Disclaimer: See Part 1
*****
::London::
"I am of the opinion," Vetinari said suddenly at the tailor's, "That setting a firebomb is a remarkably inefficient and unreliable way of killing someone."
The tailor, who had been in the middle of taking measurements when Vetinari decided to share this revelation, hesitated in his work and offered me a worried glance.
"A new case," I explained feebly. The tailor nodded carefully and tentatively resumed his work. Vetinari had washed the makeup from his beard before we'd left, claiming it irritated him, so he was back to looking like a slightly dangerous rogue.
Vetinari was, I had noticed, not so much overbearing as amazingly persuasive. He had, at times, a certain quiet intensity of character that make him seem like the calm before the storm. He could, for example, speak of a topic with almost conspiratorial quietness and still make his voice carry to everyone it concerned, including one or two bystanders to gently remind them of their place in Vetinari's world.
The trip to the tailor's was, of course, his idea, as he insisted on having clothing of his own for the remainder of his "stay" rather than having Mrs Hudson make any further alterations. I agreed, of course, knowing that if and when Holmes returned he might be upset to find that none of his own clothes fit him any longer. Vetinari appeared to prefer bleaker shades, mainly black, which, paired with his naturally fair bordering on unnaturally pale complection, made him look like one of Bram Stoker's nocturnal creations. This conclusion was exacerbated by the long black cloak that he had selected (which had only required a bit of hemming), and only slightly tempered by the fact that the man could walk about in the daytime.
"It certainly sounds like it came close to doing just that," I responded to his remark, "The brother-in-law was nearly killed."
"Burned is not killed, Watson," he said smoothly, with the confidence of an expert on the topic, "and I could think of a dozen more efficient and less flashy ways to go about it. A discreet poison, of course, always works well and, if one knows the proper concentrations, can be disguised as a heart attack or appendicitis." Watching him discuss poisons and murder so blithely, especially in the presence of a third party who might well call the police once we had left, gave me a bit of a chill. "You have no need to worry, of course," he added, probably noticing my queasy expression.
"That's comforting," I lied, and decided the subject was due to be changed. "So what do you plan to do at the Cavitz residence tomorrow?"
"Investigate, of course. Ah, Watson, I expect you will be paying for this? I appear to have left my money-pouch in another universe. I shall see that you are repaid in full." To the tailor he added, "There shall be a modest gratuity if you complete the alterations by four-thirty."
Nettled that Vetinari simply presumed that I would aid him financially (despite the fact that he claimed to be one of the richest men in Ankh-Morpork, wherever that happened to be), I sullenly nodded to avoid a scene.
"Good man. You may be useful yet."
I restrained the urge to throttle him as he wrapped himself in the black cape and prepared to explore the London shopping district.
As we walked home later that afternoon (for the previous night's storm had by then apparently vanished without leaving so much as a gloomy cloud behind) with a modest armload of packages (all Vetinari's but paid for with my coin, as he continued to claim situational poverty), Vetinari expanded on his earlier theory about the bomb.
"A bomb, of course, is the sort of weapon generally used in anger or hatred of the intended target. It makes an exemplary retaliatory device, of course, but bombers tend to be impatient - even the benign ones."
"Benign ones?" He had managed to lose me in the span of four words.
"I believe I mentioned the Alchemists to you?"
"Well, yes..."
"They manage to blow up their Guildhouse once or twice a fortnight in the course of their experiments, mainly because the rush to market an unproven thesis.. They don't mean anything by it, of course, and they always pay the rebuilding costs, and in fact I recall that last week's fireball was rather pretty."
"But who would--" I turned and saw he was no longer keeping pace with me. He had stopped short and was peering intently into an alleyway. I doubled back to see what he was looking at, which, upon investigation, appeared to be absolutely nothing. "What is it?" I asked, finally.
"Probably nothing," he said absently, "And possibly the key to getting everybody home. They're gone now, in any case. Let us get back - it will be dark soon, and I expect Mrs Hudson has dinner ready for us."
Little did I know the state in which we would in fact find our long-suffering housekeeper.
*****
::Ankh-Morpork::
"Slow down, Mr Stibbons, and start over from the beginning." Vimes hadn't caught much of Ponder's frenetic narrative, but it sounded as though the young wizard was claiming that the Patrician was having relations with a hippopotamus, and that it was somehow the collective fault of the Department of Inadvisably Applied Magic at UU.
Ponder took a deep breath. "Let me just ask you something, Commander... did anyone report anything... unusual last night? Say, around the Palace?"
"Not that I know of. The loonies usually stay inside during a storm."
"So... the Patrician is still in Ankh-Morpork?"
"I didn't say that."
"So he's gone?"
"I didn't say that, either. Look, just spit it out already. I haven't got all day. I have a hysterical secretary in the lobby--"
"Yes, I saw him. Don't worry, he's fainted by now. That was Mr. Drumknott, wasn't it, of the Palace?"
"--*and* I've got a missing Guild Thief to find, *and* I've got the latest candidate for Village Idiot in the back who, for all anybody around here knows, just dropped out of the bloody sky. So just say what you need to say and be done with it."
"I think my department may have accidentally discombolulated two men in two different universes. They aren't where they should be, I mean."
"That sounds like a problem in record-keeping to me," said Vimes.
"And one of them might have been His Lordship, the Patrician."
That finally got Vimes' attention. He hated Vetinari, of course, despite what the rumour mill said (Vimes was a married man, for gods' sake!) but he also respected him, and it was his duty, for better or for worse, to make sure Ankh-Morpork stayed orderly. Removing Vetinari would be like removing a vital piece in a game of bones - you knew from experience that if that piece were suddenly not there, everything was tumble into chaos.
"Now, this village idiot you mentioned earlier...?" Ponder was saying, "You said nobody knows where he came from?"
"Yes, what about it?"
"Where does *he* claim to have come from?"
"Someplace called London."
Ponder's head perked up like a squirrel who has just found an acorn everyone else somehow overlooked.
*****
End of Part 8.
*****
::London::
"I am of the opinion," Vetinari said suddenly at the tailor's, "That setting a firebomb is a remarkably inefficient and unreliable way of killing someone."
The tailor, who had been in the middle of taking measurements when Vetinari decided to share this revelation, hesitated in his work and offered me a worried glance.
"A new case," I explained feebly. The tailor nodded carefully and tentatively resumed his work. Vetinari had washed the makeup from his beard before we'd left, claiming it irritated him, so he was back to looking like a slightly dangerous rogue.
Vetinari was, I had noticed, not so much overbearing as amazingly persuasive. He had, at times, a certain quiet intensity of character that make him seem like the calm before the storm. He could, for example, speak of a topic with almost conspiratorial quietness and still make his voice carry to everyone it concerned, including one or two bystanders to gently remind them of their place in Vetinari's world.
The trip to the tailor's was, of course, his idea, as he insisted on having clothing of his own for the remainder of his "stay" rather than having Mrs Hudson make any further alterations. I agreed, of course, knowing that if and when Holmes returned he might be upset to find that none of his own clothes fit him any longer. Vetinari appeared to prefer bleaker shades, mainly black, which, paired with his naturally fair bordering on unnaturally pale complection, made him look like one of Bram Stoker's nocturnal creations. This conclusion was exacerbated by the long black cloak that he had selected (which had only required a bit of hemming), and only slightly tempered by the fact that the man could walk about in the daytime.
"It certainly sounds like it came close to doing just that," I responded to his remark, "The brother-in-law was nearly killed."
"Burned is not killed, Watson," he said smoothly, with the confidence of an expert on the topic, "and I could think of a dozen more efficient and less flashy ways to go about it. A discreet poison, of course, always works well and, if one knows the proper concentrations, can be disguised as a heart attack or appendicitis." Watching him discuss poisons and murder so blithely, especially in the presence of a third party who might well call the police once we had left, gave me a bit of a chill. "You have no need to worry, of course," he added, probably noticing my queasy expression.
"That's comforting," I lied, and decided the subject was due to be changed. "So what do you plan to do at the Cavitz residence tomorrow?"
"Investigate, of course. Ah, Watson, I expect you will be paying for this? I appear to have left my money-pouch in another universe. I shall see that you are repaid in full." To the tailor he added, "There shall be a modest gratuity if you complete the alterations by four-thirty."
Nettled that Vetinari simply presumed that I would aid him financially (despite the fact that he claimed to be one of the richest men in Ankh-Morpork, wherever that happened to be), I sullenly nodded to avoid a scene.
"Good man. You may be useful yet."
I restrained the urge to throttle him as he wrapped himself in the black cape and prepared to explore the London shopping district.
As we walked home later that afternoon (for the previous night's storm had by then apparently vanished without leaving so much as a gloomy cloud behind) with a modest armload of packages (all Vetinari's but paid for with my coin, as he continued to claim situational poverty), Vetinari expanded on his earlier theory about the bomb.
"A bomb, of course, is the sort of weapon generally used in anger or hatred of the intended target. It makes an exemplary retaliatory device, of course, but bombers tend to be impatient - even the benign ones."
"Benign ones?" He had managed to lose me in the span of four words.
"I believe I mentioned the Alchemists to you?"
"Well, yes..."
"They manage to blow up their Guildhouse once or twice a fortnight in the course of their experiments, mainly because the rush to market an unproven thesis.. They don't mean anything by it, of course, and they always pay the rebuilding costs, and in fact I recall that last week's fireball was rather pretty."
"But who would--" I turned and saw he was no longer keeping pace with me. He had stopped short and was peering intently into an alleyway. I doubled back to see what he was looking at, which, upon investigation, appeared to be absolutely nothing. "What is it?" I asked, finally.
"Probably nothing," he said absently, "And possibly the key to getting everybody home. They're gone now, in any case. Let us get back - it will be dark soon, and I expect Mrs Hudson has dinner ready for us."
Little did I know the state in which we would in fact find our long-suffering housekeeper.
*****
::Ankh-Morpork::
"Slow down, Mr Stibbons, and start over from the beginning." Vimes hadn't caught much of Ponder's frenetic narrative, but it sounded as though the young wizard was claiming that the Patrician was having relations with a hippopotamus, and that it was somehow the collective fault of the Department of Inadvisably Applied Magic at UU.
Ponder took a deep breath. "Let me just ask you something, Commander... did anyone report anything... unusual last night? Say, around the Palace?"
"Not that I know of. The loonies usually stay inside during a storm."
"So... the Patrician is still in Ankh-Morpork?"
"I didn't say that."
"So he's gone?"
"I didn't say that, either. Look, just spit it out already. I haven't got all day. I have a hysterical secretary in the lobby--"
"Yes, I saw him. Don't worry, he's fainted by now. That was Mr. Drumknott, wasn't it, of the Palace?"
"--*and* I've got a missing Guild Thief to find, *and* I've got the latest candidate for Village Idiot in the back who, for all anybody around here knows, just dropped out of the bloody sky. So just say what you need to say and be done with it."
"I think my department may have accidentally discombolulated two men in two different universes. They aren't where they should be, I mean."
"That sounds like a problem in record-keeping to me," said Vimes.
"And one of them might have been His Lordship, the Patrician."
That finally got Vimes' attention. He hated Vetinari, of course, despite what the rumour mill said (Vimes was a married man, for gods' sake!) but he also respected him, and it was his duty, for better or for worse, to make sure Ankh-Morpork stayed orderly. Removing Vetinari would be like removing a vital piece in a game of bones - you knew from experience that if that piece were suddenly not there, everything was tumble into chaos.
"Now, this village idiot you mentioned earlier...?" Ponder was saying, "You said nobody knows where he came from?"
"Yes, what about it?"
"Where does *he* claim to have come from?"
"Someplace called London."
Ponder's head perked up like a squirrel who has just found an acorn everyone else somehow overlooked.
*****
End of Part 8.