for aged aunts who if left on their own would wander out into the highway and frighten the donkeys. And what about the neighbours?'

`The neighbours report it,' said Fusculus. 'So we go to the house and ask the husband; he tells us that the neighbours are poisonous bastards making malicious accusations, then he claims his wife' has gone to visit relatives at Antium. We say, when she comes home will he ask her to drop in and confirm it; we file the details; she never comes, but we never have time to pursue it because by then twenty other things are happening. Anyway, the husband will have runoff' He did' not add `and good luck to him', but his tone was eloquent.

'Don't, give me the brush-off; I'm not some member of the public.' Petronius was discovering how the public felt when they ventured to his office. He sounded annoyed, probably at himself for not having been prepared for it.

Fusculus was faultlessly polite. He had been putting off the public for the past fifteen years. `If there has been a crime it could have happened anywhere, sir, and the chances of us picking up the rest of the body are nil.'