The MGC returns? C10

The joint investigation team reconvened, this time in a shabby but adequately furnished conference room on an upper floor of Pseudopolis Yard.

Chaired by Inspector Loudweather of the Cable Street Particulars, participants included Mr Smith and Mr Brown from QCIC, Joan Sanderson-Reeves, Alice Band and Johanna Smith-Rhodes of the Assassins' Guild, Sergeants Angua von Überwald and Cheery Littlebottom of the Watch, and an unidentified Dark Clerk from the Palace who gave his name as Mr (Cough}, whom all knew was Vetinari's representative.

This was an added pressure: if Vetinari had suddenly decided to take a direct interest, it was as good as being told that there was no great rush to bring about an end to the investigation.

Among case-files and notes on the table, open copies of the latest Tanty Bugle and the most recent copies of the Times served as a depressing reminder of the public interest there was in the case. The Bugle was still speculating wildly on the two latest murders, with a lurid headline and front-cover reconstructive art that loudly trumpeted NOT EVEN SAFE IN PRISON!, while the Times had a weighty editorial deploring that murders could even happen in the supposedly safe and secure regimen offered by the Tanty, and was mildly hinting that now could be the time for Sir Martin to stand down as Governor. This left was followed through with a straight right, lamenting the lack of progress made by the Watch in apprehending the serial killer active on our streets, the one vulgarly known as "The Marriage Guidance Counsellor", in honour, it seems, of the notorious mass-killer of some years ago.

The times asked how many more times this anonymous person was going to step out of the shadows and strike before the City Watch hunted them down. The editorial noted that as the original MGC had scored twenty-four not out before she was brought to book, and this appears to be only the current killer's tenth, it was very possible the City would be tormented for some time yet.

"Do you think, if I wrote them a polite letter to say I only inhumed eighteen, and not this silly figure of twenty-four that they keep plucking out of the air, would they publish it?" Joan sighed.

"There was good reason to believe it was twenty-four!" contended André.

"Maybe you had a copycat killer even back then!" Joan replied. "The idea of the Marriage Guidance Counsellor seems to have struck a very big chord in the public imagination, after all!"

"Half the public, anyway" murmured Alice. "No wonder Vetinari wanted it dealt with in private!"

"Then, and now!" Joan declared. "Which is why some woman's revived my old working name and taken it as her own. Damn' successfully, too."

There was a polite cough from the Dark Clerk.

"We do seem to be straying off topic" André said. "Let's recap on the last murder and look at any new information we've got to progress the investigation. Sergeant Littlebottom?"

"Thank you, sir. I can now absolutely confirm that the lethal weapon used in the last murder, and which is present on iconographical evidence from three others, is the flower known as the Howondalandian Death Lily. I took a sample of the flower to the university, having been assured by Miss Smith-Rhodes that it poses no further danger after discharging its pollen. Professor Pennysmart, the Professor of Extreme Horticulture, was kind enough to perform an official identification of the plant for me and to confirm what Miss Smith-Rhodes had already assured us concerning its absolute lethality. The interesting thing was, sir, that he asked me if I'd got it from Bellamy's. Apparently, the suspect owns several hothouses where she breeds exotic specials. The Professor is one of her customers."

She paused, realising that she had the full attention of everyone sitting around the table.

"He explained to me that there's such a thing as a fancy of exotic flower enthusiasts in this city and nearby towns, who all grow and breed, if that's the right word, exotic tropical plants. There's actually quite a trade in buying and selling and bartering among enthusiasts. And most of them at one time or another go to Davinia Bellamy, because she's thought of as the absolute expert."

André nodded.

"Does this club have regular meetings? Open to all?"

"I believe they sponsor lectures on exotic plants, sir. Membership is by invitation only. Like dragon-owning, it's not a cheap hobby, as you need to be able to pay for the running of a hothouse and have the space for it. But the open lectures are open to all, for maybe sixpence a time."

" Interesting. Might be a way of infiltrating an agent, and getting into her shop and hothouses without arousing her suspicions. Well done, Cheery. And on the subject of getting into her premises, neither the Watch nor the Guild have had any success, I note. According to reports, the shop premises have disproportionately strong security, that you wouldn't normally expect a flower shop to have. This makes sense, as the Thieves' Guild haven't shown much interest in mixed bouquets and pot plants in the past. Florists' shops, especially ones in which no money has been left overnight, are well in the bottom fifty, according to statistics on shop and store burglaries.

"So we have to start asking what she has to hide. Constable von Humpedink, who I may need to remind some of you is a vampire, was able to perform a very limited investigation of the shop. She is firmly of the opinion that at some point in the last nine months, somebody has died in that building. She's a vampire. I don't doubt her. But I've checked back through crime reports, alarms and call-outs for the last year. Nothing from Bellamy to say she's under threat or her premises are being raided. Nothing from her neighbours to say they've heard or seen anything suspicious. No reports of a body. Yet Sally says somebody died there. She picked up on the trace."

"I patrolled down there at six this morning, sir. I normally don't like doing that because it worries the animals in Grace Speaker's pet shop, but it couldn't be helped." Angua said. "I remembered what Sally said about a death and I wondered if a werewolf's nose might pick up on things a vampire missed. Well, there's a very faint hint of a very old death, but it's overlaid with a lot of more recent smells and taints, more recent dead meat, animal in origin. A werewolf nose couldn't miss that, even though the dominant set of smells are of flowers, pollen, scent, sap, earth, potting compost. Why should a florist deal with dead animals?"

"I'll tell you why, m'dear" said Joan. "Take a look at these iconographs we took that night."

Joan passed a set of three green-tinged, oddly bleached out, iconograph pictures down the table. Angua shrugged. She looked perplexed.

"Nobby Nobbs blowing cigarette smoke?"

Then she looked again.

"Oh… I see… Mr Nivor, I believe, fighting that creeper thing with all the suckers."

"According to Sally, the creeper thing with the hooks and the suckers is part of the security system at that shop." Joan said, with a certain smugness.

"I spent a while in the Library, trying to track it down. I was able to make a very tentative identification of the plant it belongs to. Subject to expert confirmation, of course. I'm no expert, but that little devil matches the pictures and description of the Pyramid Strangler Vine of Sumtri and the Tezuman Jungle. A mature pyramid vine can colonise an entire pyramid(1), hence the name, and while most species are vegetarian, there are several known omnivores and strict carnivores in the family. They do have rudimentary light-sensitive cells on the creepers, by the way, linked to rather basic brains, which help them build up a picture of the size of animal that's just about to blunder their way. And the infra-red flash on the new iconographs blinds them a treat, something we should add to the standard operating procedure for dealing with this plant when we meet it."

"It must take some pruning to keep it room-sized." Alice noted.

"Apparently they can be trained and coppiced and cut back to a manageable size." Joan said. "I'd suspect our Davinia knows all about Agatean bonsai work to create miniature plants. Only in this case, it's bonzai'ing something that can grow three hundred feet high down to a more manageable six foot or so. Everything's a matter of scale, after all!"

"So she uses carnivorous plants as her security guards…" Mr Brown commented, slowly, looking ill.

"Which definitely explains the animal meat smells…" said Angua. "And Sally's being absolutely clear about the death in the shop."

"And let's say if some little tick of a Thief broke into her shop and didn't know what he was up against…" Joan thought out loud.

"That would explain why she didn't bother going to the Watch!" said Cheery. "And why there was no body to declare. She fed it to her plants!"

"How can we prove this? We still only have Sally's assertion, which by the way, I completely I trust, that a death happened in the shop. The rest is conjecture." said André, to bring the discussion back on tack.

"Tell me, how does the Thieves' Guild work?" Johanna asked. She'd been quiet up to now, but her interest was now aroused.

"With us, if we ere going out on a contract, we hev to register our interest, ensure a record is left of where we will be, and which contrect we ere pursuing. If time allows, we leave a copy of our operating plan in a safe place. This means that if we ere not beck by an egreed time, friends cen come out to look for us end ensure we ere not in trouble. Whet I em thinking is that if a Licenced Thief is going out on a mission for the Guild, they must do something like thet? End if a Thief has said they ere going to rob or burgle for the Guild on a perticuler street, end they do not return, does the Guild not hev a record of it?"

André nodded. The Dark Clerk, Mr {Cough}, looked at her.

"To ask the Thieves' Guild to consult its records for details of members who went missing, while engaged in Guild business, in the Pelicool Steps area. I believe they will co-operate with the Watch, if it means they can lay a fallen and currently missing member decently to rest. Leave that with me."

André smiled.

"I've had CSP agents out taking a look at the Bellamy house and gardens, and compiling a dossier on what we know about Mrs Bellamy" he said. "This isn't complete by any means, but we do know she has a house with a surprisingly large garden, by the standards of this City. It should be beyond the reach of the joint income she and her husband are on, as land is at a premium in this city, but the facts are that they live as owner-occupiers in the Nap Hill district of Ankh. I would suspect some other, undeclared, form of income bridges the gap and pays the mortgage, as the family don't appear to be in any financial distress. Her husband Peter Bellamy is a highly respected prison guard at the Tanty who is known to have refused bribes in the past. His integrity is established – after Bellyster, prison guards are regularly covertly watched and scrutinised - and pretty much untouchable. Which does rather tend to leave Davinia as the source of this undeclared third income."

"To be fair, part of it could come from dealing in rare and exotic plants" Cheery said. "Professor Pennysmart told me what some of them can fetch and, well, if Dwarfs had green fingers we'd give up digging for gold and take up horticulture."

"And she has hothouses in her garden." André mused. "I'd love to know what's inside them. From a safe distance, obviously."

"But we can't go in without a warrant. And we can't get a warrant unless we can prove for sure the poisonous plants are in there. And the only way to know for sure is to go and look." said Joan. She sighed. "Is it me, or are things getting a tiny bit circular here?"

"I hev en idea!" Johanna said, raising her hand.

"It is perfectly possible for one of us to enter that shop completely legitimetely, even to the extent where she is invited to take a close look et the stock end the premises by Mrs Bellamy."

"Please explain" said André. Johanna obliged him.

"I hev spoken ebout this plen to my onkle, the embessador" she said. "As the Embassy is the key to getting in end out of the place, it is only correct."

"And his opinion?"

"I reminded him that the Republic needs to work on its public image, as there hev been so meny little misunderstandings lately. Helping the City Watch and the Guild with their joint inquiries could perhaps be politically useful right now. He agrees, and I hev his permission to go ahead. By tomorrow evening we should hev an eccount of the inside of the shop for you. But whet ebout Mrs Bellamy?"

"Her history, as far as we've been able to reconstruct it, points to a normal upbringing with no traumas or wants or poverty. At age sixteen she left school - QCYL at Quirm, by the way - and took a college course in floristry. She started working for a florists' shop here in Ankh-Morpork and was so good at what she did that she was managing it by the age of nineteen. Despite he shop owner's pleas for her to stay, she took all the money she'd saved, plus a family legacy, and paid for a degree in botany at Brindisi University, which is regarded academically as one of the renowned centres of study in this subject. Now this is where it gets interesting."

André paused.

"As you know, people trained by the Watch in Ankh-Morpork get everywhere on the Disc and they're a useful source of help when it comes to this sort of inquiry. Our man in Brindisi assures us Davinia is on their files for several reasons. There's a long-dormant file on student activists at the University, which was raised at the direct request of the Doge's secretariat. Her name appears as part of a radical student group who among many other things picketed the Howondalandian Embassy… and after yesterday I do agree with that heartfelt groan, miss Smith-Rhodes. In a direct demonstration against the tyrannical power of the Doge of Brindisi, the City Guard was turned out with halberds to use some of that power on the students. However, a group of female students subverted this with a novel approach. Instead of throwing cobblestones at the Guard, those female students walked up to them and hung flower garlands over the blades of the halberds. Cleverly done."

"Nice idea!" agreed Joan. "It's damn hard to stab a young gel who's just smiled at you and given you flowers, and if you do, you're going to feel like a complete bastard.(2) Especially since she's not throwing bricks or bottles or insults or anything. And a Guardsman with flowers hanging off his weapon is going to look… well, less of a threat. Even without Times iconographers and reporters watching everything!"

"I hope it doesn't spread to here!" said Angua. "Student protestors are one thing, but as long as they're stupid and keep repeating the same things even though they don't work, they're easier to deal with. If they start getting intelligent and using subversive tactics that actually work, we're in trouble!."

"That's how she met her husband, anyway. Peter Bellamy was in the Brindisi Watch at the time. He resigned not too long after the flower-garland incident. Using flowers was Davinia's idea, by the way. Peaceful protest. But the other file is more interesting, if anything."

André grinned. "It's to do with the suspicious death of a teaching professor in the Faculty of Natural Science at Brindisi University. Apparently he was an unpleasant little man who tried to browbeat and blackmail female students into sex in exchange for better grades. Shortly after Davinia joined his classes, he took very ill with an assortment of ailments. And died. The Brindisi Watch have her as a possible suspect, even though the case was officially closed. Her name figures as somebody whose stories to the Watch never entirely tallied. There was always a tiny little discrepancy, or something slightly out, but nothing near conclusive enough to put her in the frame. Just Watchman's Intuition, more than anything else."

André looked down at the file.

"And her last term paper before the death concerned how certain exotic flower and plant extracts might be used as birth-control agents, with a warning caveat that over-exposure can render a man permanently infertile and in fact chemically castrated. The tutor who was killed was in some distress, apparently, having lost his sexual urge completely and finding no response nor reaction . He was pointing the finger at, and I quote, that young vecchia and insisting she not only poisoned him, but told him beforehand exactly what she proposed to do and why.

"They had to let her go – no real proof, just the odd coincidence of her term paper. But every Watchman's sense, our man said, was telling him she did it."

"Vekkya?" Johanna asked, baffled.

"Vecchia. In Brindisian, it can mean "daft old lady who keeps too many cats", but it's usually interpreted as "witch". said Alice Band, helpfully.

"Hmm. Could change things if she's also a bloody witch." Joan said, thoughtfully. "They're damn hard to inhume. We don't take contracts on witches, generally speaking. There's a story that a contract was put out on one of the Weatherwax women of Lancre two hundred or so years ago. A total and utter shambolic fiasco of a job – more embarrassing than going after Commander Vimes. When a dirt-keen Assassin with twenty successful annulments to his name ended up abandoning the profession and joining one of the stricter Hublands temples as a novice priest, the then Dark Council discreetly ripped up that particular contract."

André, who'd had his own direct experience of Lancre witches,(3) nodded sympathetically.

"We don't believe she ever became a witch. She made friends with older witches in Brindisi and persuaded them that their knowledge of herbs and flowers should be recorded for posterity, and did some remarkable anthropological and botanical research work , but she didn't study the whole of the Craft with them. We do know from contemporaries that after graduation, she went to Lancre with the intent of persuading Lancre witches into revealing their secrets concerning herbs and flowers, but she didn't stay for very long. By all accounts – and this is a third-party story that has filtered back to us through several intermediaries – the Lancre witches didn't trust her and suggested it was a bloody good idea if she left town."

"I wonder why?" mused Alice Band, who had her own experience of Lancre and its witches, having briefly and disastrously attempted to perpetrate archaeology there.(4)

"And by the way, I'm on good enough terms with one Lancre witch." Alice remembered Nanny Ogg, who'd taken a sympathetic shine to the would-be archaeologist who had just had a series of humbling failures. Nanny had taken to Alice after watching her fail to broach a single trench nor collect any native Lancrastrian artefacts, and they had, in a way, become friends. "I could confirm the story about Davinia Bellamy travelling to Lancre with her."

"Do it." André requested. "Thank you, Miss Band."

I made friends in Lancre because they saw me screw it all up, start to finish. Alice reflected. There's nothing as unthreatening and endearing as sincere incompetence, after all. I'll bet Davinia rubbed them up the wrong way and failed to get anywhere with the witches because she was simply too good at what she does and they got to be suspicious of her motives. The only people I inhumed while I was there were two Elves, and the local witches see that as vermin control, not murder.

"After this, she returned to Ankh-Morpork, where Peter Bellamy had taken up a prison officer's job at the Tanty. They married, first home address, according to prison personnel files, being a room in Dolly Sisters. Davinia brought in a wage first as a florist's shop assistant and then as a private gardener. This was how she met Mr Mouseborough, previous owner of their current home. He was eighty-two and could not manage his garden any more, so he paid Davinia to do it for him. He was sitting on large cash offers to sell the house to a property speculator, so that the large garden could be used to build several smaller properties for resale. Mouseborough, against the advice of his lawyer and accountant, couldn't bear for the garden he'd built up over sixty years to be destroyed, and preferred it to go to somebody who loved gardening and growing things. Subsequent events are tangled, but he died, some sort of agreement was entered into with the lawyers, and there was a bit of snarling over the will, involving distant Mouseborough relatives who didn't want to lose a fortune, but the law ruled in favour of the Bellamys. We are reviewing several deaths that occurred in this period, so as to be sure that natural causes were in fact responsible. The Bellamys are, in fact, paying a somewhat below market-rate mortgage on the property to the estate of Mr George Mouseborough, and the distant relatives are going to have to be content with income from that."

André concluded with:

"Davinia Bellamy has since obtained a Masters degree from Brindisi on the subject of large tropical carnivorous plants. I have a copy of her thesis available here. I believe she is currently working on a doctoral thesis on the same topic. As we'll as running her own floristry business – she as able to buy out her previous employer - her employees also include several flower-barrows working the streets and markets of Morpork. In the middle of all this she found time for three sons. On the face of it, a busy, capable, professional woman."

"Indeed" said several people, with varying degrees of dry irony.

"Now let's review tasks to take away.

"Sergeant Littlebottom is to continue reviewing the deaths of Mr George Mouseborough and his equally elderly cousin Miss Daphne Poundclencher, so as to rule out any issues to do with hastening them towards their eternal rest. As Mr Mouseborough was nursed by Davinia Bellamy in his final year, this is a pertinent question. The property speculator in question, who wished to tear up the garden and build houses on it, a Mr Rupert van Hoogstraten, is of course already on the list of probable victims. We can be fairly sure she did kill him.

"Miss Smith-Rhodes is to continue with her plan to enter the shop premises and take a very close look at what goes on inside the building. She and her associate will then report back to this meeting when it reconvenes on Friday.

"And Mr ?..."

"Mr {Cough}" confirmed Mr {Cough}

"…is to approach the Thieves' Guild to ask them to check their records for details of members vanishing on active service in the Pelicool Steps area. He will also brief the Patrician on matters discussed at this meeting, and convey the willingness of the Howondalandian Embassy to unstintingly provide covert assistance in this investigation.

"Miss Band will approach her contact for confirmation of Davinia Bellamy's visit to Lancre, and details of what transpired here.

"We could also do with establishing whether Professor Pennysmart at the University will testify against Mrs Bellamy in court. If an expert can distinguish beyond doubt as to which member of the exotic bloom fancy cultivated a certain plant, this might well be conclusive evidence. We need caution and discretion in doing this, however, as since he appears well disposed towards her, he may not just refuse to testify, he may well withdraw active assistance to the investigation and even tip her off. We can't afford this, as he is currently one of our most expert witnesses in this area.

"Other investigators present will continue as present with covert investigation and observation. Which reminds me, did we talk to household staff at the last murder scene?"

"I did" said Angua. "The maid who answered the door to the florists describes a woman in her middle thirties, who looked somewhat like the description of Mrs Bellamy, except that the hair was dark brown. But that could have been a wig. And the wife of the deceased has been seen to revisit the shop, two days after the murder."

"That just about wraps it up, then." André said, with satisfaction. "Reconvene on Friday, here, at two? Thank you. But before we go. There's a bit of business that we've picked up on that the Assassins' Guild, and people close to the Howondalandian Embassy, should be made aware of. A favour for a favour, and all that. "

André took a sip of water.

"Strictly speaking, nothing at all to do with our investigation. But our moles in the student activist body tell us that the Royal Bank is going to be targeted for demonstrations and picketing, as it handles so much money for the Howondalandian Government from the gold and gems trade. They are, as you know, demanding a total economic boycott of the Union of Rimwards Howondaland because of its, er, fascist and repressive domestic policies, and they will be picketing the Bank with flyers and leaflets with the intention of getting people to close their accounts there in protest at its handling tainted foreign money." (5)

"Silly buggers. Shouldn't they be studying? Too much time on their hands!" snorted Joan.

"Indeed, Miss Sanderson-Reeves. I understand Mr von Lipwig has already raised interest rates on savings accounts by half a percent in response to the students. (6) But the point which will be of interest to the Assassins Guild is that the activist committee, the unofficial Students' Guild which Lord Vetinari has already twice refused to grant full Guild status to, is also going to target the Guild School with an intent to recruiting from its pupils. Opinion on the Guild Council is divided, as Assassins' School students are generally thought of as the class enemy. But the opinion is that bursary, charity and scholarship pupils are ripe for recruitment, as students from a poor background at Filigree Street are perceived as seeing the contradictions of a capitalist society more strongly then most."

"They get bullied, or otherwise have a hard time because they're poor. And the better-off kids do the bullying and beasting." Joan said, seeing the point. Among her other tasks, she was Head of Bursary and Scholarship pupils, and knew this better than most.

"OK, better prepare a response, then. It's good to know these things in advance. Thank you, inspector. I'll talk to Lord Downey."

"How does Arch-chancellor Ridcully deal with this?" Angua asked. "I can't see him putting up with too much radical activism at the University!"

"Apparently, m'dear, if they get too annoying, he just has them put in the University pond to croak to their hearts' content. It wears off after a few days, apparently, and they turn human again!"

(1) This another reason why the notoriously gloomy Tezuman religion thinks the world has got it in for them. It's no fun, when you're marching the latest sacrifice up to the top of the pyramid in order to carve their living heart out with evil obsidian knives, to be beaten to it by what you thought was a nice touch of green about the premises. If the ornamental plants then devour the priests, this is another reason why the Tezuman are as terminally bloody-minded as they are. Relays of expendable slaves are used, these days, to keep the pyramid sides completely clean, pristine, and un-strangled.

(2) This was the logic behind putting flowers down gunbarrels belonging to National Guardsmen at Kent State University, and elsewhere in the USA, during Vietnam War protests. Flower power…

(3) see TP's Maskerade.

(4) see my short story The Lancre Caper.

(5) For a long time, the British National Union of Students targeted Barclays Bank this way, as this bank handled a significant amount of South African business and invested heavily in that country.

(6) And this was how Barclays responded to the student boycott - it offered students the best possible terms for their bank accounts, better than other banks could match. But the overall cost of the NUS boycott to Barclays still ran into quite a few hundreds of millions of pounds and a lot of negative publicity.