Snuff

There was laughter, and Miss Beedle said, ‘We do have a village constable, your grace, and he keeps pigs in the lock-up down by the old bridge!’

She looked brightly at Vimes, whose expression was stony. He said, ‘Does he ever put people in there? Does he have a warrant card? Does he have a badge?’

‘Well, he puts the occasional drunk in there to sober up, and he says the pigs don’t seem to mind, but I have no idea what a warrant card is.’

There was more laughter at this but it faded quickly, sucked into nowhere by Vimes’s implacable silence.

Then he said, ‘I would not consider him to be a policeman, and until I found that he was working within a framework of proper law enforcement I would regard him not as a policeman by my standards but as a slightly bossy street cleaner. Of some use, but not a policeman.’

‘By your standards, your grace?’ said the clergyman.

‘Yes, sir, by my standards. My decision. My responsibility. My experience. My arse if things go wrong.’

‘But, your grace, as you say, you are outside your jurisdiction here,’ said Mrs Colonel gently.

Vimes could sense her husband’s nervousness, and it was certainly not to do with the food. The man was wishing heartily that he wasn’t there. It was funny how people always wanted to talk to policemen about crime, and never realize what strange little signals their anxieties betrayed.

He turned to the man’s wife, smiled and said, ‘But as I’ve said, madam, if a copper comes across a flagrant crime his jurisdiction reaches out to him like an old friend. And do you mind if we change the subject? No offence meant to any of you ladies and gentlemen, but over the years I’ve noticed that bankers and military men and merchants all get a chance to eat their dinners at their leisure at affairs like this, while the poor old copper has to talk about police work, which is most of the time rather dull.’ He smiled again to keep everything friendly, and went on, ‘Exceedingly dull around here, I would imagine. From my point of view, this place is as quiet as the … grave.’ Score: one wince from the dear old colonel, and the priest looking down at his plate, although the latter shouldn’t be taken too seriously, he thought, because you seldom saw a clergyman who couldn’t strike sparks with his knife and fork.

Sybil, using her hostess voice, shattered the silence like an icebreaker. ‘I think it’s time for the main course,’ she said, ‘which will be superb mutton avec no talking about police work at all. Honestly, if you get Sam going he’ll quote the laws and ordinances of Ankh-Morpork and force standing orders until you throw a cushion at him!’

Well done, Vimes thought, at least I can now eat my dinner in peace. He relaxed as the conversation around him became less fraught and once again replete with the everyday gossip and grumblings about other people living in the area, the difficulties with servants, the prospects for the harvest and, oh yes, the trouble with goblins.

Vimes paid attention then. Goblins. The City Watch appeared to contain at least one member of every known bipedal sapient species plus one Nobby Nobbs. It had become a tradition: if you could make it as a copper, then you could make it as a species. But nobody had ever once suggested that Vimes should employ a goblin, the simple reason being that they were universally known to be stinking, cannibalistic, vicious, untrustworthy bastards.

Of course, everybody knew that dwarfs were a chiselling bunch who would swindle you if they could, and that trolls were little more than thugs, and the city’s one resident medusa would never look you in the face, and the vampires couldn’t be trusted, however much they smiled, and werewolves were only vampires who couldn’t fly, when you got right down to it, and the man next door was a real bastard who threw his rubbish over your wall and his wife was no better than she should be. But then again it took all sorts to make a world. It was not as if you were prejudiced because, after all, there had been an orc working at the university, but he liked his football, didn’t he just, and you could forgive anyone who could score from the centre spot and, well, you took as you found … But not bloody goblins, thank you very much. People hounded them out if they came into the city and they tended to end up downriver, working for the likes of Harry King in the bone-grinding, leather-tanning and scrap-metal industries. A fair walk outside the city gates and so outside the law.

And now there were some in the vicinity of the Hall, as evidenced by chickens and cats disappearing, and so on. Well, probably, but Vimes remembered when people said that trolls stole chickens. There was nothing of interest to a troll in a chicken. It would be like humans eating plaster. He certainly did not mention any of this.

Yes, no one had a good word to say about goblins, but Miss Beedle had no word to say at all. Her gaze remained firmly fixed on Vimes’s face. You could read a dining table if you learned the knack and if you were a policeman then you could build a clear picture of what each diner thought about the others. It was all in the looks. The things said or not said. The people who were in the magic circle and the people who weren’t. Miss Beedle was an outsider, tolerated, because obviously there is such a thing as good manners, but not exactly included. What was the phrase? Not one of us.

Vimes realized that he was staring at Miss Beedle just as she was staring at him. They both smiled, and he thought that an inquisitive man would go and see the nice lady who had written the books that his little boy enjoyed so much and not because she looked like somebody prepared to blow so many whistles that it would sound like a pipe band.

Miss Beedle frowned a lot when the talk was about goblins, and occasionally people, especially the people he had tagged as Mrs Colonel, would cast a look at her as one might glance at a child who was doing something wrong.

And so he maintained a nice exterior air of attention while at the same time sifting through the affairs of the day. The process was interrupted by Mrs Colonel saying, ‘By the way, your grace, we were very pleased to hear that you gave Jefferson a drubbing this afternoon. The man is insufferable! He upsets people!’

‘Well, I noticed that he’s not afraid to air his views,’ said Vimes, ‘but nor are we, are we?’

‘But surely you of all people, your grace,’ said the clergyman, looking up earnestly, ‘cannot possibly believe that Jack is as good as his master?’

‘Depends on Jack. Depends on the master. Depends what you mean by good,’ said Vimes. ‘I suppose I was a Jack, but when it comes to the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, I am the master.’

Mrs Colonel was about to answer when Lady Sybil said brightly, ‘Talking of which, Sam, I had a letter from a Mrs Wainwright commending you highly. Remind me to show it to you.’

All long-term couples have their code. Classically there is one that the wife uses in polite conversation to warn her husband that, because of hasty dressing, or absent-mindedness, he is becoming exposed in the crotch department.¹²