Snuff (Discworld 39)

When his manservant was loitering under a tree a little way further up the lane, Vimes said, “Sorry about that, but every man has his pride. I bear that in mind. So should you. I’m a copper, a policeman, and something here is calling to me. It seems to me that you have something you’d like me to know and it’s not just about who sits

in the high castle, am I right? Something bad has happened, you are practically sweating it. Well?”

Jethro leaned toward him and said, “Dead Man’s Copse on the hill. Midnight. I won’t wait.”

The blacksmith then turned round and walked away without a glance behind.

Vimes lit a fresh cigar and strolled toward the tree where Willikins was appearing to enjoy the landscape. He straightened up when he saw Vimes. “We’d better get a move on, sir. Dinner is at eight o’clock and her ladyship would like you to be smart. She sets a lot of store by your being smartly turned out, sir.”

Vimes groaned. “Not the official tights?”

“Happily not, sir, not in the country, but her ladyship was very specific about my bringing the plum-colored evening dress, sir.”

“She says it makes me look dashing,” said Vimes morosely. “Do you think it makes me look dashing? Am I a dashing kind of person, would you say?” The birds started singing from a low branch of the tree.

“I’d put you down as more the sprinting sort, sir,” said Willikins.

They set off home, in silence for a while, which is to say that neither man spoke while wildlife sang, buzzed and screeched, eventually causing Vimes to say, “I wish I knew what the hell all those things are.”

Willikins put his head on one side for a moment, then said, “Parkinson’s warbler, the deep-throated frog-eater and the common creed-waggler, sir.”

“You know?”

“Oh, yes, sir. I frequent the music halls, sir, and there’s always a bird or animal impersonator on the bill. It tends to stick. I also know seventy-three farmyard noises, my favorite of which is the sound of a farmer who has had one boot sucked from his foot by the muck he’s trying to avoid and has nowhere else to put his stockinged foot but in the said muck. Hugely amusing, sir.”

They had reached the long drive to the Hall now, and gravel crunched beneath their boots. Under his breath, Vimes said, “I’ve arranged to meet young Mr. Jefferson at midnight in the copse on Hangman’s Hill. He wishes to tell me something important. Remind me, Willikins, what is a copse, exactly?”

“Anything between a clump of trees and a small wood. Technically, sir, the one at the top of Hangman’s Hill is a beech hanger. That just means, well, a small beech wood on top of a hill. You remember Mad Jack Ramkin? The bloke that got it made thirty feet higher at great expense? He had the beech trees planted on the top.”

Vimes liked the crunching of the gravel; it would mask the sound of their conversation. “I talked to the blacksmith with, I would swear, no one else in earshot. But this is the country, yes, Willikins?”

“There was a man setting rabbit snares in the hedge behind you,” said Willikins. “Perfectly normal activity, although to my mind he took too long over it.”

They crunched onward for a while, and Vimes said, “Tell me, Willikins. If a man had arranged to meet another man at midnight in a place with a name like Dead Man’s Copse, on Hangman’s Hill, what would you consider to be his most sensible course of action, given that his wife had forbidden him to bring weapons to his country house?”

Willikins nodded. “Why, sir, given your maxim that everything is a weapon if you choose to think of it as such, I would advise said man to see whether he has a compatriot what has, for example, acquired the keys to a cabinet that contains a number of superbly made carving knives, ideal for close fighting; and I personally would include a side order of cheesewire, sir, in conformance with my belief that the only important thing in a fight to the death is that the death should not be yours.”

“Can’t carry cheesewire, man! Not the Commander of the Watch!”

“Quite so, commander, and may I therefore advise your brass knuckles—the gentleman’s alternative? I know you never travel without them, sir. There’s some vicious people around and I know you have to be among them.”

“Look, Willikins, I don’t like to involve you in all this. It’s only a hunch, after all.”

Willikins waved this away. “You wouldn’t keep me out of it for a big clock, sir, because all this is tickling my fancy as well. I shall lay out a selection of cutting edges for you in your dressing room, sir, and I myself will go up to the copse half an hour before you’re due to be there, with my trusty bow and an assortment of favorite playthings. It’s nearly a full moon, clear skies, there’ll be shadows everywhere, and I’ll be standing in the darkest one of them.”

Vimes looked at him for a moment and said, “Could I please amend that suggestion? Could you not be there in the second darkest shadow one hour before midnight, to see who steps into the darkest shadow?”

“Ah yes, that’s why you command the watch, sir,” said Willikins, and to Vimes’s shock there was a hint of a tear in the man’s voice. “You’re listening to the street, aren’t you, sir, yes?”

Vimes shrugged. “No streets here, Willikins!”

Willikins shook his head. “Once a street boy always a street boy, sir. It comes with us, in the pinch. Mothers go, fathers go—if we ever knew who they were—but the Street, well, the Street looks after us. In the pinch it keeps us alive.”

Willikins darted ahead of Vimes and rang the doorbell, so that the footman had the door open by the time Vimes came up the steps. “You’ve got just enough time to listen to Young Sam read to you, sir,” Willikins added, making his way up the stairs. “Wonderful thing, reading, I wish I’d learned it when I was a kid. Her ladyship will be in her dressing room and guests will be arriving in about half an hour. Must go, sir. I’ve got to teach that fat toad of a butler his manners, sir.”

Vimes winced. “You’re not allowed to strangle butlers, Willikins. I’m sure I read it in a book of etiquette.”

Willikins gave him a look of mock offense. “No garrotting will be involved, sir,” Willikins went on, opening the door to Vimes’s dressing room, “but he is a snob of the first water. Never did meet a butler who wasn’t. I just have to give him an orientation lesson.”