The Fifth Elephant

Diet of Bugs in AM1880, and the possession of the metal is technically illegal.”
    There was no explanation. He made a note to ask Inigo. After all, where you got werewolves, didn’t you need silver? And things must have been pretty bad if everyone had to eat insects.
    Anyway…silver was useful, too, but fat was just…fat. It was like biscuits, or tea, or sugar. It was just something that turned up in the cupboard. There was no style to it, no romance. It was stuff in tubs.
    A note was clipped to the next page. He read: “The Fifth Elephant as a metaphor also appears in the Uberwald languages. Depending on context it can mean ‘a thing which does not exist’ (as we would say ‘Klatchian mist’) ‘a thing which is other than it seems’ and ‘a thing which, while unseen, controls events’ (in the same way that we would use the term eminence gris ).”
    I wouldn’t, thought Vimes. I don’t use words like that.

“Constable Shoe,” said Constable Shoe, when the door of the bootmaker’s factory was opened, “Homicide.”
    “You come ’bout Mister Sonky?” said the troll who’d opened the door. Warm damp air blew out into the street, smelling of incontinent cats and sulfur.
    “I meant I’m a zombie,” said Reg Shoe. “I find that telling people right away saves embarrassing misunderstandings later on. But coincidentally , yes, we’ve come about the alleged deceased.”
    “We?” said the troll, making no comment about Reg’s gray skin and stitch marks.
    “Doon here, bigjobs!”
    The troll looked down, not a usual direction in Ankh-Morpork, where people preferred not to see what they were standing in.
    “Oh,” he said, and took a few steps backward.
    Some people said that gnomes were no more belligerent than any other race, and this was true. However, the belligerence was compressed down into a body six inches high and, like many things when they are compressed, had an inclination to explode. Constable Swires had been on the force only for a few months, but news had gone around and already he inspired respect, or at least the bladder-trembling terror that can pass for respect on these occasions.
    “Don’t ye just stand there gawpin’, where’s yon stiff?” said Swire, striding into the factory.
    “We put him in der cellar,” said the troll. “And now we got half a ton of liquid rubber running to waste. He’d be livid ’bout that…if he was alive, o’course.”
    “Why’s it wasted?” said Reg.
    “Gone all thick and manky, hasn’t it. I’m gonna have to dump it later on, and dat’s not easy. We was supposed to be dipping a load of Ribbed Magical Delights today, too, but all der ladies felt faint when I hauls him outa der vat and dey went off home.”
    Reg Shoe looked shocked. He was not, for various reasons, a patron of Mr. Sonky’s wares, romance not being a regular feature of the life of the dead, but surely the world of the living had some standards, didn’t it?
    “You employ ladies here?” he said.
    The troll looked surprised.
    “Yeah. Sure. It’s good steady work. Dey’re good workers, too. Always laughing and tellin’ jokes while dey’re doin’ the dippin’ and packin’, ’specially when we’re doin’ der Big Boys.” The troll sniffed. “Pers’nally, I don’t unnerstan der jokes.”
    “Dem Big Boys are bludy good value for a penny,” said Buggy Swires.
    Reg Shoe stared at his tiny partner. There was just no way that he was going to ask the question. But Swires must have seen his expression.
    “After a bit of work wi’ yon scissors, ye won’t find a better mackintosh in the whole city,” said the gnome, and laughed nastily.
    Constable Shoe sighed. He knew that Mr. Vimes had an unofficial policy of getting ethnic minorities into the Watch, * but he wasn’t sure this was wise in the case of gnomes, even though there was, admittedly, no ethnic group that was more minor. They had a built-in resistance to rules. This didn’t just apply to the law, but to all the invisible rules that most people obeyed unthinkingly, like “Do not attempt to eat this giraffe” or “Do not head-butt people in the ankle just because they won’t give you a chip.” It was best to think of Constable Swires simply as a small independent weapon.
    “You’d better show us the d—the person who is currently vitally challenged,” he said.
    They were led downstairs. What was hanging from a beam in the cellar would have frightened the life out of anyone who wasn’t