A Murder of Quality AND Call for the Dead

by John le Carré

  Dear Sir David,

  After some hesitation I have decided to take my life. I cannot spend my remaining years under a cloud of disloyalty and suspicion. I realize that my career is ruined, that I am the victim of paid informers.

  Yours sincerely,

  Samuel Fennan

  Smiley read it through several times, his mouth pursed in concentration, his eyebrows raised a little as if in surprise. Mendel was asking him something:

  “How d’you get on to it?”

  “On to what?”

  “This early call business.”

  “Oh, I took the call. Thought it was for me. It wasn’t—it was the exchange with this thing. Even then the penny didn’t drop. I assumed it was for her, you see. Went down and told her.”

  “Down?”

  “Yes. They keep the telephone in the bedroom. It’s a sort of bed-sitter, really … she used to be an invalid, you know, and they’ve left the room as it was then, I suppose. It’s like a study, one end; books, typewriter, desk and so forth.”

  “Typewriter?”

  “Yes. A portable. I imagine he did this letter on it. But you see when I took that call I’d forgotten it couldn’t possibly be Mrs Fennan who’d asked for it.”

  “Why not?”

  “She’s an insomniac—she told me. Made a sort of joke of it. I told her to get some rest and she just said: ‘My body and I must put up with one another twenty hours a day. We have lived longer than most people already.’ There was more of it—something about not enjoying the luxury of sleep. So why should she want a call at eight-thirty?”

  “Why should her husband—why should anyone? It’s damn nearly lunch-time. God help the Civil Service.”

  “Exactly. That puzzles me too. The Foreign Office admittedly starts late—ten o’clock, I think. But even then Fennan would be pushed to dress, shave, breakfast and catch the train on time if he didn’t wake till eight-thirty. Besides, his wife could call him.”

  “She might have been shooting a line about not sleeping,” said Mendel. “Women do, about insomnia and migraine and stuff. Makes people think they’re nervous and temperamental. Cock, most of it.”

  Smiley shook his head: “No, she couldn’t have made the call, could she? She wasn’t home till ten forty-five. But even supposing she made a mistake about the time she got back, she couldn’t have gone to the telephone without seeing her husband’s body first. And you’re not going to tell me that her reaction on finding her husband dead was to go upstairs and ask for an early call?”

  They drank their coffee in silence for a while.

  “Another thing,” said Mendel.

  “Yes?”

  “His wife got back from the theatre at quarter to eleven, right?”

  “That’s what she says.”

  “Did she go alone?”

  “No idea.”

  “Bet she didn’t. I’ll bet she had to tell the truth there, and times the letter to give herself an alibi.”

  Smiley’s mind went back to Elsa Fennan, her anger, her submission. It seemed ridiculous to talk about her in this way. No: not Elsa Fennan. No.

  “Where was the body found?” Smiley asked.

  “Bottom of the stairs.”

  “Bottom of the stairs?”

  “True. Sprawled across the hall floor. Revolver underneath him.”

  “And the note. Where was that?”

  “Beside him on the floor.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yes. A mug of cocoa in the drawing-room.”

  “I see. Fennan decides to commit suicide. He asks the exchange to ring him at eight-thirty. He makes himself some cocoa and puts it in the drawing-room. He goes upstairs and types his last letter. He comes down again to shoot himself, leaving the cocoa undrunk. It all hangs together nicely.”

  “Yes, doesn’t it. Incidentally, hadn’t you better ring your office?”

  He looked at Mendel equivocally. “That’s the end of a beautiful friendship,” he said. As he walked towards the coin box beside a door marked “Private” he heard Mendel saying: “I bet you say that to all the boys.” He was actually smiling as he asked for Maston’s number.

  Maston wanted to see him at once.

  He went back to their table. Mendel was stirring another cup of coffee as if it required all his concentration. He was eating a very large bun.

  Smiley stood beside him. “I’ve got to go back to London.”

  “Well, this will put the cat among the pigeons.” The weasel face turned abruptly towards him; “Or will it?” He spoke with the front of his mouth while the back of it continued to deal with the bun.

  “If Fennan was murdered, no power on earth can prevent the Press from getting hold of the story,” and to himself added: “I don’t think Maston would like that. He’d prefer suicide.”

  “Still, we’ve got to face that, haven’t we?”

  Smiley paused, frowning earnestly. Already he could hear Maston deriding his suspicions, laughing them impatiently away. “I don’t know,” he said, “I really don’t know.”

  Back to London, he thought, back to Maston’s Ideal Home, back to the rat-race of blame. And back to the unreality of containing a human tragedy in a three-page report.

  It was raining again, a warm incessant rain now, and in the short distance between the Fountain Café and the police station he got very wet. He took off his coat and threw it into the back of the car. It was a relief to be leaving Walliston—even for London. As he turned on to the main road he saw out of the corner of his eye the figure of Mendel stoically trudging along the pavement towards the station, his grey trilby shapeless and blackened by the rain. It hadn’t occurred to Smiley that he might want a lift to London, and he felt ungracious. Mendel, untroubled by the niceties of the situation, opened the passenger door and got in.

  “Bit of luck,” he observed. “Hate trains. Cambridge Circus you going to? You can drop me Westminster way, can’t you?”

  They set off and Mendel produced a shabby green tobacco tin and rolled himself a cigarette. He directed it towards his mouth, changed his mind and offered it to Smiley, lighting it for him with an extraordinary lighter that threw a two-inch blue flame. “You look worried sick,” said Mendel.

  “I am.”

  There was a pause. Mendel said: “It’s the devil you don’t know that gets you.”

  They had driven another four or five miles when Smiley drew the car in to the side of the road. He turned to Mendel.

  “Would you mind awfully if we drove back to Walliston?”

  “Good idea. Go and ask her.”

  He turned the car and drove slowly back to Walliston, back to Merridale Lane. He left Mendel in the car and walked down the familiar gravel path.

  She opened the door and showed him into the drawing-room without a word. She was wearing the same dress, and Smiley wondered how she had passed the time since he had left her that morning.

  Had she been walking about the house or sitting motionless in the drawing-room? Or upstairs in the bedroom with the leather chairs? How did she see herself in her new widowhood? Could she take it seriously yet, was she still in that secretly elevated state which immediately follows bereavement? Still looking at herself in mirrors, trying to discern the change, the horror in her own face, and weeping when she could not?

  Neither of them sat down—both instinctively avoided a repetition of that morning’s meeting.

  “There was one thing I felt I must ask you, Mrs Fennan. I’m very sorry to have to bother you again.”

  “About the call, I expect; the early morning call from the exchange.”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought that might puzzle you. An insomniac asks for an early morning call.” She was trying to speak brightly.

  “Yes. It did seem odd. Do you often go to the theatre?”

  “Yes. Once a fortnight. I’m a member of the Weybridge Reperrory Club, you know. I try and go to everything they do. I have a seat reserved for me automatically on the first Tu
esday of each run. My husband worked late on Tuesdays. He never came; he’d only go to classical theatre.”

  “But he liked Brecht, didn’t he? He seemed very thrilled with the Berliner Ensemble performances in London.”

  She looked at him for a moment, and then smiled suddenly— the first time he had seen her do so. It was an enchanting smile; her whole face lit up like a child’s.

  Smiley had a fleeting vision of Elsa Fennan as a child—a spindly, agile tomboy like George Sand’s “Petite Fadette”—half woman, half glib, lying girl. He saw her as a wheedling Backfisch, fighting like a cat for herself alone, and he saw her too, starved and shrunken in prison camp, ruthless in her fight for self-preservation. It was pathetic to witness in that smile the light of her early innocence, and a steeled weapon in her fight for survival.

  “I’m afraid the explanation of that call is very silly,” she said. “I suffer from a terrible memory—really awful. Go shopping and forget what I’ve come to buy, make an appointment on the telephone and forget it the moment I replace the receiver. I ask people to stay the week-end and we are out when they arrive. Occasionally, when there is something I simply have to remember, I ring the exchange and ask for a call a few minutes before the appointed time. It’s like a knot in one’s handkerchief, but a knot can’t ring a bell at you, can it?”

  Smiley peered at her. His throat felt rather dry, and he had to swallow before he spoke.

  “And what was the call for this time, Mrs Fennan?”

  Again the enchanting smile: “There you are. I completely forget.”

  5

  MASTON AND CANDLELIGHT

  As he drove slowly back towards London Smiley ceased to be conscious of Mendel’s presence.

  There had been a time when the mere business of driving a car was a relief to him; when he had found in the unreality of a long, solitary journey a palliative to his troubled brain, when the fatigue of several hours’ driving had allowed him to forget more sombre cares.

  It was one of the subtler landmarks of middle age, perhaps, that he could no longer thus subdue his mind. It needed sterner measures now: he even tried on occasion to plan in his head a walk through a European city—to record the shops and buildings he would pass, for instance, in Berne on a walk from the Münster to the university. But despite such energetic mental exercise, the ghosts of time present would intrude and drive his dreams away. It was Ann who had robbed him of his peace, Ann who had once made the present so important and taught him the habit of reality, and when she went there was nothing.

  He could not believe that Elsa Fennan had killed her husband. Her instinct was to defend, to hoard the treasures of her life, to build about herself the symbols of normal existence. There was no aggression in her, no will but the will to preserve.

  But who could tell? What did Hesse write? “Strange to wander in the mist, each is alone. No tree knows his neighbour. Each is alone.” We know nothing of one another, nothing, Smiley mused. However closely we live together, at whatever time of day or night we sound the deepest thoughts in one another, we know nothing. How am I judging Elsa Fennan? I think I understand her suffering and her frightened lies, but what do I know of her? Nothing.

  Mendel was pointing at a sign-post.

  “… That’s where I live. Mitcham. Not a bad spot really. Got sick of bachelor quarters. Bought a decent little semidetached down here. For my retirement.”

  “Retirement? That’s a long way off.”

  “Yes. Three days. That’s why I got this job. Nothing to it; no complications. Give it to old Mendel; he’ll muck it up.”

  “Well, well. I expect we shall both be out of a job by Monday.”

  He drove Mendel to Scotland Yard and went on to Cambridge Circus.

  He realized as he walked into the building that everyone knew. It was the way they looked; some shade of difference in their glance, their attitude. He made straight for Maston’s room. Maston’s secretary was at her desk and she looked up quickly as he entered.

  “Adviser in?”

  “Yes. He’s expecting you. He’s alone. I should knock and go in.” But Maston had opened the door and was already calling him. He was wearing a black coat and pinstripe trousers. Here goes the cabaret, thought Smiley.

  “I’ve been trying to get in touch with you. Did you not receive my message?” said Maston.

  “I did, but I couldn’t possibly have spoken to you.”

  “I don’t quite follow?”

  “Well, I don’t believe Fennan committed suicide—I think he was murdered. I couldn’t say that on the telephone.”

  Maston took off his spectacles and looked at Smiley in blank astonishment.

  “Murdered? Why?”

  “Well, Fennan wrote his letter at ten-thirty last night, if we are to accept the time on his letter as correct.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, at seven fifty-five he rang up the exchange and asked to be called at eight-thirty the next morning.”

  “How on earth do you know that?”

  “I was there this morning when the exchange rang. I took the call thinking it might be from the Department.”

  “How can you possibly say that it was Fennan who ordered the call?”

  “I had inquiries made. The girl at the exchange knew Fennan’s voice well; she was sure it was he, and that he rang at five to eight last night.”

  “Fennan and the girl knew each other, did they?”

  “Good heavens no. They just exchanged pleasantries occasionally.”

  “And how do you conclude from this that he was murdered?”

  “Well, I asked his wife about this call …”

  “And?”

  “She lied. Said she ordered it herself. She claimed to be frightfully absent-minded—she gets the exchange to ring her occasionally, like tying a knot in a handkerchief, when she has an important appointment. And another thing—just before shooting himself he made some cocoa. He never drank it.”

  Maston listened in silence. At last he smiled and got up.

  “We seem to be at cross-purposes,” he said. “I send you down to discover why Fennan shot himself. You come back and say he didn’t. We’re not policemen, Smiley.”

  “No. I sometimes wonder what we are.”

  “Did you hear of anything that affects our position here—anything that explains his action at all? Anything to substantiate the suicide letter?”

  Smiley hesitated before replying. He had seen it coming.

  “Yes. I understood from Mrs Fennan that her husband was very upset after the interview.” He might as well hear the whole story. “It obsessed him, he couldn’t sleep after it. She had to give him a sedative. Her account of Fennan’s reaction to my interview entirely substantiates the letter.” He was silent for a minute, blinking rather stupidly before him. “What I am trying to say is that I don’t believe her. I don’t believe Fennan wrote that letter, or that he had any intention of dying.” He turned to Maston. “We simply cannot dismiss the inconsistencies. Another thing,” he plunged on, “I haven’t had an expert comparison made but there’s a similarity between the anonymous letter and Fennan’s suicide note. The type looks identical. It’s ridiculous I know but there it is. We must bring the police in—give them the facts.”

  “Facts?” said Maston. “What facts? Suppose she did lie—she’s an odd woman by all accounts, foreign, Jewish. Heaven knows the tributaries of her mind. I’m told she suffered in the war, persecuted and so forth. She may see in you the oppressor, the inquisitor. She spots you’re on to something, panics and tells you the first lie that comes into her head. Does that make her a murderess?”

  “Then why did Fennan make the call? Why make himself a nightcap?”

  “Who can tell?” Maston’s voice was richer now, more persuasive. “If you or I, Smiley, were ever driven to that dreadful point where we were determined to destroy ourselves, who can tell what our last thoughts on earth would be? And what of Fennan? He sees his career in ruins, his life has no mea
ning. Is it not conceivable that he should wish, in a moment of weakness or irresolution, to hear another human voice, feel again the warmth of human contact before he dies? Fanciful, sentimental, perhaps; but not improbable in a man so overwrought, so obsessed that he takes his own life.”

  Smiley had to give him credit—it was a good performance and he was no match for Maston when it came to this. Abruptly he felt inside himself the rising panic of frustration beyond endurance. With panic came an uncontrollable fury with this posturing sycophant, this obscene cissy with his greying hair and his reasonable smile. Panic and fury welled up in a sudden tide, flooding his breast, suffusing his whole body. His face felt hot and red, his spectacles blurred and tears sprang to his eyes, adding to his humiliation.

  Maston went on, mercifully unaware: “You cannot expect me to suggest to the Home Secretary on this evidence that the police have reached a false conclusion; you know how tenuous our police liaison is. On the one hand we have your suspicions: that in short Fennan’s behaviour last night was not consistent with the intent to die. His wife has apparently lied to you. Against that we have the opinion of trained detectives, who found nothing disturbing in the circumstances of death, and we have Mrs Fennan’s statement that her husband was upset by his interview. I’m sorry, Smiley, but there it is.”

  There was complete silence. Smiley was slowly recovering himself, and the process left him dull and inarticulate. He peered myopically before him, his pouchy, lined face still pink, his mouth slack and stupid. Maston was waiting for him to speak, but he was tired and suddenly utterly disinterested. Without a glance at Maston he got up and walked out.

  He reached his own room and sat down at the desk. Mechanically he looked through his work. His in-tray contained little—some office circulars and a personal letter addressed to G. Smiley Esq., Ministry of Defence. The handwriting was unfamiliar; he opened the envelope and read the letter.

  Dear Smiley,

  It is essential that I should lunch with you tomorrow at the Compleat Angler at Marlow. Please do your best to meet me there at one o’clock. There is something I have to tell you.