Snuff

said.
    â€œI don’t know about any bishops,” said Vimes, “but something is going on here and I can feel the tingle, felt it on the day I came here, and it’s tingling on my land. Listen to me, chief constable. When you apprehend the suspect you should take the trouble to ask them if they did it, and if they say no you must ask them if they can prove their innocence. Got it? You’re supposed to ask. Understand? And my answers are, in order, hell no and hell yes!”
    The little clawed hand scratched at Vimes’s shirt again. “Just ice?”
    Vimes thought, Oh well, I thought I’d been gentle with the lad up until now. “Chief constable, something is wrong, and you know that something is wrong, and you are all alone, so you’d better enlist the help of anyone you know that can be trusted. Such as me, for example, in which case I’ll be the suspect who, having been bailed on my own recognizance of one penny,” and here Vimes handed a partly corroded small copper disc to the astonished Feeney, “has been requested to help you with your inquiries, such as they are, and that will be all fine and dandy and in accordance with the standard work on police procedure, which, my lad, was written by me, and you had better believe it. I’m not the law, no policeman is the law. A policeman is just a man, but when he wakes up in the morning it is the law that is his alarm clock. I’ve been nice and kind to you up until now, but did you really think I was going to be spending the night in a pig pen? Time to be a real copper, lad. Do the right thing and fudge the paperwork afterward, like I do.”
    Vimes looked down at the persistent little goblin. “Okay, Stinky, lead the way.”
    â€œBut my old mum is just coming out with your dinner, commander!” Feeney’s voice was a wail, and Vimes hesitated. It didn’t do to upset an old mum.
    It was time to let the duke out. Vimes never normally bowed to anybody, but he bowed to Mistress Upshot, who almost dropped her tray in ecstatic confusion. “I am mortified, my dear Mistress Upshot, to have to ask you to keep your Man Dog Suck Po warm for us for a little while, because your son here, a credit to his uniform and to his parents, has asked me to assist him in an errand of considerable importance, which can only be entrusted to a young man with integrity, as your lad here.”
    As the woman very nearly melted in pride and happiness Vimes pulled the young man away.
    â€œSir, the dish was Bang Suck Duck, we only have Man Dog Suck Po on Sundays. With mashed carrots.”
    Vimes shook Mrs. Upshot warmly by the hand and said, “I look forward to tasting it later, my dear Mistress Upshot, but if you’ll excuse me, your son is a stickler for his police work, as I’m sure you know.”

C olonel Charles Augustus Makepeace had long ago, with the expertise of a lifelong strategist, decided to let Letitia have her way in all things. It saved so much trouble and left him able to potter around in his garden, take care of his dragons and to occasionally go trout fishing, a pastime that he loved. He rented half a mile of stream, but was sadly now finding it difficult to keep running fast enough. Nowadays he spent a lot of time in his library, working on the second volume of his memoirs, keeping from under his wife’s feet and not getting involved.
    Until this moment he had been quite happy that she had the role of chairman of the magistrates because it kept her away from home for hours at a time. He had never been very much of a one for thinking in terms of good or bad and guilty or not guilty. He had learned to think in terms of us and them and dead and not dead.
    And therefore he wasn’t exactly listening to the group sitting around the long table at the other end of the library, talking in worried voices, but nevertheless he couldn’t help overhearing.
    She had signed that damned document! He ought to have tried to talk her out of it, but he knew where that would have ended. Commander Vimes! Okay, by all accounts the man was the sort to rush in, and maybe he did have a scrap with what’shisname the blacksmith, who wasn’t too bad a cove in his way, bit of a hothead of course but he’d made a damn good dragon prod only the other day at quite a reasonable price. Vimes? Not a killer, surely. That’s one thing you learned in the military. You don’t last long if