Discworld 39 - Snuff Read online

  Willikins smiled. “You’ve never really agreed with the idea of the spiked ones, have you, sir?” He carefully shut the door behind him.

  Young Sam was already reading by himself these days, which was a great relief. Fortunately the works of Miss Felicity Beedle did not consist solely of exciting references to poo, in all its manifestations, but her output of small volumes for young children was both regular and highly popular, at least among the children. This was because she had researched her audience with care, and Young Sam had laughed his way through The Wee Wee Men, The War with the Snot Goblins, and Geoffrey and the Land of Poo. For boys of a certain age, they hit the squashy spot. At the moment he was giggling and choking his way through The Boy Who Didn’t Know How to Pick His Own Scabs, an absolute hoot for a boy just turned six. Sybil pointed out that the books were building Young Sam’s vocabulary, and not just about lavatorial matters, and it was indeed true that he was beginning, with encouragement, to read books in which nobody had a bowel movement at all. Which, when you came to think about it, was a mystery all by itself.

  Vimes carried his son to bed after ten minutes of enjoyable listening, and had managed to shave and get into the feared evening clothes a few moments before his wife knocked on the door. Separate dressing rooms and bathrooms, Vimes thought … if you had the money, there was no better way to keep a happy marriage happy. And in order to keep a happy marriage happy he allowed Sybil to bustle in, wearing, in fact, a bustle,** to adjust his shirt, tweak his collar and make him fit for company.

  And then she said, “I understand you gave the blacksmith a short lesson in unarmed combat, my dear … .” The pause hung in the air like a silken noose.

  Vimes managed, “There’s something wrong here, I know it.”

  “I think so, too,” said Sybil.

  “You do?”

  “Yes, Sam, but this is not the time. We have guests arriving at any minute. If you could refrain from throwing any of them over your shoulder in between courses I would be grateful.” This was a terrific scolding by Sybil’s normally placid standards. Vimes did what any prudent husband would do, which was dynamically nothing. Suddenly all downstairs was full of voices and the noise of carriages crunching over the gravel. Sybil trimmed her sails and headed down to be the gracious hostess.

  Despite what his wife liked to imply, Vimes was rather good at dinners, having sat through innumerable civic affairs in Ankh-Morpork. The trick was to let the other diners do the talking while agreeing with them occasionally, giving himself time to think about other things.

  Sybil had made certain that this evening’s dinner was a light occasion. The guests were mostly people of a certain class who lived in the country but were not, as it were, of it. Retired warriors; a priest of Om; Miss Pickings, a spinster, together with her companion, a strict-looking lady with short hair and a man’s shirt and pocket watch; and, yes, Miss Felicity Beedle. Vimes thought he had put his foot in it when he said, “Oh yes, the poo lady,” but she burst out laughing and shook his hand, saying, “Don’t worry, your grace, I wash mine thoroughly after writing!” And it was a big laugh. She was a small woman with the strange aspect that you see in some people that causes them to appear to be subtly vibrating even when standing perfectly still. You felt that if some interior restraint suddenly broke, the pent-up energy released would catapult her through the nearest window.

  Miss Beedle prodded him in the stomach. “And you are the famous Commander Vimes. Come to arrest us all, have you?” Of course, you got this all the time if you didn’t stop Sybil accepting the invitation to yet another posh society do. But while Miss Beedle laughed, silence fell on the other guests like a cast-iron safe. They were scowling at Miss Beedle, and Miss Beedle was staring intently at Vimes, and Vimes knew that expression. It was the expression of somebody with a story to tell. Certainly this was no time to broach the subject, and so Vimes filed it under “interesting.”

  Whatever Vimes’s misgivings, Ramkin Hall did a damn good dinner and—and this was the important thing—the dictates of popular social intercourse decreed that Sybil had to allow a menu full of things that would not be permitted at home if Vimes had asked for them. It’s one thing to act as arbiter of your own husband’s tastes, but it is frowned on to do the same to your guests.

  Across the table from him a retired military man was being assured by his wife that he did not, contrary to what he himself believed, like potted shrimps. In vain the man protested weakly that he thought he did like potted shrimps, to get the gentle response, “You may like potted shrimps, Charles, but they do not like you.”

  Vimes felt for the man, who seemed puzzled at having developed enemies among the lower crustacea. “Well, er, does lobster like me, dear?” he said, in a voice that did not express much hope.

  “No, dear, it does not get on with you at all. Remember what happened at the Parsleys’ whist evening.”

  The man looked at the groaning sideboard and tried: “Do you think the scallops could get on with me for five minutes or so?”

  “Good heavens no, Charles.”

  He cast a glance at the sideboard again. “I expect the green salad is my bosom friend, though, isn’t it?”

  “Absolutely, dear!”

  “Yes, I thought so.”

  The man looked across at Vimes and gave him a hopeless grin followed by, “I am given to believe that you are a policeman, your grace. That right?”

  Vimes took proper stock of him for the first time: a whiskery old warrior, now out to grass—and that was probably all his wife was going to let him eat without an argument. He had burn scars on his face and hands and the accent of Pseudopolis. Easy. “You were with the Light Dragons, weren’t you, sir?”

  The old man looked pleased. “Well done, that man! Not many people remember us. Alas, I’m the only one left. Colonel Charles Augustus Makepeace—strange name for a military man, or perhaps not, I don’t know.” He sniffed. “We’re just a scorched page in the history of warfare. I dare say you haven’t read my memoirs, Twenty-four Years Without Eyebrows? No? Well, you are not alone in that, I have to say. Met your missus in those days. She told us it would be totally impossible to breed dragons stable enough for use in warfare. She was right, and no mistake. Of course, we went on trying, because that’s the military way!”

  “You mean, pile dreadful failure on top of failure?” said Vimes.

  The colonel laughed. “Well, it works sometimes! I still keep a few dragons, though. Wouldn’t be without ’em. A day without a singe is a day without sunshine. They’re a great saving in matches, and, of course, they keep undesirables away, too.”

  Vimes reacted like an angler who, after some time dozing by the water’s edge, felt that the fish were rising.

  “Oh, you don’t get many of them around here, surely?”

  “You think so? You don’t know the half of it, young man. I can tell you a few stories—” He stopped talking abruptly, and Vimes’s experience of husbandry told him that the man had just been kicked under the table by his wife, who did not look happy and, to judge by the lines on her face, probably never had. She leaned past her husband, who was now accepting another brandy from the waiter, and said, icily, “As a policeman, your grace, does your jurisdiction extend to the Shires?”

  Another ring in the water, thought the angler inside Vimes’s head. He s
aid, “No, madam, my beat is Ankh-Morpork and some of the surrounding area. Traditionally, however, the policeman drags his jurisdiction with him if he is in hot pursuit in connection with crime committed within his domain. But, of course, Ankh-Morpork is a long way from here, and I doubt if I’d be able to run that far.” This got a laugh from the table in general and a thin-lipped smile from Mrs. Colonel.

  Play the fish, play the fish … “Nevertheless,” Vimes continued, “if I was to witness an arrestable offense here and now, I’d have the authority to make an arrest. Like a citizen’s arrest, but somewhat more professional, and after that I’d be required to turn the suspect over to the local force or other suitable authority, as I deemed fit.”

  The clergyman, whom Vimes had noticed out of the corner of his eye, was taking an interest in this conversation and leaned forward to say, “As you deem fit, your grace?”

  “My grace would not come into it, sir. As a sworn member of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch it would be my bounden duty to ensure the safety of my suspect. Ideally I’d look for a lockup. We don’t have them in the city anymore, but I understand most rural areas still do, even if they only hold drunks and escaped pigs.”

  There was laughter, and Miss Beedle said, “We do have a village constable, your grace, and he keeps pigs in the lockup down by the old bridge!”

  She looked brightly at Vimes, whose expression was stony. He said, “Does he ever put people in there? Does he have a warrant card? Does he have a badge?”

  “Well, he puts the occasional drunk in there to sober up, and he says the pigs don’t seem to mind, but I hae no idea what a warrant card is.”

  There was more laughter at this but it faded quickly, sucked into nowhere by Vimes’s implacable silence.

  Then he said, “I would not consider him to be a policeman, and until I found that he was working within a framework of proper law enforcement I would regard him not as a policeman by my standards but as a slightly bossy street cleaner. Of some use, but not a policeman.”

  “By your standards, your grace?” said the clergyman.

  “Yes, sir, by my standards. My decision. My responsibility. My experience. My arse if things go wrong.”

  “But, your grace, as you say, you are outside your jurisdiction here,” said Mrs. Colonel gently.

  Vimes could sense her husband’s nervousness, and it was certainly not to do with the food. The man was wishing heartily that he wasn’t there. It was funny how people always wanted to talk to policemen about crime, and never realize what strange little signals their anxieties betrayed.

  He turned to the man’s wife, smiled and said, “But as I’ve said, madam, if a copper comes across a flagrant crime his jurisdiction reaches out to him like an old friend. And do you mind if we change the subject? No offense meant to any of you ladies and gentlemen, but over the years I’ve noticed that bankers and military men and merchants all get a chance to eat their dinners at their leisure at affairs like this, while the poor old copper has to talk about police work, which is most of the time rather dull.” He smiled again to keep everything friendly, and went on, “Exceedingly dull around here, I would imagine. From my point of view, this place is as quiet as the … grave.” Score: one wince from the dear old colonel, and the priest looking down at his plate, although the latter shouldn’t be taken too seriously, he thought, because you seldom saw a clergyman who couldn’t strike sparks with his knife and fork.

  Sybil, using her hostess voice, shattered the silence like an icebreaker. “I think it’s time for the main course,” she said, “which will be superb mutton avec no talking about police work at all. Honestly, if you get Sam going he’ll quote the laws and ordinances of Ankh-Morpork and force standing orders until you throw a cushion at him!”

  Well done, Vimes thought, at least I can now eat my dinner in peace. He relaxed as the conversation around him became less fraught and once again replete with the everyday gossip and grumblings about other people living in the area, the difficulties with servants, the prospects for the harvest and, oh yes, the trouble with goblins.

  Vimes paid attention then. Goblins. The City Watch appeared to contain at least one member of every known bipedal sapient species plus one Nobby Nobbs. It had become a tradition: if you could make it as a copper, then you could make it as a species. But nobody had ever once suggested that Vimes should employ a goblin, the simple reason being that they were universally known to be stinking, cannibalistic, vicious, untrustworthy bastards.

  Of course, everybody knew that dwarfs were a chiselling bunch who would swindle you if they could, and that trolls were little more than thugs, and the city’s one resident medusa would never look you in the face, and the vampires couldn’t be trusted, however much they smiled, and werewolves were only vampires who couldn’t fly, when you got right down to it, and the man next door was a real bastard who threw his rubbish over your wall and his wife was no better than she should be. But then again it took all sorts to make a world. It was not as if you were prejudiced because, after all, there had been an orc working at the university, but he liked his football, didn’t he just, and you could forgive anyone who could score from the center spot and, well, you took as you found … But not bloody goblins, thank you very much. People hounded them out if they came into the city and they tended to end up downriver, working for the likes of Harry King in the bone-grinding, leather-tanning and scrap-metal industries. A fair walk outside the city gates and so outside the law.

  And now there were some in the vicinity of the Hall, as evidenced by chickens and cats disappearing, and so on. Well, probably, but Vimes remembered when people said that trolls stole chickens; there was nothing of interest to a troll in a chicken. It would be like humans eating plaster. He certainly did not mention any of this.

  Yes, no one had a good word to say about goblins, but Miss Beedle had no word to say at all. Her gaze remained firmly fixed on Vimes’s face. You could read a dining table if you learned the knack and if you were a policeman then you could build a clear picture of what each diner thought about the others; it was all in the looks. The things said or not said. The people who were in the magic circle and the people who weren’t. Miss Beedle was an outsider, tolerated, because obviously there is such a thing as good manners, but not exactly included. What was the phrase? Not one of us.

  Vimes realized that he was staring at Miss Beedle just as she was staring at him. They both smiled, and he thought that an inquisitive man would go and see the nice lady who had written the books that his little boy enjoyed so much and not because she looked like somebody prepared to blow so many whistles that it would sound like a pipe band.

  Miss Beedle frowned a lot when the talk was about goblins, and occasionally people, especially the people he had tagged as Mrs. Colonel, would cast a look at her as one might glance at a child who was doing something wrong.

  And so he maintained a nice exterior air of attention while at the same time sifting through the affairs of the day. The process was interrupted by Mrs. Colonel saying, “By the way, your grace, we were very pleased to hear that you gave Jefferson a drubbing this afternoon. The man is insufferable! He upsets people!”

  “Well, I noticed that he’s not afraid to air his views,” said Vimes, “but nor are we, are we?”

  “But surely you of all people, your grace,” said the clergyman, looking up earnestly, “cannot pos
sibly believe that Jack is as good as his master?”

  “Depends on Jack. Depends on the master. Depends what you mean by good,” said Vimes. “I suppose I was a Jack, but when it comes to the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, I am the Master.”

  Mrs. Colonel was about to answer when Lady Sybil said brightly, “Talking of which, Sam, I had a letter from a Mrs. Wainwright commending you highly. Remind me to show it to you.”

  All long-term couples have their code. Classically there is one that the wife uses in polite conversation to warn her husband that, because of hasty dressing, or absent-mindedness, he is becoming exposed in the crotch department.**

  In the case of Vimes and Lady Sybil, any mention of Mrs. Wainwright was a code that meant, “If you don’t stop annoying people, Sam Vimes, then there will be a certain amount of marital discord later this evening.”

  But this time Sam Vimes wanted the last word, and said, “In fact, come to think of it, I know quite a few risen Jacks in various places, and let me tell you, they often make better masters than their erstwhile masters ever did. All they needed was a chance.”

  “Do remind me to show you the letter, Sam!”

  Vimes gave in, and the arrival of the ice-cream pudding lowered the temperature somewhat, especially since her ladyship made certain that everybody’s glasses remained filled—and in the case of the colonel this meant an extremely regular top-up. Vimes would have liked to talk to him further, but he too was under wifely orders. The man had definitely had something important on his mind that caused the presence of a policeman to make him very nervous indeed. And the nervousness was apparently catching.

  This wasn’t a posh affair, by any means. Sybil had organized this little party before building up to anything more lavish, and some fairly amicable goodbyes were being said long before eleven. Vimes listened intently to the colonel and his wife as they walked, in his case unsteadily, to their carriage. All he heard, however, was a hissed, “You had the stable door open all evening!”