Snuff

‘Can’t carry cheesewire, man! Not the Commander of the Watch!’

‘Quite so, commander, and may I therefore advise your brass knuckles – the gentleman’s alternative? I know you never travel without them, sir. There’s some vicious people around and I know you have to be among them.’

‘Look, Willikins, I don’t like to involve you in all this. It’s only a hunch, after all.’

Willikins waved this away. ‘You wouldn’t keep me out of it for a big clock, sir, because all this is tickling my fancy as well. I shall lay out a selection of cutting edges for you in your dressing room, sir, and I myself will go up to the copse half an hour before you’re due to be there, with my trusty bow and an assortment of favourite playthings. It’s nearly a full moon, clear skies, there’ll be shadows everywhere, and I’ll be standing in the darkest one of them.’

Vimes looked at him for a moment and said, ‘Could I please amend that suggestion? Could you not be there in the second darkest shadow one hour before midnight, to see who steps into the darkest shadow?’

‘Ah yes, that’s why you command the Watch, sir,’ said Willikins, and to Vimes’s shock there was a hint of a tear in the man’s voice. ‘You’re listening to the street, aren’t you, sir, yes?’

Vimes shrugged. ‘No streets here, Willikins!’

Willikins shook his head. ‘Once a street boy always a street boy, sir. It comes with us, in the pinch. Mothers go, fathers go – if we ever knew who they were – but the Street, well, the Street looks after us. In the pinch it keeps us alive.’

Willikins darted ahead of Vimes and rang the doorbell, so that the footman had the door open by the time Vimes came up the steps. ‘You’ve got just enough time to listen to Young Sam read to you, sir,’ Willikins added, making his way up the stairs. ‘Wonderful thing, reading, I wish I’d learned it when I was a kid. Her ladyship will be in her dressing room and guests will be arriving in about half an hour. Must go, sir. I’ve got to teach that fat toad of a butler his manners, sir.’

Vimes winced. ‘You’re not allowed to strangle butlers, Willikins. I’m sure I read it in a book of etiquette.’

Willikins gave him a look of mock offence. ‘No garrotting will be involved, sir,’ he said, opening the door to Vimes’s dressing room, ‘but he is a snob of the first water. Never did meet a butler who wasn’t. I just have to give him an orientation lesson.’

‘Well, he is the butler, and this is his house,’ said Vimes.

‘No, sir, it’s your house, and since I am your personal manservant I, by the irrevocable laws of the servants’ hall, outrank every one of the lazy buggers! I’ll show them how we do things in the real world, sir, don’t you worry—’

He was interrupted by a heavy knock at the door, followed by a determined rattling of the doorknob. Willikins opened the door and Young Sam stomped in and announced, ‘Reading!’

Vimes picked up his son and sat him on a chair. ‘How was your afternoon, my lad?’

‘Do you know,’ said Young Sam, as if imparting the results of strict research, ‘cows do really big floppy poos, but sheep do small poos, like chocolates.’

Vimes tried not to look at Willikins, who was shaking with suppressed laughter. He managed to keep his own expression solemn and said, ‘Well, of course, sheep are smaller.’

Young Sam considered this. ‘Cow poos go flop,’ he said. ‘It never said that in Where’s My Cow? ’ Young Sam’s voice betrayed a certain annoyance that this important information had been withheld. ‘Miss Felicity Beedle wouldn’t have left it out.’

Vimes sighed. ‘I just bet she wouldn’t.’

Willikins opened the door. ‘I’ll leave you gentlemen to it, then, and see you later, sir.’

‘Willikins?’ said Vimes, just as the man had his hand on the doorknob. ‘You appear to think that my brass knuckles are inferior to yours. Is that so?’

Willikins smiled. ‘You’ve never really agreed with the idea of the spiked ones, have you, sir?’ He carefully shut the door behind him.

Young Sam was already reading by himself these days, which was a great relief. Fortunately the works of Miss Felicity Beedle did not consist solely of exciting references to poo, in all its manifestations, but her output of small volumes for young children was both regular and highly popular, at least among the children. This was because she had researched her audience with care, and Young Sam had laughed his way through The Wee Wee Men, The War with the Snot Goblins, and Geoffrey and the Land of Poo. For boys of a certain age, they hit the squashy spot. At the moment he was giggling and choking his way through The Boy Who Didn’t Know How to Pick His Own Scabs, an absolute hoot for a boy just turned six. Sybil pointed out that the books were building Young Sam’s vocabulary, and not just about lavatorial matters, and it was indeed true that he was beginning, with encouragement, to read books in which nobody had a bowel movement at all. Which, when you came to think about it, was a mystery all by itself.

Vimes carried his son to bed after ten minutes of enjoyable listening, and had managed to shave and get into the feared evening clothes a few moments before his wife knocked on the door. Separate dressing rooms and bathrooms, Vimes thought … if you had the money, there was no better way to keep a happy marriage happy. And in order to keep a happy marriage happy he allowed Sybil to bustle in, wearing, in fact, a bustle,¹¹ to adjust his shirt, tweak his collar and make him fit for company.

And then she said, ‘I understand you gave the blacksmith a short lesson in unarmed combat, my dear …’ The pause hung in the air like a silken noose.

Vimes managed, ‘There’s something wrong here, I know it.’

‘I think so, too,’ said Sybil.

‘You do?’

‘Yes, Sam, but this is not the time. We have guests arriving at any minute. If you could refrain from throwing any of them over your shoulder in between courses I would be grateful.’ This was a terrific scolding by Sybil’s