Thud (6 page)

The man looked at two blank faces.

“Methodia Rascal?” he tried. “
The Battle of Koom Valley
?” It is a priceless work of art!”

Colon hitched up his stomach. “Ah,” he said, “that’s serious. We’d better take a look at it. Er…I mean, the locale where it was situated in.”

“Years, years, of course,” said Sir Reynold. “Do come this hway. I am given to understand that the modern hWatch can learn a lot just by looking at the place where a thing was, is that not so?”

“Like, that it’s gone?” said Nobby. “Oh,
years.
We’re
good
at that.”

“Er…Quite so,” said Sir Reynold. “Do come this way.”

The watchmen followed. They had been inside the museum before, of course. Most citizens had, on days when no better entertainment presented itself. Under the governance of Lord Vetinari it hosted fewer modern exhibitions these days, since his lordship held Views, but a gentle stroll among the ancient tapestries and rather brown and dusty paintings was a pleasant way of spending an afternoon. Plus, it was always nice to look at the pictures of big pink women with no clothes on.

Nobby was having a problem. “Here, Sarge, what’s he going on about?” he whispered. “It sounds like he’s yawning all the time. What a galler rear?”

“A gallery, Nobby. That’s very high-class talkin,’ that is.”

“I can hardly understand him!”

“Shows it’s high class, Nobby. It wouldn’t be much good if people like
you
could understand, right?”

“Good point, Sarge,” Nobby conceded. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“You found it missing this morning, sir?” said Colon, as they trailed after the curator into a gallery still littered with ladders and dust sheets.

“Years indeed!”

“So it was stolen last night, then?”

Sir Reynold hesitated.

“Er…not necessarileah, I’m afraid. We have been refurbishing the Long Gallereah. The picture was too big to move, of course, so hwe had it covered in heavy dust sheets for the past month. But when we took them down this morning, there hwas only the frame! Observe!”

The Rascal occupied—or rather,
had
occupied—an actual frame some ten feet high and fifty feet long, which, as such, was pretty close to being a work of art in its own right. It was still there, framing nothing but uneven, dusty plaster.

“I suppose some rich private collector has it now,” Sir Reynold moaned. “But how could he keep it a secret? The mural is one of the most recognizable paintings in the hworld! Every civilized person hwould spot it in an instant!”

“What did it look like?” said Fred Colon.

Sir Reynold performed that downshift of assumptions that was the normal response to any conversation with Ankh-Morpork’s Finest.

“I can probableah find you a copy,” he said weakly. “But the original is fifty feet long! Have you
never
seen it?”

“Well, I remember being brought to see it when I was a kiddie, but it’s a bit long, really. You can’t really
see
it, anyway. I mean, by the time you get to the other end you’ve forgotten what was happening back up the line, as it were.”

“Alas, that is regrettableah true, Sergeant,” said Sir Reynold. “And hwhat is so vexing is that the hwhole
point
of this refurbishment hwas to build a special circular room to hold the Rascal. His ideah, you know, hwas that the viewer should be
hwholly
encircled by the mural and feel right in the
thick
of the action, as it hwere. You hwould be there in Koom Valleah! He called it panoscopic art. Say hwhat you like about the current interest, but the extra visitors hwould have made it possible to display the picture as hwe believe he intended it to be displayed. And now this!”

“If you were going to move it, why didn’t you just take it down and put it away nice and safe, sir?”

“You mean
roll it up
?” said Sir Reynold, horrified. “That could cause
such
a lot of damage. Oh, the horror! No, hwe had a very careful exercise planned for next wheek, to be done with the utmost diligence.” He shuddered. “hWhen I think of someone just
hacking
it out of the frame I feel quite faint—”

“Hey, this must be a clue, Sarge!” said Nobby, who had returned to his default activity of mooching about and poking at things to see if they were valuable. “Look, someone dumped a load of stinking ol’ rubbish here!”

He’d wandered across to a plinth, which did, indeed, appear to be piled high with rags.

“Don’t touch that, please!” said Sir Reynold, rushing over. “That’s
Don’t Talk to Me About Mondays!
It’s Daniellarina Pouter’s most controversial hwork! You didn’t move anything, did you?” he added nervously. “It’s literalleah priceless, and she’s got a sharp tongue on her!”

“It’s only a lot of old rubbish,” Nobby protested, backing away.

“Art is greater than the sum of its mere mechanical components, Corporal,” said the curator. “Surely you hwould not say that Caravati’s
Three Large Pink Women and One Piece of Gauze
is just, ahem, ‘a lot of old pigment’?”

“What about this one, then?” said Nobby, pointing to the adjacent plinth. “It’s just a big stake with a nail in it! Is this art, too?”

“
Freedom
? If it hwas ever on the market, it hwould probableah fetch thirty thousand dollars,” said Sir Reynold.

“For a bit of wood with a nail in it?” said Fred Colon. “Who did it?”

“After he viewed
Don’t Talk to Me About Mondays!
, Lord Vetinari graciousleah had Ms. Pouter nailed to the stake by her ear,” said Stitched. “However, she did manage to pull free during the afternoon.”

“I bet she was mad!” said Nobby.

“Not after she hwon several awards for it. I believe she’s planning to nail herself to several other things. It could be a very exciting exhibition.”

“Tell you what, then, sir,” said Nobby cheerfully. “Why don’t you leave the ol’ big frame where it is and give it a new name, like
Art Theft
?”

“No,” said Sir Reynold coldly. “That would be foolish.”

Shaking his head at the way of the world, Fred Colon walked right up to the wall so cruelly—or cruelleah—denuded of its covering. The painting had been crudely cut from its frame. Sergeant Colon was not a high-speed thinker, but that point struck him as odd. If you’ve got a month to pinch a painting, why botch the job? Fred had a copper’s view of humanity that differed in some respects from that of the curator. Never say that people wouldn’t do something, no matter how strange it was. Probably there were some mad rich people out there who
would
buy the painting, even if it meant only ever viewing it in the privacy of their own mansion. People could be like that. In fact, knowing that this was their big secret probably gave them a lonely, tight little shiver inside.

But the thieves had slashed the painting out as if they didn’t care about making a sale. There were several ragged inches all along the—just a moment…

Fred stood back. A Clue. There it was, right there. He got lovely, tight little shiver inside.

“This painting,” he declared, “this painting…this painting which isn’t here, I mean, obviously, was stolen by a…
troll
.”

“My goodness, how can you tell?” said Sir Reynold.

“I’m very glad you asked me that question, sir,” said Fred Colon, who was. “I have detected, you see, that the
top
of the circular muriel was cut really close to the frame.” He pointed. “Now, your troll would easily be able to reach up with his knife, right, and cut along the edge of the frame at the top and down a bit on each side, see? But your average troll don’t bend that well, so when it come to cutting along the bottom, right, he made a bit of a mess of the job and left it all jagged. Plus, only a troll could carry it away. A stair carpet’s bad enough, and a rolled-up muriel would be a lot heavier than that!”

He beamed.

“Well done, Sergeant!” said the curator.

“Good thinking, Fred,” said Nobby.

“Thank you, Corporal,” said Fred Colon generously.

“Or it could have been a couple of dwarfs with a stepladder,” Nobby went on cheerfully. “The decorators have left a few behind. They’re all over the place.”

Fred Colon sighed.

“Y’see, Nobby,” he said, “it’s comments like that, made in front of a member of the public, that are the reason why I’m a sergeant and you ain’t. If it was dwarfs,
it would be neat all ’round
, obviously. Is this place locked up at night, Mr. Sir Reynold?”

“Of course! Not just locked, but barred! Old John is meticulous about it. And he lives in the attics, so he can make this place like a
fortress
.”

“This’d be the caretaker?” said Fred. “We’ll need to talk to him.”

“Certainly you may,” said Sir Reynold nervously. “Now, I think hwe may have some details about the painting in our storeroom. I’ll, er, just go and, er, find them…”

He hurried off toward a small doorway.

“I wonder how they got it out?” said Nobby, when they were alone.

“Who says they did?” said Fred Colon. “Big place like this, full of attics and cellars and odd corners, well, why not stash it away and wait awhile? You get in as a customer one day, see, hide under a sheet, take out the muriel in the night, hide it somewhere, then go out with the customers next day. Simple, eh?” He beamed at Nobby. “You’ve got to outsmart the criminal mind, see?”

“Or they could’ve just smashed down a door and pushed off with the muriel in the middle of the night,” said Nobby. “Why mess about with a cunning plan when a simple one will do?”

Fred sighed. “I can see this is going to be a complicated case, Nobby.”

“You should ask Vimesy if we can have it, then,” said Nobby. “I mean, we already know the facts, right?”

Hovering in the air, unsaid, was:
Where would you like to be in the next few days? Out there, where the axes and clubs are likely to be flying, or in here, searching all the attics and cellars very, very carefully? Think about it. And it wouldn’t be cowardice, right? ’Cos a famous muriel like this is bound to be part of our national heritage, right? Even if it is just a painting of a load of dwarfs and trolls having a scrap.

“I think I
will
do a proper report and suggest to Mr. Vimes that maybe we should handle this one,” said Fred Colon slowly. “It needs the attention of mature officers. D’you know much about art, Nobby?”

“If necessary, Sarge.”

“Oh, come on, Nobby!”

“What? Tawneee says what she does is Art, Sarge. And she wears more clothes than a lot of the women on the walls around here, so why be sniffy about it?”

“Yeah, but…” Fred Colon hesitated here. He knew in his heart that spinning upside down around a pole wearing a costume you could floss with definitely was not Art, and being painted lying on a bed wearing nothing but a smile and a small bunch of grapes was good solid Art, but putting your finger on why this was the case was a bit tricky.

“No urns,” he said at last.

“What urns?” said Nobby.

“Nude women are only Art if there’s an urn in it,” said Fred Colon. This sounded a bit weak even to him, so he added: “Or a plinth. Both is best, o’course. It’s a secret sign, see, that they put in to say that it’s Art and okay to look at.”

“What about a potted plant?”

“That’s okay if it’s in an urn.”

“What about if it’s not got an urn
or
a plinth
or
a potted plant?” said Nobby.

“Have you one in mind, Nobby?” said Colon suspiciously.

“Yes,
The Goddess Anoia
*
Arising from the Cutlery
,” said Nobby. “They’ve got it here. It was painted by a bloke with three
i
’s in his name, which sounds pretty artistic to me.”

“The number of
i
’s is important, Nobby,” said Sergeant Colon gravely, “but in these situations you have to ask yourself: ‘Where’s the cherub?’ If there’s a little fat pink kid holding a mirror or a fan or similar, then it’s still okay. Even if he’s grinning. Obviously you can’t get urns
everywhere
.”

“All right, but supposing—” Nobby began

The distant door opened, and Sir Reynold came hurrying across the marble floor with a book under his arm.

“Ah, I’m afraid there is no copy of the painting,” he said. “Clearly, a copy that did it justice hwould be quite hard to make. But, er, this rather
sensationalist
treatise has many detailed sketches, at least. These days every visitor seems to have a copy, of course. Did you know that more than two thousand four hundred and ninety individual dwarfs and trolls can be identified by armor or body markings in the original picture? It drove Rascal quite mad, poor fellow. It took him sixteen years to complete!”

“That’s nothing,” said Nobby cheerfully. “Fred here hasn’t finished painting his kitchen yet, and he started twenty years ago!”

“Thank you for that, Nobby,” said Colon coldly. He took the book from the curator. The title was
The Koom Valley Codex
. “Mad how?” he said.

“hWell, he neglected his other hwork, you see. He hwas constantly moving his lodgings, because he couldn’t pay the rent and he had to drag that huge canvas with him. Imagine! He had to beg for paints in the street, hwhich took up a lot of his time, since not many people have a tube of burnt umber on them. He said it talked to him, too. You’ll find it all in there. Rather dramatized, I fear.”

“The painting
talked
to him?”

Sir Reynold made a face. “hWe believe that’s hwhat he meant. hWe don’t really know. He did not have any friends. He hwas convinced that if he hwent to sleep at night he hwould turn into a chicken. He’d leave little notes for himself saying ‘You are not a chicken,’ although sometimes he thought he hwas lying. The general belief is that he concentrated so much on the painting that it gave him some kind of brain fever. Toward the end he hwas sure he hwas losing his mind. He said he could hearh the battle.”