Snuff

too. Oh dear, you of all people must recognize a substition when you’re possessed by it? It’s the opposite of a superstition: it’s real even if you don’t believe in it. My mother taught me that; she was a goblin.’

Vimes looked at the pleasant brown-haired woman in front of him and said, politely, ‘No.’

‘All right, perhaps you’ll allow me a little theatricality and misdirection for effect? Truthfully, my mother was found as a child when she was three and raised by goblins in Uberwald. Until she was about eleven – and I say about because she was never quite certain about the passage of time – she pretty much thought and acted like a goblin and picked up their language, which is insanely difficult to learn if you’re not brought up to it. She ate with them, had her own plot in the mushroom farm and was very highly thought of among them for the way she looked after the rat farm. She once told me that until she met my father, all her best recollections were of those years in the goblin cave.’

Miss Beedle stirred her coffee and continued. ‘And she also told me her worst recollections, the ones that haunted her nightmares and, I might say, haunt mine now: of one day after some nearby humans had found out that there was a golden-haired, pink-cheeked human girl running around underground with evil, treacherous brutes who, as everybody knows, eat babies. Well, she screamed and fought as they tried to take her away, especially since people who she had thought of as family were being slaughtered around her.’

There was a pause. And Vimes glanced somewhat fearfully at Young Sam, who, thankfully, had returned to The Joy of Earwax and was therefore oblivious of all else.

‘You haven’t touched your coffee, commander. You’re just holding it in your hand and looking at me.’

Vimes took a deep draught of very hot coffee, which at the moment suited him just fine. He said, ‘This is true? I’m sorry, I don’t know what to say.’

Tears of the Mushroom was watching him carefully, ready should he feel a biscuit attack coming on. They were in fact pretty good, and to hide his confusion he thanked her and took another one.

‘Best not to say anything, then,’ said Miss Beedle. ‘All slaughtered, for no reason at all. It happens. Everybody knows they’re a worthless people, don’t they? I tell you, commander, it’s true that some of the most terrible things in the world are done by people who think, genuinely think, that they’re doing it for the best, especially if there is some god involved. Well, it took a lot of those things, and quite a lot of time, to convince a little girl that she wasn’t one of the nasty goblins any more and was really one of the human beings who were not nasty at all, because they were certain she would understand one day that all this terrible business with the bucket of cold water and the beatings every time she spoke in the goblin tongue, or started absent-mindedly to sing a goblin song, was in her best interest. Fortunately, although she probably didn’t think so at the time, she was strong and clever and she learned: learned to be a good girl, learned to wear proper dresses and eat with a knife and fork and kneel down to pray her thanks for all that she was receiving, including the beatings. And she learned not to be a goblin so successfully that they allowed her to work in the garden, where she vaulted over the wall. They never broke her, and she said to me that there would always be some goblin in her. I never met my father. According to my mother he was a decent and hardworking man, and a considerate and understanding one too, I suspect.’

Miss Beedle stood up and brushed at her dress, as if trying to remove the crumbs of history. Standing there, in the chintzy room with the harp in it, she said, ‘I don’t know who those people were who killed the goblins and beat my mother, but if I ever found out I would slaughter them without a thought, because good people have no business being so bad. Goodness is about what you do. Not what you pray to. And that’s how it went,’ she said. ‘My father was a jeweller, and he soon found out that my mother was absolutely gifted in that respect, probably because of her goblin background that led her to have a feel for stones. I’m sure that made up for having a wife who would swear in goblin when she was annoyed – and let me tell you a good goblin swear can go on for at least a quarter of an hour. She wasn’t one for the books, as you might expect, but my dad had been, and one day I thought, how hard can writing be? After all, most of the words are going to be and, the and I and it, and so on, and there’s a huge number to choose from, so a lot of the work has already been done for you. That was fifty-seven books ago. It seems to have worked.’

Miss Beedle sat back down in her chair and leaned forward. ‘They have the most complex language you could possibly imagine, commander. The meaning of every word is contingent on the words around it, the speaker, the listener, the time of year, the weather, oh, and so many other things. They have something equivalent to what we think of as poetry; they use and control fire … And about three years ago nearly all of them in this countryside were rounded up and carted away, because they were a nuisance. Isn’t that why you’re here?’

Vimes took a deep breath. ‘Actually, Miss Beedle, I came here to see my wife’s family estate and let my lad learn about the countryside. In the process of which I’ve already been arrested on suspicion of killing a blacksmith and have seen the brutally slaughtered body of a goblin woman. On top of this I have no knowledge of the whereabouts of said blacksmith and, Miss Beedle, would like somebody to enlighten me, preferably yourself.’

‘Yes, I saw the poor thing, and I’m sorry that I can’t tell you where Jethro is.’

Vimes stared at her and thought, She’s probably telling the truth. ‘He’s not hiding in some part of the mine, is he?’

‘No, I’ve looked. I’ve looked everywhere. No note, nothing. And his parents have no idea either. He’s a bit of a free spirit, but he’s not the sort of person to go away without telling me.’ She looked down, clearly embarrassed.

The silence said a lot. Vimes broke it by saying, ‘The murder of that poor girl on the hill will not go unpunished while I live. I’m taking it personally, you might say. I think someone was trying to set me up and mud sticks.’ He paused. ‘Tell me – these pots the goblins make. Do they carry them around all the time?’

‘Well, yes, of course, but only the ones they’re filling at the moment, obviously,’ said Miss Beedle, with a trace of annoyance. ‘Is this relevant?’

‘Well, a policeman, you might say, thinks in goblin language: everything is contingent on everything else. Incidentally, how many other people know that you have a tunnel into the hill?’

‘What makes you think I have a tunnel going into the hill?’

‘Let me see now. This place is practically at the foot of the hill, and if I lived here I’d have dug out a decent wine cellar for myself. That’s one reason, and the other is because I saw the flash in your eyes when I asked you the question. Would you like me to ask you the question again?’

The woman opened her mouth to speak, and Vimes raised a finger. ‘Not finished yet. What isn’t so simple as that is the fact that yesterday you arrived in the cave without anybody seeing you walk up the hill. Everyone tells me that there are eyes watching you everywhere in the country and, as luck would have it, I had a few working for me yesterday. Please don’t waste my time. You’ve committed no crime that I know of – you understand being kind to goblins is not a crime?’ He thought about that and added, ‘Although perhaps some people round here might think it is. But I don’t and I’m not stupid, Miss Beedle. I saw that goblin head in the pub. It looked as if it’s been there for