Snuff by Terry Pratchett Read Free Book Online

celibacy …’
    ‘Very attentive of you, your grace. We get a week’s holiday every year. A man cannot live by snails and herbs of the riverbank alone …’
    Vimes delicately indicated that they had ground to cover, and left the hermit carefully carrying the family relic back to his grotto, wherever that was. When they seemed to be safely out of earshot he said, waving his hands in the air, ‘Why? I mean … why?’
    ‘Oh, quite a few of the really old ancestral homes had a hermit on the strength, sir. It was considered romantic to have a grotto with a hermit in it.’
    ‘He was a bit whiffy on the nose,’ said Vimes.
    ‘Not allowed to bathe, I believe, sir, and you should know, sir, that he gets an allowance consisting of two pounds of potatoes, three pints of small beer or cider, three loaves of bread and one pound of pork dripping per week. And presumably all the snails and herbs of the riverbank he can force down. I looked at the accounts, sir. Not a bad diet for an ornamental garden feature.’
    ‘Not too bad if you throw in some fruit and the occasional laxative, I suppose,’ said Vimes. ‘So Sybil’s ancestors used to come along and talk to the hermit whenever they were faced with a philosophical conundrum, yes?’
    Willikins looked puzzled. ‘Good heavens, no, sir, I can’t imagine that any of them would ever dream of doing that. They never had any truck with philosophical conundra. 8 They were aristocrats, you see? Aristocrats don’t notice philosophical conundra. They just ignore them. Philosophy includes contemplating the possibility that you might be wrong, sir, and a real aristocrat knows that he is always right. It’s not vanity, you understand, it’s built-in absolute certainty. They may sometimes be as mad as a hatful of spoons, but they are always definitely and certainly mad.’
    Vimes stared at him in admiration. ‘How the hell do you know all this, Willikins?’
    ‘Watched them, sir. In the good old days when her ladyship’s granddad was alive he made certain that the whole staff of Scoone Avenue came down here with the family in the summer. As you know, I’m not much of a scholar and, truth to tell, neither are you, but when you grow up on the street you learn fast because if you don’t learn fast you’re dead.’
    They were now walking across an ornamental bridge, over what was probably the trout stream and, Vimes assumed, a tributary of Old Treachery, a name whose origin he had yet to comprehend. Two men and one little boy, walking over a bridge that might be carrying crowds, and carts and horses. The world seemed unbalanced.
    ‘You see, sir,’ said Willikins, ‘being definite is what gave them all this money and land. Sometimes lost it for them as well, of course. One of Lady Sybil’s great-uncles once lost a villa and two thousand acres of prime farmland by being definite in believing that a cloakroom ticket could beat three aces. He was killed in the duel that followed, but at least he was definitely dead.’
    ‘It’s snobbishness and I don’t like it,’ Vimes said.
    Willikins rubbed the side of his nose. ‘Well, commander, it ain’t snobbishness. You don’t get much of that from the real McCoy, in my experience. The certain ones, I mean … they don’t worry about what the neighbours think or walking around in old clothes. They’re confident, see? When Lady Sybil was younger the family would come down here for the sheep-shearing, and her father would muck in with everybody else, with his sleeves rolled up and everything, and he’d see to it that there was a round of beer for all the lads afterwards, and he’d drink with them, flagon for flagon. Of course, he was a brandy man mostly, so a bit of beer wouldn’t have him on the floor. He never worried about who he was. He was a decent old boy, her father – and her granddad, too. Certain, you see, never worried.’
    They walked along an avenue of chestnut trees for a while and then Vimes said, morosely, ‘Are