The Fifth Elephant

have to host a party ourselves, I expect, so we ought to take a cartload of typical Ankh-Morpork food. Show the flag, you know. Do you think I should take a cook along?”
    “Yes, dear. That would be a good idea. No one outside the city knows how to make a knuckle sandwich properly.”
    Sybil was impressed. Ears operating entirely on automatic had nevertheless triggered the mouth into making a small but coherent contribution.
    She said, “Do you think we ought to take the alligator with us?”
    “Yes, that might be advisable.”
    She watched his face. Small furrows formed on Vimes’s brow as the ears nudged the brain. He blinked.
    “What alligator?”
    “You were miles away, Sam. In Uberwald, I expect.”
    “Sorry.”
    “Is there a problem?”
    “Why’s he sending me , Sybil?”
    “I’m sure Havelock shares with me a conviction that you have hidden depths, Sam.”
    Vimes sank gloomily into his armchair. It was, he felt, a persistent flaw in his wife’s otherwise practical and sensible character that she believed, against all evidence, that he was a man of many talents. He knew he had hidden depths. There was nothing in them that he’d like to see float to the surface. They contained things that should be left to lie.
    There was also a nagging worry that he couldn’t quite pin down. Had he been able to, he might have expressed it like this: Policemen didn’t go on holiday. Where you got policemen, as Lord Vetinari was wont to remark, you got crime. So if he went to Bonk, however you pronounced the damn place, there would be a crime. It was something the world always laid on for policemen.
    “It’ll be nice to see Serafine again,” said Sybil.
    “Yes, indeed,” said Vimes.
    In Bonk he would not, officially, be a policeman. He did not like this at all. He liked this even less than all the other things.
    On the few occasions he’d been outside Ankh-Morpork and its surrounding fiefdom he’d either been going to other local cities where the Ankh-Morpork badge carried some weight, or he had been in hot pursuit, that most ancient and honorable of police procedures. From the way Carrot talked, in Bonk his badge would merely figure as extra roughage on someone’s menu.
    His brow wrinkled again.
    “Serafine?”
    “Lady Serafine von Uberwald,” said Sybil. “Sergeant Angua’s mother? You remember me telling you last year? We were at finishing school together. Of course, we all knew she was a werewolf, but nobody would ever dream of talking about that sort of thing in those days. Well, you just didn’t . There was all that business over the ski instructor, of course, but I’m certain in my own mind that he must have fallen down some crevasse or other. She married the baron, and they live just outside Beyonk. I write to her with a little news every Hogswatch. A very old werewolf family.”
    “A good pedigree,” said Vimes, absently.
    “You know you wouldn’t like Angua to hear you say that, Sam. Don’t worry so. You’ll have a chance to relax, I’m sure. It will be good for you.”
    “Yes, dear.”
    “It’ll be like a second honeymoon,” said Sybil.
    “Yes indeed,” said Vimes, remembering that what with one thing and another they’d never really had a first one.
    “On that, er, subject,” said Sybil, a little more hesitantly, “you remember I told you I was going to see old Mrs. Content?”
    “Oh yes, how is she?” Vimes was staring at the fireplace again. It wasn’t just old school friends, sometimes it seemed Sybil kept in touch with anyone she’d ever met.
    Her Hogswatch card list ran to a second volume.
    “Quite well, I believe. Anyway, she agrees that—”
    There was a knocking at the door.
    She sighed. “It’s Willikins’s evening off,” she said. “You’d better answer it, Sam. I know you want to…”
    “I’ve told them not to disturb me unless it’s serious,” said Vimes, getting up.
    “Yes, but you think all crime is serious, Sam.”
    Carrot was on the doorstep.
    “It’s a bit…political, sir,” he said.
    “What’s so political at a quarter to ten at night, Captain?”
    “The Dwarf Bread Museum’s been broken into, sir,” said Carrot.
    Vimes looked into his honest blue eyes.
    “A thought occurs to me, Captain,” he said, slowly. “And the thought is: A certain item has gone missing.”
    “That’s right, sir.”
    “And it’s the replica Scone.”
    “Yes, sir. Either they broke in just after we left, or,” Carrot licked his lips nervously,