The Wee Free Men (Discworld 30)

Tiffany hesitated.

“There was old Mrs. Snapperly,” she said. Oh, yes. She’d lived all alone in a strange cottage, all right….

“Good name,” said Miss Tick. “Can’t say I’ve heard it before, though. Where is she?”

“She died in the snow last winter,” said Tiffany slowly.

“And now tell me what you’re not telling me,” said Miss Tick, sharp as a knife.

“Er…she was begging, people think, but no one opened their doors to her and, er…it was a cold night, and…she died.”

“And she was a witch, was she?”

“Everyone said she was a witch,” said Tiffany. She really did not want to talk about this. No one in the villages around here wanted to talk about it. No one went near the ruins of the cottage in the woods, either.

“You don’t think so?”

“Um…” Tiffany squirmed. “You see…the Baron had a son called Roland. He was only twelve, I think. And he went riding in the woods by himself last summer and his dogs came back without him.”

“Mrs. Snapperly lived in those woods?” said Miss Tick.

“Yes.”

“And people think she killed him?” said Miss Tick. She sighed. “They probably think she cooked him in the oven, or something.”

“They never actually said,” said Tiffany. “But I think it was something like that, yes.”

“And did his horse turn up?” said Miss Tick.

“No,” said Tiffany. “And that was strange, because if it’d turned up anywhere along the hills, the people would have noticed it….”

Miss Tick folded her hands, sniffed, and smiled a smile with no humor in it at all.

“Easily explained,” she said. “Mrs. Snapperly must have had a really big oven, eh?”

“No, it was really quite small,” said Tiffany. “Only ten inches deep.”

“I bet Mrs. Snapperly had no teeth and talked to herself, right?” said Miss Tick.

“Yes. And she had a cat. And a squint,” said Tiffany. And it all came out in a rush: “And so after he vanished, they went to her cottage and they looked in the oven and they dug up her garden and they threw stones at her old cat until it died and they turned her out of her cottage and piled up all her old books in the middle of the room and set fire to them and burned the place to the ground and everyone said she was an old witch.”

“They burned the books,” said Miss Tick in a flat voice.

“Because they said they had old writing in them,” said Tiffany. “And pictures of stars.”

“And when you went to look, did they?” said Miss Tick.

Tiffany suddenly felt cold. “How did you know?” she said.

“I’m good at listening. Well, did they?”

Tiffany sighed. “Yes, I went to the cottage next day, and some of the pages, you know, had kind of floated up in the heat? And I found a part of one, and it had all old lettering and gold and blue edging. And I buried her cat.”

“You buried the cat?”

“Yes! Someone had to!” said Tiffany hotly.

“And you measured the oven,” said Miss Tick. “I know you did, because you just told me what size it was.” And you measure soup plates, Miss Tick added to herself. What have I found here?