Snuff (Discworld 39)

“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 said, “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 have 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 seriousl

y, 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.