'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.
'A man'd have to be a fool to break into the Assassins' Guild,' he said.
'Yes, sir.'
The anger had burned away the fumes. Once again he felt . . . not, not the thrill, that wasn't the right word . . . the sense of something. He still wasn't sure what it was. But it was there, waiting for him—
'Samuel Vimes, what's going on?'
Lady Ramkin shut the dining-room door behind her.
'I was watching you,' she said. 'You were being very rude, Sam.'
'I was trying not to be.'
'Lord Eorle is a very old friend.'
'Is he?'
'Well, I've known him a long time. I can't stand the man, actually. But you were making him look foolish.'
'He was making himself look foolish. I was merely helping.'
'But I've often heard you being . . . rude about dwarfs and trolls.'
'That's different. I've got a right. That idiot wouldn't know a troll if it walked over him.'
'Oh, he would know if a troll walked over him,' said Carrot, helpfully. 'Some of them weigh as much as—'
'What's so important, anyway?' said Lady Ramkin.
'We're . . . looking for whoever killed Chubby,' said Vimes.
Lady Ramkin's expression changed instantly.