Discworld 39 - Snuff Read online

  In the absence of anything else to do, Vimes headed back out to the magnificent flight of steps, where he lit a cigar. Sybil was adamant about no smoking in the house. A voice behind him said, “You don’t need to do that, sir. The Hall has a rather good smoking room, including a clockwork air extractor, which is very posh, sir, believe me, you don’t often see them.” Vimes let Willikins lead the way.

  It was a pretty good smoking room, thought Vimes, although his first-hand experience of them was admittedly limited. The room included a large snooker table and, down below, a cellar with more alcohol than any reformed alcoholic should ever see.

  “We did tell them I don’t drink, didn’t we, Willikins?”

  “Oh yes, sir. Silver said that generally the Hall finds it appropriate—I think his words were—to keep the cellar full in case of arrivals.”

  “Well, it seems to me to be a shame to pass up the opportunity, Willikins, so be my guest and pour yourself a drink.”

  Willikins perceptibly recoiled. “Oh no, sir, I couldn’t possibly do that, sir.”

  “Why not, man?”

  “It’s just not done, sir. I would be the laughingstock of the League of Gentlemen’s Gentlemen if I was so impertinent as to have a drink with my employer. It would be getting ideas above my station, sir.”

  This offended Vimes to his shakily egalitarian core,** who said, “I know your station, Willikins, and it’s about the same station as mine when the chips are down and the wounds have healed.”

  “Look, sir,” said Willikins, almost pleading. “Just occasionally we have to follow some rules. So, on this occasion I won’t drink with you, it not being Hogswatch or the birth of an heir, which are accounted for under the rules, but instead I’ll follow the acceptable alternative, which is to wait until you’ve gone to bed and drink half the bottle.”

  Well, thought Vimes, we all have our funny little ways, although some of Willikins’ would not be funny if he was angry with you in a dark alley; but he brightened as he watched Willikins rummage through a well-stocked cocktail cabinet, meticulously dropping items into a glass shaker.**

  It should not be possible to achieve the effect of alcohol in a drink without including alcohol, but among the skills that Willikins had learned, or possibly stolen, over the years was the ability to mix out of common household ingredients a totally soft drink that nevertheless had very nearly everything you wanted in alcohol. Tabasco, cucumber, ginger and chili were all in there somewhere and beyond that it was best not to ask too many questions.

  Drink gloriously in hand, Vimes leaned back and said, “Staff okay, Willikins?”

  Willikins lowered his voice. “Oh, they’re skimming stuff off the top, sir, but nothing more than usual in my experience. Everyone sneaks something, it’s the perk of the job and the way of the world.”

  Vimes smiled at Willikins’ almost theatrically wooden expression and said loudly for the hidden listener, “A conscientious man, then, is he, Silver? I’m very glad to hear it.”

  “Seems like a steady one to me, sir,” said the manservant, rolling his eyes toward heaven and pointing a finger to a small grille in the wall: the inlet to the fabled extractor, which no doubt needed a man behind the scenes to wind the clockwork, and would any butler worth his bulging stomach forgo an opportunity to keep tabs on what the new master was thinking? Would he hell.

  It was perks, wasn’t it? Of course people here would be on the take. You didn’t need evidence. It was human nature. He had constantly suggested to Sybil—he wouldn’t have dared insist—that the place be closed down and sold to somebody who really wanted to live in what he had heard was a creaking, freezing pile that could have housed a regiment. She would not hear of it. She had warm childhood memories of the place, she said, of climbing trees and swimming and fishing in the river, and picking flowers and helping the gardeners and similar jolly rural enterprises that were, to Vimes, as remote as the moon, given that his adolescent preoccupations had had everything to do with just staying alive. You could fish in the River Ankh, provided you took care not to catch anything. In fact it was amazing what you could catch by just letting one drop of the Ankh pass your lips. And as for picnicking, well, in Ankh-Morpork when you were a kid sometimes you nicked and sometimes you picked, mostly at scabs.

  It had been a long day and last night’s sleep in the inn had not been salubrious or restful, but before he got into the huge bed Vimes opened a window and stared out at the night. The wind was murmuring in the trees; Vimes mildly disapproved of trees, but Sybil liked them and that was that. Things that he didn’t care to know about rustled, whooped, gibbered and went inexplicably crazy in the darkness outside. He didn’t know what they were and hoped never to find out. What kind of noise was this for a man to go to sleep to?

  He joined his wife in the bed, thrashing around for some time before he found her, and settled down. She had instructed him to leave the window open to get some allegedly glorious fresh air, and Vimes lay there miserably, straining his ears for the reassuring noises of a drunk going home, or arguing with the sedan-chair owner about the vomit on the cushions, and the occasional street fight, domestic disturbance or even piercing scream, all punctuated at intervals by the chiming of the city clocks, no two of which, famously, ever agreed; and the more subtle sounds, like the rumble of the honey wagons as Harry King’s night-soil collectors went about the business of business. And best of all was the cry of the night watchman at the end of the street: Twelve o’clock and all is well! It wasn’t so long ago that any man trying this would have had his bell, helmet and quite probably his boots stolen before the echoes had died away. But not anymore! No, indeedy! This was the modern Watch, Vimes’s Watch, and anyone who challenged the watchman on his rounds with malice aforethought would hear the whistle blow and very quickly learn that if anybody was going to be kicked around on the street, it wasn’t going to be a watchman. The duty watchmen always made a point of shouting the hour with theatrical clarity and amazing precision outside Number One Scoone Avenue, so that the commander would hear it. Now, Vimes stuck his head under an enormous pillow and tried not to hear the tremendous and disturbing lack of noise whose absence could wake a man up when he had learned to ignore a carefully timed sound every night for years.

  But at five o’clock in the morning Mother Nature pressed a button and the world went mad: every blessed bird and animal and, by the sound of it, alligator vied with all the others to make itself heard. The cacophony took some time to get through to Vimes. The giant bed at least had an almost inexhaustible supply of pillows. Vimes was a great fan of pillows when away from his own bed. Not for him one or even two sad little bags of feathers as an afterthought to the bed—no! He liked pillows to burrow into and turn into some kind of soft fortress, leaving one hole for the oxygen supply.

  The awful racket was dying down by the time he drifted up to the linen surface. Oh yes, he recalled, that was another bloody thing about the country. It started too damn early. The commander was, by custom, necessity and inclination a nighttime man, sometimes even an all-night man; alien to him was the concept of two seven o’clocks in one day. On the other hand, he could smell bacon, and a moment later two nervous young ladies entered the room carrying trays on complex metallic things which, unfolded, made it almost but not totally impossible to sit up and eat the breakfast they contained.

 
Vimes blinked. Things were looking up! Usually Sybil considered it her wifely duty to see to it that her husband lived forever, and was convinced that this happy state of affairs could be achieved by feeding him bowel-scouring nuts and grains and yogurt, which to Vimes’s mind was a type of cheese that wasn’t trying hard enough. Then there was the sad adulteration of his mid-morning bacon, lettuce and tomato snack. It was amazing but true that in this matter the watchmen were prepared to obey the boss’s wife to the letter and, if the boss yelled and stamped, which was perfectly understandable, nay forgivable, when a man was forbidden his mid-morning lump of charred pig, would refer him to the instructions given to them by his wife, in the certain knowledge that all threats of sacking were hollow and if carried out would be immediately rescinded.

  Now Sybil appeared among the pillows and said, “You’re on holiday, dear.” What you could eat on holiday also included two fried eggs, just as he liked them, and a sausage—but not, unfortunately, the fried slice, which even on holiday was apparently still a sin. The coffee, however, was thick, black and sweet.

  “You slept very well,” said Sybil, as Vimes stared at the unexpected largesse.

  He said, “No, I didn’t, dear, not a wink, I assure you.”

  “Sam, you were snoring all night. I heard you!”

  Vimes’s grasp of successful husbandry prevented him from making any further comment except, “Really? Was I, dear? Oh, I am sorry.”

  Sybil leafed through a small pile of pastel envelopes that had been inserted into her breakfast tray. “Well, the news has got around,” she said. “The Duchess of Keepsake has invited us to a ball, Sir Henry and Lady Withering have invited us to a ball, and Lord and Lady Hangfinger have invited us to, yes, a ball!”

  “Well,” said Vimes, “that’s a lot of—”

  “Don’t you dare, Sam!” his wife warned and Vimes finished lamely, “ … invitations? You know I don’t dance, dear, I just shuffle about and tread on your feet.”

  “Well, it’s mainly for the young people, you see? People come for the therapeutic baths at Ham-on-Rye, just down the road. Really, it’s all about getting the daughters married to suitable gentlemen, and that means balls, almost continuous balls.”

  “I can manage a waltz,” said Vimes, “that’s just a matter of counting, but you know I can’t stand all those jumping-about ones like Strip the Widow and the Gay Gordon.”

  “Don’t worry, Sam. Most of the older men find a place to sit and smoke or take snuff. The mothers do the work of finding the eligible bachelors for their daughters. I just hope that my friend Ariadne will find suitable husbands for her girls. She had sextuplets, very rare, you know. Of course, young Mavis is very devout, and there is invariably a young clergyman looking for a wife and, above all, a dowry. And Emily is petite, blonde, an excellent cook but rather conscious of her enormous bosom.”

  Vimes stared at the ceiling. “I suspect that not only will she find a husband,” he forecast, “a husband will find her. Call it a man’s intuition.”

  “And then there’s Fleur,” said Lady Sybil, not rising to the bait. “She makes quite nice little bonnets, so I understand.” She thought for a moment and added, “oh, and then there’s Jane. And, er, Amanda, I think. Apparently quite interested in frogs, although I fear I may have misheard her mother. Rather a strange girl, according to her mother, who doesn’t seem to know what to make of her.”

  Vimes’s lack of interest in other people’s children was limitless, but he could count. “And the last one?”

  “Oh, Hermione, she may be difficult as she has rather scandalized the family, at least in their opinion.”

  “How?”

  “She’s a lumberjack.”

  Vimes thought for a moment and said, “Well, dear, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a man with a lot of wood must be in want of a wife who can handle a great big—”

  Lady Sybil interrupted sharply: “Sam Vimes, I believe that you intend to make an indelicate remark?”

  “I think you got there before me,” said Vimes, grinning. “You generally do, dear, admit it.”

  “You may be right, dear,” she said, “but that is only to forestall you from saying it aloud. After all, you are the Duke of Ankh and widely regarded as Lord Vetinari’s right-hand man, and that means a certain amount of decorum would be advisable, don’t you think?”

  To a bachelor this would have appeared to be gentle advice; to an experienced husband it was a command, all the more powerful because it was made delicately.

  So, when Sir Samuel Vimes and Commander Vimes and His Grace the Duke of Ankh** walked out after breakfast, they were all on their best behavior. As it turned out, other people weren’t.

  There was a maid sweeping in the corridor outside the bedroom who took one frantic look at Vimes as he strolled toward her and turned her back on him, and remained staring fixedly at the wall. She appeared to be trembling with fear, and Vimes had learned that in these circumstances the last thing any man should do is ask a question or, above all, offer to lend a helping hand. Screaming could result. She was probably just shy, he told himself.

  But it seemed that shyness was catching: there were maids carrying trays or dusting or sweeping as he walked down through the building, and every time he came near one she turned her back crisply and stood staring at the wall as if her life depended on it.

  By the time he reached a long gallery lined with his wife’s ancestors, Vimes had had enough, and when a young lady carrying a tea tray spun around like the dancer on the top of a musical box he said, “Excuse me, miss, am I as ugly as all that?” Well, that was surely better than asking her why she was so rude, wasn’t it? So why in the name of any three gods did she start to run away, crockery rattling as she headed down the hall? Among the various Vimeses it was the Commander who took over; the Duke would be too forbidding and the Blackboard Monitor just wouldn’t do the trick. “Stop where you are! Put down your tray and turn around slowly!”

  She skidded, she actually skidded and, turning with perfect grace while still clutching the tray, slowed gently to a stop, where she stood shaking with anxiety as Vimes caught up with her and said, “What’s your name, miss?”

  She answered while keeping her face turned away. “Hodges, your grace, I’m very sorry, your grace.” The crockery was still rattling.

  “Look,” said Vimes, “I can’t think with all that rattling going on! Just put it down carefully, will you? Nothing bad is going to happen to you, but I’d like to see who I’m talking to, thank you very much.” The face turned reluctantly toward him.

  “There,” he said. “Miss, er, Hodges, what is the matter? You don’t have to run away from me, surely?”

  “Please, sir,” and with that the girl headed for the nearest grezen baize door and vanished through it. It was at this point that Vimes realized there was another maid only a little way behind him, practically camouflaged by her dark uniform and facing the wall and, indeed, trembling. She was surely a witness to all that had happened, so he walked carefully toward her and said, “I don’t want you to say anything. Just nod or shake your head when I ask you a question. Do you understand?” There was a barely perceptible nod. “Good, we make progress! Will you get into trouble if you say anything to me?”

  Another microscopic nod.

  “And is it likely that you’ll get into trouble
because I’ve talked to you?” The maid, rather inventively, gave a shrug.

  “And the other girl?” Still with her back to him, the unseen girl stuck out her left hand with the thumb emphatically turned down.

  “Thank you,” said Vimes, to the invisible informant. “You’ve been very helpful.”

  He walked thoughtfully back upstairs, through an avenue of turned backs, and was thankful to encounter Willikins in the laundry on the way. The batman did not turn his back on Vimes, which was a relief.**

  He was folding shirts with the care and attention he might otherwise have marshaled for the neat cutting off of a defeated opponent’s ear. When the cuffs of his own spotlessly clean jacket slid up a little you could just see part of the tattoos on his arm but not, fortunately, spell out anything they said. Vimes said, “Willikins, what are the whirling housemaids all about?”

  Willikins smiled. “Old custom, sir. A reason to it, of course—there often is if it sounds bloody stupid. No offense, commander, but knowing you I’d suggest that you let twirling housemaids spin until you have got the lie of the land, as it were. Besides, her ladyship and Young Sam are in the nursery.”

  A few minutes later Vimes, after a certain amount of trial and error, walked into what was, in a musty kind of way, a paradise.

  Vimes had never had much in the way of relatives. Not many people are anxious to let it be known that their distant ancestor was a regicide. All that, of course, was history and it amazed the new Duke of Ankh that the history books now lauded the memory of Old Stoneface, the watchman who executed the evil bastard on the throne and had suddenly struck a blow for freedom and law. History is what you make it, he had learned, and Lord Vetinari was a man with the access to and the keys of a whole range of persuasive mechanisms left over, as luck would have it, from the regicide days and currently still well oiled in the cellar. History is, indeed, what you make it and Lord Vetinari could make it … anything he wanted. And thus the dreadful killer of kings was miraculously gone—never been there, you must be mistaken, never heard of him, no such person—and replaced with the heroic, if tragically misunderstood, Slayer of Tyrants Stoneface Vimes, the famous ancestor of the highly respected His Grace the Duke of Ankh, Commander Sir Samuel Vimes. History was a wonderful thing, it moved like the sea and Vimes was taken at the flood.