'Samuel!'
Vimes' hand stopped halfway to the bottle. Willikins was standing next to her ladyship.
'Apparently there's a young man at the door asking for you,' said Lady Ramkin. 'Corporal Carrot.'
'Gosh, this is exciting!' said Lord Eorle. 'Has he come to arrest us, do you think? Hahaha.'
'Ha,' said Vimes.
Lord Eorle nudged his partner.
'I expect that somewhere a crime is being committed,' he said.
'Yes,' said Vimes. 'Quite close, I think.'
Carrot was shown in, with his helmet under his arm at a respectful angle.
He gazed at the select company, licked his lips nervously, and saluted. Everyone was looking at him. It was hard not to notice Carrot in a room. There were bigger people than him in the city. He didn't loom. He just seemed, without trying, to distort things around him. Everything became background to Corporal Carrot.
'At ease, corporal,' said Vimes. 'What's up? I mean,' he added quickly, knowing Carrot's erratic approach to colourful language, 'what is the reason for you being here at this time?'
'Got something to show you, sir. Uh. Sir, I think it's from the Assass—'
'We'll just go and talk about it outside, shall we?' said Vimes. Dr Cruces hadn't twitched a muscle.
Lord Eorle sat back. 'Well, I must say I'm impressed,' he said. 'I'd always thought you Watchmen were a pretty ineffective lot, but I see you're pursuing your duty at all times. Always on the alert for the criminal mind, eh?'
'Oh, yes,' said Vimes. 'The criminal mind. Yes.'
The cooler air of the ancestral hallway came as a blessing. He leaned against the wall and squinted at the card.
' “Gonne”?'
'You know you said you saw something in the courtyard—' Carrot began.
'What's a gonne?'
'Maybe something wasn't in the Assassins' museum, and they put this sign on it?' said Carrot. 'You know, like “Removed for Cleaning”? They do that in museums.'
'No, I shouldn't think th—What do you know about museums, anyway?'
'Oh, well, sir,' said Carrot. 'I sometimes visit them on my day off. The one in the University, of course, and Lord Vetinari lets me look around the old Palace one, and then there's the Guild ones, they generally let me in if I ask nicely, and there's the dwarf museum off Rime Street—'
'Is there?' said Vimes, interested despite himself. He'd walked along Rime Street a thousand times.
'Yes, sir, just up Whirligig Alley.'
'Fancy that. What's in it?'
'Many interesting examples of dwarf bread, sir.'
Vimes thought about this for a moment. 'That's not important right now,' he said. 'This isn't how you spell gone, anyway.'
'Yes it is, sir,' said Carrot.
'I meant, it's not how gone is normally spelled.'
He flicked the card back and forth in his fingers.