It was shaped like a pair of artificial breasts, the sort that are highly amusing to rugby players and anyone whose sense of humour has been surgically removed. Colon gave it a quick rap and then flung himself to safety.
There was a whoop, a few honks on a horn, a little tune that someone somewhere must have thought was very jolly, a small hatch slid aside above the knocker and a custard pie emerged slowly, on the end of a wooden arm. Then the arm snapped and the pie collapsed in a little heap by Colon’s foot.
‘It’s sad, isn’t it?’ said Nobby.
The door opened awkwardly, but only by a few inches, and a small clown stared up at him.
‘I say, I say, I say,’ it said, ‘why did the fat man knock at the door?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Colon automatically. ‘Why did the fat man knock at the door?’
They stared at each other, tangled in the punch-line.
‘That’s what I asked you,’ said the clown reproachfully. He had a depressed, hopeless voice.
Sergeant Colon struck out towards sanity.
‘Sergeant Colon, Night Watch,’ he said, ‘and this here is Corporal Nobbs. We’ve come to talk to someone about the man who … was found in the river, okay?’
‘Oh. Yes. Poor Brother Beano. I suppose you’d better come in, then,’ said the clown.
Nobby was about to push at the door when Colon stopped him, and pointed wordlessly upwards.
‘There seems to be a bucket of whitewash over the door,’ he said.
‘Is there?’ said the clown. He was very small, with huge boots that made him look like a capital L. His face was plastered with flesh-coloured make-up on which a big frown had been painted. His hair had been made from a couple of old mops, painted red. He wasn’t fat, but a sort of hoop in his trousers was supposed to make him look amusingly overweight. A pair of rubber braces, so that his trousers bounced up and down when he walked, were a further component in the overall picture of a complete and utter twerp.
‘Yes,’ said Colon. ‘There is.’
‘Sure?’
‘Positive.’
‘Sorry about that,’ said the clown. ‘It’s stupid, I know, but kind of traditional. Wait a moment.’
There were sounds of a stepladder being lugged into position, and various clankings and swear-words.
‘All right, come on in.’
The clown led the way through the gatehouse. There was no sound but the flop-flop of his boots on the cobbles. Then an idea seemed to occur to him.
‘It’s a long shot, I know, but I suppose neither of you gentlemen’d like a sniff of my buttonhole?’
‘No.’
‘No.’
‘No, I suppose not.’ The clown sighed. ‘It’s not easy, you know. Clowning, I mean. I’m on gate duty ’cos I’m on probation.’
‘You are?’
‘I keep on forgetting: is it crying on the outside and laughing on the inside? I always get it mixed up.’
‘About this Beano—’ Colon began.
‘We’re just holding his funeral,’ said the little clown. ‘That’s why my trousers are at half-mast.’
They stepped out into the sunlight again.
The inner courtyard was lined with clowns and fools. Bells tinkled in the breeze. Sunlight glinted off red noses and the occasional nervous jet of water from a fake buttonhole.
The clown ushered the guards into a line of fools.
‘I’m sure Dr Whiteface will talk to you as soon as we’ve finished,’ he said. ‘My name’s Boffo, by the way.’ He held out his hand hopefully.
‘Don’t shake it,’ Colon warned.
Boffo looked crestfallen.
A band struck up, and a procession of Guild members emerged from the chapel. A clown walked a little way ahead, carrying a small urn.
‘This is very moving,’ said Boffo.
On a dais on the opposite side of the quadrangle was a fat clown in baggy trousers, huge braces, a bow tie that was spinning gently in the breeze, and a top hat. His face had been painted into a picture of misery. He held a bladder on a stick.
The clown with the urn reached the dais, climbed the steps, and waited.
The band fell silent.
The clown in the top hat hit the urn-carrier about the head with the bladder — once, twice, three times …
The urn-bearer stepped forward, waggled his wig, took the urn in one hand and the clown’s belt in the other and, with great solemnity, poured the ashes of the late Brother Beano into the other clown’s trousers.
A sigh went up from the audience. The band struck up the clown anthem ‘The March of the Idiots’, and the end of the trombone flew off and hit a clown on the back of the head. He turned and swung a punch at the clown behind him, who ducked, causing a third clown to be knocked through the bass drum.
Colon and Nobby looked at one another and shook their heads.
Boffo produced a large red and white handkerchief and blew his nose with a humorous honking sound.
‘Classic,’ he said. ‘It’s what he would have wanted.’
‘Have you any idea what happened?’ said Colon.
‘Oh, yes. Brother Grineldi did the old heel-and-toe trick and tipped the urn down—’{32}
‘I mean, why did Beano die?’
‘Um. We think it was an accident,’ said Boffo.
‘An accident,’ said Colon flatly.
‘Yes. That’s what Dr Whiteface thinks.’ Boffo glanced upwards, briefly. They followed his gaze. The rooftops of the Assassins’ Guild adjoined the Fools’ Guild. It didn’t do to upset neighbours like that, especially when the only weapon you had was a custard pie edged with short-crust pastry.
‘That’s what Dr Whiteface thinks,’ said Boffo again, looking at his enormous shoes.
Sergeant Colon liked a quiet life. And the city could spare a clown or two. In his opinion, the loss of the whole boiling could only make the world a slightly happier place. And yet … and yet … honestly, he didn’t know what had got into the Watch lately. It was Carrot, that was what it was. Even old Vimes had picked it up. We don’t let things lie any more …
‘Maybe he was cleaning a club, sort of thing, and it accidentally went off,’ said Nobby. He’d caught it, too.
‘No one’d want to kill young Beano,’ said the clown, in a quiet voice. ‘He was a friendly soul. Friends everywhere.’
‘Almost everywhere,’ said Colon.
The funeral was over. The jesters, jokers and clowns were going about their business, getting stuck in doorways on the way. There was much pushing and shoving and honking of noses and falling of prats. It was a scene to make a happy man slit his wrists on a fine spring morning.
‘All I know is,’ said Boffo, in a low voice, ‘that when I saw him yesterday he was looking very … odd. I called out to him when he was going through the gates and—’
‘How do you mean, odd?’ said Colon. I am detectoring, he thought, with a faint touch of pride. People are Helping me with My Inquiries.
‘Dunno. Odd. Not quite himself—’
‘This was yesterday?’
‘Oh, yes. In the morning. I know because the gate rota—’
‘Yesterday morning?’
‘That’s what I said, mister. Mind you, we were all a bit nervous after the bang—’
‘Brother Boffo!’
‘Oh, no—’ mumbled the clown.
A figure was striding towards them. A terrible figure.
No clowns were funny. That was the whole purpose of a clown. People laughed at clowns, but only out of nervousness. The point of clowns was that, after watching them, anything else that happened seemed enjoyable. It was nice to know there was someone worse off than you. Someone had to be the butt of the world.
But even clowns are frightened of something, and that is the white-faced clown. The one who never gets in the way of the custard. The one in the shiny white clothes, and the deadpan white make-up. The one with the little pointy hat and the thin mouth and the delicate black eyebrows.