‘Um . . .’ said Carrot, tactfully. ‘Some of us don’t have your nose.’
‘I’ve smelled it before, somewhere in this town. Can’t remember where . . . It’s strong. Stronger than the other smells. It’s a muddy smell.’
‘Hah, well, on these streets . . .’
‘No, it’s not . . . exactly mud. Sharper. More treble.’
‘You know, sometimes I envy you. It must be nice to be a wolf. Just for a while.’
‘It has its drawbacks.’ Like fleas, she thought, as they locked up the museum. And the food. And the constant nagging feeling that you should be wearing three bras at once.
She kept telling herself she had it under control and she did, in a way. She prowled the city on moonlit nights and, okay, there was the occasional chicken, but she always remembered where she’d been and went round next day to shove some money under the door.
It was hard to be a vegetarian who had to pick bits of meat out of her teeth in the morning. She was definitely on top of it, though.
Definitely, she reassured herself.
It was Angua’s mind that prowled the night, not a werewolf mind. She was almost entirely sure of that. A werewolf wouldn’t stop at chickens, not by a long way.
She shuddered.
Who was she kidding? It was easy to be a vegetarian by day. It was preventing yourself from becoming a humanitarian at night that took the real effort.
The first clocks were striking eleven as Vimes’s sedan chair wobbled to a halt outside the Patrician’s palace. Commander Vimes’s legs were beginning to give out, but he ran up five flights of stairs as fast as possible and collapsed on a chair in the waiting salon.
Minutes went past.
You didn’t knock on the Patrician’s door. He summoned you in the certain knowledge that you would be there.
Vimes sat back, enjoying a moment’s peace.
Something inside his coat went: ‘Bing bing bingley bing!’
He sighed, pulled out a leather-bound package about the size of a small book, and opened it.
A friendly yet slightly worried face peered up at him from its cage.
‘Yes?’ said Vimes.
’11 am. Appointment with the Patrician.’
‘Yes? Well? It’s five past now.’
‘Er. So you’ve had it, have you?’ said the imp.
‘No.’
‘Shall I go on remembering it or what?’
‘No. Anyway, you didn’t remind me about the College of Arms at ten.’
The imp looked panic-stricken.
That’s Tuesday, isn’t it? Could’ve sworn it was Tuesday.’
‘It was an hour ago.’
‘Oh.’ The imp was downcast. ‘Er. All right. Sorry. Um. Hey, I could tell you what time it is in Klatch, if you like. Or Genua. Or Hunghung. Any of those places. You name it.’
‘I don’t need to know the time in Klatch.’
‘You might,’ said the imp desperately. Think how people will be impressed if, during a dull moment of the conversation, you could say “Incidentally, in Klatch it’s an hour ago”. Or Bes Pelargic. Or Ephebe. Ask me. Go on. I don’t mind. Any of those places.’
Vimes sighed inwardly. He had a notebook. He took notes in it. It was always useful. And then Sybil, gods bless her, had brought him this fifteen-function imp which did so many other things, although as far as he could see at least ten of its functions consisted of apologizing for its inefficiency in the other five.
‘You could take a memo,’ Vimes said.
‘Wow! Really? Gosh! Okay. Right. No problem.’
Vimes cleared his throat. ‘See Corporal Nobbs re time-keeping; also re Earldom.’
‘Er . . . sorry, is this the memo?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sorry, you should have said “memo” first. I’m pretty certain it’s in the manual.’
‘All right, it was a memo.’
‘Sorry, you have to say it again.’
‘Memo: See Corporal Nobbs re time-keeping; also re Earldom.’
‘Got it,’ said the imp. ‘Would you like to be reminded of this at any particular time?’
The time here?’ said Vimes, nastily. ‘Or the time in, say, Klatch?’
‘As a matter of fact, I can tell you what time it’
‘I think I’ll write it in my notebook, if you don’t mind,’ said Vimes.
‘Oh, well, if you prefer, I can recognize handwriting,’ said the imp proudly. Im quite advanced.’
Vimes pulled out his notebook and held it up. ‘Like this?’ he said.
The imp squinted for a moment. ‘Yep,’ it said. That’s handwriting, sure enough. Curly bits, spiky bits, all joined together. Yep. Handwriting. I’d recognize it anywhere.’
‘Aren’t you supposed to tell me what it says?’
The imp looked wary. ‘Says?’ it said. ‘It’s supposed to make noises?’
Vimes put the battered book away and shut the lid of the organizer. Then he sat back and carried on waiting.
Someone very clever – certainly someone much cleverer than whoever had trained that imp – must have made the clock for the Patrician’s waiting room. It went tick-tock like any other clock. But somehow, and against all usual horological practice, the tick and the tock were irregular. Tick tock tick . . . and then the merest fraction of a second longer before. . . tock tick tock. . . and then a tick a fraction of a second earlier than the mind’s ear was now prepared for. The effect was enough, after ten minutes, to reduce the thinking processes of even the best-prepared to a sort of porridge. The Patrician must have paid the clockmaker quite highly.
The clock said quarter past eleven.
Vimes walked over to the door and, despite precedent, knocked gently.
There was no sound from within, no murmur of distant voices.
He tried the handle. The door was unlocked.
Lord Vetinari had always said that punctuality was the politeness of princes. , Vimes went in.
Cheery dutifully scraped up the crumbly white dirt and then examined the corpse of the late Father Tubelcek.
Anatomy was an important study at the Alchemists’ Guild, owing to the ancient theory that the human body represented a microcosm of the universe, although when you saw one opened up it was hard to imagine which part of the universe was small and purple and went blomp-blomp when you prodded it. But in any case you tended to pick up practical anatomy as you went along, and sometimes scraped it off the walls as well. When new students tried an experiment that was particularly successful in terms of explosive force, the result was often a cross between a major laboratory refit and a game of Hunt-the-other-Kidney.
The man had been killed by being repeatedly hit around the head. That was about all you could say. Some kind of very heavy blunt instrument.[9]
What else did Vimes expect Cheery to do?
He looked carefully at the rest of the body. There were no other obvious signs of violence, although . . . there were a few specks of blood on the man’s fingers. But, then, there was blood everywhere.
A couple of fingernails were torn. Tubelcek had put up a fight, or at least had tried to shield himself with his hands.
Cheery looked more closely at the fingers. There was something piled under the nails. It had a waxy sheen, like thick grease. He couldn’t imagine why it should be there, but maybe his job was to find out. He conscientiously took an envelope out of his pocket and scraped the stuff into it, sealed it up and numbered it.
Then he took his iconograph out of its box and prepared to take a picture of the corpse.
As he did so, something caught his eye.
Father Tubelcek lay there, one eye still open as Vimes had left it, winking at eternity.
Cheery looked closer. He’d thought he’d imagined it. But . . .
Even now he wasn’t sure. The mind could play tricks.
He opened the little door of the iconograph and spoke to the imp inside.
‘Can you paint a picture of his eye, Sydney?’ he said.
The imp squinted out through the lens. ‘Just the eye?’ it squeaked.
‘Yes. As big as you can.’
‘You’re sick, mister.’
‘And shut up,’ said Cheery.
He propped the box on the table and sat back. From inside the box there came the swish-swish of brush strokes. At last there was the sound of a handle being turned, and a slightly damp picture rustled out of a slot.
Cheery peered at it. Then he knocked on the box. The hatch opened.
‘Yes?’
‘Bigger. So big it fills the whole paper. In fact’ -Cheery squinted at the picture in his hands – ‘just paint the pupil. The bit in the middle.’
‘So it fills the whole paper? You’re weird.’
Cheery propped the box nearer. There was a clicking of gears as the imp wound the lenses out, and then a few more seconds of busy brush work.
Another damp picture unwound. It showed a big black disc.
Well. . . mainly black.
Cheery looked closer. There was a hint, just a hint . . .