Angua glanced up at Carrot.
‘Queen?’
‘They sometimes call the head beggar king or queen,’ said Carrot. He was breathing heavily.
Angua pulled the maid’s velvet cloak over the corpse.
‘Just the maid,’ she muttered.
There was a full-length mirror in the middle of the floor, or at least the frame of one. The glass was scattered like sequins around it.
So was the glass from a window pane.
Carrot kicked aside some shards. There was a groove in the floor, and something metallic embedded in it.
‘Cumbling Michael, I need a nail and a length of string,’ said Carrot, very slowly and carefully. His eyes never left the speck of metal. It was almost as if he expected it to do something.
‘I don’t think—’ the beggar began.
Carrot reached out without turning his head and picked him up by his grubby collar without apparent effort.
‘A length of string,’ he repeated, ‘and a nail.’
‘Yes, Corporal Carrot.’
‘And the rest of you, go away,’ said Angua.
They goggled at her.
‘Do it!’ she shouted, clenching her fists. ‘And stop staring at her!’
The beggars vanished.
‘It’ll take a while to get the string,’ said Carrot, brushing aside some glass. ‘They’ll have to beg it off someone, you see.’
He drew his knife and started digging at the floorboards, with care. Eventually he excavated a metal slug, flattened slightly by its passage through the window, the mirror, the floorboards and certain parts of the late Lettice Knibbs that had never been designed to see daylight.
He turned it over and over in his hand.
‘Angua?’
‘Yes?’
‘How did you know there was someone dead in here?’
‘I … just had a feeling.’
The beggars returned, so unnerved that half a dozen of them were trying to carry one piece of string.
Carrot hammered the nail into the frame under the smashed pane to hold one end of the string. He stuck his knife in the groove and affixed the other end of the string to it. Then he lay down and sighted up the string.
‘Good grief.’
‘What is it?’
‘It must have come from the roof of the opera house.’
‘Yes? So?’
‘That’s more than two hundred yards away.’
‘Yes?’
‘The … thing went an inch into an oak floor.’
‘Did you know the girl … at all?’ said Angua, and felt embarrassed at asking.
‘Not really.’
‘I thought you knew everyone.’
‘She was just someone I’d see around. The city’s full of people who you just see around.’
‘Why do beggars need servants?’
‘You don’t think my hair gets like this by itself, dear, do you?’
There was an apparition in the doorway. Its face was a mass of sores. There were warts, and they had warts, and they had hair on. It was possibly female, but it was hard to tell under the layers and layers of rags. The aforementioned hair looked as though it had been permed by a hurricane. With treacle on its fingers.
Then it straightened up.
‘Oh. Corporal Carrot. Didn’t know it was you.’
The voice was normal now, no trace of whine or wheedle. The figure turned and brought her stick down hard on something in the corridor.
‘Naughty boy, Dribbling Sidney! You could have told I it were Corporal Carrot!’
‘Arrgh!’
The figure strode into the room.
‘And who’s your ladyfriend, Mr Carrot?’
‘This is Lance-Constable Angua. Angua, this is Queen Molly of the Beggars.’
For once, Angua noted, someone wasn’t surprised to find a female in the Watch. Queen Molly nodded at her as one working woman to another. The Beggars’ Guild was an equal-opportunity non-employer.
‘Good day to you. You couldn’t spare I ten thousand dollars for a small mansion, could you?’
‘No.’
‘Just asking.’
Queen Molly prodded at the gown.
‘What was it, corporal?’
‘I think it’s a new kind of weapon.’
‘We heard the glass smash and there she was,’ said Molly. ‘Why would anyone want to kill her?’
Carrot looked at the velvet cloak.
‘Whose room is this?’ he said.
‘Mine. It’s my dressing room.’
‘Then whoever did it wasn’t after her. He was after you, Molly. “Some in rags, and some in tags, and one in a velvet gown” … it’s in your Charter, isn’t it?{41} Official dress of the chief beggar. She probably couldn’t resist seeing what it looked like on her. Right gown, right room. Wrong person.’
Molly put her hand to her mouth, risking instant poisoning.
‘Assassination?’
Carrot shook his head. ‘That doesn’t sound right. They like to do it up close. It’s a caring profession,’ he added, bitterly.
‘What should I do?’
‘Burying the poor thing would be a good start.’ Carrot turned the metal slug over in his fingers. Then he sniffed it.
‘Fireworks,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said Angua.
‘And what are you going to do?’ said Queen Molly. ‘You’re Watchmen, aren’t you? What’s happening? What are you going to do about it?’
Cuddy and Detritus were proceeding along Phedre Road. It was lined with tanneries and brick kilns and timber yards and was not generally considered a beauty spot which was why, Cuddy suspected, they’d been given it to patrol ‘to get to know the city’. It got them out of the way. Sergeant Colon thought they made the place look untidy.
There was no sound but the clink of his boots and the thump of Detritus’ knuckles on the ground.
Finally, Cuddy said: ‘I just want you to know that I don’t like being teamed up with you any more than you like being teamed up with me.’
‘Right!’
‘But if we’re going to have to make the best of it, there’d better be some changes, okay?’
‘Like what?’
‘Like it’s ridiculous you not even being able to count. I know trolls can count. Why can’t you?’
‘Can count!’
‘How many fingers am I holding up, then?’
Detritus squinted.
‘Two?’
‘Okay. Now how many fingers am I holding up?’
‘Two … and one more …’
‘So two and one more is …?’
Detritus looked panicky. This was calculus territory.
‘Two and one more is three.’
‘Two and one more is three.’
‘Now how many?’
‘Two and two.’
‘That’s four.’
‘Four-er.’
‘Now how many?’
Cuddy tried eight fingers.
‘A twofour.’
Cuddy looked surprised. He’d expected ‘many’, or possibly ‘lots’.
‘What’s a twofour?’
‘A two and a two and a two and a two.’
Cuddy put his head on one side.
‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘Okay. A twofour is what we call an eight.’
‘Ate.’
‘You know,’ said Cuddy, subjecting the troll to a long critical stare, ‘you might not be as stupid as you look. This is not hard. Let’s think about this. I mean … I’ll think about this, and you can join in when you know the words.’
Vimes slammed the Watch House door behind him. Sergeant Colon looked up from his desk. He had a pleased expression.
‘What’s been happening, Fred?’
Colon took a deep breath. ‘Interesting stuff, captain. Me and Nobby did some detectoring up at the Fools’ Guild. I’ve writ it all down what we found out. It’s all here. A proper report.’