Making Money (Discworld 36)

When they were walking up the main stairs Moist said: 'What relation is Hubert to the current chairman?'

'Nephew,' said Bent. 'How did you - ?'

'I'm always interested in people,' said Moist, smiling to himself. 'And there's the red hair, of course. Why does Mrs Lavish have two crossbows on her desk?'

'Family heirlooms, sir,' lied Bent. It was a deliberate, flagrant lie, and he must have meant it to be seen as such. Family heirlooms. And she sleeps in her office. All right, she's an invalid, but people usually do that at home.

She doesn't intend to step out of the room. She's on guard. And she's very particular about who comes in.

'Do you have any interests, Mr Bent?'

'I do my job with care and attention, sir.'

'Yes, but what do you do in the evenings?'

'I double-check the day's totals in my office, sir. I find counting very... satisfying.'

'You're very good at it, yes?'

'Better than you can imagine, sir.'

'So if I save ninety-three dollars forty-seven a year for seven years at two and a quarter per cent, compound, how - '

'$835.13 calculated once annually, sir,' said Bent calmly.

Yes, and twice you've known the exact time, thought Moist. And you didn't look at a watch. You are good with numbers. Inhumanly good, perhaps...

'No holidays?' he said aloud.

'I did a walking tour of the major banking houses of Uberwald last summer, sir. It was most instructive.'

'That must have taken weeks. I'm glad you felt able to tear yourself away!'

'Oh, it was easy, sir. Miss Drapes, who is the senior clerk, sent a coded clacks of the day's business to each of my lodging houses at the close of business every day. I was able to review it over my after-dinner strudel and respond instantly with advice and instructions.'

'Is Miss Drapes a useful member of staff?'

'Indeed. She performs her duties with care and alacrity.' He paused. They were at the top of the stairs. Bent turned and looked directly at Moist. 'I have worked here all my life, Mr Lipwig. Be careful of the Lavish family. Mrs Lavish is the best of them, a wonderful woman. The others... are used to getting their own way.'

Old family, old money. That kind of family. Moist felt a distant call, like the song of the skylark. It came back to taunt him every time, for example, he saw an out-of-towner in the street with a map and a perplexed expression, crying out to be relieved of his money in some helpful and hard-to-follow way.

'Dangerously so?' he said.

Bent looked a little affronted at this directness. 'They are not at home to disappointment, sir. They have tried to declare Mrs Lavish insane, sir.'

'Really?' said Moist. 'Compared to who?'

The wind blew through the town of Big Cabbage, which liked to call itself the Green Heart of the Plains.

It was called Big Cabbage because it was home to the Biggest Cabbage in the World, and the town's inhabitants were not very creative when it came to names. People travelled miles to see this wonder; they'd go inside its concrete interior and peer out through the windows, buy cabbage-leaf bookmarks, cabbage ink, cabbage shirts, Captain Cabbage dolls, musical boxes carefully crafted from kohlrabi and cauliflower that played 'The Cabbage Eater's Song', cabbage jam, kale ale, and green cigars made from a newly developed species of cabbage and rolled on the thighs of local maidens, presumably because they liked it.

Then there was the excitement of BrassicaWorld, where very small children could burst into terrified screams at the huge head of Captain Cabbage himself, along with his friends Cauliflower the Clown and Billy Broccoli. For older visitors there was of course the Cabbage Research Institute, over which a green pall always hung and downwind of which plants tended to be rather strange and sometimes turned to watch you as you passed.

And then... what better way to record the day of a lifetime than pose for a picture at the behest of the black-clad man with the iconograph who took the happy family and promised a framed, coloured picture, sent right to their home, for a mere three dollars, P&P included, one dollar deposit to cover expenses, if you would be so good, sir, and may I say what wonderful children you have there, madam, they are a credit to you and no mistake, oh, and did I say that if you are not delighted with the framed picture then send no further money and we shall say no more about it?

The kale ale was generally pretty good, and there's no such thing as too much flattery where mothers are concerned and, all right, the man had rather strange teeth, which seemed determined to make a break from his mouth, but none of us is perfect and what was there to lose?

What there was to lose was a dollar, and they add up. Whoever said you can't fool an honest man wasn't one.