“There's some very interesting old statuary in the main courtyard,” he said. “Including a very good one of Jimi, the God of Beggars. I'll show you. They won't mind.”

He rapped on the door.

“You don't have to,” said Angua.

“It's no trouble—”

The door opened.

Angua's nostrils flared. There was a smell…

A beggar looked Carrot up and down. His mouth dropped open.

“It's Cumbling Michael, isn't it?” said Carrot, in his cheery way.

The door slammed.

“Well, that wasn't very friendly,” said Carrot.

“Stinks, don't it?” said a nasty little voice from somewhere behind Angua. While she was in no mood to acknowledge Gaspode, she found herself nodding. Although the beggars were an entire cocktail of odours the second biggest one was fear, and the biggest of all was blood. The scent of it made her want to scream.

There was a babble of voices behind the door, and it swung open again.

This time there was a whole crowd of beggars there. They were all staring at Carrot.

“All right, yer honour,” said the one hailed as Cumbling Michael, “we give in. How did you know?”

“How did we know wh—” Carrot began, but Angua nudged him.

“Someone's been killed here,” she said.

“Who's she?” said Cumbling Michael.

“Lance-Constable Angua is a man of the Watch,” said Carrot.

“Har, har,” said Gaspode.

“I must say you people are getting better,” said Cumbling Michael. “We only found the poor thing a few minutes ago.”

Angua could feel Carrot opening his mouth to say “Who?” She nudged him again.

“You'd better take us to him,” she said.

He turned out to be—

–for one thing, he turned out to be a she. In a rag-strewn room on the top floor.

Angua knelt beside the body. It was very clearly a body now. It certainly wasn't a person. A person normally had more head on their shoulders.

“Why?” she said. “Who'd do such a thing?”

Carrot turned to the beggars clustered around the doorway.

“Who was she?”

“Lettice Knibbs,” said Cumbling Michael. “She was just the lady's maid to Queen Molly.”

Angua glanced up at Carrot.

“Queen?”

“They sometimes call the head beggar king or queen,” said Carrot. He was breathing heavily.

Angua pulled the maid's velvet cloak over the corpse.

“Just the maid,” she muttered.

There was a full-length mirror in the middle of the floor, or at least the frame of one. The glass was scattered like sequins around it.

So was the glass from a window pane.

Carrot kicked aside some shards. There was a groove in the floor, and something metallic embedded in it.

“Cumbling Michael, I need a nail and a length of string,” said Carrot, very slowly and carefully. His eyes never left the speck of metal. It was almost as if he expected it to do something.

“I don't think—” the beggar began.

Carrot reached out without turning his head and picked him up by his grubby collar without apparent effort.

“A length of string,” he repeated, “and a nail.”

“Yes, Corporal Carrot.”

“And the rest of you, go away,” said Angua.

They goggled at her.

“Do it!” she shouted, clenching her fists. “And stop staring at her!”

The beggars vanished.

“It'll take a while to get the string,” said Carrot, brushing aside some glass. “They'll have to beg it off someone, you see.”

He drew his knife and started digging at the floorboards, with care. Eventually he excavated a metal slug, flattened slightly by its passage through the window, the mirror, the floorboards and certain parts of the late Lettice Knibbs that had never been designed to see daylight.

He turned it over and over in his hand.

“Angua?”

“Yes?”

“How did you know there was someone dead in here?”

“I… just had a feeling.”

The beggars returned, so unnerved that half a dozen of them were trying to carry one piece of string.

Carrot hammered the nail into the frame under the smashed pane to hold one end of the string. He stuck his knife in the groove and affixed the other end of the string to it. Then he lay down and sighted up the string.

“Good grief.”

“What is it?”

“It must have come from the roof of the opera house.”

“Yes? So?”

“That's more than two hundred yards away.”

“Yes?”

“The… thing went an inch into an oak floor.”

“Did you know the girl… at all?” said Angua, and felt embarrassed at asking.

“Not really.”

“I thought you knew everyone.”

“She was just someone I'd see around. The city's full of people who you just see around.”

“Why do beggars need servants?”

“You don't think my hair gets like this by itself, dear, do you?”

There was an apparition in the doorway. Its face was a mass of sores. There were warts, and they had warts, and they had hair on. It was possibly female, but it was hard to tell under the layers and layers of rags. The aforementioned hair looked as though it had been permed by a hurricane. With treacle on its fingers.

Then it straightened up.

“Oh. Corporal Carrot. Didn't know it was you.”

The voice was normal now, no trace of whine or wheedle. The figure turned and brought her stick down hard on something in the corridor.

“Naughty boy, Dribbling Sidney! You could have told I it were Corporal Carrot!”

“Arrgh!”

The figure strode into the room.

“And who's your ladyfriend, Mr Carrot?”

“This is Lance-Constable Angua. Angua, this is Queen Molly of the Beggars.”

For once, Angua noted, someone wasn't surprised to find a female in the Watch. Queen Molly nodded at her as one working woman to another. The Beggars' Guild was an equal-opportunity non-employer.

“Good day to you. You couldn't spare I ten thousand dollars for a small mansion, could you?”

“No.”

“Just asking.”

Queen Molly prodded at the gown.

“What was it, corporal?”

“I think it's a new kind of weapon.”

“We heard the glass smash and there she was,” said Molly. “Why would anyone want to kill her?”

Carrot looked at the velvet cloak.

“Whose room is this?” he said.

“Mine. It's my dressing room.”

“Then whoever did it wasn't after her. He was after you, Molly. ‘Some in rags, and some in tags, and one in a velvet gown’… it's in your Charter, isn't it? Official dress of the chief beggar. She probably couldn't resist seeing what it looked like on her. Right gown, right room. Wrong person.”

Molly put her hand to her mouth, risking instant poisoning.

“Assassination?”

Carrot shook his head. “That doesn't sound right. They like to do it up close. It's a caring profession,” he added, bitterly.

“What should I do?”

“Burying the poor thing would be a good start.” Carrot turned the metal slug over in his fingers. Then he sniffed it.

“Fireworks,” he said.

“Yes,” said Angua.

“And what are you going to do?” said Queen Molly. “You're Watchmen, aren't you? What's happening? What are you going to do about it?”