Snuff (Discworld 39)

And then there were the frescoes, such that if you were a man easily persuaded then it was a good job there was a cold tap, because not to put too fine a point on it, as it were, there were a large number of fine points all over them, yes indeed, and the ladies were only the start of the problem. There were marble gentlemen, as well, definitely gentlemen, even the ones with goat’s feet. It was surprising that the water in the bath didn’t boil of its own accord. He had asked Sybil about it, and she said that it was an important feature of the Hall, and gentlemen collectors of antiquities would often visit in order to inspect it. Vimes had said that he expected that they did, oh yes indeed. Sybil had said that there was no need for that tone of voice, because she had occasionally taken a bath there from the time she had been twelve and had seen no harm in it. It had, she said, stopped her from being surprised later on.

And now Vimes lay in the luxurious tub, feeling as if he was trying to fit all the bits of his brain together. He was only vaguely aware of the bathroom door opening, and of hearing Sybil say, “I’ve put Young Sam to bed, and he’s sleeping soundly, although I can’t imagine what he might be dreaming about.”

Then Vimes floated again in the warm steamy atmosphere and was only just aware of the swish of cloth hitting the floor. Lady Sybil slid in beside him. The water rose, and so, in accordance with the physics of this business, did the spirits of Sam Vimes.

A few hours later, almost drowning in the pillows on the huge bed and floating just above unconsciousness in a warm pink glow, Sam Vimes was certain that he heard his own voice whispering to him. And it said, “Think of the things that don’t fit. Wonder why the nice lady of the nobby classes wanders down into a goblin cave as if it’s a natural thing to do.” He replied, “Well, Sybil spends half her time at home covered in heavy protective gear and a flameproof helmet because she likes dragons. It’s the sort of thing that nobby ladies tend to do.”

He considered what he had to say, and responded to himself, “Yes, but dragons are what you might call socially acceptable. Goblins, on the other hand, definitely aren’t. No one has got a good word to say for goblins, except Miss Beedle. Why not take Young Sam along to see her tomorrow? After all, she is the one that got him on to this poo business, and she is a writer, so I expect she’ll be quite glad of the interruption. Yes, that’d be a good idea, and it’d be educational for Young Sam and not an investigation at all…” Thus satisfied, he waited for the onset of sleep, against a chorus of howls, shrieks, mysterious distant bangs, surreptitious rustlings, screeches, disconcerting ticking noises, dreadful scratching sounds, terrible flappings of wings very close, and all the rest of the unholy orchestra that is known as the peace of the countryside.

He had enjoyed a late-night game of snooker with Willikins, just to keep his hand in, and Vimes, half listening now to the outlandish cacophony, wondered whether the solving of a complex crime, one that needed a certain amount of care, could be compared to a game of snooker. Sure, there were a lot of red balls and they got in the way, so you had to knock them down, but your target, your ultimate target, was going to be the black.

Powerful people lived in the Shires and so he would tread with care. Metaphorically, Sam Vimes, somewhere in his head, picked up his cue.

Vimes lay back in the bed, enjoying the wonderful sensation of gradually being eaten by the pillows, and said to Sybil, “Do the Rust family have a place down here?”

Too late he reflected that this might be a bad move because she might well have told him all about it on one of those occasions when, so unusually for a married man, he was not paying much attention to what his wife was saying, and therefore he might be the cause of grumpiness in those precious, warm minutes before sleep. All he could see of her right now was the very tip of her nose, as the pillows claimed her, but she mumbled, drowsily, “Oh, they bought Hangnail Manor ten years or so ago, after the Marquis of Fantailer murdered his wife with a pruning knife in the pineapple house. Don’t you remember? You spent weeks searching the city for him. In the end everybody seemed to think he’d gone off to Fourecks and disguised himself by not calling himself the Marquis of Fantailer.”

“Oh yes,” said Vimes, “and I remember that a lot of his chums were quite indignant about the investigation! They said that he’d only done one murder, and it was his wife’s fault for having the bad taste to die after just one little stab!”

Lady Sybil turned over, which meant that—since she was a woman happily rich in gravitational attraction—as she turned, the pillow closest to Sam, acting like a gear in a chain, spun softly in the opposite direction so that Sam Vimes found himself now lying on his face. He struck out for the surface again and said, “And Rust bought it, did he? It’s unusual for the old fart to spend a penny more than he needs to.”

“It wasn’t him, dear, it was Gravid.”

Vimes woke a little more. “The son? The criminal?”

“I believe, Sam, that the word is entrepreneur, and I’d like to go to sleep now, if it’s all the same to you.”

Sam Vimes knew that the best thing he could say was nothing, and he sank back into the depths, thinking words like, fiddler, sharp dealer, inserter of a crafty crowbar between what is right and wrong, and mine and thine, wide boy, financier anduntouchable …

Gently drifting into a nightmare world where the good guys and bad guys so often changed hats without warning, Vimes wrestled sleeplessness to the ground and made certain that it got eight hours.

Next morning Vimes, hand in hand with his son, walked toward the house of Miss Beedle thoughtfully, not knowing what to expect. He had little experience of the literary world, much preferring the literal one, and he had heard that writers spent all day in their dressing gowns drinking champagne.* On the other hand, as he approached the place up another little lane, some reconsideration began to take place. For one thing, the “cottage” had a garden that would do credit to a farm. When he looked over the fence he saw lines of vegetables and soft fruit, and there was an orchard and what was probably a pigsty and, over there, a proper outdoor privy, very professionally done, with the very-nearly compulsory crescent-moon shape fretsawed into the door, and the log pile close at hand so that the most efficient use could be made of every trip down the path. The whole place had a sensible and serious air, and certainly wasn’t what you would expect of somebody who just mucked about with words every day.

Miss Beedle opened the door a fraction of a second after he had knocked. She didn’t look surprised.

“I was rather expecting you, your grace,” she said, “or is it Mr. Policeman today? From what I hear, it’s always Mr. Policeman one way or the other.” Then she looked down. “And this must be Young Sam.” She glanced up at his father and said, “They tend to get rather tongue-tied, don’t they?”

“You know, I’ve got lots of poo,” said Young Sam proudly. “I keep it in jam jars and I’ve got a laboratory in the lavatory. Have you got any elephant poo? It goes”—and here he paused for effect—“dung!”

For a moment Miss Beedle had that slightly glazed sheen often seen on the face of someone meeting Young Sam for the first time. She looked at Vimes. “You must be very proud of him.”

The proud father said, “It’s very hard to keep up—I know that.”

Miss Beedle led the way out of the hall and into a room in which chintz played a major part, and drew young Sam over to a large bureau. She opened a drawer and handed the boy what looked like a small book. “This is a bound proof of The Joy of Earwax, and I shall sign it for you if you like.”

Young Sam took it like one receiving a holy object, and his father, temporarily becoming his mum, said, “What do you say?” To which Young Sam responded with a beam and a thank you and a, “Please don’t scribble on it. I’m not allowed to scribble in books.”

While Young Sam was happily turning the pages of his new book, his father was introduced to an overstuffed chair. Miss Beedle gave him a smile and hurried off toward the kitchen, leaving Vimes with not much to look a

t except for a room full of bookcases, more overstuffed furniture, a full-size concert harp, and a wall clock made to look like an owl, whose eyes swung backward and forward hypnotically in time with the tick—presumably to the point where you either committed suicide or picked up the poker in the hearth nearby and beat the damn thing until the springs broke.

While Vimes was warmly contemplating this he realized that he was being watched, and he looked round into the worried face and prognathous jaw of the goblin called Tears of the Mushroom.

Instinctively he looked at Young Sam, and suddenly the biggest raisin in his cake of apprehension was: what will Young Sam do? How many books has he read? They haven’t told him nasty tales about goblins, have they, or read him too many of those innocent, colorful fairytale books which contained nightmares ready to leap out and some needless fear that would cause trouble one day?

And what Young Sam did was march across the floor, stop dead in front of the girl and say, “I know a lot about poo. It’s very interesting!”

Tears of the Mushroom looked frantically for Miss Beedle while Young Sam, totally at ease, began a brief dissertation on sheep poo. In response, with words slapping together like little bricks, she said, “What…is…poo…for?”