Call for the Dead

by John le Carré

  Scarr’s death had frightened Mendel. He made Smiley promise not to go back to Bywater Street when he was released from hospital. With any luck they’d think he was dead, anyway. Scarr’s death proved one thing, of course: the murderer was still in England, still anxious to tidy up. ‘When I get up,’ Smiley had said last night, ‘we must get him out of his hole again. Put out bits of cheese.’ Mendel knew who the cheese would be: Smiley. Of course if they were right about the motive there would be other cheese too: Fennan’s wife. In fact, Mendel thought grimly, it doesn’t say much for her that she hasn’t been murdered. He felt ashamed of himself and turned his mind to other things. Such as Smiley again.

  Odd little beggar, Smiley was. Reminded Mendel of a fat boy he’d played football with at school. Couldn’t run, couldn’t kick, blind as a bat but played like hell, never satisfied till he’d got himself torn to bits. Used to box, too. Came in wide open swinging his arms about: got himself half killed before the referee stopped it. Clever bloke, too.

  Mendel stopped at a roadside café for a cup of tea and a bun, then drove into Weybridge. The Repertory Theatre was in a one-way street leading off the High Street where parking was impossible. Finally he left the car at the railway station and walked back into the town.

  The front doors of the theatre were locked. Mendel walked round to the side of the building under a brick archway. A green door was propped open. It had push bars on the inside and the words ‘stage door’ scribbled in chalk. There was no bell; a faint smell of coffee issued from the dark green corridor within. Mendel stepped through the doorway and walked down the corridor, at the end of which he found a stone staircase with a metal handrail leading upwards to another green door. The smell of coffee was stronger, and he heard the sound of voices.

  ‘Oh rot, darling, frankly. If the culture vultures of blissful Surrey want Barrie three months running let them have it, say I. It’s either Barrie or A Cuckoo in the Nest for the third year running and for me Barrie gets it by a short head’ – this from a middle-aged female voice.

  A querulous male replied: ‘Well, Ludo can always do Peter Pan, can’t you, Ludo?’

  ‘Bitchie, bitchie,’ said a third voice, also male, and Mendel opened the door.

  He was standing in the wings of the stage. On his left was a piece of thick hardboard with about a dozen switches mounted on a wooden panel. An absurd rococo chair in gilt and embroidery stood beneath it for the prompter and factotum.

  In the middle of the stage two men and a woman sat on barrels smoking and drinking coffee. The décor represented the deck of a ship. A mast with rigging and rope ladders occupied the centre of the stage, and a large cardboard cannon pointed disconsolately towards a backcloth of sea and sky.

  The conversation stopped abruptly as Mendel appeared on the stage. Someone murmured: ‘My dear, the ghost at the feast,’ and they all looked at him and giggled.

  The woman spoke first: ‘Are you looking for someone, dear?’

  ‘Sorry to butt in. Wanted to talk about becoming a subscriber to the theatre. Join the club.’

  ‘Why yes, of course. How nice,’ she said, getting up and walking over to him. ‘How very nice.’ She took his left hand in both of her own and squeezed it, stepping back at the same time and extending her arms to their full length. It was her chatelaine gesture – Lady Macbeth receives Duncan. She put her head on one side and smiled girlishly, retained his hand and led him across the stage to the opposite wing. A door led into a tiny office littered with old programmes and posters, greasepaint, false hair and tawdry pieces of nautical costume.

  ‘Have you seen our panto this year? Treasure Island. Such a gratifying success. And so much more social content, don’t you think, than those vulgar nursery tales?’

  Mendel said: ‘Yes, wasn’t it,’ without the least idea of what she was talking about, when his eye caught a pile of bills rather neatly assembled and held together by a bulldog clip. The top one was made out to Mrs Ludo Oriel and was four months overdue.

  She was looking at him shrewdly through her glasses. She was small and dark, with lines on her neck and a great deal of make-up. The lines under her eyes had been levelled off with greasepaint but the effect had not lasted. She was wearing slacks and a chunky pullover liberally splashed with distemper. She smoked incessantly. Her mouth was very long, and she held her cigarette in the middle of it in a direct line beneath her nose, her lips formed an exaggerated convex curve, distorting the lower half of her face and giving her an ill-tempered and impatient look. Mendel thought she would probably be difficult and clever. It was a relief to think she couldn’t pay her bills.

  ‘You do want to join the club, don’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  She suddenly flew into a rage: ‘If you’re another bloody tradesman you can get out. I’ve said I’ll pay and I will, just don’t pester me. If you let people think I’m finished I will be and you’ll be the losers, not me.’

  ‘I’m not a creditor, Mrs Oriel. I’ve come to offer you money.’

  She was waiting.

  ‘I’m a divorce agent. Rich client. Like to ask you a few questions. We’re prepared to pay for your time.’

  ‘Christ,’ she said with relief. ‘Why didn’t you say so in the first place?’ They both laughed. Mendel put five pounds on top of the bills, counting them down.

  ‘Now,’ said Mendel; ‘how do you keep your club subscription list? What are the benefits of joining?’

  ‘Well, we have watery coffee on stage every morning at eleven sharp. Members of the club can mix with the cast during the break between rehearsals from eleven o’clock to eleven forty-five. They pay for whatever they have, of course, but entry is strictly limited to club members.’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘That’s probably the part that interests you. We seem to get nothing but pansies and nymphos in the morning.’

  ‘It may be. What else goes on?’

  ‘We put on a different show each fortnight. Members can reserve seats for a particular day of each run – the second Wednesday of each run, and so on. We always begin a run on the first and third Mondays of the month. The show begins at seven-thirty and we hold the club reservations until seven-twenty. The girl at the box office has the seating plan and strikes off each seat as it’s sold. Club reservations are marked in red and aren’t sold off till last.’

  ‘I see. So if one of your members doesn’t take his usual seat, it will be marked off on the seating plan.’

  ‘Only if it’s sold.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘We’re not often full after the first week. We’re trying to do a show a week, you see, but it’s not easy to get the – er – facilities. There isn’t the support for two-week runs really.’

  ‘No, no, quite. Do you keep old seating plans?’

  ‘Sometimes, for the accounts.’

  ‘How about Tuesday the third of January?’

  She opened a cupboard and took out a sheaf of printed seating plans. ‘This is the second fortnight of our pantomime, of course. Tradition.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Mendel.

  ‘Now who is it you’re so interested in?’ asked Mrs Oriel, picking up a ledger from the desk.

  ‘Small blonde party, aged about forty-two or three. Name of Fennan, Elsa Fennan.’

  Mrs Oriel opened her ledger. Mendel quite shamelessly looked over her shoulder. The names of club members were entered neatly in the left-hand column. A red tick on the extreme left of the page indicated that the member had paid his subscription. On the right-hand side of the page were notes of standing reservations made for the year. There were about eighty members.

  ‘Name doesn’t ring a bell. Where does she sit?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Oh, yes, here we are. Merridale Lane, Walliston. Merridale! – I ask you. Let’s look. A rear stall at the end of a row. Very odd choice, don’t you think? Seat number R2. But God knows whether she took it on the third of January. I shouldn’t think we’ve got the plan any more
, though I’ve never thrown anything away in my life. Things just evaporate, don’t they?’ She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, wondering whether she’d earned her five pounds. ‘Tell you what, we’ll ask the Virgin.’ She got up and walked to the door; ‘Fennan … Fennan …’ she said. ‘Half a sec, that does ring a bell. I wonder why. Well, I’m damned – of course – the music case.’ She opened the door. ‘Where’s the Virgin?’ she said, talking to someone on the stage.

  ‘God knows.’

  ‘Helpful pig,’ said Mrs Oriel, and closed the door again. She turned to Mendel: ‘The Virgin’s our white hope. English rose, local solicitor’s stage-struck daughter, all lisle stockings and get-me-if-you-can. We loathe her. She gets a part occasionally because her father pays tuition fees. She does seating in the evenings sometimes when there’s a rush – she and Mrs Torr, the cleaner, who does cloaks. When things are quiet, Mrs Torr does the whole thing and the Virgin mopes about in the wings hoping the female lead will drop dead.’ She paused. ‘I’m damned sure I remember “Fennan”. Damned sure I do. I wonder where that cow is.’ She disappeared for a couple of minutes and returned with a tall and rather pretty girl with fuzzy blonde hair and pink cheeks – good at tennis and swimming.

  ‘This is Elizabeth Pidgeon. She may be able to help. Darling, we want to find out a Mrs Fennan, a club member. Didn’t you tell me something about her?’

  ‘Oh, yes, Ludo.’ She must have thought she sounded sweet. She smiled vapidly at Mendel, put her head on one side and twined her fingers together. Mendel jerked his head towards her.

  ‘Do you know her?’ asked Mrs Oriel.

  ‘Oh yes, Ludo. She’s madly musical; at least I think she must be because she always brings her music. She’s madly thin and odd. She’s foreign, isn’t she, Ludo?’

  ‘Why odd?’ asked Mendel.

  ‘Oh, well, last time she came she got in a frightful pet about the seat next to her. It was a club reservation, you see, and simply hours after twenty past. We’d just started the panto season and there were millions of people wanting seats so I let it go. She kept on saying she was sure the person would come because he always did.’

  ‘Did he?’ asked Mendel.

  ‘No. I let the seat go. She must have been in an awful pet because she left after the second act, and forgot to collect her music case.’

  ‘This person she was sure would turn up,’ said Mendel, ‘is he friendly with Mrs Fennan?’

  Ludo Oriel gave Mendel a suggestive wink.

  ‘Well, gosh, I should think so, he’s her husband, isn’t he?’

  Mendel looked at her for a minute and then smiled: ‘Couldn’t we find a chair for Elizabeth?’ he said.

  ‘Gosh, thanks,’ said the Virgin, and sat on the edge of an old gilt chair like the prompter’s chair in the wings. She put her red, fat hands on her knees and leant forward, smiling all the time, thrilled to be the centre of so much interest. Mrs Oriel looked at her venomously.

  ‘What makes you think he was her husband, Elizabeth?’ There was an edge to his voice which had not been there before.

  ‘Well, I know they arrive separately, but I thought that as they had seats apart from the rest of the club reservations, they must be husband and wife. And of course he always brings a music case too.’

  ‘I see. What else can you remember about that evening,

  Elizabeth?’

  ‘Oh, well, lots really because, you see, I felt awful about her leaving in such a pet and then later that night she rang up. Mrs Fennan did, I mean. She said her name and said she’d left early and forgotten her music case. She’d lost the ticket for it, too, and was in a frightful state. It sounded as if she was crying. I heard someone’s voice in the background, and then she said someone would drop in and get it if that would be all right without the ticket. I said of course, and half an hour later the man came. He’s rather super. Tall and fair.’

  ‘I see,’ said Mendel; ‘thank you very much, Elizabeth, you’ve been very helpful.’

  ‘Gosh, that’s OK.’ She got up.

  ‘Incidentally,’ said Mendel. ‘This man who collected her music case – he wasn’t by any chance the same man who sits beside her in the theatre, was he?’

  ‘Rather. Gosh, sorry, I should have said that.’

  ‘Did you talk to him?’

  ‘Well, just to say here you are, sort of thing.’

  ‘What kind of voice had he?’

  ‘Oh, foreign, like Mrs Fennan’s – she is foreign, isn’t she? That’s what I put it down to – all her fuss and state – foreign temperament.’

  She smiled at Mendel, waited a moment, then walked out like Alice.

  ‘Cow,’ said Mrs Oriel, looking at the closed door. Her eyes turned to Mendel. ‘Well, I hope you’ve got your five quids’ worth.’

  ‘I think so,’ said Mendel.

  11

  The Unrespectable Club

  Mendel found Smiley sitting in an armchair fully dressed. Peter Guillam was stretched luxuriously on the bed, a pale green folder held casually in his hand. Outside, the sky was black and menacing.

  ‘Enter the third murderer,’ said Guillam as Mendel walked in. Mendel sat down at the end of the bed and nodded happily to Smiley, who looked pale and depressed.

  ‘Congratulations. Nice to see you on your feet.’

  ‘Thank you. I’m afraid if you did see me on my feet you wouldn’t congratulate me. I feel as weak as a kitten.’

  ‘When are they letting you go?’

  ‘I don’t know when they expect me to go—’

  ‘Haven’t you asked?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, you’d better. I’ve got news for you. I don’t know what it means but it means something.’

  ‘Well, well,’ said Guillam; ‘everyone’s got news for everyone else. Isn’t that exciting. George has been looking at my family snaps’ – he raised the green folder a fraction of an inch – ‘and recognizes all his old chums.’

  Mendel felt baffled and rather left out of things. Smiley intervened: ‘I’ll tell you all about it over dinner tomorrow evening. I’m getting out of here in the morning, whatever they say. I think we’ve found the murderer and a lot more besides. Now let’s have your news.’ There was no triumph in his eyes. Only anxiety.

  Membership of the club to which Smiley belonged is not quoted among the respectable acquisitions of those who adorn the pages of Who’s Who. It was formed by a young renegade of the Junior Carlton named Steed-Asprey, who had been warned off by the Secretary for blaspheming within the hearing of a South African bishop. He persuaded his former Oxford landlady to leave her quiet house in Hollywell and take over two rooms and a cellar in Manchester Square which a monied relative put at his disposal. It had once had forty members who each paid fifty guineas a year. There were thirty-one left. There were no women and no rules, no secretary and no bishops. You could take sandwiches and buy a bottle of beer, you could take sandwiches and buy nothing at all. As long as you were reasonably sober and minded your own business, no one gave twopence what you wore, did or said, or whom you brought with you. Mrs Sturgeon no longer devilled at the bar, or brought you your chop in front of the fire in the cellar, but presided in genial comfort over the ministrations of two retired sergeants from a small border regiment.

  Naturally enough, most of the members were approximate contemporaries of Smiley at Oxford. It had always been agreed that the club was to serve one generation only, that it would grow old and die with its members. The war had taken its toll of Jebedee and others, but no one had ever suggested they should elect new members. Besides, the premises were now their own, Mrs Sturgeon’s future had been taken care of and the club was solvent.

  It was a Saturday evening and only half a dozen people were there. Smiley had ordered their meal, and a table was set for them in the cellar, where a bright coal fire burned in a brick hearth. They were alone, there was sirloin and claret; outside the rain fell continuously. For all three of them the world seemed an untrouble
d and decent place that night, despite the strange business that brought them together.

  ‘To make sense of what I have to tell you,’ began Smiley at last, addressing himself principally to Mendel, ‘I shall have to talk at length about myself. I’m an intelligence officer by trade as you know – I’ve been in the Service since the Flood, long before we were mixed up in power politics with Whitehall. In those days we were understaffed and underpaid. After the usual training and probation in South America and Central Europe, I took a job lecturing at a German university, talent spotting for young Germans with an agent potential.’ He paused, smiled at Mendel and said: ‘Forgive the jargon.’ Mendel nodded solemnly and Smiley went on. He knew he was being pompous, and didn’t know how to prevent himself.

  ‘It was shortly before the last war, a terrible time in Germany then, intolerance run mad. I would have been a lunatic to approach anyone myself. My only chance was to be as nondescript as I could, politically and socially colourless, and to put forward candidates for recruitment by someone else. I tried to bring some back to England for short periods on students’ tours. I made a point of having no contact at all with the Department when I came over because we hadn’t any idea in those days of the efficiency of German Counter Intelligence. I never knew who was approached, and of course it was much better that way. In case I was blown, I mean.

  ‘My story really begins in 1938. I was alone in my rooms one summer evening. It had been a beautiful day, warm and peaceful. Fascism might never have been heard of. I was working in my shirt sleeves at a desk by my window, not working very hard because it was such a wonderful evening.’

  He paused, embarrassed for some reason, and fussed a little with the port. Two pink spots appeared high on his cheeks. He felt slightly drunk though he had had very little wine.