‘There’s a soiree at Lady Selachii’s house this evening,’ said Dr Downey, ignoring her. ‘I believe Nobbs is being invited. Perhaps we can . . . meet him.’
Vimes told himself he was really going to inspect the progress on the new Watch House in Chittling Street. Cockbill Street was just round the corner. And then he’d call in, informally. No sense in sparing a man when they were pushed anyway, what with these murders and Vetinari and Detritus’s anti-Slab crusade.
He turned the corner, and stopped.
Nothing much had changed. That was the shocking thing. After . . . oh, too many years . . . things had no right not to have changed.
But washing lines still criss-crossed the street between the grey, ancient buildings. Antique paint still peeled in the way cheap paint peeled when it had been painted on wood too old and rotten to take paint. Cockbill Street people were usually too penniless to afford decent paint, but always far too proud to use whitewash.
And the place was slightly smaller than he remembered. That was all.
When had he last come down here? He couldn’t remember. It was beyond the Shades, and up until quite recently the Watch had tended to leave that area to its own unspeakable devices.
Unlike the Shades, though, Cockbill Street was clean, with the haunting, empty cleanliness you get when people can’t afford to waste dirt. For Cockbill Street was where people lived who were worse than poor, because they didn’t know how poor they were. If you asked them they would probably say something like ‘mustn’t grumble’ or ‘there’s far worse off than us’ or ‘we’ve always kept uz heads above water and we don’t owe nobody nowt’.
He could hear his granny speaking. ‘No one’s too poor to buy soap.’ Of course, many people were. But in Cockbill Street they bought soap just the same. The table might not have any food on it but, by gods, it was well scrubbed. That was Cockbill Street, where what you mainly ate was your pride.
What a mess the world was in, Vimes reflected. Constable Visit had told him the meek would inherit it, and what had the poor devils done to deserve that”?
Cockbill Street people would stand aside to let the meek through. For what kept them in Cockbill Street, mentally and physically, was their vague comprehension that there were rules. And they went through life filled with a quiet, distracted dread that they weren’t quite obeying them.
People said that there was one law for the rich and one law for the poor, but it wasn’t true. There was no law for those who made the law, and no law for the incorrigibly lawless. All the laws and rules were for those people stupid enough to think like Cockbill Street people.
It was oddly quiet. Normally there’d be swarms of kids, and carts heading down towards the docks, but today the place had a shut-in look.
In the middle of the road was a chalked hopscotch path.
Vimes felt his knees go weak. It was still here! When had he last seen it? Thirty-five years ago? Forty? So it must have been drawn and redrawn thousands of times.
He’d been pretty good at it. Of course, they’d played it by Ankh-Morpork rules. Instead of kicking a stone they’d kicked William Scuggins. It had been just one of the many inventive games they’d played which had involved kicking, chasing or jumping on William Scuggins until he threw one of his famous wobblers and started frothing and violently attacking himself.
Vimes had been able to drop William in the square of his choice nine times out often. The tenth time, William bit his leg.
In those days, tormenting William and finding enough to eat had made for a simple, straightforward life. There weren’t so many questions you didn’t know the answers to, except maybe how to stop your leg festering.
Sir Samuel looked around, saw the silent street, and flicked a stone out of the gutter with his foot. Then he booted it surreptitiously along the squares, adjusted his cloak, and hopped and jumped his way up, turned, hopped
What was it you shouted as you hopped? ‘Salt, mustard, vinegar, pepper?’? No? Or was it the one that went ‘William Scuggins is a bastard’? Now he’d wonder about that all day.
A door opened across the street. Vimes froze, one leg in mid-air, as two black-clothed figures came out slowly and awkwardly.
This was because they were carrying a coffin.
The natural solemnity of the occasion was diminished by their having to squeeze around it and out into the street, pulling the casket after them and allowing two other pairs of bearers to edge their way into the daylight.
Vimes remembered himself in time to lower his other foot, and then remembered even more of himself and snatched his helmet off in respect.
Another coffin emerged. It was a lot smaller. It needed only two people to carry it and that was really one too many.
As mourners trooped out behind them, Vimes fumbled in a pocket for the scrap of paper Detritus had given him. The scene was, in its way, funny, like the bit in a circus where the coach stops and a dozen clowns get out of it. Apartment houses round here made up for their limited number of rooms by having a large number of people occupy them.
He found the paper and unfolded it. First Floor Back, 27 Cockbill Street.
And this was it. He’d arrived in time for a funeral. Two funerals.
‘Looks like it’s a really bad day to be a golem,’ said Angua. There was a pottery hand lying in the gutter. ‘That’s the third one we’ve seen smashed in the street.’
There was a crash up ahead, and a dwarf came through a window more or less horizontally. His iron helmet struck sparks as he hit the street, but the dwarf was soon up again and plunging back through the adjacent doorway.
He emerged via the window a moment later but was fielded by Carrot, who set him on his feet.
‘Hello, Mr Oresmiter! Are you keeping well? And what is happening here?’
‘It’s that devil Gimlet, Captain Carrot! You should be arresting him!’
‘Why, what’s he done?’
‘He’s been poisoning people, that’s what!’
Carrot glanced at Angua, then back at Oresmiter. ‘Poison?’ he said. That’s a very serious allegation.’
‘You’re telling me! I was up all night with Mrs Oresmiter! I didn’t think much about it until I came in here this morning and there were other people complaining’
He tried to struggle out of Carrot’s grip. ‘You know what?’ he said. ‘You know what? We looked in his cold room and you know what? You know what? You know what he’s been selling as meat?’
‘Tell me,’ said Carrot.
‘Pork and beef!’
‘Oh, dear.’
‘And lamb!’
‘Teh, tch.’
‘Hardly any rat at all!’
Carrot shook his head at the duplicity of traders.
‘And Snori Glodssonsunclesson said he had Rat Surprise last night and he’ll swear there were chicken bones in it!’
Carrot let go of the dwarf. ‘You stay here,’ he said to Angua and, head bowed, stepped inside Gimlet’s Hole Food Delicatessen.
An axe spun towards him. He caught it almost absent-mindedly and tossed it casually aside.
‘Ow!’
There was a melee of dwarfs around the counter. The row had already gone well past the stage when it had anything much to do with the subject in hand and, these being dwarfs, now included matters of vital importance such as whose grandfather had stolen whose grandfather’s mining claim three hundred years ago and whose axe was at whose throat right now.
But there was something about Carrot’s presence. The fighting gradually stopped. The fighters tried to look as if they’d just happened to be standing there. There was a sudden and general ‘Axe? What axe? Oh, this axe? I was just showing it to my friend Bjorn here, good old Bjorn’ feel to the atmosphere.
‘All right,’ said Carrot. ‘What’s all this about poison? Mr Gimlet first.’
‘It’s a diabolical lie!’ shouted Gimlet, from somewhere under the heap. ‘I run a wholesome restaurant! My tables are so clean you could eat your dinner off them!’
Carrot raised his hands to stop the outburst this caused. ‘Someone said something about rats,’ he said.
‘I told them, I use only the very best rats!’ shouted Gimlet. ‘Good plump rats from the best locations! None of your latrine rubbish! And they’re hard to come by, let me tell you!’
‘And when you can’t get them, Mr Gimlet?’ said Carrot.
Gimlet paused. Carrot was hard to lie to. ‘All right,’ he mumbled. ‘Maybe when there’s not enough I might sort of plump out the stock with some chicken, maybe just a bit of beef’
‘Hah! A bit?’ More voices were raised.
‘That’s right, you should see his cold room, Mr Carrot!’