Making Money (11 page)

The latest post that Gladys had brought up contained a long and thoroughly secondhand envelope addressed to him “personly” in thick black letters. He slit it open with the letter opener and shook it out into the waste bin, just in case.

There was a folded newspaper inside. It was, it turned out, the Times from yesterday, and there was Moist von Lipwig on the front page. Circled.

Moist turned it over. On the other side, in tiny, neat handwriting, were the words:

Take it slowly, take it slowly…It can’t be from a friend. Everyone I think of as a friend can spell. This must be some kind of con, yes? But there were no skeletons in his closet…

Oh, all right, if you were going for the fine detail, there were, in fact, enough skeletons in his closet to fill a big crypt, with enough left over to equip a fun-fair house of horrors and maybe also make a macabre but mildly amusing ashtray. But they’d never been associated with the name Lipwig. He’d been careful about that. His crimes had died with Albert Spangler. A good hangman knows exactly how much rope to give a man, and had dropped him out of one life and into another.

Could anyone have recognized him? But he was the least recognizable person in the world when he wasn’t wearing his golden suit! When he was young, his mother sometimes went home from school with the wrong child!

And when he wore the suit, people recognized the suit. He hid by being conspicuous…

It had to be a scam of some kind. Yes, that was it. The old “guilty secret” job. Probably no one got to a position like this without accumulating some things they’d rather not see made public. But it was a nice touch to include the bit about affidavits. It was there to set a nervous man to wondering. It suggested that the sender knew something so dangerous that you, the recipient, might try to silence him, and he was in a position to set the lawyers on you.

Hah! And he was being given some time in which, presumably, to stew. Him! Moist von Lipwig! Well, they might just find out how hot a stew could get. For now, he shoved the paper in a bottom drawer. Hah!

There was a knock at the door.

“Come in, Gladys,” he said, rummaging in the in tray again.

The door opened and the worried, pale face of Stanley Howler appeared around it.

“It’s me, sir. Stanley, sir,” it said.

“Yes, Stanley?”

“Head of stamps at the Post Office, sir,” Stanley added, in case pin-point identification was required.

“Yes, Stanley, I know,” said Moist patiently. “I see you every day. What is it that you want?”

“Nothing, sir,” said Stanley. There was a pause, and Moist adjusted his mind to the world as seen through the brain of Stanley Howler. Stanley was very…precise, and as patient as the grave.

“What is the reason for you, coming here, to see me, today, Stanley?” Moist tried, enunciating carefully in order to deliver the sentence in bite-size chunks.

“There is a lawyer downstairs, sir,” Stanley announced.

“But I’ve only just read the threatening—” Moist began, and then relaxed.

“A lawyer? Did he say why?” he said.

“A matter of great importance, he said. There’s two watchmen with him, sir. And a dog.”

“Really?” said Moist calmly. “Well, you’d better show them up, then.”

He glanced at his watch.

Oh…kay…Not good.

The Lancre Flyer would be leaving in forty-five seconds. He knew he could be down that damn drainpipe in eleven seconds. Stanley was on his way below to bring them up here, call that thirty seconds, maybe. Get them off the ground floor, that was the thing. Scramble onto the back of the coach, jump off when it slowed down for the Hubwards Gate, pick open the tin chest he’d got stashed in the beams of the old stable in Lobbin Clout, get changed and adjust his face, stroll across the city to have a coffee in that shop near the main watch house, keep an eye on the clacks traffic for a while, stroll over to Hen and Chickens Court, where he had another trunk stored with “I Don’t Know” Jack, get changed, leave with his little bag and his tweed cap (which he’d change for the old brown bowler in the bag in some alley, just in case Jack had a sudden attack of memory brought on by excessive money), and he’d mosey down to the slaughterhouse district and step into the persona of Jeff the Drover and hang out in the huge, fetid bar of the Butcher’s Eagle, which was where the drovers traditionally damped down the road dust. There was a vampire in the Watch these days and they’d had a werewolf for years, too. Well, let those famously sharp noses snuff up the mixed cocktail stink of manure, fear, sweat, offal, and urine and see how they liked it! And that was just in the bar—if anything, it was worse in the slaughterhouses.

Then maybe he’d wait until evening to hitch a lift on one of the steaming dung carts heading out of the city, along with the other drunk drovers. The gate guards never bothered to check them. On the other hand, if his sixth sense was still squawking, then he’d run the thimble game with some drunk until he’d got enough for a little bottle of perfume and a cheap but decent thirdhand suit at some shonky shop and repair to Mrs. Eucrasia Arcanum’s Lodging House for Respectable Working Men, where with a tip of a hat and some wire-rimmed spectacles he’d be Mr. Trespass Hatchcock, a wool salesman who stayed there every time his business brought him to the city and who brought her a little gift suitable for a widow of the age she’d like people to think she was. Yes, that’d be a better idea. At Mrs. Arcanum’s the food was solid and plentiful. The beds were good and you seldom had to share.

Then he could make real plans.

The itinerary of evasion wound across his inner eye at the speed of flight. The outer eye alighted on something less pleasing. There was a copper in the coach yard, chatting to a couple of the drivers. Moist recognized Sergeant Fred Colon, whose chief duty appeared to be ambling around the city, chattering to elderly men of the same age and demeanor as himself.

The watchman spotted Moist at the window and gave him a little wave.

No, it was going to get complicated and messy if he ran. He’d have to bluff it out up here. It wasn’t as though he’d done anything wrong, technically. The letter had thrown him, that’s all it was.

Moist was sitting at his desk looking busy when Stanley came back, ushering in Mr. Slant, the city’s best-known and, at three hundred and fifty-one, probably also its oldest lawyer. He was accompanied by Sergeant Angua and Corporal Nobbs, widely rumored to be the Watch’s secret werewolf. Corporal Nobbs was accompanied by a large wicker hamper and Sergeant Angua, carrying a large bag and a squeaky rubber bone, which she occasionally, in an absentminded way, squeaked. Things were looking up but strange.

The exchanged pleasantries were not that pleasant, this close to Nobby Nobbs and the lawyer, who smelled of embalming fluid, but when they were over, Mr. Slant said: “I believe you visited Mrs. Topsy Lavish yesterday, Mr. Lipwig.”

“Oh, yes. Er…when she was alive,” said Moist, and cursed himself and the unknown letter-writer. He was losing it, he really was.

“This is not a murder investigation, sir,” said the sergeant calmly.

“Are you sure? In the circumstances—”

“We’ve made it our business to be sure, sir,” said the sergeant, “in the circumstances.”

“Don’t think it was the family, then?”

“No, sir. Or you.”

“Me?” said Moist, suitably open-mouthed at the suggestion.

“Mrs. Lavish was known to be very ill,” said Mr. Slant. “And it seems that she took quite a shine to you, Mr. Lipwig. She has left you her little dog, Mr. Fusspot.”

“And also a bag of toys, rugs, tartan coats, little booties, eight collars including one set with diamonds and, oh, a vast amount of other stuff,” said Sergeant Angua. She squeaked the rubber bone again.

Moist’s mouth shut.

“The dog,” he said, in a hollow voice. “Just the dog? And the toys?”

“You were expecting something more?” said Angua.

“I wasn’t expecting even that!” Moist looked at the hamper. It was suspiciously silent.

“I give him one of his little blue pills,” said Nobby Nobbs helpfully. “They knocks him out for a little while. Don’t work on people though. They tastes of aniseed.”

“All this is a bit…odd, isn’t it?” said Moist. “Why’s the Watch here? The diamond collar? Anyway, I thought the will wasn’t read until after the funeral…”

Mr. Slant coughed. A moth flew out of his mouth.

“Yes indeed. But knowing the contents of her will, I thought it prudent to hasten to the Royal Bank and deal with the most…”

There was a very long pause. For a zombie, the whole of life is a pause, but it seemed that he was looking for the right word.

“…problematical bequests immediately,” he finished.

“Yes, well, I suppose the little doggie needs feeding,” said Moist, “but I wouldn’t have thought that—”

“The….…. problem, if such it be, is in fact his paperwork,” said Mr. Slant.

“Wrong pedigree?” said Moist.

“Not his pedigree,” said Mr. Slant, opening his briefcase. “You may be aware that the late Sir Joshua left one percent share in the bank to Mr. Fusspot?”

A cold, black wind began to blow through Moist’s mind.

“Yes,” he said. “I am.”

“The late Mrs. Lavish has left him another fifty percent. That, by the customs of the bank, means that he is the new chairman, Mr. Lipwig. And you own him.”

“Hold on, an animal can’t own—”

“Oh, but it can, Mr. Lipwig, it can!” said Slant, with lawyerly glee. “There is a huge body of case law. There was even, once, a donkey who was ordained and a tortoise who was appointed a judge. Obviously the more difficult trades are less well represented. No horse has yet held down a job as a carpenter, for example. But dog as chairman is relatively usual.”

“This makes no sense! She hardly knows me!” And his mind chimed in with: Oh yes she does! She had you bang to rights in a blink!

“The will was dictated to me last night, Mr. Lipwig, in the presence of two witnesses and Mrs. Lavish’s physician, who declared her very sound of mind if not of body.” Mr. Slant stood up. “The will, in short, is legal. It does not have to make sense.”

“But how can he, well, chair meetings? All he does with chairs is sniff the legs!”

“I assume he will act as chairman through you,” said the lawyer. There was a squeak from Sergeant Angua.

“And what happens if he dies?” said Moist.

“Ah, thank you for reminding me,” said Mr. Slant, taking another document from the thin and rather battered briefcase. “Yes, it says here: the shares will be distributed among any remaining members of the family.”

“Any remaining members of the family? What, his family? I don’t think he’s had much of a chance to have one!”

“No, Mr. Lipwig,” said Slant, “the Lavish family.”

Moist felt the winds grow colder. “How long does a dog live?”

“An ordin’ry dog?” said Nobby Nobbs. “Or a dog who stands between a bunch of Lavishes and another fortune?”

“Corporal Nobbs, that was a pertinent remark!” snapped Sergeant Angua.

“Sorry, Sarge.”

“Ahem.” A cough from Mr. Slant liberated another moth.

“Mr. Fusspot is used to sleeping in the Manager’s Suite at the bank, Mr. Lipwig,” he said. “You will sleep there too. It is a condition of the bequest.”

Moist stood up. “I don’t have to do any of this,” he snapped. “It’s not like I’ve committed a crime! You can’t run people’s lives from beyond the grav—well, you can, sir, no problem there, but she can’t just—”

A further envelope was produced from the briefcase. Mr. Slant was smiling, which is never a good sign.

“Mrs. Lavish also wrote this personal heartfelt plea to you,” he said. “And now, Sergeant, I think we should leave Mr. Lipwig alone.”

They departed, although after a few seconds Sergeant Angua walked back in and, without saying a word or catching his eye, went over to the bag of toys and dropped the squeaky rubber bone.

Moist walked over to the basket and lifted the lid. Mr. Fusspot looked up, yawned, and then reared up on his cushion and begged. His tail wagged uncertainly once or twice and his huge eyes filled with hope.

“Don’t look at me, kid,” said Moist, and turned his back.

Mrs. Lavish’s letter was drenched in lavender water, slightly spiced with gin. She wrote in a very neat, old-lady hand:

Moist was impressed. Stick and carrot. Vetinari just used the stick, or hit you over the head with the carrot.

Vetinari! Now there was a man with some questions to answer!

The hairs on the back of his neck, trained by decades of dodging in any case and suddenly made extra sensitive with Mrs. Lavish’s words still bouncing in his skull, bristled in terror. Something came through the window and thunked! into the wall. But Moist was already diving for the carpet when the glass broke.

Shuddering in the door was a black arrow.

Moist crawled across the carpet, reached up, grabbed the arrow, and ducked down again.