Chapter Four

In which certain inconsistencies are revealed in the official records and a female dwarf is endarkened, to her colleagues' dismay

Commander Vimes came in barely seconds after Sally and Louisa had left, and was greeted perfunctorily by Carrot, who looked like his thoughts were elsewhere.

"What's been happening since yesterday, Captain?"

"Lots, sir," said Carrot, still distant.

"Oh? Do tell."

"Well, sir, the Psuedopolis ambassador - Lady Louisa's her name - came over not an hour ago, wanted to see you, sir, but when I told her you weren't in she said that was fine and she just wanted assurance that the Watch was investigating her problem. She was very complimentary."

"I'm sure," said Vimes, rolling his eyes. "Go on. What did she say?"

"Apparently -" Carrot consulted his ever present notebook "- some very strange events occurred during the ride home from the ball..."

Vimes waited patiently. Carrot had dutifully written down every word she uttered during her report, and a good deal of it was not relevant in any way whatsoever to the problem at hand but was extremely relevant to the problem they would have had if Angua had been in the room while Louisa was visiting(a). He eventually got an idea of what had happened.

"So she heard a yell outside the coach which she says was made by this lad Jamie, she opened the door and looked out to try to see what was going on, the horses reared, she fell out, and then they bolted?"

"Yessir. And then she started walking home, but was picked up on the way by her mentor, Madam Meserole."

Vimes leaned against the reception desk. "Huh. I hate mysteries," he said shortly, trying not to show the slight relief he felt. He'd been more than a bit worried that Madam would make inquiries about his identity among his fellow watchmen, which could have been... interesting, but apparently not."What did you think about all this, Carrot?"

"I don't know, sir. But..." Carrot looked awkward.

"Yes?"

"...I'm not sure Louisa is a reliable witness. Sir."

"You think she's crazy?"

"Oh, I would never think such a thing, sir," said Carrot hurriedly. "Just a little overwrought, maybe."

"I see.What else?"

"Well, sir, I sent her back to the embassy and I had Constable von Humpeding go with her, to ask some questions."

"No doubt. And?"

"And Cheery says she has some more results for us. On the chemicals in your office and on the dart, sir?"

"Oh, goody."

(a) i.e., a bloody mess and a good deal of paperwork.

---

The hairs were rising on the back of Sally's neck(a).

Louisa, she thought to herself, was a perfectly charming young woman with her breed's normal attention span, which was about negative six seconds. That should have been the only thing that was bothering her, and indeed, that wouldhave been normal.

It wasn't that.

The woman's heartbeat was normal, maybe even verging on slow.

It wasn't that.

She shifted uncomfortably in her seat and did her best to listen to the never ending stream of light, pointless chatter, in case something useful bobbed up on the current. It was a slim chance, but then, it was practically her entire job to make the most of slim chances. Still, there are some things it is impossible for even a vampire to do, and one of those was apparently to make any coherent sense of her ladyship's magnificently small talk.

Instead, she simply sat as far away from her as possible in the coach, nodded vaguely when it seemed appropriate, and clutched her black ribbon really, really tightly.

She did hear the 'and this is where I fell out of the coach.' She noted the street name, and the place on the street, using a few temporary landmarks to fix the location in her mind.

Well, she would have something to show for her excursion. Which was good. She didn't particularly want to have to deal with one of Mister Vimes' looks. She was having a bad day as it is.

"We're here!" announced Louisa cheerfully, some time later. Sally forced a charming smile and said "Yes, I can see that," before leaping out of the coach with unseemly speed.

In the coach, Louisa smirked to herself and slipped out after the vampire, rather more daintily.

The embassy was donated by some ancient baron who'd had a relative in Pseudopolis, but it bore little resemblance to an old-fashioned manor house; Bloody Stupid Johnson had got his hands on it at some point in the last century, and what mere building style could outlive that(b)? What it did mean, however, was that there were big stone gates completely surrounding the place, and that Sally had to wait at the gate for Louisa to catch up, because only her ladyship had the key.

It was an odd gate. Not in appearance; old cast iron, twisted into menacing shapes with intermittent pretty botanical patterns, the norm in this area, with that special accent of rust that really gives it authenticity.

Most humans probably wouldn't have noticed anything wrong, or would have ignored the sensation even if they had. Sally knew better(c) than that. There was, yes, a lingering hint of something. Maybe a scent, or a taste in the air.

It made her fangs grow. Damn.

Nothing she could do about it now, but she filed it away to think about later.

Louisa finally arrived, looking convincingly dismayed. "Be an absolute dear and don't run off like that again, will you? I still feel absolutely horrid after all this excitement."

She didn't bother to answer. The ribbon in one hand was cutting into the skin, she was gripping it that tightly.

"Thank you, Constable," said the other woman, apparently taking her silence as an affirmative. She unlocked the gate and strode through without another word. Frowning slightly to herself, the vampire followed.

Inside, an elderly woman Sally assumed was Madam Meserole waited. This one's heartbeat was faster, though not unduly so. Trying to think of things not at all related to the - the b-word, Sally concentrated on her appearance. Medium height, tall for a woman, curving still in the right places despite her age. Grey curls, still retaining a few streaks of chestnut, and wide brown eyes. Dressed all in purple.

It wasn't helping.

"I am Madam Roberta Meserole," said the lady, warmly enough, after a slightly too long pause.

"Constable von Humpeding. I'm here to investigate certain events the Watch understands occurred last night."

"Good," said Madam, briskly. "Jamie, come in."

She heard his heartbeat before even registering the words. This was getting bad - but, ooh, this one was nervous. Very, very much so. His heart was pounding fast enough that it was difficult to differentiate between the individual beats.

Armed with the knowledge that here was a very nervous boy indeed, she turned to see the newcomer properly (without thinking of the sound of his blood rushing through his veins at all, fresh, sweet, rich) and discovered that 'Jamie' was short, thin, and roughly twelve years old. He wore some horrible monstrosity in burgundy velvet, and looked pale and faintly guilty.

It was almost too easy. Clearly he was at the center of this mess.

"Mr. James," Sally said, formally, "I understand you were riding the coach at the time this business went on?"

She kept a straight face, even as her mind replayed that sentence back to her in her ears.

"Yes'm."

"What do you remember?"

"It was a perfectly normal ride, miss, except for the fact that when we arrived Lou wasn't-Louisa wasn't in the coach like she ought to have been."

It's difficult to surprise a vampire, but Sally was at the very least interested. She didn't bother to correct him on her rank, instead saying,

"So you have no memory of, say, horses rearing, screams in the night, Louisa falling out of the coach... nothing like that?"

"No, miss."

"How odd."

"Pardon?"

"I find that curious, sir, because your older sister here gives a rather different account."

"She does?" He looked panicked.

"There are discrepancies, yes."

"Louisa? What's going on? I only just go up," he added, reproachfully, to the room in general.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," said Sally, sweetly. "I won't intrude on your time much longer. One last thing; who was the coachman who was driving you?"

"His name's Thomas, and he's also the groom." This from Louisa. "You do believe me, don't you?"

"Would he be in the stables, then?" she asked, ignoring the question.

"Probably. But-"

She saluted before the stupid girl could say anything, and stalked away to look for a kosher butcher's shop, because it looked like she would need some fortification for this interrogation. Now.

(a) At least, they would have been, had she actually had any hairs on the back of her neck. But she didn't. So they weren't.

Er.

(b) Although as Carrot commented later, there were some really fascinating architectural devices that still lingered in the corners, traces of Ankh-Morpork's glorious history. He was unable to continue on that vein, however, because of the sudden need to save his girlfriend from death by choking. On coffee.

(c) The adjective is up for debate. These are coppers we're talking about here.

---

Cheery's workspace was quite dark; for reasons unknown to the two officers, she appeared to have propped a board against the single, lonely window and blown out the dribbly candles. In fact, Vimes couldn't see her at all.

"Cheery?"

"H'rak a'ghu'r'rak!(a)"

"...Carrot? What'd she say?"

"Er, er... she says to, uh, go away..."

"What? Why? Didn't she ask us to come here? And why's she speaking Dwarfish?"

"I don't know, sir. H'kaz'a 'rajr pao'ik, t'rakk?(b)"

"Kraz'k'uum!"

"Er, she says she won't talk to a human..."

Vimes blinked. "Who are you and where did you put Cheery?" he demanded, staring at the darkness.

"Sir," said Carrot, gently prodding him.

"All right, all right," he muttered, backing away. "What's gotten into everyone lately?"

As he left, he was sure he saw light glinting off the tip of a pickaxe.

(a) Lit. "Remove yourself at speed, tall person of uncertain birth who is in this place at this time." Translates more idiomatically as: "Fuck off, you bastard."

(b) Lit. "Second Shaft Operator, what appears to be incorrect(c)?" Translates more idiomatically as: "What's wrong, Sergeant?"

(c) Lit. "That which has an insufficient amount of scaffolding and may at any point fall in on the head of the unwary miner".

---

He met Constable von Humpeding, who appeared to be in a state of great excitement, at the front room.

"What did you learn, Humpeding?"

"Nothing very helpful, Mister Vimes. You won't like it."

"Try me."

She told him. He didn't like it.

"So either she's lying, the kid and the coachman are lying, or they're all lying, or something strange is going on. Stranger. And something about the house, or maybe this Madam Louisa, made you uneasy and tempted you to break your pledge - don't look at me like that, Constable, I can see the way your holding that damn ribbon - and no one on the street she supposedly landed in saw anything. Have I got that right?"

"Sir. For what it's worth, the kid was really, really nervous, but that could mean lots of things. You pretty much covered it."

"Pity," he said dryly. "I don't even know if this is our area. Maybe she was hallucinating! Carrot already said he thought she wasn't the sanest person ever to set foot here."

"Doesn't explain why she wasn't in the coach when they arrived and why they didn't notice anything during the ride, sir."

"I know. Bugger." He paused. "Could she have not gotten into the coach at all?"

"No, the coachman definitely heard her get in."

"Well, that's one theory out the window."

"Unfortunately true."

Vimes looked at her speculatively. "Can vampires sense magic?"

"I know what you're thinking, sir, but the answer is not really. If it's strong enough we can smell it, but there wasn't any on the street where she said she came out, or at least, not enough to trigger my senses. Maybe Anuga will be able to find something I can't."

"I doubt it. This doesn't feel like magic, exactly."

"Nossir."

A thought struck him. "Actually, why don't you talk to Angua? I think she's resting in Igor's cell after her little moment."

Sally looked puzzled. "What I should I talk about with her?"

"Tell her about the temptation you felt at that manor, and then ask her about what she felt, when she came to, and just... just think about it, all right?"

"You suspect something, sir?"

"Let's just say I have a few other ideas. Go on!"

She walked away, still giving him the occasional bewildered glance over her shoulder. He sighed and sat down at one of the empty desks where Watchmen wrote their reports, trying to think.

A few minutes later, he was brought back to the present by Carrot's voice saying,

"I don't understand what's gotten into her, sir. She's acting very strangely."

"How so?"

"She was completely covered in chain mail, sir, traditional stuff not at all like her usual attire. And lots of added weaponry. When I asked her about the alchemical stuff she said that it was for soft people, and then she started singing about gold."

"Really? Any good?"

"She was completely off-key, too."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"Not your fault, sir. And then she stopped talking to me entirely. Oh, and she said before that that she was planning to change her last name to, er, Kickarse."

"Something of an upgrade from her old one," said Vimes automatically.

"I'm sure you don't mean that," said Carrot severely.

"No, of course not. This is all very odd, Captain. Why all these mysteries at once? Is there some sort of madness epidemic running through our sergeants? I just hope Colon doesn't get it next."

"No, sir," said the younger man earnestly. Vimes watched the comment fly over his head and sighed again.

"Tell the men I'm going on patrol. I could do with a walk," he said abruptly, standing up and almost knocking the chair over. "I need to think about this mess."

"You do have an appointment with Lord Vetinari in an hour, Mister Vimes."

"An hour's a long time in the exciting world of... whatever, Carrot."

"Yes, sir," said the Captain, dubiously. "If you say so, sir."

"Well, I do."

With that, he went out into the streets, cigar smoke trailing behind him.