Feet of Clay

‘Oh, good grief,’ said Vimes. ‘Look, it’s quite simple, man. I was expected to go “At last, alcohol!”, and chugalug the lot without thinking. Then some respectable pillars of the community’ — he removed the cigar from his mouth and spat — ‘were going to find me, in your presence, too — which was a nice touch — with the evidence of my crime neatly hidden but not so well hidden that they couldn’t find it.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘The trouble is, you know, that once the taste’s got you it never lets go.’

‘But you’ve been very good, sir,’ said Carrot. ‘I’ve not seen you touch a drop for—’

‘Oh, that,’ said Vimes. ‘I was talking about policing, not alcohol. There’s lots of people will help you with the alcohol business, but there’s no one out there arranging little meetings where you can stand up and say, “My name is Sam and I’m a really suspicious bastard.”’^{82}

He pulled a paper bag out of his pocket. ‘We’ll get Littlebottom to have a look at this,’ he said. ‘I damn sure wasn’t going to try tasting it. So I nipped down to the canteen and filled a bag with sugar out of the bowl. It was but the work of a moment to fish Nobby’s butts out of it, I might add.’ He opened the door, poked his head out into the corridor and yelled, ‘Littlebottom!’ To Carrot he added, ‘You know, I feel quite perked up. The old brain has begun to work at last. You know the golem that did the killing?’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Ah, but do you know what was special about it?’

‘Can’t think, sir,’ said Carrot, ‘except that it was a new one. The golems made it themselves, I think. But of course they needed a priest for the words and they had to borrow Mr Hopkinson’s oven. I expect the old men thought it would be interesting. They were historians, after all.’

It was Vimes’s turn to stand there with his mouth open.

Finally he got control of himself. ‘Yes, yes, of course,’ he said, his voice barely shaking. ‘Yes, I mean, that’s obvious. Plain as the nose on your face. But … er, have you worked out what else is special about it?’ he added, trying to keep any trace of hope out of his voice.

‘You mean the fact it’s gone mad, sir?’

‘Well, I didn’t think it was winner of the Ankh-Morpork Mr Sanity Award!’ said Vimes.

‘I mean they drove it mad, sir. The other golems. They didn’t mean to, but it was built-in, sir. They wanted it to do so many things. It was like their … child, I think. All their hopes and dreams. And when they found out it’d been killing people … well, that’s terrible to a golem. They mustn’t kill, and it was their own clay doing it—’

‘It’s not a great idea for people, either.’

‘But they’d put all their future in it—’

‘You wanted me, Commander?’ said Cheery.

‘Oh, yes. Is this arsenic?’ said Vimes, handing her the packet.

Cheery sniffed at it. ‘It could be arsenous acid, sir. I’ll have to test it, of course.’

‘I thought acids sloshed about in jars,’ said Vimes. ‘Er … what’s that on your hands?’

‘Nail varnish, sir.’

‘Nail varnish?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Er … fine, fine. Funny, I thought it would be green.’

‘Wouldn’t look good on the fingers, sir.’

‘I meant the arsenic, Littlebottom.’

‘Oh, you can get all sorts of colours of arsenic, sir. The sulphides — that’s the ores, sir — can be red or brown or yellow or grey, sir. And then you cook them up with nitre and you get arsenous acid, sir. And a load of nasty smoke, really bad.’

‘Dangerous stuff,’ said Vimes.

‘Not good at all, sir. But useful, sir,’ said Cheery. ‘Tanners, dyers, painters … It’s not just poisoners that’ve got a use for arsenic.’

‘I’m surprised people aren’t dropping dead of it all the time,’ said Vimes.

‘Oh, most of them use golems, sir—’

The words stayed in the air even after Cheery stopped speaking.

Vimes caught Carrot’s eye and started to whistle hoarsely under his breath. This is it, he thought. This is where we’ve filled ourselves up with so many questions that they’re starting to overflow and become answers.

He felt more alive than he had for days. The recent excitement still tingled in his veins, kicking his brain into life. It was the sparkle you got with exhaustion, he knew. You were so bone-weary that a shot of adrenalin hit you like a falling troll. They must have it all now. All the bits. The edges, the corners, the whole picture. All there, just waiting to be pieced together …

‘These golems,’ said Carrot. ‘They’d be covered in arsenic, would they?’

‘Could be, sir. I saw one at the Alchemists’ Guild building in Quirm and, hah, it’d even got arsenic plated on its hands, sir, on account of stirring crucibles with its fingers …’

‘They don’t feel heat,’ said Vimes.

‘Or pain,’ said Carrot.

‘That’s right,’ said Cheery. She looked uncertainly from one to the other.

‘You can’t poison them,’ said Vimes.

‘And they’ll obey orders,’ said Carrot. ‘Without speaking.’

‘Golems do all the really mucky jobs,’ said Vimes.