A Murder of Quality AND Call for the Dead

by John le Carré

  Yours,

  Samuel Fennan

  The letter was handwritten and dated the previous day, Tuesday, 3 January. It had been postmarked in Whitehall at 6.00 p.m.

  He looked at it stodgily for several minutes, holding it stiffly before him and inclining his head to the left. Then he put the letter down, opened a drawer of the desk and took out a single clean sheet of paper. He wrote a brief letter of resignation to Maston, and attached Fennan’s invitation with a pin. He pressed the bell for a secretary, left the letter in his out-tray and made for the lift. As usual it was stuck in the basement with the registry’s tea trolley, and after a short wait he began walking downstairs. Halfway down he remembered that he had left his mackintosh and a few bits and pieces in his room. Never mind, he thought, they’ll send them on.

  He sat in his car in the car park, staring through the drenched windscreen.

  He didn’t care, he just damn well didn’t care. He was surprised certainly. Surprised that he had so nearly lost control. Interviews had played a great part in Smiley’s life, and he had long ago come to consider himself proof against them all: disciplinary, scholastic, medical and religious. His secretive nature detested the purpose of all interviews, their oppressive intimacy, their inescapable reality. He remembered one deliriously happy dinner with Ann at Quaglino’s when he had described to her the Chameleon–Armadillo system for beating the interviewer.

  They had dined by candlelight; white skin and pearls—they were drinking brandy—Ann’s eyes wide and moist, only for him; Smiley playing the lover and doing it wonderfully well; Ann loving him and thrilled by their harmony.

  “… and so I learned first to be a chameleon.”

  “You mean you sat there burping, you rude toad?”

  “No, it’s a matter of colour. Chameleons change colour.”

  “Of course they change colour. They sit on green leaves and go green. Did you go green, toad?”

  His fingers ran lightly over the tips of hers. “Listen, minx, while I explain the Smiley Chameleon–Armadillo technique for the impertinent interviewer.” Her face was very close to his and she adored him with her eyes.

  “The technique is based on the theory that the interviewer, loving no one as well as himself, will be attracted by his own image. You therefore assume the exact social, temperamental, political and intellectual colour of your inquisitor.”

  “Pompous toad. But intelligent lover.”

  “Silence. Sometimes this method founders against the idiocy or ill-disposition of the inquisitor. If so, become an armadillo.”

  “And wear linear belts, toad?”

  “No, place him in a position so incongruous that you are superior to him. I was prepared for confirmation by a retired bishop. I was his whole flock, and received on one half holiday sufficient guidance for a diocese. But by contemplating the bishop’s face, and imagining that under my gaze it became covered in thick fur, I maintained the ascendancy. From then on the skill grew. I could turn him into an ape, get him stuck in sash windows, send him naked to Masonic banquets, condemn him, like the serpent, to go about on his belly …”

  “Wicked lover-toad.”

  And so it had been. But in his recent interviews with Maston the power of detachment had left him; he was getting too involved. When Maston made the first moves, Smiley had been too tired and disgusted to compete. He supposed Elsa Fennan had killed her husband, that she had some good reason and it just did not bother him any more. The problem no longer existed; suspicion, experience, perception, common sense—for Maston these were not the organs of fact. Paper was fact, Ministers were fact, Home Secretaries were hard fact. The Department did not concern itself with the vague impressions of a single officer when they conflicted with policy.

  Smiley was tired, deeply, heavily tired. He drove slowly homewards. Dinner out tonight. Something rather special. It was only lunch-time now—he would spend the afternoon pursuing Olearius across the Russian continent on his Hansa voyage. Then dinner at Quaglino’s, and a solitary toast to the successful murderer, to Elsa perhaps, in gratitude for ending the career of George Smiley with the life of Sam Fennan.

  He remembered to collect his laundry in Sloane Street, and finally turned into Bywater Street, finding a parking space about three houses down from his own. He got out carrying the brown paper parcel of laundry, locked the car laboriously, and walked all round it from habit, testing the handles. A thin rain was still falling. It annoyed him that someone had parked outside his house again. Thank goodness Mrs Chapel had closed his bedroom window, otherwise the rain would have …

  He was suddenly alert. Something had moved in the drawing-room. A light, a shadow, a human form; something, he was certain. Was it sight or instinct? Was it the latent skill of his own tradecraft which informed him? Some fine sense or nerve, some remote faculty of perception warned him now and he heeded the warning.

  Without a moment’s thought he dropped his keys back into his overcoat pocket, walked up the steps to his own front door and rang the bell.

  It echoed shrilly through the house. There was a moment’s silence, then came to Smiley’s ears the distinct sound of footsteps approaching the door, firm and confident. A scratch of the chain, a click of the Ingersoll latch and the door was opened, swiftly, cleanly.

  Smiley had never seen him before. Tall, fair, handsome, thirtyfive odd. A light grey suit, white shirt and silver tie—habillé en diplomate. German or Swede. His left hand remained nonchalantly in his jacket pocket.

  Smiley peered at him apologetically:

  “Good afternoon. Is Mr Smiley in, please?”

  The door was opened to its fullest extent. A tiny pause.

  “Yes. Won’t you come in?”

  For a fraction of a second he hesitated. “No thanks. Would you please give him this?” He handed him the parcel of laundry, walked down the steps again, to his car. He knew he was still being watched. He started the car, turned and drove into Sloane Square without a glance in the direction of his house. He found a parking space in Sloane Street, pulled in and rapidly wrote in his diary seven sets of numbers. They belonged to the seven cars parked along Bywater Street.

  What should he do? Stop a policeman? Whoever he was, he was probably gone by now. Besides there were other considerations. He locked the car again and crossed the road to a telephone kiosk. He rang Scotland Yard, got through to Special Branch and asked for Inspector Mendel. But it appeared that the Inspector, having reported back to the Superintendent, had discreetly anticipated the pleasures of retirement and left for Mitcham. Smiley got his address after a good deal of prevarication, and set off once more in his car, covering three sides of a square and emerging at Albert Bridge. He had a sandwich and a large whisky at a new pub overlooking the river and a quarter of an hour later was crossing the bridge on the way to Mitcham, the rain still beating down on his inconspicuous little car. He was worried, very worried indeed.

  6

  TEA AND SYMPATHY

  It was still raining as he arrived. Mendel was in his garden wearing the most extraordinary hat Smiley had ever seen. It had begun life as an Anzac hat but its enormous brim hung low all the way round, so that he resembled nothing so much as a very tall mushroom. He was brooding over a tree stump, a wicked-looking pick-axe poised obediently in his sinewy right hand.

  He looked at Smiley sharply for a moment, then a grin slowly crossed his thin face as he extended his hand.

  “Trouble,” said Mendel.

  “Trouble.”

  Smiley followed him up the path and into the house. Suburban and comfortable.

  “There’s no fire in the living-room—only just got back. How about a cup of tea in the kitchen?”

  They went into the kitchen. Smiley was amused to notice the extreme tidiness, the almost feminine neatness of everything about him. Only the police calendar on the wall spoilt the illusion. While Mendel put a kettle on and busied himself with cups and saucers, Smiley related dispassionately what had happened in Bywater Street. W
hen he had finished Mendel looked at him for a long time in silence.

  “But why did he ask you in?”

  Smiley blinked and coloured a little. “That’s what I wondered. It put me off my balance for a moment. It was lucky I had the parcel.”

  He took a drink of tea. “Though I don’t believe he was taken in by the parcel. He may have been, but I doubt it. I doubt it very much.”

  “Not taken in?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t have been. Little man in a Ford delivering parcels of linen. Who could I have been? Besides, I asked for Smiley and then didn’t want to see him—he must have thought that was pretty queer.”

  “But what was he after? What would he have done with you? Who did he think you were?”

  “That’s just the point, that’s just it, you see. I think it was me he was waiting for, but of course he didn’t expect me to ring the bell. I put him off balance. I think he wanted to kill me. That’s why he asked me in: he recognized me but only just, probably from a photograph.”

  Mendel looked at him in silence for a while.

  “Christ,” he said.

  “Suppose I’m right,” Smiley continued, “all the way. Suppose Fennan was murdered last night and I did nearly follow him this morning. Well, unlike your trade, mine doesn’t normally run to a murder a day.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t know. Perhaps before we go much further you’d check on these cars for me. They were parked in Bywater Street this morning.”

  “Why not do it yourself?”

  Smiley looked at him, puzzled, for a second. Then it dawned on him that he hadn’t mentioned his resignation.

  “Sorry. I didn’t tell you, did I? I resigned this morning. Just managed to get it in before I was sacked. So I’m free as air. And about as employable.”

  Mendel took the list of numbers from him and went into the hall to telephone. He returned a couple of minutes later.

  “They’ll ring back in an hour,” he said. “Come on. I’ll show you round the estate. Know anything about bees, do you?”

  “Well, a very little, yes. I got bitten with the natural history bug at Oxford.” He was going to tell Mendel how he had wrestled with Goethe’s metamorphoses of plants and animals in the hope of discovering, like Faust, “what sustains the world at its inmost point.” He wanted to explain why it was impossible to understand nineteenth-century Europe without a working knowledge of the naturalistic sciences, he felt earnest and full of important thoughts, and knew secretly that this was because his brain was wrestling with the day’s events, that he was in a state of nervous excitement. The palms of his hands were moist.

  Mendel led him out of the back door: three neat beehives stood against the low brick wall which ran along the end of the garden. Mendel spoke as they stood in the fine rain.

  “Always wanted to keep them, see what it’s all about. Been reading it all up—frightens me stiff, I can tell you. Odd little beggars.” He nodded a couple of times in support of this statement, and Smiley looked at him again with interest. His face was thin but muscular, its expression entirely uncommunicative; his iron-grey hair was cut very short and spiky. He seemed quite indifferent to the weather, and the weather to him. Smiley knew exactly the life that lay behind Mendel, had seen in policemen all over the world the same leathern skin, the same reserves of patience, bitterness and anger. He could guess the long, fruitless hours of surveillance in every kind of weather, waiting for someone who might never come … or come and go too quickly. And he knew how much Mendel and the rest of them were at the mercy of personalities—capricious and bullying, nervous and changeful, occasionally wise and sympathetic. He knew how intelligent men could be broken by the stupidity of their superiors, how weeks of patient work night and day could be cast aside by such a man.

  Mendel led him up the precarious path laid with broken stone to the beehives and, still oblivious of the rain, began taking one to pieces, demonstrating and explaining. He spoke in jerks, with quite long pauses between phrases, indicating precisely and slowly with his slim fingers.

  At last they went indoors again, and Mendel showed him the two downstairs rooms. The drawing-room was all flowers: flowered curtains and carpet, flowered covers on the furniture. In a small cabinet in one corner were some Toby jugs and a pair of very handsome pistols beside a cup for target shooting.

  Smiley followed him upstairs. There was a smell of paraffin from the stove on the landing, and a surly bubbling from the cistern in the lavatory.

  Mendel showed him his own bedroom.

  “Bridal chamber. Bought the bed at a sale for a quid. Box spring mattress. Amazing what you can pick up. Carpets are ex-Queen Elizabeth. They change them every year. Bought them at a store in Watford.”

  Smiley stood in the doorway, somehow rather embarrassed. Mendel turned back and passed him to open the other bedroom door.

  “And that’s your room. If you want it.” He turned to Smiley. “I wouldn’t stay at your place tonight if I were you. You never know, do you? Besides, you’ll sleep better here. Air’s better.”

  Smiley began to protest.

  “Up to you. You do what you like.” Mendel grew surly and embarrassed. “Don’t understand your job, to be honest, any more than you know police work. You do what you like. From what I’ve seen of you, you can look after yourself.”

  They went downstairs again. Mendel had lit the gas fire in the drawing-room.

  “Well, at least you must let me give you dinner tonight,” said Smiley.

  The telephone rang in the hall. It was Mendel’s secretary about the car numbers.

  Mendel came back. He handed Smiley a list of seven names and addresses. Four of the seven could be discounted; the registered addresses were in Bywater Street. Three remained: a hired car from the firm of Adam Scarr and Sons of Battersea, a trade van belonging to the Severn Tile Company, Eastbourne; and the third was listed specially as the property of the Panamanian Ambassador.

  “I’ve got a man on the Panamanian job now. There’ll be no difficulty there—they’ve only got three cars on the Embassy strength.

  “Battersea’s not far,” Mendel continued. “We could pop over there together. In your car.”

  “By all means, by all means,” Smiley said quickly; “and we can go into Kensington for dinner. I’ll book a table at the Entrechat.”

  It was four o’clock. They sat for a while talking in a rather desultory way about bees and house-keeping, Mendel quite at ease and Smiley still bothered and awkward, trying to find a way of talking, trying not to be clever. He could guess what Ann would have said about Mendel. She would have loved him, made a person of him, had a special voice and face for imitating him, would have made a story of him until he fitted into their lives and wasn’t a mystery any more: “Darling, who’d have thought he could be so cosy! The last man I’d ever thought would tell me where to buy cheap fish. And what a darling little house—no bother—he must know Toby jugs are hell and he just doesn’t care. I think he’s a pet. Toad, do ask him to dinner. You must. Not to giggle at but to like.” He wouldn’t have asked him, of course, but Ann would be content—she’d found a way to like him. And having done so, forgotten him.

  That was what Smiley wanted, really—a way to like Mendel. He was not as quick as Ann at finding one. But Ann was Ann— she practically murdered an Etonian nephew once for drinking claret with fish, but if Mendel had lit a pipe over her crêpe Suzette, she probably would not have noticed.

  Mendel made more tea and they drank it. At about a quarter past five they set off for Battersea in Smiley’s car. On the way Mendel bought an evening paper. He read it with difficulty, catching the light from the street lamps. After a few minutes he spoke with sudden venom:

  “Krauts. Bloody Krauts. God, I hate them!”

  “Krauts?”

  “Krauts. Huns. Jerries. Bloody Germans. Wouldn’t give you sixpence for the lot of them. Carnivorous ruddy sheep. Kicking Jews about again. Us all over. Knock �
�em down, set ’em up. Forgive and forget. Why bloody well forget, I’d like to know? Why forget theft, murder and rape just because millions committed it? Christ, one poor little sod of a bank clerk pinches ten bob and the whole of the Metropolitan’s on to him. But Krupp and all that mob—oh no. Christ, if I was a Jew in Germany I’d …”

  Smiley was suddenly wide awake: “What would you do? What would you do, Mendel?”

  “Oh, I suppose I’d sit down under it. It’s statistics now, politics. It isn’t sense to give them H-bombs so it’s politics. And there’s the Yanks—millions of ruddy Jews in America. What do they do? Damn all: give the Krauts more bombs. All chums together— blow each other up.”

  Mendel was trembling with rage, and Smiley was silent for a while, thinking of Elsa Fennan.

  “What’s the answer?” he asked, just for something to say.

  “Christ knows,” said Mendel savagely.

  They turned into Battersea Bridge Road and drew up beside a constable standing on the pavement. Mendel showed his police card.

  “Scarr’s garage? Well, it isn’t hardly a garage, sir, just a yard. Scrap metal he handles mostly, and secondhand cars. If they won’t do for one they’ll do for the other, that’s what Adam says. You want to go down Prince of Wales Drive till you come to the hospital. It’s tucked in there between a couple of pre-fabs. Bomb site it is really. Old Adam straightened it out with some cinders and no one’s ever moved him.”

  “You seem to know a lot about him,” said Mendel.

  “I should do, I’ve run him in a few times. There’s not much in the book that Adam hasn’t been up to. He’s one of our hardy perennials, Scarr is.”

  “Well, well. Anything on him at present?”

  “Couldn’t say, sir. But you can have him any time for illegal betting. And Adam’s practically under the Act already.”

  They drove towards Battersea Hospital. The park on their right looked black and hostile behind the street lamps.