Men at Arms

out except the last one. The ink on the earlier ones had faded almost to nothing. She put it down and unconsciously wiped her hand on her tunic.
    “What happens if a clown wants to use another clown’s face?” she said.
    “Oh, we compare all the new eggs with the ones on the shelves,” said Boffo. “It’s not allowed.”
    They walked between aisles of faces. Angua fancied she could hear the squelch of a million custard-filled trousers and the echoes of a thousand honking noses and a million grins of faces that weren’t smiling. About halfway along was a sort of alcove containing a desk and chair, a shelf piled with old ledgers, and a workbench covered with crusted pots of paint, scraps of colored horsehair, sequins and other odds and ends of the egg-painter’s specialized art. Carrot picked up a wisp of colored horsehair and twiddled it thoughtfully.
    “But supposing,” he said, “that a clown, I mean a clown with his own face…supposing he used another clown’s face?”
    “Pardon?” said Boffo.
    “Supposing you used another clown’s make-up?” said Angua.
    “Oh, that happens all the time,” said Boffo. “People’re always borrowing slap off each other—”
    “Slap?” said Angua.
    “Make-up,” Carrot translated. “No, I think what the lance-constable is asking, Boffo, is: could a clown make himself up to look like another clown?”
    Boffo’s brow wrinkled, like someone trying hard to understand an impossible question.
    “Pardon?”
    “Where’s Beano’s egg, Boffo?”
    “That’s here on the desk,” said Boffo. “You can have a look if you like.”
    An egg was handed up. It had a blobby red nose and a red wig. Angua saw Carrot hold it up to the light and produce a couple of red strands from his pocket.
    “But,” she said, trying one more time to get Boffo to understand, “couldn’t you wake up one morning and put on make-up so that you looked like a different clown?”
    He looked at her. It was hard to tell his expression under the permanently downcast mouth, but as far as she could tell she might as well have suggested that he performed a specific sex act with a small chicken.
    “How could I do that?” he said. “Then I wouldn’t be me .”
    “Someone else might do it, though?”
    Boffo’s buttonhole squirted.
    “I don’t have to listen to this sort of dirty talk, miss.”
    “What you’re saying, then,” said Carrot, “is that no clown would ever make up his face in another clown’s, urn, design?”
    “You’re doing it again!”
    “Yes, but perhaps sometimes by accident a young clown might perhaps—”
    “Look, we’re decent people, all right?”
    “Sorry,” said Carrot. “I think I understand. Now…when we found poor Mr. Beano, he didn’t have his clown wig on, but something like that could easily have got knocked off in the river. But his nose, now…you told Sergeant Colon that someone had taken his nose. His real nose. Could you,” said Carrot, in the pleasant tones of someone talking to a simpleton, “point to your real nose, Boffo?”
    Boffo tapped the big red nose on his face.
    “But that’s—” Angua began.
    “—your real nose,” said Carrot. “Thank you.”
    The clown wound down a little.
    “I think you’d better go,” he said. “I don’t like this sort of thing. It upsets me.”
    “Sorry,” said Carrot again. “It’s just that…I think I’m having an idea. I wondered about it before…and I’m pretty certain now. I think I know about the person who did it. But I had to see the eggs to be sure.”
    “You saying another clown killed him?” said Boffo belligerently. “’Cos if you are, I’m going straight to—”
    “Not exactly,” said Carrot. “But I can show you the killer’s face.”
    He reached down and took something from the debris on the table. Then he turned to Boffo and opened his hand. He had his back to Angua, and she could not quite see what he was holding. But Boffo gave a strangled cry and ran away down the avenue of faces, his big shoes flip-flopping hugely on the stone flags.
    “Thank you,” said Carrot, at his retreating back. “You’ve been very helpful.”
    He folded his hand again.
    “Come on,” he said. “We’d better be going. I don’t think we’re going to be popular here in a minute or two.”
    “What was that you showed him?” Angua asked, as they proceeded with dignity yet speed toward the gate. “It was something you came here to find, wasn’t it? All that stuff about