A tic started to dance across the Bursar's face. The words started to come out by themselves, without the apparent intervention of his brain.
“-and then he got this device with a glass rod and, and, and you rubbed it with a silk cloth and-”
“I mean it's ridiculous! My family have never gone bald, except for one of my aunts!”
“-and, and, and then he'd collect morning dew and wash his head, and, and, and-”
Ridcully subsided. He was not an unkind man.
“What're you taking for it at the moment?” he murmured.
“Dried, dried, dried, dried,” stuttered the Bursar.
“The old dried frog pills, right?”
“R-r-r-r.”
“Left-hand pocket?”
“R-r-r-r.”
“OK. . . right. . . swallow. . .”
They stared at one another for a moment.
The Bursar sagged.
“M-m-much better now, Archchancellor, thank you.”
“Something's definitely happening. Bursar. I can feel it in my water.”
“Anything you say, Archchancellor.”
“Bursar?”
“Yes, Archchancellor?”
“You ain't a member of some secret society or somethin', are you?”
“Me? No, Archchancellor.”
“Then it'd be a damn good idea to take your underpants off your head.”
“Know him?” said Granny Weatherwax.
Nanny Ogg knew everyone in Lancre, even the forlorn thing on the bracken.
“It's William Scrope, from over Slice way,” she said. “One of three brothers. He married that Palliard girl, remember? The one with the air-cooled teeth?”
“I hope the poor woman's got some respectable black clothes,” said Granny Weatherwax.
“Looks like he's been stabbed,” said Nanny. She turned the body over, gently but firmly. Corpses as such didn't worry her. Witches generally act as layers-out of the dead as well as midwives; there were plenty of people in Lancre for whom Nanny Ogg's face had been the first and last thing they'd ever seen, which had probably made all the bit in the middle seem quite uneventful by comparison.
“Right through,” she said. “Stabbed right through. Blimey who'd do a thing like that?”
Both the witches turned to look at the stones.
“I don't know what, but I knows where it come from,” said Granny.