2. Sheets of Black
The Capelli house had seen better days. It was, to Vimes' surprise, not in Ankh but was rimwards of the river in a middle class neighbourhood where the buildings were made of stone and single families lived in narrow walk-ups of two stories without having to share. The shutters on the Capelli house were worn, the windows intact but of a rather cheap glass that here and there had hairline cracks. There was a water stain down the front wall on the first floor. When Vimes pushed the doorbell, nothing happened. He had to knock.
Mrs. Capelli answered the door herself and ushered Vimes into the parlour and fluttered around him, offering tea and biscuits. He accepted out of politeness and revealed the iconograph only after they'd chatted a while.
A hand flew to her mouth, her eyes wide.
"It can't be…" She pulled the iconograph out of Vimes' hand and held her spectacles over it. "By the gods…it is her!" She let the picture flutter to the carpet and sank down on her knees right beside it and clasped her hands to her heart. "Praise be, O Benevolent, Merciful Io!"
"You recognize the woman, then?"
"Praise be to him, the All-seeing, All-knowing!"
"Praise, o praise," said Vimes to show solidarity with Mrs. Capelli. "Great god, that Io. So…Who is this woman?"
Mrs. Capelli finally came down from her prayer and pulled herself back onto the sofa, her smile radiant, her cheeks damp. "My daughter. My dear, dear Isabella."
From nowhere, Vimes felt a tad disappointed. When it came to Vetinari, normal policeman's instincts didn't always work, he knew, but he'd sensed something was there. Vimes had to accept that maybe he wanted this to be more complicated than it was. The woman in his house was obviously ill and that was all. Though the girl in the iconograph still had an amazing resemblance…
"Sorry it took so long to contact you, ma'am," he said, getting to his feet. "We could've brought her back faster if you'd reported her missing."
"Oh, she can't be brought back from where she is. Alas! Alas!" Mrs. Capelli fluttered herself with her handkerchief.
Slowly, Vimes sat back down again, a little tingling sensation on the back of his neck. What did he always say to the watchmen about easy explanations? They were usually the correct ones, all right. In every day crime. Vimes didn't know if a crime had been committed, but the explanation of Isabella Capelli (and maybe Vetinari) as simply a delusional woman was, when he thought about it, too good to be true. For Lord Vetinari.
"Where is she?" he asked.
"At the right side of the Benevolent Io," said Mrs. Capelli. She fetched an iconograph from the mantelpiece and showed it to Vimes. It was the woman in his house, much younger, but he could see it easily. Black hair, hooded dark eyes, a nose too prominent to be fashionable. The picture was of much worse quality than the colour one he had and more importantly, a corner of the frame was wrapped by a black silk ribbon.
"Your daughter is…deceased."
"On high these fifteen years. My pride, my oldest." Mrs. Capelli hugged the photo before settling it back among the others. "Where did you a get an iconograph of her, sir? And who are those children?"
"It's…er…police evidence, ma'am. She didn't have a twin sister by any chance, did she?"
Mrs. Capelli shook her head, confused.
"Then could you tell me how she died…" at the distressed look on her face, Vimes said, "…went on high to the Benevolent Io?"
"A tragedy." She blew her nose into the handkerchief. "The carriage crashed as she was travelling with her father, my dear husband, to Pseudopolis. They were both taken from me too soon."
Capelli, Vimes was thinking. Capelli. It had rung a bell earlier and now there was a carillon in his head. A carriage accident on the edge of city, on the Pseudopolis Road, wasn't it? He vaguely remembered being called out to help move the wreckage; the Watch wasn't good for anything else back then. A black coach, its windows tinted black, had been there as well and two bodies, horribly twisted, he remembered, were carried inside by two grim-faced men in black suits. Somebody had whispered the name Capelli.
"How old was she?" he asked.
"Twenty two. Such a tender age. Full of promise." Mrs. Capelli wiped her eyes.
It was strange, the little details that came back to the memory, thought Vimes. A spotless blue ladies shoe had sat upright next to the mangled remains of the carriage, as if the owner had set it there carefully. The match was not at the scene. Presumably it was still on the corpse.
He pulled himself back to the present.
"Did your daughter ever meet the Patrician?"
Mrs. Capelli blew her nose again. "Oh yes. The last reception she ever went to for the Merchants Guild. My husband Marco was secretary of the guild and introduced her to Lord Vetinari. He wasn't Patrician yet, of course."
Vimes didn't bother to feel triumphant that his suspicion was vindicated. He'd known they knew each other. Known it somewhere in his copper's gut. But there was a question he had to ask now, one he really, really wished he didn't have to ask.
"Mrs. Capelli, was your daughter cremated?"
**
The bodies were found by the landlady, a bumblebee-stomached woman with a kerchief tied around her head. She saw them from the cellar steps and screamed and dropped the candle and ran up to get her son. He appeared then with a new candle illuminating his soiled vest and ancient, dirty boots and a face that had long given up on the general optimism of life.
"Dead, al'right," he said. He nudged a pale arm with the toe of his boot.
The landlady sniffled. "I'll go call the Watch."
Her son grasped her arm as she turned.
"You daft, mother? What'll they say when they see all this?"
He held the candle up higher and it showed in its weak glow the cellar walls covered in slat wood shelving that contained, on nearly every row, a surprising range of goods that had gone missing from various households in the upper class neighbourhood of Ankh over the past year.
The mother pointed at the corpses.
"But they been drained, boy." She pulled her kerchief off her head and tied it quickly around her neck.
The son handed the candle to his mother and bent to lift the arms of the first body. "Thieves Guild'd get wind of us too," he said as he began dragging the body toward the cellar steps. It was an easy job. A good deal of its weight had been sapped out of it. "Go'n up and watch the door. I'll take care of these meself. And don't go tellin' tales to the neighbours about vampires."
**
Mrs. Capelli was a religious woman and religious women tended to look poorly upon anyone who suggested opening the family tomb for a look at a long dead relative. It was all the more difficult because Vimes thought it best not to admit that Isabella was staying at his home. There was a chance she was an imposter and the last thing he wanted was to entangle himself in that kind of emotional debacle.
In the end, he convinced her by spinning a whopper about reopening the case of the carriage accident, that the Watch regretted its former tendency to not investigate anything more complicated than a purse snatching, and that he as commander felt bound to repair old mistakes. He was proud of himself for coming up with this until Mrs. Capelli said:
"I'm so relieved, commander. No one believed me when I said it wasn't an accident." She leaned toward Vimes, her voice lowered conspiratorially. "Those were dangerous times, the last days of Lord Snapcase. I think their deaths were political."
It was a word he hated in all its forms. Political. Politics. Politician.
"Why do you think it wasn't an accident?"
"The driver was never found."
And there it was, the memory shoving details at the forefront of Vimes' mind again. This time it was the bright red leather cushion of the carriage driver seat. Vacant. Two unidentifiable bodies carried into the black coach. Two deaths, Marco Capelli and his daughter Isabella. No third body. No survivors. And no one had said a thing. The Watch had simply cleared the road, mindless work.
They went together directly to the Capelli family tomb at the Temple of Blind Io. It was a relatively small affair as far as tombs went, built only two generations before and housing only the immediate family. Copses along the walls contained the ashes of the previous generations. The Capellis were practical; the eight coffins that fit on the floor of the mausoleum were reused. After twenty years or so, the remains of previous occupants were gathered, burned, and stored to make room for the new.
Hughnon Ridcully, Chief Priest of Io, stood by while two grave diggers did the honours.
Crowbars were wedged beneath the granite lid of the coffin Mrs. Capelli identified as that of her daughter. The men heaved, the lid lifted – it had no mortar or nails because granite was a heavy enough material – and Vimes stepped a bit closer.
It wasn't a pretty sight. Corpses never were, but decomposition made it worse. The occupant of the coffin was better preserved than Vimes expected but that didn't soften the woozy feeling in his stomach. She – and the body was identifiable as a she only because of the gown it wore – had a skull that contained, here and there, painful-looking dents as if someone had drummed it with a hammer. The gown was white. Vimes had the uncomfortable feeling that there were small creatures underneath the fabric, writhing around out of sight.
Mrs. Capelli dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief. "That was my wedding gown," she said. "We passed it down mother to daughter but Isabella was my only and I knew I'd never have another."
"That's definitely…her, then?" asked Vimes.
Mrs. Capelli looked at him, puzzled. "Who else would it be?"
**
Lady Sybil pointed to a rhododendron bush in her garden, some of the purplish-pink blossoms crushed on the ground.
"My butler found you there."
Isabella was still in a dressing gown, still had the weight of fatigue and a post-fever pallor on her face, but she'd insisted that a walk in the fresh air would help her more than another day lying in bed. She walked without Sybil's help, and the clean air of the upper class Ankh neighbourhood, on the hills above the river, did seem to make her more alert.
She looked closely at the bush, moving a few branches aside.
"What time was it?" she asked.
"About eleven in the evening. Willikins said he was locking the windows on this side of the house and heard something that made him come out into the garden. He said he practically fell over you in the path."
Isabella shaded her eyes and looked up at the sky. It was an unusually clear, sunny day in Ankh-Morpork, where fogs and general unpleasant steams tended to waft over the city.
"What was the weather like?"
"Clear as a bell. Stars everywhere and a little cool. It was the first decent night in a week. Too much humidity before. I could barely sleep nights."
"Did the dragons act in any way unusual?"
Sybil waved toward the path that led to the dragon pens. "Now that you ask, they were quite fussy that evening. Little Snooker Featherbottom the Fourth refused to go back into his pen. Lady Ipswitch Merriweather wouldn't eat a thing, a bit of stomach trouble there, and… Yes, they were all a bit distracted." Sybil looked at Isabella. "Were you in the pens that night?"
"No. I just wondered. Dragons are so sensitive."
"They are. So many people don't realize that. They think the small ones are cute and want one as a pet and then," Sybil snapped her fingers, "snap: Lord Clooty Tembleton is far too temperamental for the kiddies, he gets dumped in the Ankh and now the poor thing gets the shakes when he sees a bucket of water."
Isabella walked along the path, her head bowed, examining the white stones and the grass and bushes to either side. Sybil followed.
"What was it you said was the reason you were here that night?" she asked. "Yesterday you said something about a ball, but your fever was--"
"Oh, I must have wandered up here by accident," said Isabella. "I like to walk at night." She stopped and smiled at Sybil. "I do thank you for being such a kind hostess. I hope I'm not too much trouble."
"Nonsense. I don't have house guests often so I'm delighted at the practice. And," Sybil patted her stomach, "I'm awaiting my first, if you hadn't noticed." She smiled shyly. "Not everyone does. With you having three children already, maybe you can give me some pointers."
"I'd be happy to."
They strolled for a while, talking of pregnancy, the trials of labour, what in the world to do with a baby.
"I'd really like an instruction manual of some kind," said Sybil.
"It's just like the rest of life; you make it up as you go along. If something goes wrong, you can only hope it isn't serious."
"That's not very comforting."
Sybil led Isabella through the rose bower, where only the sturdiest strains of roses were still blooming so late in the summer. "Your oldest girl, Octavia is it? She has an amazing resemblance to the Patrician."
She glanced up at Isabella, who was frowning.
**
After the Watch meeting, Lord Vetinari sent Captain Carrot out of his office, leaving Vimes standing alone in the middle of the Oblong Office.
"Desecrating the resting place of those who have passed on, commander?"
Vimes had left the temple two hours ago, long enough for Vetinari to find out what he'd done. The Patrician found out about everything, usually before anyone else.
"I thought it was necessary," he said. "Mrs. Capelli said her daughter Isabella died in a carriage accident fifteen years ago."
"Did you find what you were looking for?"
"There was a body in the coffin, if that's what you mean, sir."
The Patrician folded his hands on the desk top. "Which leaves you with a now nameless woman in your house. A puzzle."
"Mrs. Capelli identified her, sir. From the iconograph. She said that was definitely her daughter."
"And what did she say about the woman in the coffin?"
"There's no way to know if it's really her. She's wearing what her mother said she was buried in but otherwise, it's hard to identify 15-year-old corpses. She probably wasn't easy to identify back then either. There was quite a bit of damage."
The Patrician looked thoughtful but said nothing.
"If the woman in my house really is this Isabella Capelli, then she was never killed in the accident," said Vimes. "Or she was. Either way, someone else is buried in her coffin."
"In the latter instance, it would follow logically that the lady is undead, Vimes."
"You saw her, sir. She doesn't look anything like a zombie or a vampire or werewolf or any of the other usual…things…" Vimes felt uncomfortable having much to do with the undead, though they were filling some of the mucky jobs at the Watch.
"Have you looked at her teeth?" asked the Patrician helpfully.
"I sent a message to have Angua go and see her when she's off her shift."
"That should clear up the issue," said the Patrician
"I hope so. There's enough evidence that she really is who she says she is." Vimes' gaze slid to the Patrician's bland one, then back to its regular place at a space on the wall behind Vetinari's head. "I took her some family pictures last night and she identified everyone. She knew some details I got from her mother about her childhood. I reckon she never died in the accident, which by the way the mother thinks wasn't an accident at all."
The Patrician's gaze shifted minutely, as if sharpened. "What makes her think that, commander?"
"The driver was never found."
"My, that is…unusual."
"Not for the Watch back then. We didn't even bother asking where he was."
The Patrician blinked.
"Were you there, commander?"
"Another coincidence, sir."
"Then surely you saw the woman who died."
"There was a coach there. A black one. Carried the bodies away before I got too much of a look."
Vetinari studied Vimes' blank face for a moment.
"You seem to consider that a telling detail, Sir Samuel."
"The coach was there when we got there. The Watch wasn't what it is today but we were fast about getting to accidents. Nobby wanted first dibs on anything he could nick. When we got there, two men were loading the coach and everything else was…tidy."
"And so," said the Patrician, pressing the tips of his fingers together, "we have a puzzle wrapped in a riddle."
"I sent a copy of the iconograph to the Pseudopolis Watch to see if they can dig something up. If that's where she was headed at the time, maybe she ended up there after all."
"A sound move." The Patrician picked up some papers and leaned back in his chair. "It's all very interesting. Do keep me posted."
A full minute passed.
"You appear to still be here, commander."
"There's one more thing, sir. Mrs. Capelli said you met her daughter at a Merchants Guild reception before you took office."
"That is possible." Lord Vetinari didn't look up from his papers.
"It might have helped if you'd mentioned that yesterday, sir."
The legs of the Patrician's chair thumped as they hit the floor. "I do beg your pardon, commander. My memory is quite good but not every trifling detail of my life is immediately available for recollection."
"Can you at least recall, sir, if you only met her that one time?"
Lord Vetinari gave Vimes a stony frown.
"Now that you've refreshed my memory, Sir Samuel, yes…I can recall that. Any more questions?"
Vimes put on his helmet. "When I've made some more progress, sir."
The Patrician picked up his papers and settled back again. "I am delighted to help you at any time. Good day."
He waited until Vimes had been gone for some time before leaving his office through one of the secret passages. Just like any other corridor, the passage branched off into others, one that led to a booby-trapped alley ending at the attic of Leonard of Quirm, another to the throne room, and another to what Vetinari had selected to be his private storage space. He unlocked the oak door and lit a candle.
The room held few things, and many, depending on how one looked at it. There was a comfortable plush arm chair and a small cabinet beside it that doubled as a writing table. The only other things in the windowless room were bookcases. These were on every wall, making the relatively large room feel cosy in Vetinari's opinion. Almost all of the shelves were full, half of them books and scrolls in his private library, volumes he preferred others didn't know he had. Many were original, single editions, ancient, rare, or just curious. About a third of the shelves contained his own works. Unexpurgated diaries, decades of them, arranged in chronological order.
He let a finger browse over the spines, and bent down until he found the dates he was looking for, pulled out a volume and settled with the candle into the armchair. The page he needed was about halfway through the book. Fifteen years ago, an Ember evening…
…vice president Dooley Paulson, treasurer Pete Longfingers, secretary Marco Capelli. Total guild membership: 23,452. Taxes paid last year: AM345,698. Politically reliable: possibly Paulson, more likely Capelli, who spoke freely against Snapcase. Level-headed, conscientious, ethical. Late 40s, owns third largest ship-building firm in AM, no foreign branches. Not inordinately ambitious, is well-respected, possibly for that reason. Wife Sandra: mid-40s, rather vain, Interested in spiritual issues, though not particularly religious. Likes gladiolas and white cake. Daughter Isabella: early 20s, well-spoken, self-possessed, interest in city planning. Claims she never loses at chess.
Lord Vetinari turned the pages, scanning for the next mention of the Capellis. Here and there, he encountered pages that were solid blocks of black ink, not writing, just colour. The Capellis showed up again in an entry dated about three months after the first. Two small envelopes, one sealed, one opened, were tucked between the pages. In the entry, Vetinari's usually precise and measured handwriting had changed slightly. It was more hurried, as if he wanted the next few lines to be written quickly and be done with it:
Merchants Guild sent word of Capelli accident this afternoon on Pseudopolis Road. No survivors. Sent flowers to the widow, will attend funeral.
Then there were five pages of writing that were blacked out with long brush strokes of ink.
It was a peculiar function of Lord Vetinari's mind that he kept journals as the only outlet for expressing his private thoughts and then censored them himself. There was always the chance of his sudden death and the discovery of the journals if his clerk failed to follow his directions and destroy them. For years, the books had been his only confidante, but like humans, they couldn't always be trusted to keep quiet. Censorship in this situation was caution. Besides, he thought as he ran his fingers down the black pages, this field of night, this absence of colour was a better reminder, perhaps, of why he'd written so much that day than the actual words would have been.
He turned his attention to the envelopes, the opened one first.
Your lordship,
It was pleasant to discuss certain issues with you at the Merchants Guild reception three nights ago. On the way home from the Guild hall, I noticed some structural irregularities on the Sentimental Bridge that might need to be addressed should you find yourself in a position to address them one day. If you are interested, I can forward drawings to you. If you wish to discuss this in person, I will be happy to oblige.
Or perhaps we could simply play chess.
Yours sincerely,
Miss Isabella Capelli
Lord Vetinari first read that note as a 29-year-old lord who spent most of his time and thoughts laying the groundwork for what would become his life's work. Ladies hadn't occupied much space in his life. He usually discouraged their attentions by remaining democratically polite to them all under all circumstances. Isabella Capelli had imitated his chilly manner at the reception, aped it almost perfectly. Their attempts to top the other's cold politeness had made for an amusing evening.
The Patrician set the note aside and regarded the second, sealed envelope. There was no point in opening it, really. He had long ago guessed what was inside.
