A third, minor, chapter rewrite to tidy up, expand slightly, and remove a few inconsistencies that eagle-eyed readers pointed out at the time. Thanks to Clodia and others.
And today it was eight years further on, and she was in the well-guarded briefing room listening to Lord Downey explaining, for the benefit of those staff who have never invigilated a Finals before, how these things are done. She, Johanna, Joan and Emmanuelle were sitting together as a bloc, for unspoken mutual support. It is true the four women have had their differences, singly and collectively. But over time, and particularly during training, they discovered more to bond them rather than divide them. For one thing, each of the four began by feeling the weight of the unspoken prejudice that as women, they would never make it as Assassins. An unspoken collective agreement applied almost from Day One: whatever their personal differences, and there have been some along the way, they would make it and they would make it together. And at this point they were well aware the eyes of the long-time male teachers were upon them, and that the unspoken question was Women teachers are all very well in a normal school. In this school, will they be able to take it when pupils they have become emotionally involved with over the last seven years inevitably fail the Finals, as a proportion of everyone's pupils inevitably must?
And tomorrow there will, for the very first time, be a graduation class of licenced female assassins on the streets of Ankh-Morpork. This moment has been eight years in the preparing. For the female teachers recruited eight long years ago, this is their first Finals. The four women knew they would be judged too, by their reactions. And tonight, for the first time at Finals, they had an active part to play.
"As with the candidates, who will begin their runs at nine tonight, there will be a draw for places on the two types of Run. As one is so much more popular than the other, this is the only fair way to assign staff to invigilate.
"If you would care to form an orderly line, you will each be pleased to draw a black or white ball from the jar. In this sealed envelope, I have a note that will explain what each colour represents. This was prepared blind – not even I know at the moment" Downey said, in his soothing voice.
The female teachers went up at intervals to collect their tokens. Alice felt its weight in her hand, but very purposefully didn't look at it until she resumed her seat.
She heard Emmie deliver a low and delighted chuckle. "Oh, Johanna. A shame for you! You have ze black ball. Did nobody tell them you are a White Howondalandian?"
Joan and Emmie looked at theirs. Both white.
"Et toi, Alice?" Emmie prompted her.
Alice opened her palm. Black. A plain stone ball, but with a number engraved on it.
"No doubt they'll tell us what it's for." Joan said, soberly. The oldest, and in her fifties the most unlikely, of the new teachers, crossed her legs primly. Joan Sanderson-Reeves did not, at first, look like an Assassin. This was a feature she had played upon to bring about one or two very satisfying licenced inhumations, since her graduation and receipt of her licence to practice. She looked like a staid middle-aged housewife of a certain social class, one with Standards to maintain, and a firm belief in the class system and her own place in it. It explains a lot that two of her closest friends outside the school are Mrs. Whitlow, the University's formidable housekeeper, and Miss Tripp (1), a woman who is two promotions away from having achieved the same role at the Palace. But appearances deceived. Appearances had, in fact, deceived often enough for Joan to have clocked up an impressive number of annulments in a very specialized field of inhumation. This had brought her freelance practice to the attention of the Guild, and she had been offered the same choice as the others. She now taught Elocution, Etiquette, Deportment and Domestic Science.
In fact, she had already been working for the Guild for quite some time, but as an elocution and deportment teacher who ran classes from above a Klatchian grocer's store in Whirligig Alley. It had been the practice for the Guild to send her scholarship pupils who had unfortunate gutter Morporkian accents, or else who came from places like Llamedos and Hergen and Sto Kerrig and who could not, unfortunately, shake off their rustic manner of speech, for her to reform into people of ton who could blend into polite society, as befits the Assassin.
And it all began… when? … twelve or thirteen years before. Joan Sanderson-Reeves, who by choice had never married (there had been a young man, a subaltern in Lord Rust's regiment, but he had not come back from one of Lord Snapcase's wars), and was making a steady, though not spectacular, living, teaching elocution and deportment to those whose general education had, quite unaccountably, missed out on such basic social skills. Like Alice Band, although from well before her time, she was a product of Miss Butts and miss Delcross at the Quirm Academy for Young Ladies, and still spoke fondly of the spinster teachers as her mentors in all things fine and gracious. (2)
This income from the School had kept Joan in reasonable comfort for some years. She performed a valuable service, as she saw it: educating the sons and daughters of arriviste families in the social skills and manner of speech which will help them blend in at the higher social level their enhanced prosperity now entitles them to move in. She wished, wryly, that she'd been able to get Patrician Snapcase into her classes and work on his grating, offensive to the genteel ear, manner of speaking.
But, all those years ago, there are some things a sister knows. Joan looked at the latest crop of cuts and bruises on Jenifer's face, and felt at once outraged and protective of her younger sister. Being genteel is not the same thing as being fluffy and ineffectual: Joan challenged her sister outright, demanding to know when she'd drop this pretence of being clumsy, or falling over chairs, or walking into doors, when everybody knew it was him. But Jennifer maintained it was nothing of the kind, honestly, and Joan kept her peace, with an effort.
Until the day Jenny walked painfully into her sister's house, and burst into tears.
"I want him dead, Joan! Out of my life!"
"Now what on earth brought about this sudden change of mind?"
"I could cope when it was only me. But I've just come from Dr Lawn's. He killed our baby!"
Later on, Joan asked to see her occasional employer at the Guild School, Dr Cruces. He and Lady T'Malia received her in the office: as the only full time woman teacher at the School, Lady T'Malia acted as Joan's mentor and professional support.
"Miss. Sanderson-Reeves! Might I offer you my congratulations in the work you're doing with our Scholarship boys? You'd hardly believe young Skimmer came out of a gutter in Morpork! What can we do for you?"
Joan fixed her employer with a level eye, and asked how easy it would be to bring about an inhumation. She thought she could afford up to ten thousand dollars to make her sister into a widow who was free of an abusive husband.
As Joan explained the situation, Cruces and T'malia exchanged looks. Dr Cruces took a very deep breath.
"I'm so, so, sorry. I really wish we could help. But long-standing policy says that the Guild doesn't get involved in domestics. It isn't perceived as being a seemly reason to inhume. Perhaps if you came back to us with other reasons to see your brother in law annulled?"
T'Malia escorted her to the door.
"These things have a habit of working themselves out, my dear." she said. "Things may look radically different a couple of months further along. You'll see".
Later on, Joan was to realize there were already Guild contracts on her brother-in-law for more socially acceptable reasons, and T'Malia had been hinting at what for confidentiality reasons she couldn't say outright. But on that morning, Joan Sanderson-Reeves had passed through indignation, navigated a sea of rage, and was now anchored in the pool of calm that lies beyond. Ideas were forming in her head. Strange, unaccustomed, ideas, that only one who has worked at the Assassins' School as a part-time teacher might ever form. What the Guild was not willing to do, she'd do for herself.
Opportunity arose one Sunday that winter, as Joan was beginning to prepare lunch. She had pulled the food bag in from its position outside the window, where the cold had not only kept things fresh, it had actually deep-frozen them. While she was estimating how long it would take to cook a leg of lamb from frozen, He walked in, looking scornful.
"Get out of my house." she said, briskly. Jennifer was in hospital this time, at Dr Lawn's insistence. He sneered.
"I hear you disapprove of the way I manage my household."
"I have nothing to say to you. Get out."
" I also hear you attempted to get an Assassins' Guild contract on me. It doesn't work. They don't deal with petty domestic squabbles. Neither do the Watch!"
He turned his back on her, scornfully, menacing by his presence.
Joan actually felt something go "ping" inside her head. She picked up the leg of lamb, thoughtfully, by the shank. And lifted it. He half-turned, but could not stop the blow descending… Joan screamed, and hit him twice more. The frozen meat was hardly dented, which was more than she could say for his skull.
She set to work with furious concentration, stepping round and over the corpse while she cooked lunch. And thought. She needed the right two Watchmen, and they tended to patrol her area a lot. But not yet…
After some hours had elapsed, she dishevelled her clothes and ran into the street, screaming "Murder!" She'd timed it right: the two Watchmen hastened their pace towards her.
"Now then, Mrs. Sanderson-Reeves?" said Sergeant Fred Colon, steadying her as she pretended to faint.
"Murder… my sister's husband… man… big club.. he ran out again…" she said, in good imitation of a traumatized woman.
"And by the way, Sergeant, it's Miss!" she firmly added, in a well-judged exclamation of social propriety.
Colon and Corporal Nobbs investigated the murder scene. They drew a chalk outline, covered the body, and waited for Dr Lawn to come and formally pronounce death and remove the corpse.
"Your brother-in-law. Mr "Ruthless Albert" Kettlering. It's no secret he had lots of enemies, ma'am. One of 'em must have followed him here… good afternoon, Dr Lawn!"
Mossy Lawn studied the corpse intently.
"Beats me why you chaps always have to draw a chalk outline."
"Traditional, sir!" Nobby said.
"Even the bunch of flowers and the false moustache? Hmm."
The doctor looked intently at Joan, holding her equally steady gaze back. He looked away. "Well, at least we know it was a man who did it. No woman could ever have swung a blunt instrument with enough force to inflict those sort of injuries!"
Joan could have sworn Mossy winked at her.
"I'll get him tagged and to the morgue. If Commander Vimes needs to make any further enquiries, he knows where to find me, although I'll stress in my report it's a case of fatal assault with a blunt weapon by person or persons unknown, presumed male. Oh, and his wif- widow is a patient in my care. I'll break it to her. Good day, Miss. Sanderson-Reeves, gentlemen."
Lawn tipped his hat and left, nodding at Joan.
Joan took a deep breath. Now to tidy things up.
"Sergeant, Corporal. I invited Albert here for his lunch, what with my sister being in hospital. But it's going to waste now. As it's lunchtime, you must both be hungry?"
"Well, that's very kind of you, ma'am!" Sergeant Colon said.
"It's lamb. There's plenty of it. Dig deep!"
Contentedly, Joan served the two Watchmen as they proceeded to dispose of the murder weapon… her thoughts were racing.
I got away with it! and There must be other women in this city who need something more terminal than a divorce…if the Assassins think we're beneath their dignity to help, somebody must do it for them, for all the other Jennifers out there…
Jennifer gave her sister ten thousand dollars out of Alfred's estate. This endowed a cookery school, where at nights, after the last pupil had left, Joan would experiment and think. And receive discreet callers.
And now Joan was sitting with the three other women teachers, wondering what part she would play in tonight's events. She looked at Emmanuelle with wwhat the rest called her diamond-drill stare.
Damn' gel kept her secret well. We really did think she was a spy they'd inserted to keep an eye on the rest of us. Just the sort of thing they would not be above doing. But you cannot help liking her. She's easy to like, damn the gel.
(1) Miss Tripp is the senior housekeeper at the Palace who once a week braves all the traps, perils and pitfalls that guard the way to Leonard of Quirm's apartment so as to "do" for him. It is possible that in her quest to dust and clean and change soiled bedlinen, she scorns the sort of devices installed by the Patrician with great scorn, and could walk it through the Locks, Traps and Deadfalls module at the Assassins' School with 100%. Miss Tripp is a canonical character in The Last Hero.
(2) Alice Band also speaks of her former teachers at the Quirm Academy for Young Ladies as "mentors". More or less. She generally prefixes "mentors" with "tor", for good reason, as we shall see in a flashback later.
An afterword: while writing this story, I knew it would be right for Joan to slay her unpleasant b-i-l with a deep-frozen leg of lamb. I also knew it would be howlingly appropriate for Fred Colon to come along afterwards and dispose of the murder weapon, so to speak, in Fred's usual inimitable way. I had an uneasy feeling I was rehashing an idea I'd heard somewhere else, but I knew somebody would be sure to tell me. Thanks, Clodia: I was of course re-hashing one of Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected. Ah well. Call this a Discworld tribute to Roald... or maybe the inexorable work of Narrativium in the wider Multiverse.