Chapter One - In which Commander Vimes witnesses a disturbing incident and two watchmen trade their dignity for a hat full of coins.
Even after so much time, Vimes still had difficulty adjusting to working in daylight. Of course, people were bastards at any hour - but the city was decidedly different while the sun was up, and so were the crimes.
Excess traffic, for instance, had never been a problem at night, and it was even less so after the unfortunate incident of Sergeant Detritus' surprise midnight speed trap. Pick- pocketing was rarely an after-dark issue, not when the option of knocking the victim out in an alley and pinching everything of value was waving so invitingly. Being a policeman in the day was almost a different job, although still one nobody thanked you for.
Another thing he'd never had to deal with was mimes. Across the Plaza Sergeant Colon, ably assisted by Corporal Nobbs, was currently having fun threatening a white-faced(1) pair, having first witnessed their act. This seemed to have involved the larger man pretending various objects were incredibly heavy, while the smaller man ran to help him but found himself confined in a small room with invisible walls. The Watchmen had stepped in after the men had made a small collection - which the Corporal had thoughtfully confiscated as evidence – and explained that the Patrician Didn't Like Mimes.
Colon and Nobbs marched the pair off to the palace without even giving them the chance to pack their props away. The large man was still carrying a small carboard box, staggering under the weight theatrically, much to the appreciation of the crowd. The more irritated Sergeant Colon became, the more the crowd laughed at him, and it was only when they were all through the gates that the crowd began to drift away, and Vimes continued on his beat.
He found himself oddly preoccupied by the matter, with the nagging feeling that something was wrong. Of course, one might consider that hanging mimes upside down in a scorpion pit was wrong, but that was the usual Ankh-Morpork type of wrongness. Everyone knew what happened to mimes, and if a couple of foreigners - or renegades from the fools guild – wanted to risk it, well, they couldn't say they hadn't been warned. No, it was something else that was bothering Vimes. A nagging detail that most definitely wasn't a Clue, but that he couldn't quite pinpoint.
It was funny, he reflected, but you didn't often see mimes with props. Aside from the ethics, there was the angle exclusive to Ankh-Morpork – carry nothing that hinders escape. And come to think of it, the actor had been very good, which was odd because his companion, on the whole, was only just above mediocre.
Unless he wasn't that good. Perhaps the reason it had looked like he was carrying a really heavy box – Vimes started running - was because he was carrying a really heavy box.
Vimes nearly made it to the palace before the explosion.
(1) This is a punne suggesting they were frightened when in fact they had just painted their faces white. Readers born within the last eighty years are excused from laughing.