They drank to his success, and the conversation turned to other things until Smiley asked: ‘What’s Rode himself like to work with?’
‘He’s a good schoolmaster,’ said Simon, slowly, ‘but tiring as a colleague.’
‘Oh, he was
quite
different from Stella,’ said Ann; ‘terribly Carne-minded. D’Arcy adopted him and he got the bug. Simon says all the grammar school people go that way – it’s the fury of the convert. It’s sickening. He even changed his religion when he got to Carne. Stella didn’t, though; she wouldn’t dream of it.’
‘The Established Church has much to offer Carne,’ Simon observed, and Smiley enjoyed the dry precision of his delivery.
‘Stella can’t exactly have hit it off with Shane Hecht,’ Smiley probed gently.
‘Of
course
she didn’t!’ Ann declared angrily. ‘Shane was horrid to her, always sneering at her because she was honest and simple about the things she liked. Shane hated Stella – I think it was because Stella didn’t
want
to be a lady of quality. She was quite happy to be herself. That’s what really worried Shane. Shane likes people to compete so that she can make fools of them.’
‘So does Carne,’ said Simon, quietly.
‘She was awfully good at helping out with the refugees. That was how she got into real trouble.’ Ann Snow’s slim hands gently rocked her brandy glass.
‘Trouble?’
‘Just before she died. Hasn’t anyone told you? About her frightful row with D’Arcy’s sister?’
‘No.’
‘Of course, they wouldn’t have done. Stella never gossiped.’
‘Let me tell you,’ said Simon. ‘It’s a good story. When the Refugee Year business started, Dorothy D’Arcy was fired with charitable enthusiasm. So was the Master. Dorothy’s enthusiasms always seem to correspond with his. She started collecting clothes and money and packing them off to London. All very laudable, but there was a perfectly good town appeal going, launched by the Mayor. That wasn’t good enough for Dorothy, though: the school must have its own appeal; you can’t mix your charity. I think Felix was largely behind it. Anyway, after the thing had been going for a few months the refugee centre in London apparently wrote to Dorothy and asked whether anyone would be prepared to accommodate a refugee couple. Instead of publicising the letter, Dorothy wrote straight back and said she would put them up herself. So far so good. The couple turned up, Dorothy and Felix pointed a proud finger at them and the local press wrote it all up as an example of British humanity.
‘About six weeks later, one afternoon, these two turned up on Stella’s doorstep. The Rodes and the D’Arcys are neighbours, you see, and anyway Stella had tried to take an interest in Dorothy’s refugees. The woman was in floods of tears and the husband was shouting blue murder, but that didn’t worry Stella. She had them straight into the drawing-room and gave them a cup of tea. Finally, they managed to explain in basic English that they had run away from the D’Arcys because of the treatment they received. The girl was expected to work from morning till night in the kitchen, and the husband was acting as unpaid kennel-boy for those beastly spaniels that Dorothy breeds. The ones without noses.’
‘King Charles,’ Ann prompted.
‘It was about as awful as it could be. The girl was pregnant and he was a fully qualified engineer, so neither of them were exactly suited to domestic service. They told Stella that Dorothy was away till the evening – she’d gone to a dog show. Stella advised them to stay with her for the time being, and that evening she went round and told Dorothy what had happened. She had quite a nerve, you see. Although it wasn’t nerve really. She just did the simple thing. Dorothy was furious, and demanded that Stella should return “her refugees” immediately. Stella replied that she was sure that they wouldn’t come, and went home. When Stella got home she rang up the refugee people in London and asked their advice. They sent a woman down to see Dorothy and the couple, and the result was that they returned to London the following day … You can imagine what Shane Hecht would have made of that story.’
‘Didn’t she ever find out?’
‘Stella never told anyone except us, and we didn’t pass it on. Dorothy just let it be known that the refugees had gone to some job in London, and that was that.’
‘How long ago did this happen?’
‘They left exactly three weeks ago,’ said Ann to her husband. ‘Stella told me about it when she came to supper the night you were in Oxford for your interview. That was three weeks ago tonight.’ She turned to Smiley:
‘Poor Simon’s been having an awful time. Felix D’Arcy unloaded all Rode’s exam. correcting on to him. It’s bad enough doing one person’s correction – two is frantic.’
‘Yes,’ replied Simon reflectively. ‘It’s been a bad week. And rather humiliating in a way. Several of the boys who were up to me for science last Half are now in Rode’s forms. I’d regarded one or two of them as practically unteachable, but Rode seems to have brought them on marvellously. I corrected one boy’s paper – Perkins – sixty-one per cent for elementary science. Last Half he got fifteen per cent in a much easier paper. He only got his remove because Fielding raised hell. He was in Fielding’s house.’
‘Oh, I know – a red-haired boy, a prefect.’
‘Good Lord,’ cried Simon. ‘Don’t say you know him?’
‘Oh, Fielding introduced us,’ said Smiley vaguely. ‘Incidentally – no one else ever mentioned that incident to you about Miss D’Arcy’s refugees, did they? Confirmed it, as it were?’
Ann Snow looked at him oddly. ‘No. Stella told us about it, but of course Dorothy D’Arcy never referred to it at all. She must have
hated
Stella, though.’
He saw them to their car, and waited despite their protests while Simon cranked it. At last they drove off, the car bellowing down the silent street. Smiley stood for a moment on the pavement, an odd, lonely figure peering down the empty road.
11 A Coat For to Keep Her Warm
A dog that had not bitten the postman; a devil that rode upon the wind; a woman who knew that she would die; a little, worried man in an overcoat standing in the snow outside his hotel, and the laborious chime of the Abbey clock telling him to go to bed.
Smiley hesitated, then with a shrug crossed the road to the hotel entrance, mounted the step and entered the cheap, yellow light of the residents’ hall. He walked slowly up the stairs.
He detested the Sawley Arms. That muted light in the hall was typical: inefficient, antiquated and smug. Like the waiters in the dining-room and the lowered voices in the residents’ lounge, like his own hateful bedroom with its blue and gilt urns, and the framed tapestry of a Buckinghamshire garden.
His room was bitterly cold; the maid must have opened the window. He put a shilling in the meter and lit the gas. The fire bubbled grumpily and went out. Muttering, Smiley looked around for some paper to write on, and discovered some, much to his surprise, in the drawer of the writing desk. He changed into his pyjamas and dressing-gown and crawled miserably into bed. After sitting there uncomfortably for some minutes he got up, fetched his overcoat and spread it over the eiderdown. A coat for to keep her warm …
How did her statement read? ‘There’s one will thank me, that’s my darling and I took her jewels for the saints I did, and a coat for to keep me warm …’ The coat had been given to Stella last Wednesday for the refugees. It seemed reasonable to assume from the way the statement read that Janie had taken the coat from the outhouse at the same time as she took the beads from Stella’s body. But Dorothy D’Arcy had been round there on Friday morning – of course she had, with Mr Cardew – she was talking about it at her party that very evening: ‘There wasn’t a thing out of place – every bit of clothing she had was all packed up and addressed – a damn’ good little worker, I will say …’ Then why hadn’t Stella packed the overcoat? If she packed everything else, why not the overcoat too?
Or had Janie stolen the coat earlier in the day, before Stella made her parcel? If that was so, it went some way to weakening the case against her. But it was not so. It was not so because it was utterly improbable that Janie should steal a coat in the afternoon and return to the house the same evening.
‘Start at the beginning,’ Smiley muttered, a little sententiously, to the crested paper on his lap. ‘Janie stole the coat at the same time as she stole the beads – that is, after Stella was dead. Therefore either the coat was not packed with the other clothes, or …’
Or what?
Or somebody else, somebody who was not Stella Rode, packed up the clothes after Stella had died and before Dorothy D’Arcy and Mr Cardew went round to North Fields on Friday morning. And why the devil, thought Smiley, should anyone do that?
It had been one of Smiley’s cardinal principles in research, whether among the incunabula of an obscure poet or the laboriously gathered fragments of intelligence, not to proceed beyond the evidence. A fact, once logically arrived at, should not be extended beyond its natural significance. Accordingly he did not speculate with the remarkable discovery he had made, but turned his mind to the most obscure problem of all: motive for murder.
He began writing:
‘Dorothy D’Arcy – resentment after refugee fiasco. As a motive for murder – definitely thin.’ Yet why did she seem to go out of her way to sing Stella’s praises?
‘Felix D’Arcy – resented Stella Rode for not observing Carne’s standards. As a motive for murder – ludicrous.’
‘Shane Hecht – hatred.’
‘Terence Fielding – in a sane world, no conceivable motive.’
Yet was it a sane world? Year in year out they must share the same life, say the same things to the same people, sing the same hymns. They had no money, no hope. The world changed, fashion changed; the women saw it second-hand in the glossy papers, took in their dresses and pinned up their hair, and hated their husbands a little more. Shane Hecht – did she kill Stella Rode? Did she conceal in the sterile omniscience of her huge body not only hatred and jealousy, but the courage to kill? Was she frightened for her stupid husband, frightened of Rode’s promotion, of his cleverness? Was she really so angry when Stella refused to take part in the rat race of gentility?
Rigby was right – it was impossible to know. You had to be ill, you had to be sick to understand, you had to be there in the sanatorium, not for weeks, but for years, had to be one in the line of white beds, to know the smell of their food and the greed in their eyes. You had to hear it and see it, to be part of it, to know their rules and recognise their transgressions. This world was compressed into a mould of anomalous conventions: blind, Pharisaical but real.
Yet some things were written plain enough: the curious bond which tied Felix D’Arcy and Terence Fielding despite their mutual dislike; D’Arcy’s reluctance to discuss the night of the murder; Fielding’s evident preference for Stella Rode rather than her husband; Shane Hecht’s contempt for everyone.
He could not get Shane out of his mind. If Carne were a rational place, and somebody had to die, then Shane Hecht should clearly be the one. She was a depository of other people’s secrets, she had an infallible sense of weakness. Had she not found even Smiley out? She had taunted him with his wretched marriage, she had played with him for her own pleasure. Yes, she was an admirable candidate for murder.
But why on earth should Stella die? Why and how? Who tied up the parcel after her death? And why?
He tried to sleep, but could not. Finally, as the Abbey clock chimed three, he put the light on again and sat up. The room was much warmer and at first Smiley wondered if someone had switched on the central heating in the middle of the night, after it had been off all day. Then he became aware of the sound of rain outside; he went to the window and parted the curtains. A steady rain was falling; by tomorrow the snow would be washed away. Two policemen walked slowly down the road; he could hear the squelch of their boots as they trod in the melting snow. Their wet capes glistened in the arc of the street lamp.
And suddenly he seemed to hear Rigby’s voice: ‘Blood everywhere. Whoever killed her must have been covered in it.’ And then Mad Janie calling to him across the moonlit snow: ‘Janie seed ’im … silver wings like fishes … flying on the wind … there’s not many seen the devil fly …’ Of course: the parcel! He remained a long time at the window, watching the rain. Finally, content at last, he climbed back into bed and fell asleep.
He tried to telephone Miss Brimley throughout the morning. Each time she was out and he left no message. Eventually, at about midday, he spoke to her:
‘George, I’m terribly sorry – some missionary is in London – I had to go for an interview and I’ve got a Baptist Conference this afternoon. They’ve both got to be in this week. Will first thing tomorrow do?’
‘Yes,’ said Smiley. ‘I’m sure it will.’ There was no particular hurry. There were one or two ends he wanted to tie up that afternoon, anyway.
12 Uncomfortable Words
He enjoyed the bus. The conductor was a very surly man with a great deal to say about the bus company, and why it lost money. Gently encouraged by Smiley, he expanded wonderfully so that by the time they arrived at Sturminster he had transformed the Directors of the Dorset and General Traction Company into a herd of Gadarene swine charging into the abyss of voluntary bankruptcy. The conductor directed Smiley to the Sturminster kennels, and when he alighted in the tiny village, he set out confidently towards a group of cottages which stood about a quarter of a mile beyond the church, on the Okeford road.
He had a nasty feeling he wasn’t going to like Mr Harriman. The very fact that D’Arcy had described him as a superior type of person inclined Smiley against him. Smiley was not opposed to social distinctions but he liked to make his own.
A notice stood at the gate: ‘
Sturminster Kennels, proprietor, C. J. Reid-Harriman, Veterinary Surgeon. Breeder of Alsatian and Labrador Dogs. Boarding
.’
A narrow path led to what seemed to be a backyard. There was washing everywhere, shirts, underclothes, and sheets, most of it khaki. There was a rich smell of dog. There was a rusted hand-pump with a dozen or so dog leads draped over it, and there was a small girl. She watched him sadly as he picked his way through the thick mud towards the door. He pulled on the bell-rope and waited. He tried again, and the child said: