Snuff

Om; Miss Pickings, a spinster, together with her companion, a strict-looking lady with short hair and a man’s shirt and pocket watch; and, yes, Miss Felicity Beedle. Vimes thought he had put his foot in it when he said, “Oh yes, the poo lady,” but she burst out laughing and shook his hand, saying, “Don’t worry, your grace, I wash mine thoroughly after writing!” And it was a big laugh. She was a small woman with the strange aspect that you see in some people that causes them to appear to be subtly vibrating even when standing perfectly still. You felt that if some interior restraint suddenly broke, the pent-up energy released would catapult her through the nearest window.
    Miss Beedle prodded him in the stomach. “And you are the famous Commander Vimes. Come to arrest us all, have you?” Of course, you got this all the time if you didn’t stop Sybil accepting the invitation to yet another posh society do. But while Miss Beedle laughed, silence fell on the other guests like a cast-iron safe. They were scowling at Miss Beedle, and Miss Beedle was staring intently at Vimes, and Vimes knew that expression. It was the expression of somebody with a story to tell. Certainly this was no time to broach the subject, and so Vimes filed it under “interesting.”
    Whatever Vimes’s misgivings, Ramkin Hall did a damn good dinner and—and this was the important thing—the dictates of popular social intercourse decreed that Sybil had to allow a menu full of things that would not be permitted at home if Vimes had asked for them. It’s one thing to act as arbiter of your own husband’s tastes, but it is frowned on to do the same to your guests.
    Across the table from him a retired military man was being assured by his wife that he did not, contrary to what he himself believed, like potted shrimps. In vain the man protested weakly that he thought he did like potted shrimps, to get the gentle response, “You may like potted shrimps, Charles, but they do not like you.”
    Vimes felt for the man, who seemed puzzled at having developed enemies among the lower crustacea. “Well, er, does lobster like me, dear?” he said, in a voice that did not express much hope.
    â€œNo, dear, it does not get on with you at all. Remember what happened at the Parsleys’ whist evening.”
    The man looked at the groaning sideboard and tried: “Do you think the scallops could get on with me for five minutes or so?”
    â€œGood heavens no, Charles.”
    He cast a glance at the sideboard again. “I expect the green salad is my bosom friend, though, isn’t it?”
    â€œAbsolutely, dear!”
    â€œYes, I thought so.”
    The man looked across at Vimes and gave him a hopeless grin followed by, “I am given to believe that you are a policeman, your grace. That right?”
    Vimes took proper stock of him for the first time: a whiskery old warrior, now out to grass—and that was probably all his wife was going to let him eat without an argument. He had burn scars on his face and hands and the accent of Pseudopolis. Easy. “You were with the Light Dragons, weren’t you, sir?”
    The old man looked pleased. “Well done, that man! Not many people remember us. Alas, I’m the only one left. Colonel Charles Augustus Makepeace—strange name for a military man, or perhaps not, I don’t know.” He sniffed. “We’re just a scorched page in the history of warfare. I dare say you haven’t read my memoirs, Twenty-four Years Without Eyebrows ? No? Well, you are not alone in that, I have to say. Met your missus in those days. She told us it would be totally impossible to breed dragons stable enough for use in warfare. She was right, and no mistake. Of course, we went on trying, because that’s the military way!”
    â€œYou mean, pile dreadful failure on top of failure?” said Vimes.
    The colonel laughed. “Well, it works sometimes! I still keep a few dragons, though. Wouldn’t be without ’em. A day without a singe is a day without sunshine. They’re a great saving in matches, and, of course, they keep undesirables away, too.”
    Vimes reacted like an angler who, after some time dozing by the water’s edge, felt that the fish were rising.
    â€œOh, you don’t get many of them around here, surely?”
    â€œYou think so? You don’t know the half of it, young man. I