Snuff

had entrusted him with anything . Good old Mistress Slightly, Vimes thought, as he stood in this gloomy cave surrounded by ranks of silent, solemn goblins. I’ll have a bag of peppermints on your grave if I get out of this alive. He cleared his throat. “Well now, lad, what we appear to have here is a goblin who has been in a fight.” He looked down at the corpse, and then to Feeney. “Perhaps you would care to tell me what you see?”
    Feeney was one step away from trembling. “Well, sir, I surmise that it is dead, sir.”
    â€œAnd how do you deduce this, please?”
    â€œEr, its head isn’t attached to its body, sir?”
    â€œYes, we generally recognize that as a clue that the corpse is indeed dead. Incidentally, lad, you may as well take the string off. I wouldn’t say this is the best light I’ve ever seen by, but it’ll do. Do you notice anything else, chief constable?” Vimes tried to keep his tone level.
    â€œWell, sir, it’s pretty cut about, sir.”
    Vimes smiled encouragingly. “Notice anything about that, lad?” Feeney was making heavy weather of it, but recruits often did at the start, doing so much looking that they forgot to see . “You’re doing well, chief constable. Would you care to extrapolate?”
    â€œSir? Extrapolate, sir?”
    â€œWhy would somebody be all cut about on their arms? Think about that.”
    Feeney’s lips actually moved as he thought, and then he grinned. “He was defending himself with his hands, sir?”
    â€œWell done, lad, and people who are defending themselves with their hands are doing so because they don’t have a shield or a weapon. I would wager, too, that his head was cut off while he was on the ground. Can’t exactly put my finger on it, but that looks to me like deliberate butchering rather than a hasty slice. Everything is messy, but you can see that the belly has been sliced open, yet there is hardly any blood around it. He was taken by surprise. And because of the belly would I know something else about him that I wish I didn’t know,” he said.
    â€œWhat’s that, sir?”
    â€œHe is a she, and she was ambushed, or maybe trapped.” And, he thought, there’s a claw missing.
    After a while it becomes a puzzle, not a corpse, said Vimes to himself as he knelt down, but never soon enough, and never for long enough. Aloud he said, “Look at the marks on this leg, lad. I reckon she stepped in a rabbit snare, probably because she was running away from…somebody.”
    Vimes stood up so fast that the watching goblins backed away. “Good grief, boy, we shouldn’t do that, not even in the country! Isn’t there some kind of code? You kill the bucks, not the does, isn’t that right? And this isn’t some spur-of-the-moment thing! Someone wanted to get a lot of blood out of this lady! You tell me why!”
    Vimes wasn’t certain what Feeney would have replied had they not been surrounded by solemn-faced goblins, which was just as well.
    â€œThis is murder, lad, the capital crime! And do you know why it was done? I’ll wager anything that it was so that Constable Upshot, acting on information received, would find a lot of blood in Dead Man’s Copse, where Commander Vimes was apparently going to have a meeting with an annoying blacksmith, and so, given that both of them were men of quick temper, quite possibly foul play could have been involved, yes?”
    â€œIt’s a legitimate deduction, sir, you must admit that.”
    â€œOf course I do, and now it’s a total bastard of a deduction, and now you must admit that.”
    â€œYes, sir, I do, sir, and apologize. However, I’d like to search the premises for any sign of Mr. Jefferson.” Feeney looked half ashamed, half defiant.
    â€œAnd why do you want to do that, chief constable?”
    Feeney stuck out his chin. “Because I’ve been shown to be a bloody fool once, and I don’t intend to be one again. Besides, sir, you might be wrong. This poor lady might have been in a fight with the blacksmith, perhaps, I don’t know, but I do know that if I don’t make a search here in the circumstances, somebody important is bound to ask me why I didn’t. And that person would be you, wouldn’t it, commander?”
    â€œGood answer, young man! And I have to admit that I’ve been a bloody fool more times than I