Snuff

Still worse than the stuff he was being offered was the conversation, which inclined towards bonnets, a subject on which his ignorance was not just treasured but venerated. And besides, his breeches were chafing: wretched things, but Sybil had insisted, saying that he looked very smart in them, just like a country gentleman. Vimes had to suppose the country gentleman had different arrangements in the groinal department.

There was, besides himself and Lady Sybil, a young Omnian curate, wisely dressed in a voluminous black robe, which presumably presented no groinal problems. Vimes had no idea why the young man was there, but presumably the young ladies needed somebody to fill with weak tea, suspect scones and mindless twittering conversation when someone like Vimes wasn’t there. And it seemed that when the subject of bonnets lost its fascination the only other topics were legacies and the prospects for forthcoming balls. And so, inevitably, given his restlessness in female company, a growing disaffection for urine-coloured tea, and small talk that would barely be visible under a microscope, Vimes said, ‘Excuse me asking, ladies, but what is it that you actually, I mean actually do … For a living, I mean?’

This question elicited five genuinely blank looks. Vimes couldn’t tell the daughters one from the other, except the one called Emily, who certainly lodged in the mind and possibly also in doorways, and who now said, in the tones of one slightly out of her depth, ‘I do beg your pardon, commander, but I don’t think we understand what you just vouchsafed?’

‘I meant, well, how do you make a living? Are any of you in employment? How do you make your daily crust? What work do you do?’ Vimes could pick up nothing from Sybil, because he couldn’t see her face, but the girls’ mother was staring at him with gleeful fascination. Oh well, if he was going to get it in the neck he might as well get it all the way down. ‘I mean, ladies,’ he said, ‘how do you make your way in the world? How do you earn your keep? Apart from bonnets, do you have any skills – like cookery, for example?’

Another daughter, quite possibly Mavis, but Vimes was guessing, cleared her throat and said, ‘Fortunately, commander, we have servants for that sort of thing. We’re gentlewomen, you see? It would be quite, quite unthinkable for us to go into trade or commerce. The scandal! It’s just not done.’

By now there appeared to be a competition to see who could terminally baffle who, or possibly whom, first. But Vimes managed to say, ‘Don’t you have a sister in the timber business?’

It was amazing, he thought, that neither their mother nor Sybil was as yet adding anything to the conversation. And now another sister (possibly Amanda?) looked about to speak. Why in the world did they all wear those silly diaphanous dresses? You couldn’t hope to do a day’s work in something as skimpy as that. Amanda (possibly) said carefully, ‘I’m afraid our sister is a bit of an embarrassment to the family, your grace.’

‘What, for getting a job! Why?’

Another one of the girls, and Vimes was in fact getting really confused at this point, said, ‘Well, commander, she has no hope of making a good marriage now … er, not to a gentleman.’

This was becoming a tangle and so Vimes said, ‘Tell me, ladies, what is a gentleman?’

After some whispered conversation a sacrificial daughter said, very nervously, ‘We understand the gentleman is a man who does not have to sully his hands by working.’

Adamantium is said to be the strongest of all metals, but it would have bent around the patience of Sam Vimes as he said, with every syllable carefully smelted, ‘Oh, a layabout. And how do you go about snagging such a gentleman, pray?’

Now the girls looked as if they were indeed praying. One of them managed to say, ‘You see, commander, our dear late father was unlucky in the money market, and I’m afraid that until the death of Great-aunt Marigold, of whom we have expectations, there is, alas, no money for a dowry for any of us.’

The heavens held their breath while the concept of a dowry was explained to Sam Vimes, and ice formed on the windows as he sat in strangulated thought.