Snuff

  There was, besides himself and Lady Sybil, a young Omnian curate, wisely dressed in a voluminous black robe, which presumably presented no groinal problems. Vimes had no idea why the young man was there, but presumably the young ladies needed somebody to fill with weak tea, suspect scones and mindless twittering conversation when someone like Vimes wasn’t there. And it seemed that when the subject of bonnets lost its fascination the only other topics were legacies and the prospects for forthcoming balls. And so, inevitably, given his restlessness in female company, a growing disaffection for urine-colored tea, and small talk that would barely be visible under a microscope, Vimes said, “Excuse me asking, ladies, but what is it that you actually, I mean actually do…For a living, I mean?”

  This question elicited five genuinely blank looks. Vimes couldn’t tell the daughters one from the other, except the one called Emily, who certainly lodged in the mind and possibly also in doorways, and who now said, in the tones of one slightly out of her depth, “I do beg your pardon, commander, but I don’t think we understand what you just vouchsafed?”

  “I meant, well, how do you make a living? Are any of you in employment? How do you make your daily crust? What work do you do?” Vimes could pick up nothing from Sybil, because he couldn’t see her face, but the girl’s mother was staring at him with gleeful fascination. Oh well, if he was going to get it in the neck he might as well get it all the way down. “I mean, ladies,” he said, “how do you make your way in the world? How do you earn your keep? Apart from bonnets, do you have any skills—like cookery, for example?”

  Another daughter, quite possibly Mavis, but Vimes was guessing, cleared her throat and said, “Fortunately, commander, we have servants for that sort of thing. We’re gentlewomen, you see? It would be quite, quite unthinkable for us to go into trade or commerce. The scandal! It’s just not done.”

  By now there appeared to be a competition to see who could terminally baffle who, or possibly whom, first. But Vimes managed to say, “Don’t you have a sister in the timber business?”

  It was amazing, he thought, that neither their mother nor Sybil was as yet adding anything to the conversation. And now another sister (possibly Amanda?) looked about to speak. Why in the world did they all wear those silly diaphanous dresses? You couldn’t hope to do a day’s work in something as skimpy as that. Amanda (possibly) said carefully, “I’m afraid our sister is a bit of an embarrassment to the family, your grace.”

  “What, for getting a job! Why?”

  Another one of the girls, and Vimes was in fact getting really confused at this point, said, “Well, commander, she has no hope of making a good marriage now…er, not to a gentleman.”

  This was becoming a tangle and so Vimes said, “Tell me, ladies, what is a gentleman?”

  After some whispered conversation a sacrificial daughter said, very nervously, “We understand the gentleman is a man who does not have to sully his hands by working.”

  Adamantium is said to be the strongest of all metals, but it would have bent around the patience of Sam Vimes as he said, with every syllable carefully smelted, “Oh, a layabout. And how do you go about snagging such a gentleman, pray?”

  Now the girls looked as if they were indeed praying. One of them managed to say, “You see, commander, our dear late father was unlucky in the money market, and I’m afraid that until the death of Great-aunt Marigold, of whom we have expectations, there is, alas, no money for a dowry for any of us.”

  The heavens held their breath while the concept of a dowry was explained to Sam Vimes, and ice formed on the windows as he sat in strangulated thought.

  At last, he cleared his throat and said, “Ladies, the solution to your problem, in my opinion, would be to get off your quite attractive backsides, go out there in the world and make your own way! A dowry? You mean some man has to be paid to marry you? What century do you think you’re living in? Is it just me, or is it the most bloody stupid thing you could ever imagine?” He glanced at the beautiful Emily and thought, good grief, men would line up on the lawn to fight one another, my dear. How come no one’s ever told you? Gentility is all very well, but practicality has its uses. Get out in the world and let the world see you and it might find a new word in its vocabulary such as, perhaps, “wow!” Aloud he continued, “Honestly, there are lots of jobs out there for a young lady with her wits about her. The Lady Sybil Free Hospital is always on the lookout for sharp girls to train as nurses, for example. Good pay, very fetching uniforms, and a fine chance of snagging a skilled young physician who is on the way to the top, especially if you get your boot behind him. Plus, of course, as a nurse you inherit an amazingly large amount of amusing and embarrassing stories about things which people put…Perhaps this is not the time, but anyway, there is also the possibility of becoming matron if you reach the specified weight. A very responsible job, of use to the community at large and giving you at the end of a long day the satisfaction that you have done some good in the world.”

  Vimes looked around at the pink and white faces contemplating a jump into the unknown and continued. “Of course, if you really want to stick with bonnets, then Sybil and I own a decent property in Old Cobblers, in the big city, which is standing empty. Used to be a tough area, but the upwardly mobile trolls and vampires are moving in right now, and the heavy dollar and the dark dollar are not to be sneezed at, especially because they’ll pay top dollar for what they want. Quite a sophisticated area, too. People actually put tables and chairs out on the pavement and they don’t always all get stolen. We could let you have it rent free for three months to see how you do and then maybe you’d have to learn the concept of rent, if only for your self-respect. Trust me, ladies, self-respect is what you get when you don’t have to spend your life waiting for some rich old lady to pop her clogs. Any takers?”

  Vimes took as an optimistic sign the fact that the girls were staring at one another with what could only be called a wild surmise at the prospect of not being totally useless ornaments, and so he added, “And whatever you do, stop reading bloody silly romantic novels!”

  There was, however, a pocket—or possibly purse—of resistance to the revolution. One girl was standing by the curate as if she owned him. She looked at Vimes defiantly and said, “Please don’t think me forward, commander, but I’d rather like to marry Jeremy and help him in his ministry.”

  “Very good, very good,” said Vimes. “And you love him and he loves you? Speak up, the pair of you.” They both nodded, red with embarrassment, each with one eye on the girl’s mother, whose wide grin suggested that would be a definite plus. “Well then, I suggest you get yourselves sorted out, and you, young man, would be advised to find a better-paying job. Can’t help you with that, but there are loads of religions these days, and if I were you I’d impress some bishop somewhere with my common sense, which is what a clergyman needs above everything else…Well, nearly everything else, and remember there’s room at the top…Although in the case of religion, not right at the top, eh?” Vimes thought for a moment and added, “But maybe the best idea, ladies, might be to take a look around a bit until you find some lad that’s got the makings of a successful man, noble or not, and if he suits then get behind him, support him as necessary, help him up when he’s down, and generally be around when he looks for you, and make certain that he’ll be around when you look for him. Well, if both of you put your backs into it then it might turn out to be something good. It has certainly worked once before, didn’t it, Sybil?”

  Sybil burst out laughing and the overwhelmed girls nodded dutifully as if they actually understood, but Vimes was gratified to feel a gentle little prod from Lady Sybil that offered hope that he was not going to pay too high a price from his wife for speaking his mind to these precious flowers.

  He looked around as if seeking to tidy things up. “Well, that seems to be that, yes?”

  “Excuse me, commander?” It took Vimes some time to see where the voice had come from; this daughter hadn’t spoken a word al
l afternoon, but had occasionally scribbled in a notebook. Now she gazed at him with a look somewhat brighter than those of her sisters.

  “Can I help you, miss? And perhaps you’ll tell me your name?”

  “Jane, commander. I am endeavoring to be a writer, may I ask if you have any views on that as an acceptable career for a young lady?”

  Jane, thought Vimes, the strange one. And she was. She was just as demure as the other sisters, but somehow as he looked at her he got the impression that she was seeing right through him, thoughts and all.

  Vimes leaned back in his chair, a little defensively and said, “Well, it can’t be a difficult job, given that all the words have probably been invented already, so there’s a saving in time right there, considering that you simply have to put them together in a different order.” That was about the limit of his expertise in the literary arts, but he added, “What sort of thing were you thinking of writing, Jane?”

  The girl looked embarrassed. “Well, commander, at the moment I’m working on what might be considered a novel about the complexities of personal relationships, with all their hopes and dreams and misunderstandings.” She coughed nervously, as if apologizing.

  Vimes pursed his lips. “Yes. Sounds basically like a good idea, miss, but I can’t really help you on that—though if I was you, and this is me talking off the top of my head, I’d be putting in a lot of fighting, and dead bodies falling out of wardrobes…and maybe a war, perhaps, as a bit of background?”

  Jane nodded uneasily. “A remarkable suggestion, commander, with much to recommend it, but possibly the relationships would be somewhat neglected?”

  Vimes considered this input and said, “Well, you might be right.” Then, out of nowhere, possibly some deep hole, a thought struck him, just as it had many times before, sometimes in nightmares. “I wonder if any author has thought about the relationship between the hunter and the hunted, the policeman and the mysterious killer, the lawman who must think like a criminal sometimes in order to do his job, and may be unpleasantly surprised at how good he is at such thinking, perhaps. Just an idea, you understand,” he said lamely, and wondered where the hell it had come from. Maybe the strange Jane had pulled it out of him and even, perhaps, could resolve it.

  “Would anybody like some more tea?” said Ariadne brightly.

  Lady Sybil was very quiet as their coach drove away, and so Vimes decided to bite the bullet now and get it over with. She was looking thoughtful, which was always worrying.

  “Am I in trouble, Sybil?”

  His wife looked at him blankly for a moment and then said, “You mean for telling that bunch of precious blooms to stop yearning for a life and to get out there and make one? Good heavens, no! You did everything I would have expected of you, Sam. You always do. I told Ariadne that you wouldn’t let her down. She doesn’t have much of an income, and if you hadn’t given them the righteous word I think she would have eventually driven them out with a shovel. No, Sam, I just wonder what goes on in your head, that’s all. I mean, I’m sure some people think being a policeman is just a job, but you don’t, do you? I’m very proud of you, Sam, and wouldn’t have you any other way, but I do worry sometimes. Anyway, well done! I’ll look forward with interest to see what young Jane writes.”

  Next day, Vimes took his little boy fishing, hampered somewhat by a total lack of knowledge of the art. Young Sam didn’t seem to mind. He had located a shrimping net among the largesse of the nursery and messed about in the shallows, chasing crayfish and sometimes going almost rigid in order to stare at things. Once he got over the shock, Vimes noticed that Young Sam did this quite happily, and on one occasion pointed out to his doting father things in the stream “like insects in the water with a coat made of little pebbles,” which Vimes had to investigate, to find that this was entirely true. This amazed Sam Vimes even more than it did his son, who in fact, he told his father as they strolled back for lunch, had been really looking to see if fish did a poo, a question that had never exercised Sam Vimes in his life, but which appeared to be of great importance to his son. So much so that on the way home he had to be restrained from doubling back to the stream to see if they got out to do it because otherwise, er, yuck!

  Sybil had promised Young Sam another trip around Home Farm in the afternoon, which left Sam Vimes to his own devices, or such devices as the policeman could find in the quiet lanes. Vimes was streetwise; he didn’t know what lanewise might entail, but possibly it would deal with things like throttling stoats and knowing whether whatever it was that had just said “moo” was a cow or a bull without having to bend down to find out.

  And as he walked around his rolling acres on his aching feet, wishing that there were cobblestones under him, once again he could feel the tingle; the tingle that raises little hairs on a copper’s neck when his well-honed senses tell him that there was something happening around here that shouldn’t be, and was crying out to have something done about it.

  But there was another copper here, wasn’t there, a real old flatfoot let out to grass, but being a copper stained you to the bone; you never got rid of it. He smiled. Time perhaps to go for a convivial drink with Mr. Jiminy.

  The Goblin’s Head was bare of customers at this time of day except the ever-present trio on the bench outside. Vimes settled himself at the bar with a glass of Mrs. Jiminy’s root beer and leaned confidentially toward the barman. “So, Mr. Jiminy, what’s of interest here to an old copper?”

  Jiminy opened his mouth, but Vimes went on, “Rosewood truncheon, Pseudopolis City Watch? I know I’m right. It’s no crime. That’s the copper’s dream, and you take your trusty truncheon with you to have a little friend you can depend on if the customer can’t hold his liquor and won’t take a hint.” Vimes was now settled with one elbow on the bar and doodling on a small puddle of spilt beer. “But the job follows you, doesn’t it? And if you run a pub, well that goes double, because you hear all sorts of things, things you don’t do anything about because you aren’t a copper anymore, except you know you are. And it must worry you, somewhere in your soul, that there are things going wrong in these parts. Even I can tell. It’s the copper’s nose. I can smell it in the air. It comes up through my boots. Secrets and lies, Mr. Jiminy, secrets and lies.”

  Mr. Jiminy made a point of wiping his cloth over the spilt beer and said, as if absent-mindedly, “You know, Commander Vimes, things are different in the country. People think that the country is where you can go to hide out. It ain’t so. In the city you’re a face in the crowd. In the country people will stare at you until you’re out of sight, just for the entertainment value. Like you say, I’m not a copper anymore: I ain’t got a warrant card, and I ain’t got the inclination. And now, if you don’t mind, I have some work to do. There’ll be more customers soon. Watch where you tread, your grace.”

  Vimes didn’t let him off the hook. “Interesting thing, Mr. Jiminy: I know you have the lease on this pub but, amazingly enough, I’m still your landlord. I’m sorry about that, but before we came down here I looked at a map and saw a pub on our land, and what a waste, I thought, but that makes me your landlord. Not very republican of me, I know, but I just wonder, Mr. Jiminy, if it may be that not everyone in these parts is not that keen on having the Commander of the City Watch down here in this quiet little hideaway, hmm?” An image of poor old Lord Rust artlessly telling him that there was nothing here of interest passed across Vimes’s inner vision.

  Jiminy’s expression was frozen, but Vimes, who knew this game, saw that tiny twitch which, when decoded, meant, “Yes, but I didn’t say anything and no one can prove I did. Not even you, my friend.”

  Further discussion on the point was interrupted when the sons of the soil began to come in, one by one, to celebrate the ending of the working day. This time there was less suspicion in their eyes as they nodded to Vimes en route to the bar, and so he sat nursing his pint of spiced-up beetroot juice and just enjoyed the moment. It was a very short moment, at the end of which the blacksmi
th swaggered into the bar and walked straight up to him.

  “You are sitting in my seat!”

  Vimes looked around. He was sitting on a bench that was indistinguishable from all the others in the room, but he accepted the possibility that there was something mystic about the one he was occupying, picked up his glass and strolled over to an unoccupied one, where he sat down just in time to hear the blacksmith say, “That one’s my seat too, understand?”

  Oh dear, here was the overture and beginners to a brawl, and Vimes was no beginner, right enough, and the blacksmith’s eyes held the look of a man who wanted to punch somebody and very likely thought that Vimes would make the ideal candidate.

  He felt the gentle pressure of his own brass knuckles in his trouser pocket. Vimes had been economical with the truth when he promised his wife that he would not take any weapons on holiday with him. However, he’d reasoned that a knuckleduster was not so much a weapon as a way of making certain that he stayed alive. It could be called a defensive instrument, a kind of shield, as it were, especially if you needed to get your defense in before you were attacked.

  He stood up. “Mr. Jethro, I’d be grateful if you’d be so kind as to choose which chair is yours for the evening, thank you very much, after which I intend to enjoy my drink in peace.”

  Whoever said that a soft answer turneth away wrath had never worked in a bar. The blacksmith glowered at about the same temperature as his forge. “I ain’t Jethro to you, not by a long way. You can call me Mr. Jefferson, do you hear?”

  “And you can call me Sam Vimes.” He watched Jefferson very deliberately place his drink on the bar before he strode toward Vimes.