Discworld 39 - Snuff Read online

  “Well, I could give him another one,” Igor volunteered, as Fred Colon slumped into a chair, which creaked ominously under his weight. The chair had straps on it.

  “Look,” said Nobby, “I’m not mucking about! You’ve heard of the tobacco that counts? Well, he just had a cigar that cries. I’ve put it in this ’ere evidence bag, as per standing instructions.”

  Cheery took the bag and peered inside. “It’s got egg sandwiches in it! Honestly, Nobby, has anyone explained to you what forensic means?” On the basis that she probably couldn’t make things actually worse, Cheery emptied the sandwiches on to the table, where they were joined by one cigar with mayonnaise. She wiped this down with some care and looked at it. “Well, Nobby? I don’t smoke and I don’t know much about cigars, but this one appears to be quite happy at the moment.”

  “You have to hold it to your ear,” said Nobby helpfully.

  Cheery did so, and said, “All I can hear is the crinkling of the tobacco, which I suspect hasn’t been properly kept.” The dwarf held the cigar away from her face and looked at it suspiciously, and then wordlessly she handed it to Igor, who put it to his ear, or at least the one that he was currently using, because you never know with Igors. They looked at one another and Igor broke the silence. “There are such things, I believe, as tobacco weevils?”

  “I’m sure there are,” said Cheery, “but I doubt very much if they … chuckle?”

  “Chuckle? It sounded to me like somebody crying,” said Igor, as he squinted at the bulging cigar, and added, “We should wash down the table and clean a scalpel and use the number-two tweezers and two, no, make that four sterilized surgical masks and gloves. It may be some kind of unusual insect in there.”

  “I held that cigar up to my ear,” said Nobby. “What kind of insect are we talking about?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Igor, “but generally the places in the world where tobacco is cultivated are known for some remarkably dangerous ones. For example, the yellow grass weevil of Howondaland has been known to enter the skull via the ears, lay its eggs in the victim’s brain and leave the poor victim hallucinating continuously until it has exited via the nostrils. Death inevitably ensues. My cousin Igor has a tank full of them. They’re very good at getting skulls scrupulously clean.” Igor paused. “So I’m told, that is, although I personally cannot confirm that.” He paused again, then added, “Of course.”

  Nobby Nobbs headed for the door, but, unusually, Sergeant Colon did not follow his friend. Instead, he said, “I’ll just stay with my fingers in my ears, if it’s all the same to you?”

  He craned his head to watch as Igor carefully pulled the cigar apart, and said conversationally, “They say that the cigars made in foreign parts are rolled on the thighs of young women. Personally I call that disgusting.”

  There was a tinkle and a glint** and something dropped onto the table. Cheery leaned cautiously forward. It looked like a small expensive vial for the most delicate alchemical experiments and yet, she thought later, it seemed to have movement in it, movement while staying still. Igor looked over her shoulder and said, “Oh.”

  They looked at the vial in silence, silence that was soon broken by Sergeant Colon. “That looks shiny,” he said. “Is it worth anything?”

  Cheery Littlebottom raised her eyebrows at Igor, who shrugged. He said, “Priceless, I should think, if you could find a buyer with enough money and the, how shall I put it, right taste in ornamentation.”

  “It’s an unggue pot,” Cheery said carefully. “A goblin ceremonial pot, sarge.”

  The dawn of understanding began to flow across Sergeant Colon’s gas giant of a face. “Ain’t they the things they make to store all their piss and shit in?” he said, backing away.

  Igor cleared his throat and looked at Cheery as he said, icily, “Not this type, if I’m right, and at least not down here on the Plains. Those that feel themselves protected in the high mountains make pots, and also use the unggue brushes and, of course, the unggue masks.” He looked expectantly, but without any real hope, at the sergeant. Cheery, who had known him for longer, said, “I understand, sarge, that the goblins on the Plains think the ones in the mountains are rather strange. As for this pot,” she hesitated, “I rather fear that this is a particularly special one.”

  “Well, it looks like the little buggers got that right,” said Fred cheerfully, and, to Cheery’s horror, he snatched up the tiny pot. “It’s mine, that’s why, far too good for a stinking goblin, but how come it makes a noise?”

  Sergeant Littlebottom looked at Igor’s expression, and, to prevent trouble in the Forensic Department, she grabbed the sergeant’s arm and dragged him out of the door, slamming it behind them.

  “Sorry about this, sergeant, but I could see that Igor was becoming a little bit agitated.”

  Sergeant Colon brushed himself down with as much dignity as he could muster, and said, “If it’s valuable, then I want it, thank you so very much. After all, it was given to me in good faith. Right?”

  “Well, of course that is so, sergeant, but you see, it already belongs to a goblin.”

  Sergeant Colon burst out laughing. “Them? What have they got to own apart from big piles of crap?”

  Cheery hesitated. Lazy and bombastic as Fred Colon was, the record showed that, against all apparent evidence, he had been a helpful and useful officer. She needed to be tactful.

  “Sergeant, can I say right now that I appreciate all the help you have given to me since I arrived in Pseudopolis Yard? I’ll always remember you pointing out to me all those places where a watchman could stand out of the wind and the worst of the rain, and I definitely committed to memory the list of public houses who would be generous to a thirsty copper after hours. And indeed I remember you telling me that a copper should never take a bribe, and why a meal was not a bribe. I cherish your approval, sergeant, since I know that by upbringing you are not particularly happy about women in the Watch, and especially when one of those women is of the dwarf persuasion. I realize that in the course of your long career you have had to adapt your thinking to meet the new circumstances. Therefore, I’m proud to be a colleague of yours, Sergeant Colon, and I hope you’ll forgive me when I tell you that there are times when you should shut up and get some new ideas in that big fat head of yours rather than constantly reheating the old ones. You picked up a little trinket, sergeant, and now it really is yours, more yours than I think you can possibly imagine. I wish I could tell you more, but I only know what the average dwarf knows about goblins; and I don’t know too much about this type of unggue pot but I think, given the floral decoration and its small size, that it is the one they call the soul of tears, sergeant, and I think you have made your life suddenly very interesting because— Can I ask you to put it down for just one moment, please? I promise most sincerely that I won’t take it away from you.”

  Colon’s somewhat piggy eyes looked at Cheery suspiciously, but he said, “Well, if it gives you any satisfaction.” He went to put the pot on the nearby windowsill and she saw him shake his hand. “Seems to be stuck on.”

  Cheery thought to herself, so it’s true. Out loud she said, “I’m very sorry to hear that, sergeant, but you see, in that pot is the living soul of a goblin child and it belongs to you. Congratulations!” she said, trying to keep the rising sarcasm out of her voice.

  T
hat night Sergeant Colon dreamed he was in a cave with monsters chattering away at him in their dreadful lingo. He put it down to the beer, but it was funny the way he couldn’t let the little glittering thing go. His fingers never quite managed it, however hard he tried.

  The mother of Sam Vimes had managed, heavens know how, to scrape up the penny a day necessary for him to be educated at the Dame School run by Mistress Slightly.

  Mistress Slightly was everything a dame should be. She was fat, and gave the impression of being made of marshmallows, had a gentle understanding of the fact that the bladders of small boys are almost as treacherous as the bladders of old men, and, in general, taught the basics of the alphabet with a minimum of cruelty and a maximum of marshmallow.

  She kept geese, as any self-respecting dame should do. Later in life the older Vimes had wondered if, underneath the endless layers of petticoats, Mistress Slightly wore red-and-white spotted drawers. She certainly had a mob cap and a laugh like rainwater going down a drain. Invariably, while she gave lessons, she was peeling potatoes or plucking geese.

  There was still a place in his heart for old Mistress Slightly, who occasionally had a mint in her pocket for a boy who knew his alphabet and could say it backward. And you had to be grateful to someone who taught you how not to be afraid.

  She had one book in her tiny sitting room, and the first time she had given it to young Sam Vimes to read he had got as far as page seven when he froze. The page showed a goblin: the jolly goblin, according to the text. Was it laughing, was it scowling, was it hungry, was it about to bite your head off? Young Sam Vimes hadn’t waited to find out and had spent the rest of the morning under a chair. These days he excused himself by remembering that most of the other kids felt the same way. When it came to the innocence of childhood, adults often got it wrong. In any case, she had sat him on her always slightly damp knee after class and made him really look at the goblin. It was made of lots of dots! Tiny dots, if you looked closely. The closer you looked at the goblin the more it wasn’t there. Stare it down and it lost all its power to frighten. “I hear that they are wretched, badly made mortals,” the dame had said sadly. “Half-finished folk, or so I hear. It’s only a blessing this one had something to be jolly about.”

  Later on, because he had been a good boy, she had made him blackboard monitor, the first time anyone had entrusted him with anything. Good old Mistress Slightly, Vimes thought, as he stood in this gloomy cave surrounded by ranks of silent, solemn goblins. I’ll have a bag of peppermints on your grave if I get out of this alive. He cleared his throat. “Well now, lad, what we appear to have here is a goblin who has been in a fight.” He looked down at the corpse, and then to Feeney. “Perhaps you would care to tell me what you see?”

  Feeney was one step away from trembling. “Well, sir, I surmise that it is dead, sir.”

  “And how do you deduce this, please?”

  “Er, its head isn’t attached to its body, sir?”

  “Yes, we generally recognize that as a clue that the corpse is indeed dead. Incidentally, lad, you may as well take the string off. I wouldn’t say this is the best light I’ve ever seen by, but it’ll do. Do you notice anything else, chief constable?” Vimes tried to keep his tone level.

  “Well, sir, it’s pretty cut about, sir.”

  Vimes smiled encouragingly. “Notice anything about that, lad?” Feeney was making heavy weather of it, but recruits often did at the start, doing so much looking that they forgot to see. “You’re doing well, chief constable. Would you care to extrapolate?”

  “Sir? Extrapolate, sir?”

  “Why would somebody be all cut about on their arms? Think about that.”

  Feeney’s lips actually moved as he thought, and then he grinned. “He was defending himself with his hands, sir?”

  “Well done, lad, and people who are defending themselves with their hands are doing so because they don’t have a shield or a weapon. I would wager, too, that his head was cut off while he was on the ground. Can’t exactly put my finger on it, but that looks to me like deliberate butchering rather than a hasty slice. Everything is messy, but you can see that the belly has been sliced open, yet there is hardly any blood around it. He was taken by surprise. And because of the belly would I know something else about him that I wish I didn’t know,” he said.

  “What’s that, sir?”

  “He is a she, and she was ambushed, or maybe trapped.” And, he thought, there’s a claw missing.

  After a while it becomes a puzzle, not a corpse, said Vimes to himself as he knelt down, but never soon enough, and never for long enough. Aloud he said, “Look at the marks on this leg, lad. I reckon she stepped in a rabbit snare, probably because she was running away from … somebody.”

  Vimes stood up so fast that the watching goblins backed away. “Good grief, boy, we shouldn’t do that, not even in the country! Isn’t there some kind of code? You kill the bucks, not the does, isn’t that right? And this isn’t some spur-of-the-moment thing! Someone wanted to get a lot of blood out of this lady! You tell me why!”

  Vimes wasn’t certain what Feeney would have replied had they not been surrounded by solemn-faced goblins, which was just as well.

  “This is murder, lad, the capital crime! And do you know why it was done? I’ll wager anything that it was so that Constable Upshot, acting on information received, would find a lot of blood in Dead Man’s Copse, where Commander Vimes was apparently going to have a meeting with an annoying blacksmith, and so, given that both of them were men of quick temper, quite possibly foul play could have been involved, yes?”

  “It’s a legitimate deduction, sir, you must admit that.”

  “Of course I do, and now it’s a total bastard of a deduction, and now you must admit that.”

  “Yes, sir, I do, sir, and apologize. However, I’d like to search the premises for any sign of Mr. Jefferson.” Feeney looked half ashamed, half defiant.

  “And why do you want to do that, chief constable?”

  Feeney stuck out his chin. “Because I’ve been shown to be a bloody fool once, and I don’t intend to be one again. Besides, sir, you might be wrong. This poor lady might have been in a fight with the blacksmith, perhaps, I don’t know, but I do know that if I don’t make a search here in the circumstances, somebody important is bound to ask me why I didn’t. And that person would be you, wouldn’t it, commander?”

  “Good answer, young man! And I have to admit that I’ve been a bloody fool more times than I can count, so I can sympathize.”

  Vimes looked down again at the corpse and it was suddenly urgent to try to find out what Willikins had done with the claw, complete with ring, that they had found the previous night. Awkwardly, he said to the assembled goblins, “I believe that I have found some jewelry belonging to this young lady and, of course, I shall bring it to you.”

  There was not so much as an acknowledgment from the impassive horde. Vimes considered that thought. Hordes come in killing and stealing. This lot look like a bunch of worried people. He walked over to a grizzled old goblin who might have been the one he had seen up on the surface a thousand years ago, and said, “I’d like to see more of this place, sir. I’m sorry for the death of the lady. I’ll bring the killers to justice.”

  “Just ice!” Once again it echoed around the cave. The old goblin stepped forward v
ery gently and touched Vimes’s sleeve. “The dark is your friend, Mr. Po-leess-maan. I hear you, you hear me. In the dark you may go where you wish. Mr. Po-leess-maan, please do not kill us.”

  Vimes looked past the goblin to the ranks behind, most of them as skinny as rakes, and this, well, chieftain probably, who looked as though he was decomposing while standing up, didn’t want him to hurt them? He remembered the scattered flowers. The orphaned bergamot tea. The uneaten meal. They were trying to hide away from me? He nodded and said, “I do not attack anyone who isn’t attacking me, sir, and I will not start today. Can you tell me how this lady came to be … killed?”

  “She was thrown into our cave last night, Mr. Po-leess-maan. She had gone out to check the rabbit snares. Thrown down like old bones, Mr. Po-leess-maan, like old bones. No blood in her. Like old bones.”

  “What was her name?”

  The old goblin looked at Vimes as if shocked, and after a moment said, “Her name was The Pleasant Contrast of the Orange and Yellow Petals in the Flower of the Gorse. Thank you, Mr. Po-leess-maan of the dark.”

  “I’m afraid I’m only just starting to investigate this crime,” said Vimes, feeling unusually embarrassed.

  “I meant, Mr. Po-leess-maan, thank you for believing that goblins have names. My name is Sound of the Rain on Hard Ground. She was my second wife.”

  Vimes stared at the rugged face that only a mother could tolerate and perhaps love, searching for any sign of anger or grief. There was just a sense of sorrow and hopeless resignation at the fact that the world was as it was and always would be and there was nothing that could be done. The goblin was a sigh on legs. In dejection he looked up at Vimes and said, “They used to send hungry dogs into the cave, Mr. Po-leess-maan. Those were good days; we ate well.”