Snuff (21 page)

T
he coach stood empty in the lane. They hadn't dared knock on the door, not while that heavenly music was drifting out of the cottage window. Sybil was in tears, but often she looked up, and said things like, “That shouldn't be possible on a harp!” Even Young Sam was transfixed, standing there with his little mouth open, while the music rushed in and, for a moment upon the world, lifted all hearts and forgave all sins—not having its work cut out in the case of Young Sam, a part of Vimes managed to reflect, but doing a sterling and heavyweight job on his father. And when the music stopped Young Sam said, “More!” and that went for his parents, too. They stood there, not looking at one another, and then the cottage door opened and Miss Beedle stepped out.

“I saw you out there, of course. Do come in, but quietly. I've made lemonade.” She led them through the hall and turned into the living room.

Tears of the Mushroom must have been forewarned by Miss Beedle. She sat on a chair next to the harp with her oversized hands clasped demurely over her apron. Wordlessly, Young Sam walked over to her and cuddled her leg. The goblin girl looked panicky and Vimes said, “Don't worry, he just wants to show that he loves you.” And he thought, I've just told a goblin not to be frightened of my son because he loves her and the world has turned upside-down and all sins are forgiven, except possibly mine.

A
s the coach rattled gently back toward Ramkin Hall Lady Sybil said quietly to Vimes, “I understand that the young lady goblin who was…murdered could play the harp as well as Miss Mushroom.”

Vimes stirred from his inner thoughts and said, “I didn't know that.”

“Oh yes,” said Sybil, in a curiously chatty voice. “Apparently Miss Beedle wants young goblin girls to have something to be proud of.” She cleared her throat, and, after a pause, said, “Do you have any suspects, Sam?”

“Oh yes, two. I have the testimony of a reliable witness that they were in the area after the event, and I'm beginning to consider a chain of events that might lead me also to the whereabouts of Mr. Jefferson the smith. This is the countryside, after all. Everyone sees where you go and you never know who is behind a hedge. I believe they may have heard him invite me to Dead Man's Copse on what
The Times
would call ‘that fateful night.' ”

Sybil looked down at Young Sam, dozing between them, and said, “Do you know where they live?”

“Yes, one of them at least. I think the other one just hangs around, as they say.” And now the rattle of gravel under wheel told them that they were going down the long drive.

Sybil cleared her throat again, and in a quiet voice said, “I fear you may have felt that I was being rather acerbic to you, Sam, on the subject of letting your professional concerns get in the way of our holiday. I may, at times, have been somewhat…blunt.”

“Not at all, Sybil, I fully understood your concern.”

It seemed that Lady Sybil really could have done with some cough drops, but she carried on carefully and said, “Sam, I'd be very grateful if you could see your way clear to perhaps taking Willikins with you to wherever it is that these scoundrels poison the world with their existence, and bring them to justice, if you would be so good.”

He could feel her trembling with rage and said, “I was considering doing so as soon as possible, my dear, but I must tell you that things may not go entirely in accordance with the rulebook. After all, I'm out of my jurisdiction here.”

But his wife said, “You're a stickler for the book, Sam, and I admire that, but the jurisdiction of a good man extends to the end of the world—though who will you take them to? Havelock would hang them, you know that. But he's a long way away. Nonetheless, Sam, I am certain of one thing and it's this: the worst thing you can do is nothing. Go to it, Sam.”

“Actually, Sybil, I was considering delivering them to the local justices.”

“What? They're a terrible bunch, apparently using what they call the law here for their own ends! There'll be an enormous stink!”

Vimes smiled. “Oh dear, do you really think so?”

T
here was no point going to bed, thought Vimes later that evening, and so he kissed his wife goodnight and went to the snooker room where Willikins was idly demonstrating one of the more socially acceptable skills he had learned during a misspent youth. The man straightened up when Vimes walked in and said, “Good evening, commander. Would you like a sustaining drink to be going on with?”

Vimes also indulged in a rare cigar because, well, what good is a snooker room without smoke twisting among the lights and turning the air a desolate blue, the color of dead hopes and lost chances?

Willikins, who knew the protocol, waited until Vimes had made his shot before coughing gently. “Oh, well done, sir, and I understand her ladyship is somewhat vexed about the goblin situation, sir. I believe this to be the case, sir, because I met her in the corridor earlier and she used language I haven't heard on the lips of a woman since my old mother passed away, gods bless her soul, if they can find it. But, well done again, sir.”

Vimes laid his cue aside. “I want to get them all, Willikins. It's no good slamming up some local thug.”

“Yes indeed, commander, it's all about potting the black.”

Vimes looked up from his fiery drink. “I can see you must have played a lot in your time, Willikins. Did you ever see Pelvic Williams? Very religious man in his way, lived somewhere in Hen-and-Chickens Court with his sister, played like I've never seen anyone else play before or since. I swear he could make a ball jump the table, roll along the edge and drop back onto the cloth just where he wanted it, to drop neatly into the pocket.” Vimes gave a grunt of satisfaction, and went on, “Of course, everyone used to say that was cheating, but he used to stand there, as meek as milk, just repeating ‘The ball dropped.' Tell you the truth, the reason he never got beaten up was that it was an education watching the man. He once sank a ball by bouncing it off the lamp and a pint mug. But, like he said, the ball dropped.” Vimes relaxed and said, “The trouble is, of course, that in real life rules are more stringent.”

“Yes indeed, commander,” said Willikins. “Where I used to play the only rule was that after you'd hit your opponent over the head with your cue you had to be able to run very fast. I understand from her ladyship that you might be requiring my assistance tonight?”

“Yes, please. We're going to the village of Hangnails. It's about twenty miles upriver.”

Willikins nodded. “Yes indeed, sir, once the seat of the Hangnail family and most notably of Lord Justice Hangnail, who famously declared that he never took account of any plea of not guilty on the basis that ‘criminals always lie' and was, by happy chance, the Worshipful Master of the Benevolent Company of Rope Makers and Braiders. With any luck, we'll not see his like again.”

“Excellent, Willikins, and we'll stop en route to pick up our keen young local constable, who'll see fair play. I intend to make sure of that.”

“Glad to hear it, sir,” said Willikins, “but bear this in mind: what does it matter once the ball has dropped?”

I
t was Mrs. Upshot who opened the cottage door, gave a little scream, slammed the door, opened the door to apologize for slamming the door, and then shut the door carefully, leaving Vimes on the doorstep. Thirty seconds later Feeney opened the door, with his nightshirt tucked into his trousers. “Commander Vimes! Is something wrong?” he said, trying valiantly to tuck all the nightshirt inside.

Vimes rubbed his hands together briskly. “Yes, Chief Constable Upshot, almost everything is, but there is one part that can be made right with your help. Regarding the murder of the goblin girl, I have sufficient information to warrant apprehending two men for questioning. This is your manor, so professionally speaking I think it's only right and proper that you assist me with the arrests.”

Vimes took a step into the room so that the face of Willikins was visible, and went on, “And I think you know Willikins, my manservant, who has volunteered to drive my coach and, of course, provide me with a clean white shirt should I need it.”

“Yerrr,” growled Willikins, turning to wink at Vimes.

“Chief Constable Upshot, I'd be obliged if you would arm yourself with whatever you think you might need and, since you don't have a pair of handcuffs worth a damn, oh I'm so sorry, then at least can you source some rope?”

The face of Feeney Upshot was a whole palette of conflicting emotions. I'll be working with the famous Commander Vimes—hooray! But this is big and serious—oh dear. But it'll be like being a real policeman—hooray! But there's already a hot water bottle in my bed—oh dear. On the other hand, if it all goes wrong, well, after all, the Duke of Ankh owns most of this place, so he'll have to take most of the blame—hooray! And maybe if I distinguish myself I can get a job in the city, so that my mum can live in a place where you don't lie awake at night listening to the mice fighting the cockroaches—hooray!
*

It was a treat for Vimes to watch the lad's face in the candlelight, especially as Feeney moved his lips as he thought. And so he said, “I'm sure, Chief Constable Upshot, that assistance in this matter will be very helpful to your future career.”

This last comment caused Mrs. Upshot, peering over her son's shoulder, to flush with pride and say, “Hark at his grace, Feeney! You could make something of yourself, just like I'm always telling you! No arguing now, off you go, my lad.”

This motherly advice was punctuated by Mrs. Upshot bobbing up and down so fast that she could have been harnessed to a sewing machine. Thank goodness for old mums, Vimes thought, as Feeney eventually got into the coach with a flask of hot tea, a spare pair of clean drawers and half an apple pie.

As the wheels started to turn, and after Feeney had finished waving to his old mum out of the window, Vimes, balancing carefully against the rocking, lit the little spirit lamp that was all the coach had for illumination. He fell back into his seat again and said, “I'd be grateful, lad, if you would take some time to write down in your notebook everything I've said to you since I arrived this evening. It might be of assistance to both of us.” Feeney practically saluted, and Vimes continued, “When we saw the dead goblin girl the other day, Mr. Feeney, did you make a note of that in your notebook?”

“Yes, sir!” Feeney nearly saluted again. “My granddad told me always to write everything down in my notebook!”

They bounced in their seats as the coach hit a stone and Vimes said quietly, “Did he ever tell you to accidentally sometimes turn over two pages at once so that you had the occasional blank page?”

“Oh, no, sir. Should I?”

The seat bounced them up and down again as Vimes said, “Strictly speaking, lad, the answer is no, especially if you never work with me. Now please write it all down, just as I asked. And since I am not as young as you, I'm going to try to get some rest.”

“Yessir, I understand that, sir. Just one thing, sir? Mr. Stoner, the Clerk to the Magistrates, came to see me this afternoon, and had a chat and said not to bother about the goblin girl because goblins are officially vermin. He was very kind, and brought some brandy for my old mum, and he said that you were a fine gentleman but tended to get a bee in your bonnet, sir, what with being upper-class and out of touch, sir. Sir? Sir? Have you gone to sleep, sir?”

Vimes turned his head and in honeyed tones said, “Did you make a note of that in your notebook, lad?”

“Oh, yessir!”

“And you still got in this coach with me? Why did you do that, Mr. Feeney?”

Gravel rattled behind them and it seemed some time before Feeney Upshot had assembled his thoughts to his satisfaction. He said, “Well, Commander Vimes, I thought, well, that Mr. Stoner he's a nob more or less, and so is Commander Vimes, only he's a duke and is therefore a very big nob and if you're going to get caught between nobs, maybe you'd better pick the biggest one to be on the side of.” He heard Vimes grunt, and continued, “And then, sir, I thought, well, I was up there, I saw that poor creature and what had been done to her, and I remembered that Stoner had tried to make a fool out of me by making me arrest your good self, sir, and I thought about the goblins and I thought, well, they're mucky and smelly and the old goblin was crying, and animals don't cry and goblins, well, they make stuff, beautiful stuff and as for pinching our pig swill and being generally mucky, we surely ain't short of humans around here who are pretty big in that respect, I could tell you some stories, and so I thought some more and I thought, well, that Mr. Stoner, I thought he must have got it wrong.”

There was a rumbling as the coach went over a bridge and then the sound of wheels on packed flints was back. Feeney said anxiously, “Is that all right, sir?” He waited nervously. And then the voice of Vimes, and this time sounding rather far away said, “Do you know what that little speech you made was called, Mr. Feeney?”

“Don't know, sir, it's just what I think.”

“It was called redemption, Mr. Feeney. Hold on to it.”

V
imes woke from a doze in which he had dreamed about Young Sam playing a harp, and by the time he had understood that this was a dream the noise of the coach wheels had changed as they slowed down and stopped.

Willikins slid open the small slot that allowed discourse between passenger and coachman and said quietly, “Rise and shine, sir, we're about a quarter of a mile from Hangnails, population thirty-seven and still stupid. And you can smell turkey from here and wish you bloody well couldn't, excuse my Klatchian. I surmised that it might be a good idea to walk quietly the rest of the way, sir.”

Vimes got down from the coach and stamped the cramp out of his limbs. The air stank with the curiously invasive smell of birds; not even goblins persecuted the sinuses one half so badly. But this was a tiny distraction compared with the thrill, yes, the thrill. How long was it since he had led a dawn raid? Far too long, that's how long, and now captains and senior sergeants got the job while he stayed in the office,
being
the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. Well, not today.

Whispering as they walked through the knee-high mist, he said, “You, Chief Constable Upshot, you will hammer on the front door when I give you the signal, and I will be stationed outside the back door in case the gentleman does a runner, okay?”

They were nearing the property now, yes, they would just need the two of them. The farmhouse looked barely big enough to have two doors, let alone three.

“What shall I say, commander?” hissed Feeney.

“Oh, blimey, you're the bloody son and grandson of coppers, my lad, what the hell do you think you should shout? Let me give you a clue. It does not include the word ‘please.' I'll give you a whistle when I'm in position, got it? Good.”

They walked with care across the stinking yard and Vimes took up station around the back, where an interesting thought occurred to him and he made a mental note. He then leaned against the dirty wall of the house a little bit away from the back door, took a pinch of snuff to clear the air of turkey and gave one faint whistle.

“Open up in the name of the law! You are surrounded! You have one minute to open the door! I mean it! Open the door! This is the police!”

Leaning cosily against the wall, Vimes grudgingly rated that as pretty good for a beginner, with one point taken off for adding “I mean it,” then, as a man flew out of the back door, he stuck out his boot.

“Good morning, sir. My name is Commander Vimes! I hope you're in a position to remember yours!”

In the sheds the turkeys were going insane, causing a slight rise in the smell. The man struggled to his feet, looking around desperately.

“Oh, yes, you could run, yes, you could do that,” said Vimes in a conversational tone of voice, “but it might be thought by others that this might indicate that you knew you had some reason to run. Now, personally, I would agree that anyone stopped by a copper should run like buggery, innocent or not, on first principles. Besides, we get so fat these days that we need the exercise. But do run if you want to, Mr. Flutter, because I can run too, and
very
fast.”

By now Flutter was smiling the smile of a man who thinks that this copper is not very smart.

“I bet you don't have a magistrate's warrant, do ya'?”

“Well now, Mr. Flutter, why might you think that, eh? Perhaps you think the magistrates might not issue a warrant to arrest you, yes? By the way, thank you for showing me where the tobacco barrels are stored. Your cooperation will be taken into consideration.”

Some days are bad days, like when you stare right down into the mangled corpse of a young woman, and then you get good days, when the suspect's darting eyes flashing across the yard show you exactly where the loot is hidden.

“I shall, of course, mention your cooperation to the authorities and, of course, in the local pub as well, ah, yes.”

And now Mr. Flutter was relishing the thought of being seen as some kind of grass, so stupidly he went for, “I never told you anything about any tobacco, and you know it, copper!”

At this point Feeney stepped around the corner with his fearsome club raised and a look of almost comical aggression on his face. “You want me to give him the old one-two, commander, just say the word, guv!”

Vimes rolled his eyes in mock despair. “No need for that, Feeney, no need for that, just when Mr. Flutter here is so anxious to talk to us, understand?”

Flutter decided that the way forward was an appeal to Feeney. “Look, Feeney, you know me—”

He got that far and no further because Feeney said, “It's Constable Upshot to you, Flutter. My dad had you up before the beaks two dozen times, you know. He used to call you the bluebottle on account of whenever there was a load of shit going down he'd find you flapping about in it. And he told me to watch you, which is what I am doing right now, in fact.” He glanced at Vimes, who gave him an encouraging nod and then said, “You see my problem, Mr. Flutter, we're not here to talk about contraband tobacco, okay? Now, I never saw myself as a revenuer, not a popular profession. I'm a copper pure and simple, right, and in my hand I have this man what is only doing a favor to his employer by storing a few barrels of tobacco in his shed, but on the
other
hand, well, if I found a murderer in the other hand, why, gods bless you, I might totally forget all about the first hand…Don't ask me to draw you a picture, Flutter, because my hands are full.”

Flutter looked aghast. “This is about that goblin, right? Look, it wasn't me! Okay, I'm a bit of a naughty boy, I put my hand up to that, but I ain't like him! I'm a scallywag, not a damn murderer!”

Vimes looked at Feeney. Some people could be said to be as pleased as punch. Feeney could be said to look as pleased as Punch, Judy, the dog Toby, the crocodile and, above all, the policeman, all rolled in together. Vimes raised his eyebrows in new interrogation, and Feeney said, “I believe him, chief. He hasn't got it in him, I swear. The best he could manage would be knocking over an old lady for her purse, and even then she'd probably have to be blind too.”

“There, you see!” said Flutter triumphantly. “I'm not really a
bad
person!”

“No,” said Vimes, “you're a veritable choirboy, Mr. Flutter, I can see that, and I'm rather religious too, and I like chapter and verse, but are you willing to swear that the individual known as Stratford knifed a goblin girl to death on Hangman's Hill in the grounds of Ramkin Hall, three nights ago?”

Flutter raised a finger. “Can I say that I told him to stop, and he laughed, and I didn't know it was a girl neither—I mean, how can you tell?”

Vimes's face was deadpan. “Tell me, Ted, what would you have done if you
had
known? I'm intrigued.”

Flutter looked down at his feet. “Well, I, well, well, I mean…not a girl, I mean…well, not a girl…I mean, that's not right, know what I mean?”

And you can find someone like this dangerous clown in nearly every neighborhood, Vimes thought. “Clearly chivalry is not dead, Mr. Flutter. Okay, Feeney, let's carry on. Mr. Flutter, why were you on Hangman's Hill on the aforesaid night?”

“We were just having a walk,” said Flutter.

Vimes's face was again deadpan, so deadpan as to be mortified. “Of course you were, Mr. Flutter. Silly of me to ask the question, really. Constable Upshot, I can see Willikins over there having a smoke.” He pushed at the open door and dragged Flutter inside. “Does this building have a cellar?”

Flutter was one step away from a toilet break, but nevertheless, being the kind of fool to dig himself in deeper, managed to sneer, “There might be. So what?”

“Mr. Flutter, I have already told you that I'm a religious man, and since you would test the patience of a saint I need to spend a moment in quiet contemplation, understand? I'm sure you know that there's always an easy way, and then again, there's always the hard way. Currently, this is the easy way, but the hard way is also quite easy, in a manner of speaking. Before talking to you again I want to be alone with my thoughts. And it occurs to me, Mr. Flutter, that you might have some thoughts about, as it were, legging it, and so my colleague, Chief Constable Upshot, will guard the door and I shall send in my batman, Mr. Willikins, to keep you company.”

Before Vimes was even able to tap on the window, the door opened and Willikins, immaculate as ever, stepped into the grubby room, all smart and crisp with shiny shoes and a hint of pomade on his hair. The three men then watched Vimes heave at a likely ring on the floor, which pulled back to reveal the trap door to a dark cellar and a ladder going down.

Vimes said, “Constable Upshot, I need a little time to think in the darkness. I won't be long.” He went down the ladder and pulled the trap door closed behind him.

The darkness said, “Ah, commander, at long last. I suspect that you're here to take a witness statement.”

This is wrong, Vimes told himself. How can you take testimony from a demon, especially when it's one of no fixed abode? But on the other hand, who needs a witness statement if you've got a confession?

Up above, Ted Flutter's eyes rolled this way and that as he analyzed the situation. Let's see: we have one young twit who is playing at being a copper, and a snooty butler type, all pink and shiny. I reckon Mrs. Flutter's little boy is out of here. At this point, at this
very
point, Willikins, without looking at Flutter, reached into his jacket and there was a slap as he laid down on the table in front of him a steel comb. It gleamed. And it gleamed even stronger in Flutter's imagination. He took one look at Willikins' expression, and Mrs. Flutter's little boy decided he would sit very still until that nice Commander Vimes came back. Out of another pocket Willikins produced the sharpest-looking knife Flutter had ever seen and, without paying any attention whatsoever to Flutter, began to clean his fingernails.

In fact it was only a matter of seconds before the trap door was heaved back, and Vimes emerged, then nodded to Willikins, who secured the comb and walked out of the room without a word. Vimes regained the chair. “Mr. Flutter, I have a witness statement that puts you on Hangman's Hill on the night in question with another man, said man being known as Stratford. The witness tells me that you said to him that you could have got hold of some turkey blood, but he said that there were rabbits all over the place and he never missed with his slingshot. At this point the witness says a young goblin girl came out of the bushes and your companion struck at her as she was begging for her life—and furiously, to the extent that you yourself told him, in your words, to leave off, upon which he turned on you, still holding his knife, described to me as a machete, so swiftly that you urinated into your boots.

“No, don't speak, I haven't finished. Nevertheless, I am informed that you did say to your companion that you were supposed to leave just blood, and not, as you put it, ‘guts all over the place,' whereupon he forced you to put them back into the cadaver and hide it further down the hill in some gorse bushes. No, I said don't talk! In your pocket you had a pork pie, which you'd brought from home, and three dollars in cash, which was your payment for this little errand.

“After that you and Stratford walked back some distance to your horses, which you had temporarily stabled in the tumbledown old barn on the other side of the village. The horses were a chestnut mare and a gray gelding, both of them broken down by ill use. In fact, the gelding threw a shoe as you were leaving, and you had to stop your companion from killing it there and then. Oh, and the witness told me that you were naked to the waist when you left, since your shirt was soaked with blood and you left it in the barn after an argument with Stratford. I'll recover it when we get back. Your friend told you to take your trousers off as well, but you declined; however, I noted splashes of blood on them earlier. I don't want to go to the expense of sending a rider back to the city, where my Igor will ascertain whether the blood is human, goblin or turkey. I said don't speak, didn't I? I haven't mentioned some of the other conversation between you and Mr. Stratford, because Feeney here is listening, and you should be relieved about that; gossip can be so cruel.

“And now Mr. Flutter, I'm going to stop talking and upon doing so I would like the first words you utter to be—pay attention—‘I want to turn King's evidence.' Yes, I know we don't have kings anymore, but nobody has amended the law. You are a little shit, but I'm reluctantly persuaded that you were dragged into something beyond your control and worse than you could have imagined. The good news is that Lord Vetinari will almost certainly take my advice and you will live. Remember: ‘I want to turn King's evidence,' that's what I want to hear, Mr. Flutter, otherwise I'll go for a walk and Mr. Willikins will comb his hair.”

Flutter, who had listened to most of this with his eyes shut, blurted out the words so fast that Vimes had to ask him to repeat them more slowly. When he had finished he was allowed to go to the privy, with Willikins waiting outside, cleaning his nails with his knife, and Feeney was sent to feed the frantic turkeys.

For his part, Vimes entered one of the stinking sheds and prodded around in the dirty straw for what he knew would be there. He was not disappointed. Sufficiently close to, the smell of tobacco was just discernible above the stifling stink of turkey. He rolled a barrel out, found Feeney and said, “I think this is full of tobacco and so I'm intending to take it as evidence. Your job right now is to scout out a jemmy for me and somebody known to you as a decent upstanding citizen, insofar as there might be one around this place.”