A Murder of Quality (17 page)

As the train pulled slowly out of Carne and one by one the familiar landmarks disappeared into the cold February mist, George Smiley was filled with a feeling of relief. He hadn’t wanted to come, he knew that. He’d been afraid of the place where his wife had spent her childhood, afraid to see the fields where she had lived. But he had found nothing, not the faintest memory, neither in the lifeless outlines of Sawley Castle, nor in the surrounding countryside, to remind him of her. Only the gossip remained, as it would while the Hechts and the Havelocks survived to parade their acquaintance with the first family in Carne.

He took a taxi to Chelsea, carried his suitcase upstairs and unpacked with the care of a man accustomed to living alone. He thought of having a bath, but decided to ring Ailsa Brimley first. The telephone was by his bed. He sat on the edge of the bed and dialled the number. A tinny model-voice sang: ‘Unipress, good afternoon,’ and he asked for Miss Brimley. There was a long silence, then, ‘Ah’m afraid Miss Brimley is in conference. Can someone else answer your query?’

Query, thought Smiley. Good God! Why on earth query – why not question or inquiry?

‘No,’ he replied. ‘Just tell her Mr Smiley rang.’ He put back the receiver and went into the bathroom and turned on the hot tap. He was fiddling with his cuff-links when the telephone rang. It was Ailsa Brimley:

‘George? I think you’d better come round at once. We’ve got a visitor. Mr Rode from Carne. He wants to talk to us.’

Pulling on his jacket, he ran out into the street and hailed a taxi.

19 Disposal of a Legend

The descending escalator was packed with the staff of Unipress, homebound and heavy-eyed. To them, the sight of a fat, middle-aged gentleman bounding up the adjoining staircase provided unexpected entertainment, so that Smiley was hastened on his way by the jeers of office-boys and the laughter of typists. On the first floor he paused to study an enormous board carrying the titles of a quarter of the national dailies. Finally, under the heading of ‘Technical and Miscellaneous’, he spotted the
Christian Voice
, Room 619. The lift seemed to go up very slowly. Formless music issued from behind its plush, while a boy in a monkey jacket flicked his hips on the heavier beats. The golden doors parted with a sigh, the boy said ‘Six’, and Smiley stepped quickly into the corridor. A moment or two later he was knocking on the door of Room 619. It was opened by Ailsa Brimley.

‘George, how nice,’ she said brightly. ‘Mr Rode will be dreadfully pleased to see you.’ And without any further introduction she led him into her office. In an armchair near the window sat Stanley Rode, tutor of Carne, in a neat black overcoat. As Smiley entered he stood up and held out his hand. ‘Good of you to come, sir,’ he said woodenly. ‘Very.’ The same flat manner, the same cautious voice.

‘How can I help you?’ asked Smiley.

They all sat down. Smiley offered Miss Brimley a cigarette and lit it for her.

‘It’s about this article you’re writing about Stella,’ he began. ‘I feel awful about it really, because you’ve been so good to her, and her memory, if you see what I mean. I know you wish well, but I don’t want you to write it.’

Smiley said nothing, and Ailsa was wise enough to keep quiet. From now on it was Smiley’s interview. The silence didn’t worry him, but it seemed to worry Rode.

‘It wouldn’t be right; it wouldn’t do at all. Mr Glaston agreed; I spoke to him yesterday before he left and he agreed. I just couldn’t let you write that stuff.’

‘Why not?’

‘Too many people know, you see. Poor Mr Cardew, I asked him. He knows a lot; and a lot about Stella, so I asked him. He understands why I gave up Chapel too; I couldn’t bear to see her going there every Sunday and going down on her knees.’ He shook his head. ‘It was all wrong. It just made a fool of your faith.’

‘What did Mr Cardew say?’

‘He said we should not be the judges. We should let God judge. But I said to him it wouldn’t be right, those people knowing her and knowing what she’d done, and then reading all that stuff in the
Voice
. They’d think it was crazy. He didn’t seem to see that, he just said to leave it to God. But I can’t, Mr Smiley.’

Again no one spoke for a time. Rode sat quite still, save for a very slight rocking movement of his head. Then he began to talk again:

‘I didn’t believe old Mr Glaston at first. He said she was bad, but I didn’t believe it. They lived up on the hill then, Gorse Hill, only a step from the Tabernacle; Stella and her father. They never seemed to keep servants for long, so she did most of the work. I used to call in Sunday mornings sometimes after church. Stella looked after her father, cooked for him and everything, and I always wondered how I’d ever have the nerve to ask Mr Glaston for her. The Glastons were big people in Branxome. I was teaching at the Grammar School in those days. They let me teach part-time while I read for my degree, and I made up my mind that if I passed the exam. I’d ask her to marry me.

‘The Sunday after the results came out I went round to the house after morning service. Mr Glaston opened the door himself. He took me straight into the study. You could see half the potteries in Poole from the window, and the sea beyond. He sat me down and he said: “I know what you’re here for, Stanley. You want to marry Stella. But you don’t know her,” he said, “you don’t know her.” “I’ve been visiting two years, Mr Glaston,” I said,“and I think I know my mind.” Then he started talking about her. I never thought to hear a human being talk like that of his own child. He said she was bad – bad in her heart. That she was full of malice. That was why no servants would stay at the Hill. He told me how she’d lead people on, all kind and warm, till they’d told her everything, then she’d hurt them, saying wicked, wicked things, half true, half lies. He told me a lot more besides, and I didn’t believe it, not a word. I think I lost my head; I called him a jealous old man who didn’t want to lose his housekeeper, a lying, jealous old man who wanted his child to wait on him till he died. I said it was him who was bad, not Stella, and I shouted at him liar, liar. He didn’t seem to hear, just shook his head, and I ran out into the hall and called Stella. She’d been in the kitchen, I think, and she came to me and put her arms round me and kissed me.

‘We were married a month later, and the old man gave her away. He shook my hand at the wedding and called me a fine man, and I thought what an old hypocrite he was. He gave us money – to me, not her – two thousand pounds. I thought perhaps he was trying to make up for the dreadful things he’d said, and later I wrote to him and said I forgave him. He never answered and I didn’t see him often after that.

‘For a year or more we were happy enough at Branxome. She was just what I thought she’d be, neat and simple. She liked to go for walks and kiss at the stiles; she liked to be a bit grand sometimes, going to the Dolphin for dinner all dressed up. It meant a lot to me then, I don’t mind admitting, going to the right places with Mr Glaston’s daughter. He was Rotary and on the Council and quite a figure in Branxome. She used to tease me about it – in front of other people too, which got me a bit. I remember one time we went to the Dolphin, one of the waiters there was a bloke called Johnnie Raglan. We’d been to school together. Johnnie was a bit of a tear-about and hadn’t done anything much since he’d left school except run after girls and get into trouble. Stella knew him, I don’t know how, and she waved to him as soon as we’d sat down. Johnnie came over and Stella made him bring another chair and sit with us. The Manager looked daggers, but he didn’t dare to do anything because she was Samuel Glaston’s daughter. Johnnie stayed there all the meal and Stella talked to him about school and what I was like. Johnnie was pleased as Punch and got cheeky, saying I’d been a swot and a good boy and all the rest, and how Johnnie had knocked me about – lies most of it, and she egged him on. I went for her afterwards and said I didn’t pay good money at the Dolphin to hear Johnnie Raglan tell a lot of tall stories, and she turned on me fast like a cat. It was her money, she said, and Johnnie was as good as me any day. Then she was sorry and kissed me and I pretended to forgive her.’

Sweat was forming on his face; he was talking fast, the words tripping over each other. It was like a man recalling a nightmare, as if the memory were still there, the fear only half gone. He paused and looked sharply at Smiley as if expecting him to speak, but Smiley seemed to be looking past him, his face impassive, its soft contours grown hard.

‘Then we went to Carne. I’d just started reading
The Times
and I saw the advert. They wanted a science tutor and I applied. Mr D’Arcy interviewed me and I got the job. It wasn’t till we got to Carne that I knew that what her father had said was true. She hadn’t been very keen on Chapel before, but as soon as she got here she went in for it in a big way. She knew it would look wrong, that it would hurt me. Branxome’s a fine big church, you see; there was nothing funny about going to Branxome Tabernacle. But at Carne it was different; Carne Tabernacle’s a little out-of-the-way place with a tin roof. She wanted to be different, to spite the school and me, by playing the humble one. I wouldn’t have minded if she’d been sincere, but she wasn’t, Mr Cardew knew that. He got to know Stella, Mr Cardew did. I think her father told him; anyway, Mr Cardew was up North before, and he knew the family well. For all I know he wrote to Mr Glaston, or went and saw him or something.

‘She began there well enough. The townspeople were all pleased enough to see her – a wife from the School coming to the Tabernacle, that had never happened before. Then she took to running the appeal for the refugees – to collecting clothes and all that. Miss D’Arcy was running it for the school, Mr D’Arcy’s sister, and Stella wanted to beat her at her own game – to get more from the Chapel people than Miss D’Arcy got from the School. But I knew what she was doing, and so did Mr Cardew, and so did the townspeople in the end. She listened. Every drop of gossip and dirt, she hoarded it away. She’d come home of an evening sometimes – Wednesdays and Fridays she did her Chapel work – and she’d throw off her coat and laugh till I thought she’d gone mad.

“ ‘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.