Snuff

Honestly, if you get Sam going he’ll quote the laws and ordinances of Ankh-Morpork and force standing orders until you throw a cushion at him!”
    Well done, Vimes thought, at least I can now eat my dinner in peace. He relaxed as the conversation around him became less fraught and once again replete with the everyday gossip and grumblings about other people living in the area, the difficulties with servants, the prospects for the harvest and, oh yes, the trouble with goblins.
    Vimes paid attention then. Goblins. The City Watch appeared to contain at least one member of every known bipedal sapient species plus one Nobby Nobbs. It had become a tradition: if you could make it as a copper, then you could make it as a species. But nobody had ever once suggested that Vimes should employ a goblin, the simple reason being that they were universally known to be stinking, cannibalistic, vicious, untrustworthy bastards.
    Of course, everybody knew that dwarfs were a chiselling bunch who would swindle you if they could, and that trolls were little more than thugs, and the city’s one resident medusa would never look you in the face, and the vampires couldn’t be trusted, however much they smiled, and werewolves were only vampires who couldn’t fly, when you got right down to it, and the man next door was a real bastard who threw his rubbish over your wall and his wife was no better than she should be. But then again it took all sorts to make a world. It was not as if you were prejudiced because, after all, there had been an orc working at the university, but he liked his football, didn’t he just, and you could forgive anyone who could score from the center spot and, well, you took as you found…But not bloody goblins, thank you very much. People hounded them out if they came into the city and they tended to end up downriver, working for the likes of Harry King in the bone-grinding, leather-tanning and scrap-metal industries. A fair walk outside the city gates and so outside the law.
    And now there were some in the vicinity of the Hall, as evidenced by chickens and cats disappearing, and so on. Well, probably, but Vimes remembered when people said that trolls stole chickens; there was nothing of interest to a troll in a chicken. It would be like humans eating plaster. He certainly did not mention any of this.
    Yes, no one had a good word to say about goblins, but Miss Beedle had no word to say at all. Her gaze remained firmly fixed on Vimes’s face. You could read a dining table if you learned the knack and if you were a policeman then you could build a clear picture of what each diner thought about the others; it was all in the looks. The things said or not said. The people who were in the magic circle and the people who weren’t. Miss Beedle was an outsider, tolerated, because obviously there is such a thing as good manners, but not exactly included. What was the phrase? Not one of us.
    Vimes realized that he was staring at Miss Beedle just as she was staring at him. They both smiled, and he thought that an inquisitive man would go and see the nice lady who had written the books that his little boy enjoyed so much and not because she looked like somebody prepared to blow so many whistles that it would sound like a pipe band.
    Miss Beedle frowned a lot when the talk was about goblins, and occasionally people, especially the people he had tagged as Mrs. Colonel, would cast a look at her as one might glance at a child who was doing something wrong.
    And so he maintained a nice exterior air of attention while at the same time sifting through the affairs of the day. The process was interrupted by Mrs. Colonel saying, “By the way, your grace, we were very pleased to hear that you gave Jefferson a drubbing this afternoon. The man is insufferable! He upsets people!”
    â€œWell, I noticed that he’s not afraid to air his views,” said Vimes, “but nor are we, are we?”
    â€œBut surely you of all people, your grace,” said the clergyman, looking up earnestly, “cannot possibly believe that Jack is as good as his master?”
    â€œDepends on Jack. Depends on the master. Depends what you mean by good,” said Vimes. “I suppose I was a Jack, but when it comes to the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, I am the Master.”
    Mrs. Colonel was about to answer when Lady Sybil said brightly, “Talking of which, Sam, I had a letter from a Mrs. Wainwright commending you