Snuff (Discworld 39)

Feeney was silent as they went down the long corridors, but Vimes sensed the boy’s mind working its way through a problem, which came out when he said, “Lady Sybil is a very nice kind lady, isn’t she, sir?”

“I do not need to be reminded of that,” said Vimes, “and I’d like you to understand that she stands in vivid contrast to me. I get edgy when I think there’s a crime unsolved. A crime unsolved is against nature.”

“I keep thinking of the goblin girl, sir. She looked like a statue, and the way she spoke, well, I don’t know what to say. I mean, they can be a bloody nuisance—they’ll have the laces out of your boots if you don’t move quick enough—but when you see them in their cave you realize there’s, well, kids, old granddad goblins and—”

“Old mum goblins?” Vimes suggested quietly.

Once again, Mrs. Upshot’s little boy struggled in the unfamiliar and terrifying grip of philosophy and fetched up with, “Well, sir, I dare say cows make good mothers, but at the end of the day a calf is veal on the hoof, yes?”

“Maybe, but what would you say if the calf walked up to you and said, ‘Hello, my name is Tears of the Mushroom?’ ”

Feeney’s face once again frowned in the effort of novel cogitation. “I think I’d have the salad, sir.”

Vimes smiled. “You were in a difficult position, lad, and I’ll tell you something: so am I. It’s called being a copper. That’s why I like it when they run. That makes it all so simple. They run and I chase. I don’t know if it’s metaphysical, or something like that. But there was a corpse. You saw it, so did I and so did Miss Beedle. Keep that in mind.”

Young Sam was sitting on a hay bale in the farmyard, watching the horses come in. He ran to his dad, looking very pleased with himself, and said, “Dad, you know chickens?”

Vimes picked up his son and said, “Yes, I have heard of them, Sam.”

Young Sam wriggled out of his father’s grasp as if being picked up and swung around was inappropriate activity for a serious researcher in scatological studies, and looked solemn. “Do you know, Dad, that when a chicken does a poo, there’s a white bit on top which is the wee? Sometimes it’s like the icing on a bun, Dad!”

“Thank you for letting me know,” said Vimes. “I’ll remember that next time I eat a bun.” And every time after that, he added to himself. “I suppose you know everything about poo now, Sam?” Vimes said hopefully, and he saw Willikins smile.

Young Sam, now staring at a pile of chicken droppings through a little magnifying glass, shook his head without looking up. “Oh no, Dad, Mr. …” Here, Young Sam stopped and looked at Willikins hopefully.

Willikins cleared his throat and said, “Mr. Trout, one of the gamekeepers, was around half an hour ago, and of course your lad will strike up a conversation with anybody, and the upshot is that young Sam, it would appear, sir, would like to amass a collection of the droppings of a number of woodland creatures.”

Gamekeepers, thought Vimes. He ran that across his brain and thought about who had actually rounded the goblins up three years ago. And then he thought, how important is that compared with the question who told them to? I think I’ve got the smell of this place: people do what they’re told because they’ve always done what they’re told. But gamekeepers are a canny lot; it’s not just human beings they have to outsmart. And remember, this is the countryside, where everybody knows everybody else, and notices everybody else. I don’t think Feeney is lying, so other people know what happened here one night three years ago. I mustn’t be a bull at a gate, said Sybil, and she’s right. I need to know where I’m treading. What happened happened three years ago? I can afford to take my time over this one. Aloud he said, “How far can I take this?”

“It seems you’ve had a busy day, sir,” said Willikins. “This morning you went down to the lockup with a little tit who thinks he is a copper, and then, in company with a goblin, you and said little tit went up to Dead Man’s Copse, where you remained for quite some time, until you and the aforesaid little tit came out and you arrived here, minus one tit just now.” Willikins grinned at Vimes. “There’s people coming and going down in the kitchens all the time, sir, and gossip is a kind of currency when you get beyond the green door. You’ve got to remember, sir, that, despite Mr. Silver’s dirty looks, I am the top nob below stairs and I can go where I like and do what I like and they can choke on it if they like. The whole of the hill is visible from some window or other in this house, and maids are very cooperative, sir. It seems that all the girls are busting for a job in the Scoone Avenue establishment. Very keen they are for the city lights, sir. Very cooperative. Also, I found quite a good telescope in the study. Remarkable view of Hangman’s Hill, you know. I could practically read your lips. Young Sam quite enjoyed the game of searching for Dad.”

Vimes felt a pang of guilt at those words. This was supposed to be a family holiday, wasn’t it? But…“Someone killed a goblin girl up at Dead Man’s Copse,” he said, his voice dull. “They made sure there was a lot of blood to give our keen young copper something that he could think of as a case. He’s floundering; I don’t think he’s ever seen a corpse before.”

Willikins looked genuinely taken aback. “What, never? Maybe I’ll retire down here, except I’d die of boredom.”

A thought struck Vimes and he said, “When you were looking through the telescope, did you see anyone else go up the hill?”

Willikins shook his head. “No, sir, just you.”

They both turned to watch Young Sam, who was carefully drawing chicken poo in his notebook, and Willikins said quietly, “You’ve got a good lad there, very bright. Make the most of the time, sir.”

Vimes shook his head. “Gods know you’re right, but, well, she was cut about, and with steel, definitely steel. They only have stone weapons. They cut her about to make certain there was enough blood that even a stupid flatfoot would spot it. And she was named after the colors of a flower.”

There was a disapproving noise from Willikins. “Coppers shouldn’t get sentimental, it’s bad for the judgement. You said it yourself. You find yourself in some bloody awful domestic scene and you think things could be improved by kicking the shit out of somebody, only how do you know when to stop? That’s what you said. You said whacking a bloke in a fight is one thing, but when he’s been cuffed, it ain’t right.”

To Vimes’s surprise Willikins tapped him on the shoulder in a kindly way (you’d know it instantly if Willikins tapped you in an unfriendly way).

“Take my advice, commander, and have tomorrow off, too. There’s a boating house on the lake, and later you could take the little lad out in the woods, which are, by all accounts, knee-deep in poo of all sorts. He’ll be in poo heaven! Oh, and he also told me that he wants to go and see the smelly skull man again. I’ll tell you what, I reckon with a mind like his, he’ll be Archchancellor of Unseen University by the time he’s sixty!”

Willikins must have seen the grimace on Vimes’s face, because he went on, “Why so surprised sir? He might want to be an alchemist, right? Don’t say you’d want him to be a copper: you wouldn’t, would you? At least when you’re a wizard people don’t try to kick you in the fork, right? Of course you do have to go up against dreadful creatures from hellish dimensions, but they don’t carry knives, and you get training. Worth thinking about, commander, ’cos he’s growing like a weed and you should be putting him on the right track through life. And now, if you’ll excuse me, commander,

I’m off to annoy the servants.”

Willikins took a few steps then stopped, looked at Vimes and said, “Look at it like this, sir, if you take some time off, the guilty will be no less guilty, and the dead won’t get any less dead, and her ladyship will not try to behead you with a coat hanger.”

The guests at Lady Sybil’s tea party were leaving when Vimes got back to the Hall. He scraped the countryside off his boots and headed to the Hall’s master bathroom.

Of course, there were plenty of bathrooms around the place—probably more than there were in a street in most of the city, where a tin bath, a jug and basin, or nothing at all were the ablutions of choice or necessity…but this bathroom had been built to a design by Mad Jack Ramkin and resembled the famous bathroom at Unseen University, although, had Mad Jack designed that one, it would have been called the Obscene University, since Mad Jack had a healthy (or possibly unhealthy) liking for the ladies, and in his bathroom it showed, oh dear, it showed. Of course, the white marble lovelies were dignified with urns, bunches of marble grapes, and the ever-popular length of gauze which had, happily, landed in just the right place to stop art becoming pornography. It was also, in all probability, the only bath that had taps marked hot, cold, brandy.