Snuff

that he could think of as a case. He’s floundering; I don’t think he’s ever seen a corpse before.’
    Willikins looked genuinely taken aback. ‘What, never? Maybe I’ll retire down here, except I’d die of boredom.’
    A thought struck Vimes and he said, ‘When you were looking through the telescope, did you see anyone else go up the hill?’
    Willikins shook his head. ‘No, sir, just you.’
    They both turned to watch Young Sam, who was carefully drawing chicken poo in his notebook, and Willikins said quietly, ‘You’ve got a good lad there, very bright. Make the most of the time, sir.’
    Vimes shook his head. ‘Gods know you’re right, but, well, she was cut about, and with steel, definitely steel. They only have stone weapons. They cut her about to make certain there was so much blood that even a stupid flatfoot would spot it. And she was named after the colours of a flower.’
    There was a disapproving noise from Willikins. ‘Coppers shouldn’t get sentimental, it’s bad for the judgement. You said it yourself . You find yourself in some bloody awful domestic scene and you think things could be improved by kicking the shit out of somebody, only how do you know when to stop? That’s what you said. You said whacking a bloke in a fight is one thing, but when he’s been cuffed, it ain’t right.’
    To Vimes’s surprise Willikins tapped him on the shoulder in a kindly way (you’d know it instantly if Willikins tapped you in an unfriendly way).
    ‘Take my advice, commander, and have tomorrow off, too. There’s a boating house on the lake, and later you could take the little lad out in the woods, which are, by all accounts, knee-deep in poo of all sorts. He’ll be in poo heaven! Oh, and he also told me that he wants to go and see the smelly skull man again. I’ll tell you what, I reckon with a mind like his, he’ll be Archchancellor of Unseen University by the time he’s sixty!’
    Willikins must have seen the grimace on Vimes’s face, because he went on, ‘Why so surprised sir? He might want to be an alchemist, right? Don’t say you’d want him to be a copper: you wouldn’t, would you? At least when you’re a wizard people don’t try to kick you in the fork, right? Of course you do have to go up against dreadful creatures from hellish dimensions, but they don’t carry knives, and you get training. Worth thinking about, commander, ’cos he’s growing like a weed and you should be putting him on the right track through life. And now, if you’ll excuse me, commander, I’m off to annoy the servants.’
    Willikins took a few steps then stopped, looked at Vimes and said, ‘Look at it like this, sir. If you take some time off, the guilty will be no less guilty, and the dead won’t get any less dead, and her ladyship will not try to behead you with a coat hanger.’
    The guests at Lady Sybil’s tea party were leaving when Vimes got back to the Hall. He scraped the countryside off his boots and headed to the Hall’s master bathroom.
    Of course, there were plenty of bathrooms around the place – probably more than there were in a street in most of the city, where a tin bath, a jug and basin, or nothing at all were the ablutions of choice or necessity … but this bathroom had been built to a design by Mad Jack Ramkin and resembled the famous bathroom at Unseen University, although, had Mad Jack designed that one, it would have been called the Obscene University, since Mad Jack had a healthy (or possibly unhealthy) liking for the ladies, and in his bathroom it showed, oh dear, it showed. Of course, the white marble lovelies were dignified with urns, bunches of marble grapes, and the ever-popular length of gauze which had, happily, landed in just the right place to stop art becoming pornography. It was also, in all probability, the only bath that had taps marked hot, cold, brandy .
    And then there were the frescoes, such that if you were a man easily persuaded then it was a good job there was a cold tap, because not to put too fine a point on it, as it were, there were a large number of fine points all over them, yes indeed, and the ladies were only the start of the problem. There were marble gentlemen, as well, definitely gentlemen, even the ones with goats’ feet. It was surprising that the water in the bath didn’t boil of its own accord. He had asked Sybil about it, and she said that it was an important feature of the Hall, and gentlemen collectors of antiquities would often