Lunchtime arrived, and with it a plate of one-foot-wide cheese sandwiches delivered by Gladys, along with the midday copy of the Times.

Mrs Lavish had died in the night. Moist stared at the news. It said she had passed away quietly in her sleep, after a long illness.

He dropped the paper and stared at the wall. She'd seemed like someone hanging together by sheer grit and gin. Even so, that vitality, that spark… well, she couldn't hold on for ever. So what would happen now? Ye gods, he was well out of it!

And it was probably not a good day to be Mr Fusspot. He'd looked a waddly sort of dog, so he'd better learn to run really quickly.

The latest post that Gladys had brought up contained a long and thoroughly second-hand envelope addressed to him 'personly' in thick black letters. He slit it open with the paperknife and shook it out into the waste bin, just in case.

There was a folded newspaper inside. It was, it turned out, yesterday's Times, and there was Moist von Lipwig on the front page. Circled.

Moist turned it over. On the other side, in tiny neat handwriting, were the words:

Dear Sir, I have took the small precawtion of loging certain affedavids with trusted associates. You will here from me gain.

a friend

Take it slowly, take it slowly… It can't be from a friend. Everyone I think of as a friend can spell. This must be some kind of con, yes? But there were no skeletons in his closet…

Oh, all right, if you were going for the fine detail, there were in fact enough skeletons in his closet to fill a big crypt, with enough left over to equip a funfair House of Horrors and maybe also make a macabre but mildly amusing ashtray. But they'd never been associated with the name Lipwig. He'd been careful about that. His crimes had died with Albert Spangler. A good hangman knows exactly how much rope to give a man, and had dropped him out of one life and into another.

Could anyone have recognized him? But he was the least recognizable person in the world when he wasn't wearing his golden suit! When he was young his mother had sometimes gone home from school with the wrong child!

And when he wore the suit, people recognized the suit. He hid by being conspicuous…

It had to be a scam of some kind. Yes, that was it. The old 'guilty secret' job. Probably no one got to a position like this without accumulating some things they'd rather not see made public. But it was a nice touch to include the bit about affidavits. It was there to set a nervous man to wondering. It suggested that the sender knew something so dangerous that you, the recipient, might try to silence him, and he was in a position to set the lawyers on you.

Hah! And he was being given some time in which, presumably, to stew. Him! Moist von Lipwig! Well, they might just find out how hot a stew could get. For now, he shoved the paper in a bottom drawer. Hah!

There was a knock at the door.

'Come in, Gladys,' he said, rummaging in the in-tray again.

The door opened and the worried, pale face of Stanley Howler appeared around it.

'It's me, sir. Stanley, sir,' it said.

'Yes, Stanley?'

'Head of Stamps at the Post Office, sir,' Stanley added, in case pinpoint identification was required.

'Yes, Stanley, I know,' said Moist patiently. 'I see you every day. What is it that you want?'

'Nothing, sir,' said Stanley. There was a pause, and Moist adjusted his mind to the world as seen through the brain of Stanley Howler. Stanley was very… precise, and as patient as the grave.

'What is the reason for you, coming here, to see me, today, Stanley?' Moist tried, enunciating carefully in order to deliver the sentence in bite-sized chunks.

'There is a lawyer downstairs, sir,' Stanley announced.

'But I've only just read the threatening—' Moist began, and then relaxed. 'A lawyer? Did he say why?' he said.

'A matter of great importance, he said. There's two watchmen with him, sir. And a dog.'

'Really?' said Moist calmly. 'Well, you'd better show them up, then.'

He glanced at his watch.

O-kay… Not good.

The Lancre Flyer would be leaving in forty-five seconds. He knew he could be down that damn drainpipe in eleven seconds. Stanley was on his way below to bring them up here, call that thirty seconds, maybe. Get them off the ground floor, that was the thing. Scramble on to the back of the coach, jump off when it slowed down for the Hubwards Gate, pick up the tin chest he'd got stashed in the beams of the old stable in Lobbin Clout, get changed and adjust his face, stroll across the city to have a coffee in that shop near the main Watch House, keep an eye on the clacks traffic for a while, stroll over to Hen and Chickens Court where he had another trunk stored with 'I don't know' Jack, get changed, leave with his little bag and his tweed cap (which he'd change for the old brown bowler in the bag in some alley, just in case Jack had a sudden attack of memory brought on by excessive money), and he'd mosey down to the slaughterhouse district and step into the persona of Jeff the drover and hang out in the huge fetid bar of the Butcher's Eagle, which was where the drovers traditionally damped down the road dust. There was a vampire in the Watch these days and they'd had a werewolf for years, too. Well, let those famously sharp noses snuff up the mixed cocktail stink of manure, fear, sweat, offal and urine and see how they liked it! And that was just in the bar — if anything, it was worse in the slaughterhouses.

Then maybe he'd wait until evening to hitch a lift on the steaming dung carts heading out of the city, along with the other drunk drovers. The gate guards never bothered to check them. On the other hand, if his sixth sense was still squawking, then he'd run the thimble game with some drunk until he'd got enough for a little bottle of perfume and a cheap but decent third-hand suit at some shonky shop and repair to Mrs Eucrasia Arcanum's Lodging House for Respectable Working Men, where with a tip of a hat and some wire-rimmed spectacles he'd be Mr Trespass Hatchcock, a wool salesman, who stayed there every time his business brought him to the city and who always brought her a little gift suitable for a widow of the age she'd like people to think she was. Yes, that'd be a better idea. At Mrs Arcanum's the food was solid and plentiful. The beds were good and you seldom had to share.

Then he could make real plans.

The itinerary of evasion wound across his inner eye at the speed of flight. The outer eye alighted on something less pleasing. There was a copper in the coach yard, chatting to a couple of the drivers. Moist recognized Sergeant Fred Colon, whose chief duty appeared to be ambling around the city chattering to elderly men of the same age and demeanour as himself.

The watchman spotted Moist at the window and gave him a little wave.

No, it was going to get complicated and messy if he ran. He'd have to bluff it out up here. It wasn't as though he'd done anything wrong, technically. The letter had thrown him, that's all it was.

Moist was sitting at his desk looking busy when Stanley came back, ushering in Mr Slant, the city's best-known and, at 351, probably also its oldest lawyer. He was accompanied by Sergeant Angua and Corporal Nobbs, widely rumoured to be the Watch's secret werewolf. Corporal Nobbs was accompanied by a large wicker hamper and Sergeant Angua was holding a squeaky rubber bone, which she occasionally, in an absent-minded way, squeaked. Things were looking up, but strange.

The exchanged pleasantries were not that pleasant, this close to Nobby Nobbs and the lawyer, who smelled of embalming fluid, but when they were over Mr Slant said: 'I believe you visited Mrs Topsy Lavish yesterday, Mr Lipwig.'