Discworld 39 - Snuff Read online

  Vetinari stood up and stared out of the window. “This is a city of beggars and thieves, Drumknott, is it not? I pride myself that we have some of the most skilled. In fact, if there were such a thing as an inter-city thieving contest, Ankh-Morpork would bring home the trophy and probably everyone’s wallets. Theft has a purpose, Drumknott, but one intrinsically feels that while there are things by nature unavailable to the common man, there are also things not to be allowed to the rich and powerful.”

  Drumknott’s understanding of his master’s thought processes would appear to an outsider to be magical, but it was amazing what could be gleaned by watching what Lord Vetinari was reading, listening to apparently pointless observations and integrating those, as only Drumknott could integrate, into current problems and concerns. He said, “Is this now about the smuggling, sir?”

  “Quite so, quite so. I have no problem with smuggling. It involves the qualities of enterprise, stealth and original thinking. Attributes to be encouraged in the common man. In truth, it doesn’t do that much harm and allows the man in the street a little frisson of enjoyment. Everyone should occasionally break the law in some small and delightful way, Drumknott. It’s good for the hygiene of the brain.”

  Drumknott, whose cranial cleanness could never be in dispute, said, “Nevertheless, sir, taxes must be levied and paid. The city is growing. All of this must be paid for.”

  “Indeed,” said Vetinari. “I could have taxed all kinds of things, but I have decided to tax something that you could eminently do without. It’s hardly addictive, is it?”

  “Some people tend to think so. There is a certain amount of grumbling, sir.”

  Vetinari did not look up from his paperwork. “Drumknott,” he said. “Life is addictive. If people complain overmuch, I think I will have to draw that fact to their attention.”

  The Patrician smiled again and steepled his fingers. “In short, Drumknott, a certain amount of harmless banditry amongst the lower classes is to be smiled upon if not actively encouraged, for the health of the city, but what should we do when the highborn and wealthy take to crime? Indeed, if a poor man will spend a year in prison for stealing out of hunger, how high would the gallows need to be to hang the rich man who breaks the law out of greed?”

  “I would like to reiterate, sir, that I buy all my own paper clips,” said Drumknott urgently.

  “Of course, but in your case I am pleased to say that you have a brain so pristine that it sparkles.”

  “I keep the receipts, sir,” Drumknott inisted, “just in case you wish to see them.” There was silence for a moment, then he continued. “Commander Vimes should be well on his way to the Hall by now, my lord. That might prove a fortunate circumstance.”

  Vetinari’s face was blank. “Yes indeed, Drumknott, yes indeed.”

  The Hall had been a full day’s journey, which in coaching terms really meant two, with a stay at an inn. Vimes spent the time listening for the sound of overtaking horsemen from the city bringing much-to-be-desired news of dire catastrophe. Usually Ankh-Morpork could supply this on an almost hourly basis but now it was singularly failing to deliver its desperate son in his hour of vegetation.

  The other sun was setting on this particular son when the coach pulled up outside a pair of gates. After a second or two, an elderly man, an extremely elderly man, appeared from nowhere and made a great show of opening said gates, then stood to attention as the coach went through, beaming in the knowledge of a job well done. Once inside, the coach stopped.

  Sybil, who had been reading, nudged her husband without looking up from her book and said, “It’s customary to give Mr. Coffin a penny. In the old days my grandfather kept a little charcoal brazier in the coach, you know, in theory to keep warm but mostly to heat up pennies to red heat before picking them up in some tongs and tossing them out for the gatekeeper to catch. Apparently everybody enjoyed it, or so my grandfather said, but we don’t do that anymore.”

  Vimes fumbled in his purse for some small change, opened the carriage door and stepped down, much to the shock of the aforesaid Mr. Coffin, who backed away into the thick undergrowth, watching Vimes like a cornered animal.

  “Nice job, Mr. Coffin, very good lifting of the latch there, excellent work.” Vimes proffered the coin and Mr. Coffin backed further away, his stance suggesting that he was going to bolt at any moment. Vimes flicked the coin in the air and the fearful man caught it, deftly spat on it and melted back into the scenery. Vimes got the impression that he resented the lack of hiss.

  “How long ago did your family stop throwing hot money at the servants?” Vimes said, settling back into his seat as the coach progressed.

  Sybil laid aside her book. “My father put a stop to it. My mother complained. So did the gatekeepers.”

  “I should think so!”

  “No, Sam, they complained when the custom was stopped.”

  “But it’s demeaning!”

  Sybil sighed. “Yes, I know, Sam, but it was also free money, you see. In my great-grandfather’s day, if things were busy, a man might make sixpence in a day. And since the old boy was almost permanently sozzled on rum and brandy he quite often threw out a dollar. One of the real old-fashioned solid-gold dollars, I mean. A man could live quite well for a year on one of those, especially out here.”

  “Yes, but—” Vimes began, but his wife silenced him with a smile. She had a special smile for these occasions; it was warm and friendly and carved out of rock. You had to stop discussing politics or you would run right into it, causing no damage to anything but yourself. Wisely, with a wisdom that had been well learned, Sam Vimes restricted himself to staring out of the window.

  With the gate far behind he kept looking, in the fading light, to see the big house that was apparently at the center of all this, and couldn’t find it until they had rattled along an avenue of trees, past what some wretched poet would have had to call “verdant pastures,” dotted with almost certainly, Vimes considered, sheep, through manicured woodland, and then reached a bridge that would not have been out of place back in the city.** The bridge spanned what Vimes first thought was an ornamental lake but turned out to be a very wide river; even as they trundled over it, in dignified splendor, Vimes saw a large boat travelling along it by some means unknown, but which, to judge from the smell as it went past, must have something to do with cattle. At this point Young Sam said, “Those ladies haven’t got any clothes on! Are they going to have a swim?”

  Vimes nodded absently because the whole area of naked ladies was not something you wanted to discuss with a six-year-old boy. In any case, his attention was still on the boat; white water churned all around it and the seamen on the deck made what was possibly a nautical gesture to Lady Sybil or, quite possibly, one of the naked ladies.

  “That is a river, isn’t it?” said Vimes.

  “It’s the Quire,” said Lady Sybil. “It drains most of the Octarine grass country and comes out in Quirm. If I recall correctly, however, most people call it ‘Old Treachery.’ It has moods, but I used to enjoy those little riverboats when I was a child. They really were rather jolly.”

  The coach rumbled down the far end of the bridge and up a long drive to, yes, the stately home, presumably so called, Vimes thought, because it was about the size of the average state. There was a herd of deer on the lawn, and a big herd of people clustered around what
was obviously the front door. They were shuffling into two lines, as though they were a wedding party. They were, in fact, some kind of guard of honor, and there must have been more than three hundred there, from gardeners through to footmen, all trying to smile and not succeeding very well. It reminded Vimes of a Watch parade.

  Two footmen collided while endeavoring to place a step by the coach, and Vimes totally spoiled the moment by getting out of the opposite door and swinging Lady Sybil down after him.

  In the middle of the throng of nervous people was a friendly face, and it belonged to Willikins, Vimes’s butler and general manservant from the city. Vimes had been adamant about that, at least. If he was going to the countryside, then he would have Willikins there. He pointed out to his wife that Willikins was definitely not a policeman, and so it was not the same as bringing your work home. And that was true. Willikins was definitely not a policeman, because most policemen don’t know how to glass up somebody with a broken bottle without hurting their hands or how to make weapons of limited but specific destruction out of common kitchen utensils. Willikins had a history that showed up when he had to carve the turkey. And now Young Sam, seeing his scarred but familiar smile, ran up through the row of hesitant employees to cuddle the butler at the knees. For his part, Willikins turned Young Sam upside down and spun him around before gently putting him back on the gravel, the whole process being a matter of huge entertainment to a boy of six. Vimes trusted Willikins. He didn’t trust many people. Too many years as a copper made you rather discriminating in that respect.

  He leaned toward his wife. “What do I do now?” he whispered, because the ranks of worried half-smiles were unnerving him.

  “Whatever you like, dear,” she said. “You’re the boss. You take Watch parade, don’t you?”

  “Yes, but I know who everyone is and their rank and, well, everything! It’s never been like this in the city!”

  “Yes, dear, that’s because in Ankh-Morpork everybody knows Commander Vimes.”

  Well, how hard could it be? Vimes walked up to a man with a battered straw hat, a spade and, as Vimes neared, a state of subdued terror even worse than that of Sam Vimes himself. Vimes held out his hand. The man looked at it as if he had never seen a hand before. Vimes managed to say, “Hello, I’m Sam Vimes. Who are you?”

  The man thus addressed looked around for help, support and guidance or escape, but there was none; the crowd was deathly silent. He said, “William Butler, your grace, if it’s all the same to you.”

  “Pleased to meet you, William,” said Vimes, and held out his hand again, which William almost leaned away from before offering Vimes a palm the texture of an ancient leather glove.

  Well, thought Vimes, this isn’t too bad, and he ventured into unknown territory with, “And what’s your job around here, William?”

  “Gardener,” William managed, and held up his spade between himself and Vimes, both as a protection and as exhibit “A,” proof positive of his bona fides. Since Vimes himself was equally at sea, he settled for testing the blade with his finger and mumbling, “Properly maintained, I see. Well done, Mr. Butler.”

  He jumped when there was a tap on his shoulder and his wife said, “Well done, yourself, dear, but all you really needed to do is go up the steps and congratulate the butler and the housekeeper on the wonderful turnout of the staff. We’ll be here all day if you want to chat to everybody.” And with that, Lady Sybil took her husband firmly by the hand and led him up the steps between the rows of owlish stares.

  “All right,” he whispered, “I can see the footmen and the cooks and gardeners, but who are those blokes in the thick jackets and the bowler hats? Have we got the bailiffs in?”

  “That is reasonably unlikely, dear. In fact, they are some of the gamekeepers.”

  “The hats look wrong on them.”

  “Do you think so? As a matter of fact they were designed by Lord Bowler to protect his gamekeepers from vicious attacks by poachers. Deceptively strong, I’m told, and much better than steel helmets because you don’t get the nasty ringing in your ears.”

  Clearly unable to hide their displeasure that their new master had chosen to shake the hand of a gardener before addressing either of them, the butler and housekeeper, who shared the traditional girth and pinkness that Vimes had learned to expect on these occasions, were aware that their master had not come to them and, he noticed, were coming to him as fast as their little legs would carry them.

  Vimes knew about life below stairs, hell, yes, he did! Not so long ago a policeman summoned to a big house would be sent around to the back door to be instructed to drag away some weeping chambermaid or not-very-bright boot boy accused without evidence of stealing some ring or silver-handled brush that the lady of the house would probably find later, perhaps when she had finished the gin. That wasn’t supposed to be what coppers were for, although in reality, of course it was what coppers were for. It was about privilege, and young Vimes had hardly worn in his first pair of policeman’s boots when his sergeant had explained what that meant. It meant private law. In those days an influential man could get away with quite a lot if he had the right accent, the right crest on his tie or the right chums, and a young policeman who objected might get away without a job and without a reference.

  It wasn’t like that now, not even close.

  But in those days young Vimes had seen butlers as double-traitors to both sides and so the large man in the black tailcoat got a glare that skewered him. The fact that he gave Vimes a little nod did not help matters. Vimes lived in a world where people saluted.

  “I am Silver, the butler, your grace,” the man carefully intoned reprovingly.

  Vimes immediately grabbed him by the hand and shook it warmly. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Silver!”

  The butler winced. “It’s Silver, sir, not Mister.”

  “Sorry about that, Mr. Silver. So what’s your first name?”

  The butler’s face was an entertainment. “Silver, sir! Always Silver!”

  “Well, Mr. Silver,” said Vimes, “it’s an item of faith with me that once you get past the trousers all men are the same.”

  The butler’s face was wooden as he said, “That is as maybe, sir, but I am and always will be, commander, Silver. Good evening, your grace, ” the butler turned, “and good evening, Lady Sybil. It must be seven or eight years since anyone from the family came to stay. May we look forward to further visits? And might I please introduce to you my wife, Mrs. Silver, the housekeeper, whom I think you have not met before?”

  Vimes could not stop his mind translating the little speech as: I am annoyed that you ignored me to shake hands with the gardener … which, to be fair, was not deliberate. Vimes had shaken the gardener’s hand out of sheer, overpowering terror. The translation continued: and now I am worried that we might not be having such an easy life in the near future.

  “Hold on a minute,” said Vimes, “my wife is a Grace as well, you know, that’s a bit more than a lady. Syb— Her Grace made me look at the score chart.”

  Lady Sybil knew her husband in the way people living next door to a volcano get to know the moods of their neighbor. The important thing is to avoid the bang.

  “Sam, I have been Lady Sybil to all the servants in both our houses ever since I was a girl, and so I regard Lady Sybil as my name, at least among people I ha
ve come to look on as friends. You know that!” And, she added to herself, we all have our little quirks, Sam, even you.

  And with that scented admonition floating in the air, Lady Sybil shook the housekeeper’s hand, and then turned to her son. “Now it’s bed for you, Young Sam, straight after supper. And no arguing.”

  Vimes looked around as the little party stepped into the entrance hall which was to all intents and purposes an armory. It would always be an armory in the eyes of any policeman although, undoubtedly, to the Ramkins who had put the swords, halberds, cutlasses, maces, pikes and shields on every wall, the assemblage was no more than a bit of historical furniture. In the middle of it all was the enormous Ramkin coat of arms. Vimes already knew what the motto said, “What We Have We Keep.” You could call it … a hint.

  Soon afterward Lady Sybil was busily engaged in the huge laundry and ironing room with Purity the maid, whom Vimes had insisted she take on after the birth of Young Sam, and who, both he and his wife believed, had an understanding with Willikins, although exactly what it was they understood remained a speculation. The two women were engrossed in the feminine pastime of taking clothes out of some things, and putting them into other things. This could go on for a long time, and included the ceremony of holding some things up to the light and giving a sad little sigh.