A Blink of the Screen

stage and wear a ruff. In my opinion he is the brains of the outfit, and controls the Punch and Judy man by strange mental powers
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    Despite the feeling of people like Captain Carrot of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, who have occasionally tried to ban Punch, he survives and evolves. It can only be a matter of time before an anger management consultant is included amongst the puppets. I’d like to be there when it happens. Oh, happy day
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    It was a fine summer morning, the kind to make a man happy to be alive. And probably the man would have been happier to be alive. He was, in fact, dead.
    It would be hard to be deader without special training.
    ‘Well, now,’ said Sergeant Colon (Ankh-Morpork City Guard, Night Watch), consulting his notebook, ‘so far we has cause of death as a) being beaten with at least one blunt instrument, b) being strangled with a string of sausages, and c) being savaged by at least two animals with big sharp teeth. What do we do now, Nobby?’
    ‘Arrest the suspect, sarge,’ said Corporal Nobbs, saluting smartly.
    ‘What suspect, Nobby?’
    ‘Him,’ said Nobby, prodding the corpse with his boot. ‘I call it highly suspicious, being dead like that.’
    ‘But he’s the victim, Nobby. He was the one what was killed.’
    ‘Ah, right. So we can get him as an accessory, too.’
    ‘Nobby—’
    ‘He’s been drinking, too. We could do him for being dead and disorderly.’
    Colon scratched his head. Arresting the corpse offered, of course, certain advantages. But …
    ‘I reckon,’ he said slowly, ‘that Captain Vimes’ll want this one sorted out. You’d better bring it back to the Watch House, Nobby.’
    ‘And then can we eat the sausages, sarge?’ said Corporal Nobbs.
    It wasn’t easy, being the senior policeman in Ankh-Morpork, greatest of cities of the Discworld. 1 There were probably worlds, Captain Vimes mused in his gloomier moments, where there weren’t wizards (who made locked-room mysteries commonplace) or zombies (murder cases were really strange when the victim could be the chief witness) and where dogs could be relied on to do nothing in the night-time and not go around chatting to people. Captain Vimes believed in logic, in much the same way as a man in a desert believes in ice – i.e., it was something he really needed, but this just wasn’t the place for it. Just once, he thought, it’d be nice to solve something.
    He looked at the blue-faced body on the slab, and felt a tiny flicker of excitement. These were clues. He’d never seen proper clues before.
    ‘Couldn’t have been a robber, captain,’ said Sergeant Colon. ‘The reason being, his pockets were full of money. Eleven dollars.’
    ‘I wouldn’t call that full,’ said Captain Vimes.
    ‘It was all in pennies and ha’pennies, sir. I’m amazed his trousers stood the strain. And I have cunningly detected the fact that he was a showman, sir. He had some cards in his pocket, sir. “Chas Slumber, Children’s Entertainer”.’
    ‘I suppose no one saw anything?’ said Vimes.
    ‘Well, sir,’ said Sergeant Colon helpfully, ‘I told young Corporal Carrot to find some witnesses.’
    ‘You asked Corporal Carrot to investigate a murder? All by himself?’ said Vimes.
    The sergeant scratched his head.
    ‘Yessir. I said he ought to try to find a witness, sir. And he said to me, did I know anyone very old and seriously ill?’
    And on the magical Discworld, there is always one guaranteed witness to any homicide. It’s his job.
    Corporal Carrot, the Watch’s youngest member, often struck people as simple. And he was. He was incredibly simple, but in the same way that a sword is simple, or an ambush is simple. He was also possibly the most linear thinker in the history of the universe.
    He’d been waiting by the bedside of an old man, who’d quite enjoyed the company right up until just a few seconds ago, whereupon he’d passed on to whatever reward was due him. And now it was time for Carrot to take out his notebook.
    ‘Now I know you saw something, sir,’ he said. ‘You were there.’
    W ELL, YES , said Death. I HAVE TO BE, YOU KNOW . B UT THIS IS VERY IRREGULAR .
    ‘You see, sir,’ said Corporal Carrot, ‘as I understand the law, you are an Accessory After The Fact. Or possibly Before The Fact.’
    Y OUNG MAN , I AM THE FACT .
    ‘And I am an officer of the Law,’ said Corporal Carrot. ‘There’s got to be a law, you know.’
    Y OU WANT ME TO … E R … G RASS SOMEONE UP ? D ROP A DIME