A Murder of Quality

by John le Carré

  “ ‘I’ve got them! I’ve got them all,” she’d say. “I know all their little secrets and I’ve got them in the hollow of my hand, Stan.” That’s what she’d say. And those that realised grew to be frightened of her. They all gossiped, Heaven knows, but not to profit from it, not like Stella. Stella was cunning; anything decent, anything good, she’d drag it down and spoil it. There were a dozen she’d got the measure of. There was Mulligan the furniture man; he’s got a daughter with a kid near Leamington. Somehow she found out the girl wasn’t married – they’d sent her to an aunt to have her baby and begin again up there. She rang up Mulligan once, something to do with a bill for moving Simon Snow’s furniture, and she said, “Greetings from Leamington Spa, Mr Mulligan. We need a little cooperation.” She told me that – she came home laughing her head off and told me. But they got her in the end, didn’t they? They got their own back!’

  Smiley nodded slowly, his eyes now turned fully upon Rode.

  ‘Yes,’ he said at last, ‘they got their own back.’

  ‘They thought Mad Janie did it, but I didn’t. Janie’d as soon have killed her own sister as Stella. They were as close as moon and stars, that’s what Stella said. They’d talk together for hours in the evenings when I was out late on Societies or Extra Tuition. Stella cooked food for her, gave her clothes and money. It gave her a feeling of power to help a creature like Janie, and have her fawning round. Not because she was kind, but because she was cruel.

  ‘She’d brought a little dog with her from Branxome, a mongrel. One day a few months ago I came home and found it lying in the garage whimpering, terrified. It was limping and had blood on its back. She’d beaten it. She must have gone mad. I knew she’d beaten it before, but never like that; never. Then something happened – I shouted at her and she laughed and then I hit her. Not hard, but hard enough. In the face. I gave her twenty-four hours to have the dog destroyed or I’d tell the police. She screamed at me – it was her dog and she’d damn well do what she liked with it – but next day she put on her little black hat and took the dog to the vet. I suppose she told him some tale. She could spin a good tale about anything, Stella could. She kind of stepped into a part and played it right through. Like the tale she told the Hungarians. Miss D’Arcy had some refugees to stay from London once and Stella told them such a tale they ran away and had to be taken back to London. Miss D’Arcy paid for their fares and everything, even had the welfare officer down to see them and try and put things right. I don’t think Miss D’Arcy ever knew who’d got at them, but I did – Stella told me. She laughed, always that same laugh: “There’s your fine lady, Stan. Look at her charity now.”

  ‘After the dog, she took to pretending I was violent, cringing away whenever I came near, holding her arm up as though I was going to hit her again. She even made out I was plotting to murder her: she went and told Mr Cardew I was. She didn’t believe it herself; she’d laugh about it sometimes. She said to me: “It’s no good killing me now, Stan; they’ll all know who’s done it.” But other times she’d whine and stroke me, begging me not to kill her. “You’ll kill me in the long nights!” She’d scream it out – it was the words that got her, the long nights, she liked the sound of them the way an actor does, and she’d build a whole story round them. “Oh, Stan,” she’d say, “keep me safe in the long nights.” You know how it is when you never meant to do anything anyway, and someone goes on begging you not to do it? You think you might do it after all, you begin to consider the possibility.’

  Miss Brimley drew in her breath rather quickly. Smiley stood up and walked over to Rode.

  ‘Why don’t we go back to my house for some food?’ he said. ‘We can talk this over quietly. Among friends.’

  They took a taxi to Bywater Street. Rode sat beside Ailsa Brimley, more relaxed now, and Smiley, opposite him on a drop-seat, watched him and wondered. And it occurred to him that the most important thing about Rode was that he had no friends. Smiley was reminded of BÜchner’s fairy tale of the child left alone in an empty world who, finding no one to talk to, went to the moon because it smiled at him, but the moon was made of rotten wood. And when the sun and moon and stars had all turned to nothing, he tried to go back to the earth, but it had gone.

  Perhaps because Smiley was tired, or perhaps because he was getting a little old, he felt a movement of sudden compassion towards Rode, such as children feel for the poor and parents for their children. Rode had tried so hard – he had used Carne’s language, bought the right clothes, and thought as best he could the right thoughts – yet remained hopelessly apart, hopelessly alone.

  He lit the gas-fire in the drawing-room while Ailsa Brimley went to the delicatessen in the King’s Road for soup and eggs. He poured out whisky and soda and gave one to Rode, who drank it in short sips, without speaking.

  ‘I had to tell somebody,’ he said at last. ‘I thought you’d be a good person. I didn’t want you to print that article, though. Too many knew, you see.’

  ‘How many really knew?’

  ‘Only those she’d gone for, I think. I suppose about a dozen townspeople. And Mr Cardew, of course. She was terribly cunning, you see. She didn’t often pass on gossip. She knew to a hair how far she could go. Those who knew were the ones she’d got on the hook. Oh, and D’Arcy, Felix D’Arcy, he knew. She had something special there, something she never told me about. There were nights when she’d put on her shawl and slip out, all excited as if she was going to a party. Quite late sometimes, eleven or twelve. I’d never ask her where she was going because it only bucked her, but sometimes she’d nod at me all cunning and say, “You don’t know, Stan, but D’Arcy does. D’Arcy knows and he can’t tell,” and then she’d laugh again and try and look mysterious, and off she’d go.’

  Smiley was silent for a long time, watching Rode and thinking. Then he asked suddenly: ‘What was Stella’s blood group, do you know?’

  ‘Mine’s B. I know that. I was a donor at Branxome. Hers was different.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘She had a test before we were married. She used to suffer from anaemia. I remember hers being different, that’s all. Probably A. I can’t remember for sure. Why?’

  ‘Where were you registered as a donor?’

  ‘North Poole Transfusion Centre.’

  ‘Will they know you there still? Are you still recorded there?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  The front-door bell rang. It was Ailsa Brimley, back from her shopping.

  Ailsa installed herself in the kitchen, while Rode and Smiley sat in the warm comfort of the drawing-room.

  ‘Tell me something else,’ said Smiley, ‘about the night of the murder. Why did you leave the writing-case behind? Was it absent-mindedness?’

  ‘No, not really. I was on Chapel duty that night, so Stella and I arrived separately at Fielding’s house. She got there before I did and I think Fielding gave the case to her – right at the start of the evening so that it wouldn’t get forgotten. He said something about it later that evening. She’d put the case beside her coat in the hall. It was only a little thing about eighteen inches by twelve. I could have sworn she was carrying it as we stood in the hall saying good-bye, but I must have been mistaken. It wasn’t till we got to the house that she asked me what I’d done with it.’

  ‘She asked you what you’d done with it?’

  ‘Yes. Then she threw a temper and said I expected her to remember everything. I didn’t particularly want to go back, I could have rung Fielding and arranged to collect it first thing next morning, but Stella wouldn’t hear of it. She made me go. I didn’t like to tell the police all this stuff about us quarrelling, it didn’t seem right.’

  Smiley nodded. ‘When you got back to Fielding’s you rang the bell?’

  ‘Yes. There’s the front door, then a glass door inside, a sort of French window to keep out draughts. The front door was still open, and the light was on in the hall. I rang the bell and collected the case from Fielding.’


  They had finished supper when the telephone rang.

  ‘Rigby here, Mr Smiley. I’ve got the laboratory results. They’re rather puzzling.’

  ‘The exam. paper first: it doesn’t tally?’

  ‘No, it doesn’t. The boffins here say all the figures and writing were done with the same ballpoint pen. They can’t be sure about the diagrams but they say the legend on all the diagrams corresponds to the rest of the script on the sheet.’

  ‘All done by the boy after all in fact?’

  ‘Yes. I brought up some other samples of his handwriting for comparison. They match the exam. paper right the way through. Fielding couldn’t have tinkered with it.’

  ‘Good. And the clothing? Nothing there either?’

  ‘Traces of blood, that’s all. No prints on the plastic.’

  ‘What was her blood group, by the way?’

  ‘Group A.’

  Smiley sat down on the edge of the bed. Pressing the receiver to his ear, he began talking quietly. Ten minutes later he was walking slowly downstairs. He had come to the end of the chase, and was already sickened by the kill.

  It was nearly an hour before Rigby arrived.

  20 The Dross of the River

  Albert Bridge was as preposterous as ever; bony steel, rising to Wagnerian pinnacles, against the patient London sky; the Thames crawling beneath it with resignation, edging its filth into the wharves of Battersea, then sliding towards the mist down river.

  The mist was thick. Smiley watched the driftwood, as it touched it, turning first to white dust, then seeming to lift, dissolve and vanish.

  This was how it would end, on a foul morning like this when they dragged the murderer whimpering from his cell and put the hempen rope round his neck. Would Smiley have the courage to recall this two months from now, as the dawn broke outside his window and the clock rang out the time? When they broke a man’s neck on the scaffold and put him away like the dross of the river?

  He made his way along Beaumont Street towards the King’s Road. The milkman chugged past him in his electric van. He would breakfast out this morning, then take a cab to Curzon Street and order the wine for dinner. He would choose something good. Fielding would like that.

  Fielding closed his eyes and drank, his left hand held lightly across his chest.

  ‘Divine,’ he said, ‘divine!’ And Ailsa Brimley, opposite him, smiled gently.

  ‘How are you going to spend your retirement, Mr Fielding?’ she asked. ‘Drinking Frankenwein?’

  His glass still held before his lips, he looked into the candles. The silver was good, better than his own. He wondered why they were only dining three. ‘In peace,’ he replied at last. ‘I have recently made a discovery.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘That I have been playing to an empty house. But now I’m comforted to think that no one remembers how I forgot my words or missed an entry. So many of us wait patiently for our audience to die. At Carne no one will remember for more than a Half or two what a mess I’ve made of life. I was too vain to realise that until recently.’ He put the glass down in front of him and smiled suddenly at Ailsa Brimley. ‘That is the peace I mean. Not to exist in anyone’s mind, but my own; to be a secular monk, safe and forgotten.’

  Smiley gave him more wine: ‘Miss Brimley knew your brother Adrian well in the war. We were all in the same department,’ he said. ‘She was Adrian’s secretary for a while. Weren’t you, Brim?’

  ‘It’s depressing how the bad live on,’ Fielding declared. ‘Rather embarrassing. For the bad, I mean.’ He gave a little gastronomic sigh. ‘The moment of truth in a good meal! Übergangsperiode between entremet and dessert,’ and they all laughed, and then were silent. Smiley put down his glass, and said:

  ‘The story you told me on Tuesday, when I came and saw you …’

  ‘Well?’ Fielding was irritated.

  ‘About cheating for Tim Perkins … how you took the paper from the case and altered it …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It isn’t true.’ He might have been talking about the weather. ‘They’ve examined it and it isn’t true. The writing was all one person’s … the boy’s. If anyone cheated, it must have been the boy.’

  There was a long silence. Fielding shrugged.

  ‘My dear fellow, you can’t expect me to believe that. These people are practically moronic.’

  ‘Of course, it doesn’t necessarily signify anything. I mean you could be protecting the boy, couldn’t you? By lying for him, for his honour, so to speak. Is that the explanation?’

  ‘I’ve told you the truth,’ he replied shortly. ‘Make what you want of it.’

  ‘I mean, I can see a situation where there might have been collusion, where you were moved by the boy’s distress when he brought you the papers; and on the spur of the moment you opened the case and took out his paper and told him what to write.’

  ‘Look here,’ said Fielding hotly, ‘why don’t you keep off this? What’s it got to do with you?’ And Smiley replied with sudden fervour:

  ‘I’m trying to help, Fielding. I beg you to believe me, I’m trying to help. For Adrian’s sake. I don’t want there to be … more trouble than there need, more pain. I want to get it straight before Rigby comes. They’ve dropped the charge against Janie. You know that, don’t you? They seem to think it’s Rode, but they haven’t pulled him in. They could have done, but they haven’t. They just took more statements from him. So you see, it matters terribly about the writing-case. Everything hangs by whether you really saw inside it; and whether Perkins did. Don’t you see that? If it was Perkins who cheated after all, if it was only the boy who opened the case and not you, then they’ll want to know the answer to a very important question: they’ll want to know how you knew what was inside it.’

  ‘What are you trying to say?’

  ‘They’re not really moronic, you know. Let’s start from the other end for a moment. Suppose it was you who killed Stella Rode, suppose you had a reason, a terribly good reason, and they knew what that reason might be; suppose you went ahead of Rode after giving him the case that night – by bicycle, for instance, like Janie said, riding on the wind. If that were really so, none of those things you saw would have been in the case at all. You could have made it up. And when later the exam. results came out and you realised that Perkins had cheated, then you guessed he had seen inside the case, had seen that it contained nothing, nothing but exam. papers. I mean, that would explain why you had to kill the boy.’ He stopped and glanced towards Fielding. ‘And in a way,’ he added almost reluctantly, ‘it makes better sense, doesn’t it?’

  ‘And what, may I ask, was the reason you speak of?’

  ‘Perhaps she blackmailed you. She certainly knew about your conviction in the war from when she was up North. Her father was a magistrate, wasn’t he? I understand they’ve looked up the files. The police, I mean. It was her father who heard the case. She knew you’re broke and need another job and she kept you on a hook. It seems D’Arcy knew too. She told him. She’d nothing to lose; he was in on the story from the start, he’d never allow the papers to get hold of it; she knew that, she knew her man. Did you tell D’Arcy as well, Fielding? I think you may have done. When she came to you and told you she knew, jeered and laughed at you, you went to D’Arcy and told him. You asked him what to do. And he said – what would he say? – perhaps he said find out what she wants. But she wanted nothing; not money at least, but something more pleasing, more gratifying to her twisted little mind: she wanted to command and own you. She loved to conspire, she summoned you to meetings at absurd times and places; in woods, in disused churches, and above all at night. And she wanted nothing from you but your will, she made you listen to her boasts and her mad intrigues, made you fawn and cringe, then let you run away till the next time.’ He looked up again. ‘They might think along those lines, you see. That’s why we need to know who saw inside the case. And who cheated in the exam.’ They were both looking at him, Ailsa in
horror, Fielding motionless, impassive.

  ‘If they think that,’ asked Fielding at last, ‘how do they suppose I knew Rode would come back for the case that night?’

  ‘Oh, they knew she was expecting you to meet her that night, after the dinner at your house.’ Smiley threw this off as if it were a tedious detail. ‘It was part of the game she liked to play.’

  ‘How do they know that?’

  ‘From what Rode says,’ Smiley continued, ‘Stella was carrying the case in the hall, actually had it in her hand. When they arrived at North Fields she was without it; she flew into a rage and accused him of forgetting it. She made him go back for it. You see the inference?’

  ‘Oh, clearly,’ said Fielding, and Smiley heard Ailsa Brimley whisper his name in horror.

  ‘In other words, when Stella devised this trick to gratify her twisted will, you saw it as an opportunity to kill her, putting the blame on a non-existent tramp, or, failing that, on Rode, as a second line of defence. Let us suppose you had been meaning to kill her. You had meant, I expect, to ride out there one night when Rode was teaching late. You had your boots and your cape, even the cable stolen from Rode’s room, and you meant to lay a false trail. But what a golden opportunity when Perkins turned up with the hand-case! Stella wanted her meeting – the forgotten hand-case was agreed upon as the means of achieving it. That, I fear, is the way their minds may work. And you see, they know it wasn’t Rode.’

  ‘How do they know? How can they know? He’s got no alibi.’ Smiley didn’t seem to hear. He was looking towards the window, and the heavy velvet curtains stirring uneasily.

  ‘What’s that? What are you looking at?’ Fielding asked with sudden urgency, but Smiley did not answer.

  ‘You know, Fielding,’ he said at last, ‘we just don’t know what people are like, we can never tell; there isn’t any truth about human beings, no formula that meets each one of us. And there are some of us – aren’t there? – who are nothing, who are so labile that we astound ourselves; we’re the chameleons. I read a story once about a poet who bathed himself in cold fountains so that he could recognise his own existence in the contrast. He had to reassure himself, you see, like a child being hateful to its parents. You might say he had to make the sun shine on him so that he could see his shadow and feel alive.’