Feet of Clay - Terry Pratchett [71]
He found the paper and unfolded it. First Floor Back, 27 Cockbill Street.
And this was it. He’d arrived in time for a funeral. Two funerals.
“Looks like it’s a really bad day to be a golem,” said Angua. There was a pottery hand lying in the gutter. “That’s the third one we’ve seen smashed in the street.”
There was a crash up ahead, and a dwarf came through a window more or less horizontally. His iron helmet struck sparks as he hit the street, but the dwarf was soon up again and plunging back through the adjacent doorway.
He emerged via the window again a moment later but was fielded by Carrot, who set him on his feet.
“Hello, Mr. Oresmiter! Are you keeping well? And what is happening here?”
“It’s that devil Gimlet, Captain Carrot! You should be arresting him!”
“Why, what’s he done?”
“He’s been poisoning people, that’s what!”
Carrot glanced at Angua, then back at Oresmiter. “Poison?” he said. “That’s a very serious allegation.”
“You’re telling me! I was up all night with Mrs. Oresmiter! I didn’t think much about it until I came in here this morning and there were other people complaining—”
He tried to struggle out of Carrot’s grip. “You know what?” he said. “You know what? We looked in his cold room and you know what? You know what? You know what he’s been selling as meat?”
“Tell me,” said Carrot.
“Pork and beef!”
“Oh, dear.”
“And lamb!”
“Tch, tch.”
“Hardly any rat at all!”
Carrot shook his head at the duplicity of traders.
“And Snori Glodssonsunclesson said he had Rat Surprise last night and he’ll swear there were chicken bones in it!”
Carrot let go of the dwarf. “You stay here,” he said to Angua and, head bowed, stepped inside Gimlet’s Hole Food Delicatessen.
An axe spun towards him. He caught it almost absentmindedly and tossed it casually aside.
“Ow!”
There was a mêlée of dwarfs around the counter. The row had already gone well past the stage when it had anything much to do with the subject in hand and, these being dwarfs, took in other matters of vital importance such as whose grandfather had stolen whose grandfather’s mining claim three hundred years ago and whose axe was at whose throat right now.
But there was something about Carrot’s presence. The fighting gradually stopped. The fighters tried to look as if they’d just happened to be standing there. There was a sudden and general “Axe? What axe? Oh, this axe? I was just showing it to my friend Bjorn here, good old Bjorn” feel to the atmosphere.
“All right,” said Carrot. “What’s all this about poison? Mr. Gimlet first.”
“It’s a diabolical lie!” shouted Gimlet, from somewhere under the heap. “I run a wholesome restaurant! My tables are so clean you could eat your dinner off them!”
Carrot raised his hands to stop the outburst this caused. “Someone said something about rats,” he said.
“I told them, I use only the very best rats!” shouted Gimlet. “Good plump rats from the best locations! None of your latrine rubbish! And they’re hard to come by, let me tell you!”
“And when you can’t get them, Mr. Gimlet?” said Carrot.
Gimlet paused. Carrot was hard to lie to. “All right,” he mumbled. “Maybe when there’s not enough I might sort of plump out the stock with some chicken, maybe just a bit of beef—”
“Hah! A bit?”
“That’s right, you should see his cold room, Mr. Carrot!”
“Yeah, he uses steak and cuts little legs in it and covers it with rat sauce!”
“I don’t know. You try to do your best at very reasonable prices and this is the thanks you get?” said Gimlet hotly. “It’s hard enough to make ends meet as it is!”
“You don’t even make ’em of the right meat!”
Carrot sighed. There were no public health laws in Ankh-Morpork. It would be like installing smoke detectors in Hell.
“All right,” he said. “But you can’t get poisoned by steak. No, honestly. No. No, shut up, all of you. No, I don’t care what your mothers told you. Now, I want to know about this poisoning, Gimlet.”
Gimlet struggled to his feet.
“We did Rat Surprise last night for the Sons of Bloodaxe annual dinner,” he said. There was a general groan. “And it was rat.” He raised