A Murder of Quality

by John le Carré

  ‘When did you come?’ Rode asked suddenly.

  ‘Yesterday.’

  ‘Making a weekend of it, eh?’

  Smiley was so astonished that for a moment he could think of nothing to say. Rode was still looking at him, waiting for an answer.

  ‘I have one or two friends here … Mr Fielding …’

  ‘Oh, Terence.’ Smiley was convinced that Rode was not on Christian-name terms with Fielding.

  ‘I would like, if I may,’ Smiley ventured, ‘to write a small obituary for Miss Brimley. Would you have any objection?’

  ‘Stella would have liked that.’

  ‘If you are not too upset, perhaps I could call round tomorrow for one or two details?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘Eleven o’clock?’

  ‘It will be a pleasure,’ Rode replied, almost pertly, and they walked together to the churchyard gate.

  9 The Mourners

  It was a cheap trick to play on a man who had suddenly lost his wife. Smiley knew that. As he gently unlatched the gate and entered the drive, where two nights ago he had conducted his strange conversation with Jane Lyn, he acknowledged that in calling on Rode under any pretext at such a time he was committing a thoroughly unprincipled act. It was a peculiarity of Smiley’s character that throughout the whole of his clandestine work he had never managed to reconcile the means to the end. A stringent critic of his own motives, he had discovered after long observation that he tended to be less a creature of intellect than his tastes and habits might suggest; once in the war he had been described by his superiors as possessing the cunning of Satan and the conscience of a virgin, which seemed to him not wholly unjust.

  He pressed the bell and waited.

  Stanley Rode opened the door. He was very neatly dressed, very scrubbed.

  ‘Oh, hullo,’ he said, as if they were old friends. ‘I say, you haven’t got a car, have you?’

  ‘I’m afraid I left it in London.’

  ‘Never mind.’ Rode sounded disappointed. ‘Thought we might have gone out for a drive, had a chat as we went. I get a bit fed-up, kicking around here on my own. Miss D’Arcy asked me to stay over at their place. Very good people they are, very good indeed; but somehow I didn’t wish it, not yet.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Do you?’ They were in the hall now, Smiley was getting out of his overcoat, Rode waiting to receive it. ‘I don’t think many do – the loneliness, I mean. Do you know what they’ve done, the Master and Mr D’Arcy? They meant it well, I know. They’ve farmed out all my correcting – my exam correcting, you understand. What am I supposed to do here, all on my own? I’ve no teaching, nothing; they’ve all taken a hand. You’d think they wanted to get rid of me.’

  Smiley nodded vaguely. They moved towards the drawing-room, Rode leading the way.

  ‘I know they did it for the best, as I said. But after all, I’ve got to spend the time somehow. Simon Snow got some of my division to correct. Have you met him, by any chance? Sixty-one per cent he gave one boy – sixty-one. The boy’s an absolute fool; I told Fielding at the beginning of the Half that he wouldn’t possibly get his remove. Perkins his name is, a nice enough boy; head of Fielding’s house. He’d have been lucky to get thirty per cent … sixty-one, Snow gave him. I haven’t seen the papers yet, of course, but it’s impossible, quite impossible.’

  They sat down.

  ‘Not that I don’t want the boy to get on. He’s a nice enough boy, nothing special, but well-mannered. Mrs Rode and I meant to have him here to tea this Half. We would have done, in fact, if it hadn’t been for …’ There was a moment’s silence. Smiley was going to speak when Rode stood up and said:

  ‘I’ve a kettle on the stove, Mr …’

  ‘Smiley.’

  ‘I’ve a kettle on the stove, Mr Smiley. May I make you a cup of coffee?’ That little stiff voice with the corners carefully defined, like a hired morning suit, thought Smiley.

  Rode returned a few minutes later with a tray and measured their coffee in precise quantities, according to their taste.

  Smiley found himself continually irritated by Rode’s social assumptions, and his constant struggle to conceal his origin. You could tell at the time, from every word and gesture, what he was; from the angle of his elbow as he drank his coffee, from the swift, expert pluck at the knee of his trouser leg as he sat down.

  ‘I wonder,’ Smiley began, ‘whether perhaps I might now …’

  ‘Go ahead, Mr Smiley.’

  ‘We are, of course, largely interested in Mrs Rode’s association with … our Church.’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘You were married at Branxome, I believe.’

  ‘Branxome Hill Tabernacle; fine church.’ D’Arcy wouldn’t have liked the way he said that; cocksure lad on a motor-bike. Pencils in the outside pocket.

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘September, fifty-one.’

  ‘Did Mrs Rode engage in charitable work in Branxome? I know she was very active here.’

  ‘No, not at Branxome, but a lot here. She had to look after her father at Branxome, you see. It was refugee relief she was keen on here. That didn’t get going much until late 1956 – the Hungarians began it, and then this last year …’

  Smiley peered thoughtfully at Rode from behind his spectacles, forgot himself, blinked, and looked away.

  ‘Did she take a large part in the social activities of Carne? Does the staff have its own Women’s Institute and so on?’ he asked innocently.

  ‘She did a bit, yes. But, being Chapel, she kept mainly with the Chapel people from the town … you should ask Mr Cardew about that; he’s the Minister.’

  ‘But may I say, Mr Rode, that she took an active part in school affairs as well?’

  Rode hesitated.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you.’

  There was a moment’s silence, then Smiley continued:

  ‘Our readers will, of course, remember Mrs Rode as the winner of our Kitchen Hints competition. Was she a good cook, Mr Rode?’

  ‘Very good, for plain things, not fancy.’

  ‘Is there any little fact that you would specially like us to include, anything she herself would like to be remembered by?’

  Rode looked at him with expressionless eyes. Then he shrugged.

  ‘No, not really. I can’t think of anything. Oh, you could say her father was a magistrate up North. She was proud of that.’

  Smiley finished his coffee and stood up.

  ‘You’ve been very patient with me, Mr Rode. We’re most grateful, I assure you. I’ll take care to send you an advance copy of our notice …’

  ‘Thanks. I did it for her, you see. She liked the Voice; always did. Grew up with it.’

  They shook hands.

  ‘By the way, do you know where I can find old Mr Glaston? Is he staying in Carne or has he returned to Branxome?’

  ‘He was up here yesterday. He’s going back to Branxome this afternoon. The police wanted to see him before he left.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘He’s staying at the Sawley.’

  ‘Thank you. I might try and see him before I go.’

  ‘When do you leave, then?’

  ‘Quite soon, I expect. Good-bye, then, Mr Rode. Incidentally –’ Smiley began.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘If ever you’re in London and at a loose end, if ever you want a chat … and a cup of tea, we’re always pleased to see you at the Voice, you know. Always.’

  ‘Thanks. Thanks very much, Mr –’

  ‘Smiley.’

  ‘Thanks, that’s very decent. No one’s said that to me for a long time. I’ll take you up on that one day. Very good of you.’

  ‘Good-bye.’ Again they shook hands; Rode’s was dry and cool. Smooth.

  He returned to the Sawley Arms, sat himself at a desk in the empty residents’ lounge and wrote a note to Mr Glaston:

  Dear Mr Glaston,

  I am here on beh
alf of Miss Brimley of the Christian Voice. I have some letters from Stella which I think you would like to see. Forgive me for bothering you at this sad moment: I understand you are leaving Carne this afternoon and wondered if I might see you before you left.

  He carefully sealed the envelope and took it to the reception desk. There was no one there, so he rang the bell and waited. At last a porter came, an old turnkey with a grey, bristly face, and after examining the envelope critically for a long time, he agreed, against an excessive fee, to convey it to Mr Glaston’s room. Smiley stayed at the desk, waiting for his answer.

  Smiley himself was one of those solitaries who seem to have come into the world fully educated at the age of eighteen. Obscurity was his nature, as well as his profession. The byways of espionage are not populated by the brash and colourful adventurers of fiction. A man who, like Smiley, has lived and worked for years among his country’s enemies learns only one prayer: that he may never, never be noticed. Assimilation is his highest aim, he learns to love the crowds who pass him in the street without a glance; he clings to them for his anonymity and his safety. His fear makes him servile – he could embrace the shoppers who jostle him in their impatience, and force him from the pavement. He could adore the officials, the police, the bus conductors, for the terse indifference of their attitudes.

  But this fear, this servility, this dependence, had developed in Smiley a perception for the colour of human beings: a swift, feminine sensitivity to their characters and motives. He knew mankind as a huntsman knows his cover, as a fox the wood. For a spy must hunt while he is hunted, and the crowd is his estate. He could collect their gestures and their words, record the interplay of glance and movement, as a huntsman can record the twisted bracken and the broken twig, or as a fox detects the signs of danger.

  Thus, while he waited patiently for Glaston’s reply and recalled the crowded events of the last forty-eight hours, he was able to order and assess them with detachment. What was the cause of D’Arcy’s attitude to Fielding, as if they were unwilling partners to a shabby secret? Staring across the neglected hotel gardens towards Carne Abbey, he was able to glimpse behind the lead roof of the Abbey the familiar battlements of the school: keeping the new world out and the old world secure. In his mind’s eye he saw the Great Court now, as the boys came out of Chapel: the black-coated groups in the leisured attitudes of eighteenth-century England. And he remembered the other school beside the police station: Carne High School; a little tawdry place like a porter’s lodge in an empty graveyard, as detached from the tones of Carne as its brick and flint from the saffron battlements of School Hall.

  Yes, he reflected, Stanley Rode had made a long, long journey from the Grammar School at Branxome. And if he had killed his wife, then the motive, Smiley was sure, and even the means, were to be found in that hard road to Carne.

  ‘It was kind of you to come,’ said Glaston; ‘kind of Miss Brimley to send you. They’re good people at the Voice; always were.’ He said this as if ‘good’ were an absolute quality with which he was familiar.

  ‘You’d better read the letters, Mr Glaston. The second one will shock you, I’m afraid, but I’m sure you’ll agree that it would be wrong of me not to show it to you.’ They were sitting in the lounge, the mammoth plants like sentinels beside them.

  He handed Glaston the two letters, and the old man took them firmly and read them. He held them a good way from him to read, thrusting his strong head back, his eyes half closed, the crisp line of his mouth turned down at the corners. At last he said:

  ‘You were with Miss Brimley in the war, were you?’

  ‘I worked with John Landsbury, yes.’

  ‘I see. That’s why she came to you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you Chapel?’

  ‘No.’

  He was silent for a while, his hands folded on his lap, the letters before him on the table.

  ‘Stanley was Chapel when they married. Then he went over. Did you know that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where I come from in the North, we don’t do that. Chapel was something we’d stood up for and won. Almost like the Vote.’

  ‘I know.’

  His back was as straight as a soldier’s. He looked stern rather than sad. Quite suddenly, his eyes turned towards Smiley, and he looked at him long and carefully.

  ‘Are you a schoolmaster?’ he asked, and it occurred to Smiley that in his day Samuel Glaston had been a very shrewd man of business.

  ‘No … I’m more or less retired.’

  ‘Married?’

  ‘I was.’

  Again the old man fell silent, and Smiley wished he had left him alone.

  ‘She was a great one for chatter,’ he said at last.

  Smiley said nothing.

  ‘Have you told the police?’

  ‘Yes, but they knew already. That is, they knew that Stella thought her husband was going to murder her. She’d tried to tell Mr Cardew …’

  ‘The Minister?’

  ‘Yes. He thought she was overwrought and … deluded.’

  ‘Do you think she wasn’t?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just don’t know. But from what I have heard of your daughter I don’t believe she was unbalanced. Something roused her suspicions, something frightened her very much. I don’t believe we can just disregard that. I don’t believe it was a coincidence that she was frightened before she died. And therefore I don’t believe that the beggar-woman murdered her.’

  Samuel Glaston nodded slowly. It seemed to Smiley that the old man was trying to show interest, partly to be polite, and partly because if he did not it would be a confession that he had lost interest in life itself.

  Then, after a long silence, he carefully folded up the letters and gave them back. Smiley waited for him to speak, but he said nothing.

  After a few moments Smiley got up and walked quietly from the room.

  10 Little Women

  Shane Hecht smiled, and drank some more sherry. ‘You must be dreadfully important,’ she said to Smiley, ‘for D’Arcy to serve decent sherry. What are you, Almanach de Gotha?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. D’Arcy and I were both dining at Terence Fielding’s on Friday night and D’Arcy asked me for sherry.’

  ‘Terence is wicked, isn’t he? Charles loathes him. I’m afraid they see Sparta in quite different ways … Poor Terence. It’s his last Half, you know.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘So sweet of you to come to the funeral yesterday. I hate funerals, don’t you? Black is so insanitary. I always remember King George V’s funeral. Lord Sawley was at Court in those days, and gave Charles two tickets. So kind. I always think it’s spoilt us for ordinary funerals in a way. Although I’m never quite sure about funerals, are you? I have a suspicion that they are largely a lower-class recreation; cherry brandy and seed cake in the parlour. I think the tendency of people like ourselves is for a quiet funeral these days; no flowers, just a short obituary and a memorial service later.’ Her small eyes were bright with pleasure. She finished her sherry and held out her empty glass to Smiley.

  ‘Would you mind, dear? I hate sherry, but Felix is so mean.’

  Smiley filled her glass from the decanter on the table.

  ‘Dreadful about the murder, wasn’t it? That beggar-woman must be mad. Stella Rode was such a nice person, I always thought … and so unusual. She did such clever things with the same dress … But she had such curious friends. All for Hans the woodcutter and Pedro the fisherman, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Was she popular at Carne?’

  Shane Hecht laughed gently: ‘No one is popular at Carne … but she wasn’t easy to like … She would wear black crêpe on Sundays … Forgive me, but do the lower classes always do that? The townspeople liked her, I believe. They adore anyone who betrays Carne. But then she was a Christian Scientist or something.’

  ‘Baptist, I understand,’ said Smiley unthinkingly.

  She looked at him for a moment with unfei
gned curiosity. ‘How sweet,’ she murmured. ‘Tell me, what are you?’

  Smiley made some facetious reply about being unemployed, and realised that it was only by a hair’s-breadth that he had avoided explaining himself to Shane Hecht like a small boy. Her very ugliness, her size and voice, coupled with the sophisticated malice of her conversation, gave her the dangerous quality of command. Smiley was tempted to compare her with Fielding, but for Fielding other people scarcely existed. For Shane Hecht they did exist: they were there to be found wanting in the minute tests of social behaviour, to be ridiculed, cut off and destroyed.

  ‘I read in the paper that her father was quite well off. From the North. Second generation. Remarkable really how unspoilt she was … so natural … You wouldn’t think she needed to go to the launderette or to make friends with beggars … Though, of course, the Midlands are different, aren’t they? Only about three good families between Ipswich and Newcastle. Where did you say you came from, dear?’

  ‘London.’

  ‘How nice. I went to tea with Stella once. Milk in first and Indian. So different,’ and she looked at Smiley suddenly and said, ‘I’ll tell you something. She almost aroused an admiration in me, I found her so insufferable. She was one of those tiresome little snobs who think that only the humble are virtuous.’ Then she smiled and added, ‘I even agreed with Charles about Stella Rode, and that’s saying something. If you’re a student of mankind, do go and have a look at him, the contrast is riveting.’ But at that moment they were joined by D’Arcy’s sister, a bony, virile woman with untidy grey hair and an arrogant, hunting mouth.

  ‘Dorothy darling,’ Shane murmured; ‘such a lovely party. So kind. And so exciting to meet somebody from London, don’t you think? We were talking about poor Mrs Rode’s funeral.’

  ‘Stella Rode may have been damn’ bad form, Shane, but she did a lot for my refugees.’

  ‘Refugees?’ asked Smiley innocently.

  ‘Hungarians. Collecting for them. Clothes, furniture, money. One of the few wives who did anything.’ She looked sharply at Shane Hecht, who was smiling benignly past her towards her husband: ‘Busy little creature, she was; didn’t mind rolling her sleeves up, going from door to door. Got her little women on to it too at the Baptist chapel and brought in a mass of stuff. You’ve got to hand it to them, you know. They’ve got spirit. Felix, more sherry!’