Snuff

was going to be spending the night in a pig pen? Time to be a real copper, lad. Do the right thing and fudge the paperwork afterwards, like I do.’ Vimes looked down at the persistent little goblin. ‘Okay, Stinky, lead the way.’

‘But my old mum is just coming out with your dinner, commander!’ Feeney’s voice was a wail, and Vimes hesitated. It didn’t do to upset an old mum.

It was time to let the duke out. Vimes never normally bowed to anybody, but he bowed to Mistress Upshot, who almost dropped her tray in ecstatic confusion. ‘I am mortified, my dear Mistress Upshot, to have to ask you to keep your Man Dog Suck Po warm for us for a little while, because your son here, a credit to his uniform and to his parents, has asked me to assist him in an errand of considerable importance, which can only be entrusted to a young man with integrity, as your lad here.’

As the woman very nearly melted in pride and happiness Vimes pulled the young man away.

‘Sir, the dish was Bang Suck Duck. We only have Man Dog Suck Po on Sundays. With mashed carrots.’

Vimes turned back and shook Mrs Upshot warmly by the hand, and said, ‘I look forward to tasting it later, my dear Mistress Upshot, but if you’ll excuse me, your son is a stickler for his police work, as I’m sure you know.’

Colonel Charles Augustus Makepeace had long ago, with the expertise of a lifelong strategist, decided to let Letitia have her way in all things. It saved so much trouble and left him able to potter around in his garden, take care of his dragons and occasionally go trout fishing, a pastime that he loved. He rented half a mile of stream, but was sadly now finding it difficult to keep running fast enough. Nowadays he spent a lot of time in his library, working on the second volume of his memoirs, keeping from under his wife’s feet and not getting involved.

Until this moment he had been quite happy that she had the role of chairman of the magistrates because it kept her away from home for hours at a time. He had never been very much of a one for thinking in terms of good or bad and guilty or not guilty. He had learned to think in terms of us and them and dead and not dead.

And therefore he wasn’t exactly listening to the group sitting around the long table at the other end of the library, talking in worried voices, but nevertheless he couldn’t help overhearing.

She had signed that damned document! He ought to have tried to talk her out of it, but he knew where that would have ended. Commander Vimes! Okay, by all accounts the man was the sort to rush in, and maybe he did have a scrap with what’shisname the blacksmith, who wasn’t too bad a cove in his way, bit of a hot-head of course but he’d made a damn good dragon prod only the other day at quite a reasonable price. Vimes? Not a killer, surely. That’s one thing you learned in the military. You don’t last long if you’re a killer. Killing as duty called was another thing entirely. Letitia had listened to that unspeakable lawyer and they had all agreed that it be signed simply because that wretched Rust fella wanted it.

He opened this month’s edition of Fang and Fire. Occasionally somebody lowered their voice, which you couldn’t help thinking was damn insulting, given that they were sitting in a chap’s library and especially when the chap hadn’t been consulted. But he didn’t protest. He had long ago learned not to protest, and so he kept his eyes focused on the pullout feature on flame-retardant incubators, holding it in front of him as if to ward off evil.

However, among the words he didn’t hear were, ‘Of course, he only married her for her money, you know.’ That was his wife’s voice. Then, ‘I heard she was desperate to find a husband.’ The curiously sharp tone of that voice identified its owner as Miss Pickings, who, the colonel couldn’t help noting, as he stared grimly at a full-page advertisement for asbestos kennels, had clearly been in no hurry to find a husband herself.

The colonel was, by inclination, a live-and-let-live personality and, frankly, if a gel wanted to go around with another gel who wore a shirt and tie, trained horses and had a face like a bulldog licking vinegar off a thistle, then it was entirely her business. After all, he told himself, what about old ‘Beefy’ Jackson, eh? Wore a dress every night in the mess and rather flowery aftershave for a chap, but when the call to arms came he could fight like a bloody demon. Funny old world.

He tried to find his place on the page again, but was interrupted by the Very Reverend Mouser. He never could get on with padres, couldn’t see the point. ‘I find it very suspicious that the Ramkin family have turned up here after so many years, don’t you? I keep reading about Vimes in the newspaper, not the kind of person you can imagine as simply taking a holiday.’

‘According to Gravid, he is known as Vetinari’s terrier,’ said Letitia.

At the other end of the room her husband thrust his head even deeper into his magazine so as not to snigger. Gravid! Who would call their child Gravid? No one who had ever kept dragons or fish, that was certain. Of course, there was such a thing as a dictionary, but then the old Lord Rust had never been the kind of man to open a book if he could help it. The colonel tried to contemplate an article on the treatment of Zig-Zag Throat in older males and the wife of his heart continued, ‘Well, we don’t want any of Vetinari’s nonsense here. Apparently, his lordship rather enjoys allowing Vimes to break wind in the halls of the mighty. Apparently, Vimes is no respecter of rank. Indeed, quite the reverse. And indeed, it would seem that he is prepared to ambush a decent working man.’

Funny, thought the colonel, first time I ever heard her call the smith anything other than a blasted nuisance. It seemed to him that the gossip around the table was trite, artificial, like the conversation of raw recruits on the eve of their first battle. He thought, There’s a warrant out for Commander Vimes, hero of Koom Valley (bloody good show! Wonderful execution. Peace in our time between brother troll and brother dwarf and that sort of thing. Just the job! I’ve seen too much killing in my time), and now you are going to put him out of a job and a reputation, just because that greasy lad with a name like a pregnant frog has charmed you into doing so.

‘I understand he has a very violent nature,’ said, oh, what was his name? Bit of a bad hat in the colonel’s opinion. Bought a big villa up near Overhang, one of Rust’s cronies. Never seemed to do any work. What was his name, ah yes, Edgehill, not a man that you would trust behind you or in front of you, but they’d sworn him in even so.

‘And he was just a street kid and a drunkard!’ said Letitia. ‘What do you think of that?’

The colonel paid careful attention to his magazine while his unspoken thoughts said, Sounds jolly good to me, my dear. All I got when I married you was the promise of a half-share in your dad’s fish and chip shop when I left the service, and I never even got that.

‘Everybody knows that his ancestor killed a king, so I can’t imagine a Vimes would jib at killing a blacksmith,’ said the Honourable Ambrose. Bit of a mystery, this one. Something to do with shipping. Sent out from the city to lie low here because of something to do with a girl. And the colonel, who spent a lot of time thinking,¹⁴ had some time ago wondered to himself how, in these modern days, you got banished from the city because of a girl, and instinct had told him that possibly it had something to do with the age of the girl. After incubating that