He padded back to the house. A door was open. It led into a large but dark and musty hall. Up in the gloom the heads of dead animals haunted the walls. The Ramkins seemed to have endangered more species than an ice age.
Vimes wandered aimlessly through another mahogany archway.
It was a dining room, containing the kind of table where the people at the other end are in a different time zone. One end had been colonised by silver candlesticks.
It was laid for two. A battery of cutlery flanked each plate. Antique wineglasses sparkled in the candlelight.
A terrible premonition took hold of Vimes at the same moment as a gust of Captivation, the most expensive perfume available anywhere in Ankh-Morpork, blew past him.
'Ah, Captain. So nice of you to come.'
Vimes turned around slowly, without his feet appearing to move.
Lady Ramkin stood there, magnificently.
Vimes was vaguely aware of a brilliant blue dress that sparkled in the candlelight, a mass of hair the colour of chestnuts, a slightly anxious face that suggested that a whole battalion of skilled painters and decorators had only just dismantled their scaffolding and gone home, and a faint creaking that said underneath it all mere corsetry was being subjected to the kind of tensions more usually found in the heart of large stars.
'I, er,' he said. 'If you, er. If you'd said, er. I'd, er. Dress more suitable, er. Extremely, er. Very. Er.'
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