The Fifth Elephant

years, mhm.”
    Behind the coaches a pair of gates were swung shut. There was the sound of heavy bolts shooting home. Vimes stared at the apparition that came limping back toward the coach door.
    “He looks it,” he said.
    “Oh, I don’t think this is—”
    “Good evening, marthterth, mithtreth…” said the figure. “Welcome to Ankh-Morpork. I’m Igor.”
    “Igor who?” said Inigo.
    “Jutht Igor, thir. Alwayth …jutht Igor,” said Igor calmly, unfolding the step. “I’m the odd-job man.”
    “You don’t say?” said Vimes, mesmerized.
    “Have you had a terrible accident?” said Lady Sybil.
    “I did thpill tea down my thirt thith morning,” said Igor. “Kind of you to notice.”
    “Where’s Mister Sleeps?” said Inigo.
    “I’m afraid Marthter Thleeps ith nowhere to be found. I wath rather hoping you would know what’d happened to him.”
    “Us?” said Inigo. “Mhm, mmm! We assumed he was here!”
    “He left rather urgently two weeks ago,” said Igor. “He did not vouchthafe to me where he wath going. Do go inthide, and I will thee to the baggage.”
    Vimes glanced up. A little bit of snow was falling now, but there was enough light to see that, across the whole courtyard, was an iron mesh. With the bolted doors and the walls of the building all around, they were in a cage.
    “Jutht a little leftover from the old dayth,” said Igor cheerfully. “Nothing to worry about, thir.”
    “What a fine figure of a man,” said Sybil weakly, as they stepped inside.
    “More than one man, by the look of him.”
    “Sam!”
    “Sorry. I’m sure his heart’s in the right place.”
    “Good.”
    “Or someone’s heart, anyway.”
    “Sam, really!”
    “All right, all right, but you must admit he does look a bit…odd.”
    “None of us can help the way we’re made, Sam.”
    “He looks as if he tried—good grief…”
    “Oh dear,” said Lady Sybil.
    Vimes was not against hunting, if only because Ankh-Morpork seldom offered any better game than the large rats you got along the waterfront. But the sight of the walls of the new embassy might have been enough to make the keenest hunter take a step back and cry “Oh, I say, hold on…”
    The previous occupant had been keen on hunting, shooting and fishing and, to have covered every single wall with the resultant trophies, he must have been doing all three at the same time.
    Hundreds of glass eyes, obscenely alive in the light of the fire in the huge hearth, stared down at Vimes.
    “It’s just like my grandfather’s study,” said Lady Sybil. “There was a stag’s head in there that used to frighten the life out of me.”
    “There’s just about everything here…oh no…”
    “My gods…” whispered Lady Sybil.
    Vimes looked around desperately. Detritus was just entering, carrying some of the trunks.
    “Stand in front of it,” Vimes hissed.
    “I’m not that tall, Sam! Or that wide!”
    The troll looked up at them, then at the trophies, and then grinned. It’s colder up here, Vimes thought. He’s quicker on the uptake. * Even Nobby won’t play poker with him in the winter. Damn!
    “Something wrong?” said Detritus.
    Vimes sighed. What was the point? He’d spot it sooner or later.
    “I’m sorry about this, Detritus,” he said, standing aside.
    Detritus looked at the horrible trophy and nodded.
    “Yeah, dere used to be a lot of dat sort of fing in der old days,” he said calmly, putting down the luggage. “Dey wouldn’t be de real diamond teef, o’course. Dey’d take dem out and put bigger glass ones in.”
    “You don’t mind ?” said Lady Sybil. “It’s a troll’s head! Someone actually mounted a troll’s head and put it on the wall!”
    “Ain’t mine,” said Detritus.
    “But it’s so horrible !”
    Detritus stood in thought for a moment, and then opened the stained wooden box that contained all he had felt it necessary to bring.
    “Dis is de old country, after all,” he said. “So if it’d made you feel better…”
    He pulled out a smaller box and rummaged among what appeared to be bits of rock and cloth until he found something yellowy-brown and round, like a shallow cup.
    “Should’ve bunged it away,” he said, “but it’s all I got to remember my old granny by. She kept fings in it.”
    “It’s a bit of human skull, isn’t it,” said Vimes, at last.
    “Yep.”
    “Whose?”
    “Anyone ask dat troll dere his name?” said Detritus, and the glint in his eye had a brittle edge to it for