Discworld 39 - Snuff

by Terry Pratchett

  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.

  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 gentl
emen, 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 and untouchable . . .

  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 Y
oung 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 at 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?”

  Young Sam frowned at this as if somebody was questioning his life’s work. Then he looked up brightly and said, “Without poo, you would go off bang!” And he stood there beaming, the meaning of life completely solved.