Snuff

Too late he reflected that this might be a bad move because she might well have told him all about it on one of those occasions when, so unusually for a married man, he was not paying much attention to what his wife was saying, and therefore he might be the cause of grumpiness in those precious, warm minutes before sleep. All he could see of her right now was the very tip of her nose, as the pillows claimed her, but she mumbled, drowsily, ‘Oh, they bought Hangnail Manor ten years or so ago, after the Marquis of Fantailer murdered his wife with a pruning knife in the pineapple house. Don’t you remember? You spent weeks searching the city for him. In the end everybody seemed to think he’d gone off to Fourecks and disguised himself by not calling himself the Marquis of Fantailer.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Vimes, ‘and I remember that a lot of his chums were quite indignant about the investigation! They said that he’d only done one murder, and it was his wife’s fault for having the bad taste to die after just one little stab!’

Lady Sybil turned over, which meant that – since she was a woman happily rich in gravitational attraction – as she turned, the pillow closest to Sam, acting like a gear in a chain, spun softly in the opposite direction so that Sam Vimes found himself now lying on his face. He struck out for the surface again and said, ‘And Rust bought it, did he? It’s unusual for the old fart to spend a penny more than he needs to.’

‘It wasn’t him, dear, it was Gravid.’

Vimes woke a little more. ‘The son? The criminal?’

‘I believe, Sam, that the word is entrepreneur, and I’d like to go to sleep now, if it’s all the same to you.’

Sam Vimes knew that the best thing he could say was nothing, and he sank back into the depths, thinking words like fiddler, sharp dealer, inserter of a crafty crowbar between what is right and wrong

, and mine and thine, wide boy, financier and untouchable …

Gently drifting into a nightmare world where the good guys and bad guys so often changed hats without warning, Vimes wrestled sleeplessness to the ground and made certain that it got eight hours.

Next morning Vimes, hand in hand with his son, walked thoughtfully towards the house of Miss Beedle, not knowing what to expect. He had little experience of the literary world, much preferring the literal one, and he had heard that writers spent all day in their dressing gowns drinking champagne.¹⁷ On the other hand, as he approached the place up another little lane, some reconsideration began to take place. For one thing, the ‘cottage’ had a garden that would do credit to a farm. When he looked over the fence he saw rows of vegetables and soft fruit, and there was an orchard and what was probably a pigsty and, over there, a proper outdoor privy, very professionally done, with the very nearly compulsory crescent-moon shape fretsawed into the door, and the log pile close at hand so that the most efficient use could be made of every trip down the path. The whole place had a sensible and serious air, and certainly wasn’t what you would expect of somebody who just mucked about with words every day.

Miss Beedle opened the door a fraction of a second after he had knocked. She didn’t look surprised.

‘I was rather expecting you, your grace,’ she said, ‘or is it Mister Policeman today? From what I hear, it’s always Mister Policeman one way or the other.’ Then she looked down. ‘And this must be Young Sam.’ She glanced up at his father and said, ‘They tend to get rather tongue-tied, don’t they?’

‘You know, I’ve got lots of poo,’ said Young Sam proudly. ‘I keep it in jam jars and I’ve got a laboratory in the lavatory. Have you got any elephant poo? It goes – and here he paused for effect – ‘dung!

’

For a moment Miss Beedle had that slightly glazed sheen often seen on the face of someone meeting Young Sam for the first time. She looked at Vimes. ‘You must be very proud of him.’

The proud father said, ‘It’s very hard to keep up – I know that.’

Miss Beedle led the way out of the hall and into a room in which chintz played a major part, and drew young Sam over to a large bureau. She opened a drawer and handed the boy what looked like a small book. ‘This is a bound proof of The Joy of Earwax, and I shall sign it for you if you like.’

Young Sam took it like one receiving a holy object, and his father, temporarily becoming his mum, said, ‘What do you say?’ To which Young Sam responded with a beam and a thank you and a ‘Please don’t scribble on it. I’m not allowed to scribble in books.’