A Murder of Quality

by John le Carré

  ‘Of course,’ Smiley cut in quickly. ‘It’s much simpler if you keep me out of it.’

  ‘I shall tell him it was just a routine inquiry. We shall have to mention Miss Brimley later … but there’s no point in making things worse, is there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I shall have to let Janie go, I suppose … She was right, wasn’t she? Silver wings in the moonlight.’

  ‘I wouldn’t – no, I wouldn’t let her go, Rigby,’ said Smiley with unaccustomed vehemence. ‘Keep her with you as long as you can possibly manage. No more accidents, for Heaven’s sake. We’ve had enough.’

  ‘Then you don’t believe Perkins’s death was an accident?’

  ‘Good Lord, no,’ cried Smiley suddenly, ‘and nor do you, do you?’

  ‘I’ve put a detective on to it,’ Rigby replied coolly. ‘I can’t take the case myself. I shall be needed on the Rode murder. The Chief will have to call the Yard in now; there’ll be hell to pay, I can tell you. He thought it was all over bar the shouting.’

  ‘And in the meantime?’

  ‘In the meantime, sir, I’m going to do my damnedest to find out who killed Stella Rode.’

  ‘If,’ said Smiley slowly, ‘if you find fingerprints on that mackintosh, which I doubt, will you have anything … local … to compare them with?’

  ‘We’ve got Rode’s, of course, and Janie’s.’

  ‘But not Fielding’s?’

  Rigby hesitated.

  ‘As a matter of fact, we have,’ he said at last. ‘From long ago. But nothing to do with this kind of thing.’

  ‘It was during the war,’ said Smiley. ‘His brother told me. Up in the North. It was hushed up, wasn’t it?’

  Rigby nodded. ‘So far as I heard, only the D’Arcys knew; and the Master, of course. It happened in the holidays – some Air Force boy. The Chief was very helpful …’

  Smiley shook hands with Rigby and made his way down the familiar pine staircase. He noticed again the vaguely institutional smell of floor polish and carbolic soap, like the smell at Fielding’s house.

  He walked slowly back towards the Sawley Arms. At the point where he should have turned left to his hotel, however, he hesitated, then seemed to change his mind. Slowly, almost reluctantly, he crossed the road to the Abbey Close, and walked along the southern edge towards Fielding’s house. He looked worried, almost frightened.

  16 A Taste for Music

  Miss Truebody opened the door. The rims of her eyes were pink, as though she had been weeping.

  ‘I wonder if I might see Mr Fielding? To say good-bye.’

  She hesitated: ‘Mr Fielding’s very upset. I doubt whether he’ll want to see anyone.’ He followed her into the hall and watched her go to the study door. She knocked, inclined her head, then gently turned the handle and let herself in. It was a long time before she returned. ‘He’ll be out shortly,’ she said, without looking at him. ‘Will you take off your coat?’ She waited while he struggled out of his overcoat, then took it from him and hung it beside the Van Gogh chair. They stood together in silence, both looking towards the study door.

  Then, quite suddenly, Fielding was standing in the half-open doorway, unshaven and in his shirt-sleeves. ‘For Christ’s sake,’ he said thickly. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I just wanted to say good-bye, Fielding, and to offer you my condolences.’

  Fielding looked at him hard for a moment; he was leaning heavily against the doorway. ‘Well, good-bye. Thank you for calling.’ He waved one hand vaguely in the air. ‘You needn’t have bothered really, need you?’ he added rudely. ‘You could have sent me a card, couldn’t you?’

  ‘I could have done, yes; it just seemed so very tragic, when he was so near success.’

  ‘What do you mean? What the devil do you mean?’

  ‘I mean in his work … the improvement. Simon Snow was telling me all about it. Amazing really, the way Rode brought him on.’

  A long silence, then Fielding spoke: ‘Good-bye, Smiley. Thanks for coming.’ He was turning back into the study as Smiley called:

  ‘Not at all … not at all. I suppose poor Rode must have been bucked with those exam. results, too. I mean it was more or less a matter of life and death for Perkins, passing that exam. wasn’t it? He wouldn’t have got his remove next Half if he’d failed in science. They might have superannuated him, I suppose, even though he was head of the house; then he couldn’t have sat for the Army. Poor Perkins, he had a lot to thank Rode for, didn’t he? And you, too, Fielding, I’m sure. You must have helped him wonderfully … both of you did, you and Rode; Rode and Fielding. His parents ought to know that. They’re rather hard up, I gather; the father’s in the Army, isn’t he, in Singapore? It must have been a great effort keeping the boy at Carne. It will comfort them to know how much was done for him, won’t it, Fielding?’

  Smiley was very pale. ‘You’ve heard the latest, I suppose,’ he continued. ‘About that wretched gipsy woman who killed Stella Rode? They’ve decided she’s fit to plead. I suppose they’ll hang her. That’ll be the third death, won’t it? You know, I’ll tell you an odd thing – just between ourselves, Fielding. I don’t believe she did it. Do you? I don’t believe she did it at all.’

  He was not looking at Fielding. He had clasped his little hands tightly behind his back, and he stood with his shoulders bowed and his head inclined to one side, as though listening for an answer.

  Fielding seemed to feel Smiley’s words like a physical pain. Slowly he shook his head:

  ‘No,’ he said; ‘no. Carne killed them; it was Carne. It could only happen here. It’s the game we play: the exclusion game. Divide and rule!’ He looked Smiley full in the face, and shouted: ‘Now for God’s sake go! You’ve got what you want, haven’t you? You can pin me on your little board, can’t you?’ And then, to Smiley’s distress, he began sobbing in great uncontrollable gulps, holding his hand across his brow. He appeared suddenly grotesque, stemming the childish tears with his chalky hand, his cumbersome feet turned inwards. Gently, Smiley coaxed him back into the study, gently sat him before the dead fire. Then he began talking to him softly and with compassion.

  ‘If what I think is true, there isn’t much time,’ he began. ‘I want you to tell me about Tim Perkins – about the exam.’

  Fielding, his face buried in his hands, nodded.

  ‘He would have failed, wouldn’t he? He would have failed and not got his remove; he’d have had to leave.’ Fielding was silent. ‘After the exam. that day, Rode gave him the writing-case to bring here, the case that contained the papers; Rode was doing Chapel Duty that week and wouldn’t be going home before dinner, but he wanted to correct the papers that night, after his dinner with you.’

  Fielding took his hands from his face and leant back in his chair, his great head tilted back, his eyes closed. Smiley continued:

  ‘Perkins came home, and that evening he brought the case to you, as Rode told him to, for safe keeping. Perkins, after all, was head of your house, a responsible boy … He gave you the case and you asked him how he’d done in the exam.’

  ‘He wept,’ said Fielding suddenly. ‘He wept as only a child can.’

  ‘And after breaking down he told you he had cheated? That he had looked up the answers and copied them on to his paper. Is that right? And after the murder of Stella Rode he remembered what else he had seen in the suitcase?’

  Fielding was standing up. ‘No! Don’t you see? Tim wouldn’t have cheated to save his life! That’s the whole point, the whole bloody irony of it,’ he shouted. ‘He never cheated at all. I cheated for him.’

  ‘But you couldn’t! You couldn’t copy his handwriting!’

  ‘He wrote with a ball-pen. It was only formulae and diagrams. When he’d gone, and left me alone with the case, I looked at his paper. It was hopeless – he’d only done two out of seven questions. So I cheated for him. I just cribbed them from the science book, and wrote them with blue ballpoint, the kind we all use. Abbots’ sell them. I copied h
is hand as best I could. It only needed about three lines of figures. The rest was diagrams.’

  ‘Then it was you who opened the case? You who saw …’

  ‘Yes. It was me, I tell you, not Tim! He couldn’t cheat to save his life! But Tim paid for it, don’t you see? When the marks were published, Tim must have known something was wrong with them. After all, he’d only attempted two questions out of seven and yet he’d got sixty-one per cent. But he knew nothing else, nothing!’

  For a long time neither spoke. Fielding was standing over Smiley, exultant with the relief of sharing his secret, and Smiley was looking vaguely past him, his face drawn in deep concentration.

  ‘And of course,’ he said finally, ‘when Stella was murdered, you knew who had done it.’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Fielding. ‘I knew that Rode had killed her.’

  Fielding poured himself a brandy and gave one to Smiley. He seemed to have recovered his self-control. He sat down and looked at Smiley thoughtfully for a time.

  ‘I’ve got no money,’ he said at last. ‘None. Nobody knows that except the Master. Oh, they know I’m more or less broke, but they don’t know how broke. Long ago I made an ass of myself. I got into trouble. It was in the war, when staff was impossible. I had a boys’ house and was practically running the school – D’Arcy and I. We were running it together, and the Master running us. Then I made an ass of myself. It was during the holidays. I was up North at the time, giving a course of talks at an RAF educational place. And I stepped out of line. Badly. They pulled me in. And along came D’Arcy wearing his country overcoat and bringing the Master’s terms: Come back to Carne, my dear fellow, and we’ll say no more about it; go on running your house, my dear fellow, and giving of your wisdom. There’s been no publicity. We know it will never happen again, my dear fellow, and we’re dreadfully hard up for staff. Come back as a temporary. So I did, and I’ve been one ever since, going cap in hand to darling D’Arcy every December asking for my contract to be renewed. And, of course – no pension. I shall have to teach at a crammer’s. There’s a place in Somerset where they’ll take me. I’m seeing their Headmaster in London on Thursday. It’s a sort of breaker’s yard for old dons. The Master had to know, because he gave me a reference.’

  ‘That was why you couldn’t tell anyone? Because of Perkins?’

  ‘In a way, yes. I mean they’d want to know all sorts of things. I did it for Tim, you see. The Governors wouldn’t have liked that much … inordinate affection … It looks bad, doesn’t it? But it wasn’t that kind of affection, Smiley, not any more. You never heard him play the ’cello. He wasn’t marvellous, but just sometimes he would play so beautifully, with a kind of studious simplicity, that was indescribably good. He was an awkward boy, and when he played well it was such a surprise. You should have heard him play.’

  ‘You didn’t want to drag him into it. If you told the police what you had seen it would ruin Tim too?’

  Fielding nodded. ‘In the whole of Carne, he was the one thing I loved.’

  ‘Loved?’ asked Smiley.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ said Fielding in an exhausted voice, ‘why not?’

  ‘His parents wanted him to go to Sandhurst; I didn’t, I’m afraid. I thought that if I could keep him here another Half or two I might be able to get him a music scholarship. That’s why I made him Head of House: I wanted his parents to keep him on because he was doing so well.’ Fielding paused. ‘He was a rotten Head of House,’ he added.

  ‘And what exactly was in the writing-case,’ Smiley asked, ‘when you opened it that evening to look at Tim’s exam. paper?’

  ‘A sheet of transparent plastic … it may have been one of those pack-away cape things – an old pair of gloves, and a pair of home-made galoshes.’

  ‘Home-made?’

  ‘Yes. Hacked from a pair of Wellington boots, I should think.’

  ‘That’s all?’

  ‘No. There was a length of heavy cable, I presumed for demonstrating something in his science lessons. It seemed natural enough in winter to carry waterproofs about. Then, after the murder, I realised how he had done it.’

  ‘Did you know,’ Smiley asked him, ‘why he had done it?’

  Fielding seemed to hesitate: ‘Rode’s a guinea-pig,’ he began, ‘the first man we’ve had from a grammar school. Most of us are old Carnians ourselves, in fact. Focused when we start. Rode wasn’t, and Carne thrilled him. The very name Carne means quality, and Rode loved quality. His wife wasn’t like that. She had her standards and they were different, but just as good. I used to watch Rode in the Abbey sometimes on Sunday mornings. Tutors sit at the end of pews, right by the aisle, you know. I used to watch his face as the choir processed past him in white and scarlet, and the Master in his doctor’s robes and the Governors and Guardians behind him. Rode was drunk – drunk with the pride of Carne. We’re heady wine for the grammar school men, you know. It must have hurt him terribly that Stella wouldn’t share any of that. You could see it did. The night they came to dinner with me, the night she died, they argued. I never told anyone, but they did. The Master had preached a sermon at Compline that evening: “Hold fast to that which is good.” Rode talked about it at dinner; he couldn’t take much drink, you know, he wasn’t used to it. He was full of this sermon and of the eloquence of the Master. She never came to the Abbey – she went to that drab tabernacle by the station. He went on and on about the beauty of the Abbey service, the dignity, the reverence. She kept quiet till he’d finished, then laughed, and said: “Poor old Stan. You’ll always be Stan to me.” I’ve never seen anyone so angry as he was then. He went quite pale.’

  Fielding swept his white hair from his eyes and went on, with something like the old panache: ‘I’ve watched her, too, at meals. Not just here, but at dinner parties elsewhere, when we’ve both been invited. I’ve watched her do the simplest things – like eating an apple. She’d peel it in one piece, round and round till the whole peel fell off. Then she’d cut the apple and dice the quarters, getting it all ready before she ate it. She might have been a miner’s wife preparing it for her husband. She must have seen how people do things here, but it never occurred to her that she ought to copy them. I admire that. So do you, I expect. But Carne doesn’t – and Rode didn’t; above all, Rode didn’t. He’d watch her, and I think he grew to hate her for not conforming. He came to see her as the bar to his success, the one factor which would deprive him of a great career. Once he’d reached that conclusion, what could he do? He couldn’t divorce her – that would do him more harm than remaining married to her. Rode knew what Carne would think of divorce; we’re a Church foundation, remember. So he killed her. He plotted a squalid murder, and with his little scientist’s mind he gave them all the clues they wanted. Fabricated clues. Clues that would point to a murderer who didn’t exist. But something went wrong; Tim Perkins got sixty-one per cent. He’d got an impossible mark – he must have cheated. He’d had the opportunity – he’d had the papers in the case. Rode put his little mind to it and decided what had happened: Tim had opened the case and he’d seen the cape and the boots and the gloves. And the cable. So Rode killed him too.’

  With surprising energy, Fielding got up and gave himself more brandy. His face was flushed, almost exultant.

  Smiley stood up. ‘When did you say you’ll be coming to London? Thursday, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. I had arranged to lunch with my crammer man at one of those dreadful clubs in Pall Mall. I always go into the wrong one, don’t you? But I’m afraid there’s not much point in my seeing him now, is there, if all this is going to come out? Not even a crammer’s will take me then.’

  Smiley hesitated.

  ‘Come and dine with me that evening. Spend the night if you want. I’ll ask one or two other people. We’ll have a party. You’ll feel better by then. We can talk a bit. I might be able to help you … for Adrian’s sake.’

  ‘Thank you. I should like to. Interview apart, I’ve got some odds and ends to clear up in Lo
ndon, anyway.’

  ‘Good. Quarter to eight. Bywater Street, Chelsea, number 9A.’ Fielding wrote it down in his diary. His hand was quite steady.

  ‘Black tie?’ asked Fielding, his pen poised, and some imp made Smiley reply:

  ‘I usually do, but it doesn’t matter.’ There was a moment’s silence.

  ‘I suppose,’ Fielding began tentatively, ‘that all this will come out in the trial, about Tim and me? I’ll be ruined if it does, you know, ruined.’

  ‘I don’t see how they can prevent it.’

  ‘I feel much better now, anyway,’ said Fielding; ‘much.’

  With a cursory good-bye, Smiley left him alone. He walked quickly back to the police station, reasonably confident that Terence Fielding was the most accomplished liar he had met for a long time.

  17 Rabbit Run

  He knocked on Rigby’s door and walked straight in.

  ‘I’m awfully afraid you’ll have to arrest Stanley Rode,’ he began, and recounted his interview with Fielding.

  ‘I shall have to tell the Chief,’ said Rigby doubtfully. ‘Would you like to repeat all that in front of him? If we’re going to pull in a Carne master, I think the Chief had better know first. He’s just come back. Hang on a minute.’ He picked up the telephone on his desk and asked for the Chief Constable. A few minutes later they were walking in silence down a carpeted corridor. On either wall hung photographs of rugby and cricket teams, some yellow and faded from the Indian sun, others done in a sepia tint much favoured by Carne photographers in the early part of the century. At intervals along the corridor stood empty buckets of brilliant red, with FIRE printed carefully in white on the outside. At the far end of the corridor was a dark oak door. Rigby knocked and waited. There was silence. He knocked again and was answered with a cry of ‘Come!’

  Two very large spaniels watched them come in. Behind the spaniels, at an enormous desk, Brigadier Havelock, OBE, Chief Constable of Carne, sat like a water rat on a raft.