Call for the Dead - 1

by John le Carré

  ‘It’s not the letter, Mr Smiley, that I’m thinking of. It’s what he said to me.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘He was deeply upset by the interview, he told me so. When he came back on Monday night he was desperate, almost incoherent. He collapsed in a chair and I persuaded him to go to bed. I gave him a sedative which lasted him half the night. He was still talking about it the next morning. It occupied his whole mind until his death.’

  The telephone was ringing upstairs. Smiley got up.

  ‘Excuse me – that will be my office. Do you mind?’

  ‘It’s in the front bedroom, directly above us.’

  Smiley walked slowly upstairs in a state of complete bewilderment. What on earth should he say to Maston now?

  He lifted the receiver, glancing mechanically at the number on the apparatus.

  ‘Walliston 2944.’

  ‘Exchange here. Good morning. Your eight-thirty call.’

  ‘Oh – Oh yes, thank you very much.’

  He rang off, grateful for the temporary respite. He glanced briefly round the bedroom. It was the Fennans’ own bedroom, austere but comfortable. There were two armchairs in front of the gas fire. Smiley remembered now that Elsa Fennan had been bedridden for three years after the war. It was probably a survival from those years that they still sat in the bedroom in the evenings. The alcoves on either side of the fireplace were full of books. In the furthest corner, a typewriter on a desk. There was something intimate and touching about the arrangement, and perhaps for the first time Smiley was filled with an immediate sense of the tragedy of Fennan’s death. He returned to the drawing-room.

  ‘It was for you. Your eight-thirty call from the exchange.’

  He was aware of a pause and glanced incuriously towards her. But she had turned away from him and was standing looking out of the window, her slender back very straight and still, her stiff, short hair dark against the morning light.

  Suddenly he stared at her. Something had occurred to him which he should have realized upstairs in the bedroom, something so improbable that for a moment his brain was unable to grasp it. Mechanically he went on talking; he must get out of there, get away from the telephone and Maston’s hysterical questions, get away from Elsa Fennan and her dark, restless house. Get away and think.

  ‘I have intruded too much already, Mrs Fennan, and I must now take your advice and return to Whitehall.’

  Again the cold, frail hand, the mumbled expressions of sympathy. He collected his coat from the hall and stepped out into the early sunlight. The winter sun had just appeared for a moment after the rain, and it repainted in pale, wet colours the trees and houses of Merridale Lane. The sky was still dark grey, and the world beneath it strangely luminous, giving back the sunlight it had stolen from nowhere.

  He walked slowly down the gravel path, fearful of being called back.

  He returned to the police station, full of disturbing thoughts. To begin with it was not Elsa Fennan who had asked the exchange for an eight-thirty call that morning.

  4

  Coffee at the Fountain

  The CID Superintendent at Walliston was a large, genial soul who measured professional competence in years of service and saw no fault in the habit. Sparrow’s Inspector Mendel on the other hand was a thin, weasel-faced gentleman who spoke very rapidly out of the corner of his mouth. Smiley secretly likened him to a gamekeeper – a man who knew his territory and disliked intruders.

  ‘I have a message from your Department, sir. You’re to ring the Adviser at once.’ The Superintendent indicated his telephone with an enormous hand and walked out through the open door of his office. Mendel remained. Smiley looked at him owlishly for a moment, guessing his man.

  ‘Shut the door.’ Mendel moved to the door and pulled it quietly to.

  ‘I want to make an inquiry of the Walliston telephone exchange. Who’s the most likely contact?’

  ‘Assistant Supervisor normally. Supervisor’s always in the clouds; Assistant Supervisor does the work.’

  ‘Someone at 15 Merridale Lane asked to be called by the exchange at eight-thirty this morning. I want to know what time the request was made and who by. I want to know whether there’s a standing request for a morning call, and if so let’s have the details.’

  ‘Know the number?’

  ‘Walliston 2944. Subscriber Samuel Fennan, I should think.’

  Mendel moved to the telephone and dialled 0. While he waited for a reply he said to Smiley: ‘You don’t want anyone to know about this, do you?’

  ‘No one. Not even you. There’s probably nothing in it. If we start bleating about murder we’ll …’

  Mendel was through to the exchange, asking for the Assistant Supervisor.

  ‘Walliston CID here, Superintendent’s office. We have an inquiry … yes, of course … ring me back then … CID outside line, Walliston 2421.’

  He replaced the receiver and waited for the exchange to ring him. ‘Sensible girl,’ he muttered, without looking at Smiley. The telephone rang and he began speaking at once.

  ‘We’re investigating a burglary in Merridale Lane. Number fifteen. Just possible they used number fifteen as an observation point for a job on the opposite house. Have you got any way of finding out whether calls were originated or received on Walliston 2944 in the last twenty-four hours?’

  There was a pause. Mendel put his hand over the mouthpiece and turned to Smiley with a very slight grin. Smiley suddenly liked him a good deal.

  ‘She’s asking the girls,’ said Mendel; ‘and she’ll look at the dockets.’ He turned back to the telephone and began jotting down figures on the Superintendent’s pad. He stiffened abruptly and leant forward on the desk.

  ‘Oh yes.’ His voice was casual, in contrast to his attitude; ‘I wonder when she asked for that?’ Another pause … ‘19.55 hours … a man, eh? The girl’s sure of that, is she? … Oh, I see, oh, well, that fixes that. Thanks very much indeed all the same. Well, at least we know where we stand … not at all, you’ve been very helpful … just a theory, that’s all … have to think again, won’t we? Well, thanks very much. Very kind, keep it under your hat … Cheerio.’ He rang off, tore the page from the pad, and put it in his pocket.

  Smiley spoke quickly: ‘There’s a beastly café down the road. I need some breakfast. Come and have a cup of coffee.’ The telephone was ringing; Smiley could almost feel Maston on the other end. Mendel looked at him for a moment and seemed to understand. They left it ringing and walked quickly out of the police station towards the High Street.

  The Fountain Café (Proprietor Miss Gloria Adam) was all Tudor and horse brasses and local honey at sixpence more than anywhere else. Miss Adam herself dispensed the nastiest coffee south of Manchester and spoke of her customers as ‘My Friends’. Miss Adam did not do business with friends, but simply robbed them, which somehow added to the illusion of genteel amateurism which Miss Adam was so anxious to preserve. Her origin was obscure, but she often spoke of her late father as ‘The Colonel’. It was rumoured among those of Miss Adam’s friends who had paid particularly dearly for their friendship that the colonelcy in question had been granted by the Salvation Army.

  Mendel and Smiley sat at a corner table near the fire, waiting for their order. Mendel looked at Smiley oddly: ‘The girl remembers the call clearly; it came right at the end of her shift – five to eight last night. A request for an eight-thirty call this morning. It was made by Fennan himself – the girl is positive of that.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Apparently this Fennan had rung the exchange on Christmas Day and the same girl was on duty. Wanted to wish them all a Happy Christmas. She was rather bucked. They had quite a chat. She’s sure it was the same voice yesterday, asking for the call. “Very cultured gentleman”, she said.’

  ‘But it doesn’t make sense. He wrote a suicide letter at ten-thirty. What happened between eight and ten-thirty?’

  Mendel picked up a battered old briefcase. It had no lock �
� more like a music case, thought Smiley. He took from it

  a plain buff folder and handed it to Smiley. ‘Facsimile of the letter. Super said to give you a copy. They’re sending the original to the FO and another copy straight to Marlene Dietrich.’

  ‘Who the devil’s she?’

  ‘Sorry, sir. What we call your Adviser, sir. Pretty general in the Branch, sir. Very sorry, sir.’

  How beautiful, thought Smiley, how absolutely beautiful. He opened the folder and looked at the facsimile. Mendel went on talking: ‘First suicide letter I’ve ever seen that was typed. First one I’ve seen with the time on it, for that matter. Signature looks OK, though. Checked it at the station against a receipt he once signed for lost property. Right as rain.’

  The letter was typed, probably a portable. Like the anonymous denunciation; that was a portable too. This one was signed with Fennan’s neat, legible signature. Beneath the printed address at the head of the page was typed the date, and beneath that the time: 10.30 p.m.:

  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 timed 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 Repertory Club, you know. I try and go to everything they do. I have a seat reserved for me automatically on the first Tuesday 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?’