Going Postal

mail but they never filled the basements? Where’s the sense in that?”
    “Oh, you couldn’t use the basements, sir, oh, not the basements,” said Groat, looking shocked. “It’s far too damp down here. The letters’d be destroyed in no time.”
    “Destroyed,” said Moist flatly.
    “Nothing like damp for destroying things, sir,” said Groat, nodding sagely.
    “Destroying mail from dead people to dead people,” said Moist in the same flat voice.
    “We don’t know that, sir,” said the old man. “I mean, we’re got no actual proof.”
    “Well, no. After all, some of those envelopes are only a hundred years old!” said Moist. He had a headache from the dust and a sore throat from the dryness, and there was something about the old man that was grating on his raw nerves. He was keeping something back. “That’s no time at all to some people. I bet the zombie and vampire population are still waiting by the letterbox every day, right?”
    “No need to be like that, sir,” said Groat levelly. “No need to be like that. You can’t destroy the mails. You just can’t do it, sir. That’s Tampering With The Mail, sir. That’s not just a crime, sir. That’s a, a—”
    “Sin?” said Moist.
    “Oh, worse’n a sin ,” said Groat, almost sneering. “For sins you’re only in trouble with a god, but in my day, if you interfered with the mail, you’d be up against Chief Postal Inspector Rumbelow. Hah! And there’s a big difference. Gods forgive .”
    Moist searched for sanity in the wrinkled face opposite him. The unkempt beard was streaked with different colors, either of dirt, tea, or random celestial pigment. Like some hermit , he thought. Only a hermit could wear a wig like that .
    “Sorry?” he said. “And you mean that shoving someone’s letter under the floorboards for a hundred years isn’t tampering with it?”
    Groat suddenly looked wretched. The beard quivered. Then he started to cough, great, hacking, wooden, crackling lumps of cough that made the jars shake and caused a yellow mist to rise from his trouser bottoms. “’Scuse me a moment, sir,” he wheezed between hacks, and fumbled in his pocket for a scratched and battered tin.
    “You suck at all, sir?” he said, tears rolling down his cheeks. He proffered the tin to Moist. “They’re Number Threes, sir. Very mild. I make ’em meself, sir. Nat’ral remedies from nat’ral ingredients, that’s my style, sir. Got to keep the tubes clear, sir, otherwise they turn against you.”
    Moist took a large, violet lozenge from the box and sniffed it. It smelled faintly of aniseed.
    “Thank you, Mr. Groat,” he said, but in case this counted as an attempt at bribery, he added sternly, “The mail, Mr. Groat? Sticking undelivered mail wherever there’s a space isn’t tampering with it?”
    “That’s more… delaying the mail, sir. Just, er…slowing it down. A bit. It’s not like there’s any intention of never delivering it, sir.”
    Moist stared at the worried expression. He felt that sense of shifting ground you experience when you realize that you’re dealing with someone whose world is connected with your own only by their fingertips. Not a hermit , he thought, but more like a shipwrecked mariner, living in this dry desert island of a building while the world outside moves on and all sanity evaporates .
    “Mr. Groat, I don’t want to, you know, upset you or anything, but there’s thousands of letters out there under a thick layer of pigeon guano…” he said slowly.
    “Actually, on that score, sir, things aren’t as bad as they seem,” said Groat, and paused to suck noisily on his natural cough lozenge. “It’s very dry stuff, pigeon doins, and forms quite a hard protective crust on the envelopes…”
    “Why are they all here , Mr. Groat?” said Moist. People skills, he remembered. You’re not allowed to shake him.
    The junior postman avoided his gaze.
    “Well, you know how it is…” he tried.
    “No, Mr. Groat. I don’t think I do.”
    “Well…maybe a man’s busy, got a full round, maybe it’s Hogswatch, lots of cards, see? and the inspector is after him about his timekeeping, and so maybe he just shoves half a bag of letters somewhere safe…but he will deliver ’em, right? I mean, it’s not his fault if they keeps pushing, sir, pushing him all the time. Then it’s tomorrow and he’s got an even bigger bag, ’cos they’re pushing all the time, so he reckons, I’ll just drop a few off