A Murder of Quality AND Call for the Dead Page 9

  “I know.”

  His back was as straight as a soldier’s. He looked stern rather than sad. Quite suddenly, his eyes turned towards Smiley, and he looked at him long and carefully.

  “Are you a schoolmaster?” he asked, and it occurred to Smiley that in his day Samuel Glaston had been a very shrewd man of business.

  “No … I’m more or less retired.”

  “Married?”

  “I was.”

  Again the old man fell silent, and Smiley wished he had left him alone.

  “She was a great one for chatter,” he said at last.

  Smiley said nothing.

  “Have you told the police?”

  “Yes, but they knew already. That is, they knew that Stella thought her husband was going to murder her. She’d tried to tell Mr Cardew …”

  “The Minister?”

  “Yes. He thought she was overwrought and … deluded.”

  “Do you think she wasn’t?”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t know. But from what I have heard of your daughter I don’t believe she was unbalanced. Something roused her suspicions, something frightened her very much. I don’t believe we can just disregard that. I don’t believe it was a coincidence that she was frightened before she died. And therefore I don’t believe that the beggar-woman murdered her.”

  Samuel Glaston nodded slowly. It seemed to Smiley that the old man was trying to show interest, partly to be polite, and partly because if he did not it would be a confession that he had lost interest in life itself.

  Then, after a long silence, he carefully folded up the letters and gave them back. Smiley waited for him to speak, but he said nothing.

  After a few moments Smiley got up and walked quietly from the room.

  10

  LITTLE WOMEN

  Shane Hecht smiled, and drank some more sherry. “You must be dreadfully important,” she said to Smiley, “for D’Arcy to serve decent sherry. What are you, Almanach de Gotha?”

  “I’m afraid not. D’Arcy and I were both dining at Terence Fielding’s on Friday night and D’Arcy asked me for sherry.”

  “Terence is wicked, isn’t he? Charles loathes him. I’m afraid they see Sparta in quite different ways … Poor Terence. It’s his last Half, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “So sweet of you to come to the funeral yesterday. I hate funerals, don’t you? Black is so insanitary. I always remember King George V’s funeral. Lord Sawley was at Court in those days, and gave Charles two tickets. So kind. I always think it’s spoilt us for ordinary funerals in a way. Although I’m never quite sure about funerals, are you? I have a suspicion that they are largely a lowerclass recreation; cherry brandy and seed cake in the parlour. I think the tendency of people like ourselves is for a quiet funeral these days; no flowers, just a short obituary and a memorial service later.” Her small eyes were bright with pleasure. She finished her sherry and held out her empty glass to Smiley.

  “Would you mind, dear? I hate sherry, but Felix is so mean.”

  Smiley filled her glass from the decanter on the table.

  “Dreadful about the murder, wasn’t it? That beggar- must be mad. Stella Rode was such a nice person, I always thought … and so unusual. She did such clever things with the same dress … But she had such curious friends. All for Hans the woodcutter and Pedro the fisherman, if you know what I mean.”

  “Was she popular at Carne?”

  Shane Hecht laughed gently: “No one is popular at Carne … but she wasn’t easy to like … She would wear black crêpe on Sundays … Forgive me, but do the lower classes always do that? The townspeople liked her, I believe. They adore anyone who betrays Carne. But then she was a Christian Scientist or something.”

  “Baptist, I understand,” said Smiley unthinkingly.

  She looked at him for a moment with unfeigned curiosity. “How sweet,” she murmured. “Tell me, what are you?”

  Smiley made some facetious reply about being unemployed, and realised that it was only by a hair’s-breadth that he had avoided explaining himself to Shane Hecht like a small boy. Her very ugliness, her size and voice, coupled with the sophisticated malice of her conversation, gave her the dangerous quality of command. Smiley was tempted to compare her with Fielding, but for Fielding other people scarcely existed. For Shane Hecht they did exist: they were there to be found wanting in the minute tests of social behaviour, to be ridiculed, cut off and destroyed.

  “I read in the paper that her father was quite well off. From the North. Second generation. Remarkable really how unspoilt she was … so natural … You wouldn’t think she needed to go to the launderette or to make friends with beggars … Though, of course, the Midlands are different, aren’t they? Only about three good families between Ipswich and Newcastle. Where did you say you came from, dear?”

  “London.”

  “How nice. I went to tea with Stella once. Milk in first and Indian. So different,” and she looked at Smiley suddenly and said, “I’ll tell you something. She almost aroused an admiration in me, I found her so insufferable. She was one of those tiresome little snobs who think that only the humble are virtuous.” Then she smiled and added, “I even agreed with Charles about Stella Rode, and that’s saying something. If you’re a student of mankind, do go and have a look at him, the contrast is riveting.” But at that moment they were joined by D’Arcy’s sister, a bony, virile woman with untidy grey hair and an arrogant, hunting mouth.

  “Dorothy darling,” Shane murmured; “such a lovely party. So kind. And so exciting to meet somebody from London, don’t you think? We were talking about poor Mrs Rode’s funeral.”

  “Stella Rode may have been damn’ bad form, Shane, but she did a lot for my refugees.”

  “Refugees?” asked Smiley innocently.

  “Hungarians. Collecting for them. Clothes, furniture, money. One of the few wives who did anything.” She looked sharply at Shane Hecht, who was smiling benignly past her towards her husband: “Busy little creature, she was; didn’t mind rolling her sleeves up, going from door to door. Got her little women on to it too at the Baptist chapel and brought in a mass of stuff. You’ve got to hand it to them, you know. They’ve got spirit. Felix, more sherry!”

  There were about twenty in the two rooms, but Smiley, who had arrived a little late, found himself attached to a group of about eight who stood nearest the door: D’Arcy and his sister; Charles and Shane Hecht; a young mathematician called Snow and his wife; a curate from the Abbey and Smiley himself, bewildered and mole-like behind his spectacles. Smiley looked quickly round the room, but could see no sign of Fielding.

  “… Yes,” Dorothy D’Arcy continued, “she was a good little worker, very … right to the end. I went over there on Friday with that parson man from the tin tabernacle—Cardew—to see if there was any refugee stuff to tidy up. There wasn’t a thing out of place—every bit of clothing she had was all packed up and addressed; we just had to send it off. She was a damn’ good little worker, I will say. Did a splendid job at the bazaar, you know.”

  “Yes, darling,” said Shane Hecht sweetly. “I remember it well. It was the day I presented her to Lady Sawley. She wore such a nice little hat—the one she wore on Sundays, you know. And so respectful. She called her ‘my lady.’” She turned to Smiley and breathed: “Rather feudal, don’t you think, dear? I always like that: so few of us left.”

  The mathematician and his wife were talking to Charles Hecht in a corner and a few minutes later Smiley managed to extricate himself from the group and join them.

  Ann Snow was a pretty girl with a rather square face and a turned-up nose. Her husband was tall and thin, with an agreeable stoop. He held his sherry glass between straight, slender fingers as if it were a chemical retort and when he spoke he seemed to address the sherry rather than his listener; Smiley remembered them from the funeral. Hecht was looking pink and rather cross, sucking at his pipe. They talked in a desultory way, their conversation dwarfed by the exchanges of th
e adjoining group. Hecht eventually drifted away from them, still frowning and withdrawn, and stood ostentatiously alone near the door.

  “Poor Stella,” said Ann Snow after a moment’s silence. “Sorry,” she added. “I can’t get her out of my mind yet. It seems mad, just mad. I mean why should she do it, that Janie woman?”

  “Did you like Stella?” Smiley asked.

  “Of course we did. She was sweet. We’ve been here four Halves now, but she was the only person here who’s ever been kind to us.” Her husband said nothing, just nodded at his sherry. “Simon wasn’t a boy at Carne, you see—most of the staff were—so we didn’t know anyone and no one was really interested. They all pretended to be terribly pleased with us, of course, but it was Stella who really …”

  Dorothy D’Arcy was descending on them. “Mrs Snow,” she said crisply, “I’ve been meaning to talk to you. I want you to take over Stella Rode’s job on the refugees.” She cast an appraising look in Simon’s direction: “The Master’s very keen on refugees.”

  “Oh, my goodness!” Ann Snow replied, aghast. “I couldn’t possibly, Miss D’Arcy, I …”

  “Couldn’t? Why couldn’t you? You helped Mrs Rode with her stall at the bazaar, didn’t you?”

  “So that’s where she got her clothes from,” breathed Shane Hecht behind them. Ann was fumbling on:

  “But … well I haven’t quite got Stella’s nerve, if you understand what I mean; and besides, she was a Baptist: all the locals helped her and gave her things, and they all liked her. With me it would be different.”

  “Lot of damn’ nonsense,” declared Miss D’Arcy, who spoke to all her juniors as if they were grooms or erring children; and Shane Hecht beside her said: “Baptists are the people who don’t like private pews, aren’t they? I do so agree—one feels that if one’s paid one simply has to go.”

  The curate, who had been talking cricket in a corner, was startled into mild protest: “Oh, come, Mrs Hecht, the private pew had many advantages …” and embarked on a diffuse apologia for ancient custom, to which Shane listened with every sign of the most assiduous interest. When at last he finished she said: “Thank you, William dear, so sweet,” turned her back on him and added to Smiley in a stage whisper: “William Trumper—one of Charles’s old pupils—such a triumph when he passed his Certificate.”

  Smiley, anxious to dissociate himself from Shane Hecht’s vengeance on the curate, turned to Ann Snow, but she was still at the mercy of Miss D’Arcy’s charitable intentions, and Shane was still talking to him:

  “The only Smiley I ever heard of married Lady Ann Sercombe at the end of the war. She left him soon afterwards, of course. A very curious match. I understand he was quite unsuitable. She was Lord Sawley’s cousin, you know. The Sawleys have been connected with Carne for four hundred years. The present heir is a pupil of Charles; we often dine at the Castle. I never did hear what became of Ann Sercombe … she went to Africa, you know … or was it India? No, it was America. So tragic. One doesn’t talk about it at the Castle.” For a moment the noise in the room stopped. For a moment, no more, he could discern nothing but the steady gaze of Shane Hecht upon him, and knew she was waiting for an answer. And then she released him as if to say: “I could crush you, you see. But I won’t, I’ll let you live,” and she turned and walked away.

  He contrived to take his leave at the same time as Ann and Simon Snow. They had an old car and insisted on running Smiley back to his hotel. On the way there, he said:

  “If you have nothing better to do, I would be happy to give you both dinner at my hotel. I imagine the food is dreadful.”

  The Snows protested and accepted, and a quarter of an hour later they were all three seated in a corner of the enormous dining-room of the Sawley Arms, to the great despondency of three waiters and a dozen generations of Lord Sawley’s forebears, puffy men in crumbling pigment.

  “We really got to know her our second Half,” Ann Snow ran on. “Stella didn’t do much mixing with the other wives—she’d learnt her lesson by then. She didn’t go to coffee parties and things, so it was really luck that we did meet. When we first came there wasn’t a staff house available for us: we had to spend the first Half in a hotel. We moved in to a little house in Bread Street at the end of our second Half. Moving was chaos—Simon was examining for the scholarships and we were terribly broke, so we had to do everything we possibly could for ourselves. It was a wet Thursday morning when we moved. The rain was simply teeming down; but none of our good pieces would get in through the front door, and in the end Mulligan’s just dumped me on the doorstep and let me sort it out.” She laughed, and Smiley thought what an agreeable child she was. “They were absolutely foul. They would have just driven off, I think, but they wanted a cheque as soon as they’d done the delivery, and the bill was pounds more than the estimate. I hadn’t got the cheque-book, of course. Simon had gone off with it. Mulligan’s even threatened to take all the stuff away again. It was monstrous. I think I was nearly in tears.” She nearly is now, thought Smiley. “Then out of the blue Stella turned up. I can’t think how she even knew we were moving—I’m sure no one else did. She’d brought an overall and an old pair of shoes and she’d come to help. When she saw what was going on she didn’t bother with the men at all, just went to a phone and rang Mr Mulligan himself. I don’t know what she said to him, but she made the foreman talk to him afterwards and there was no more trouble after that. She was terribly happy—happy to help. She was that sort of person. They took the door right out and managed to get everything in. She was marvellous at helping without managing. The rest of the wives,” she added bitterly, “are awfully good at managing, but don’t help at all.”

  Smiley nodded, and discreetly filled their glasses.

  “Simon’s leaving,” Ann said, suddenly confidential. “He’s got a grant and we’re going back to Oxford. He’s going to do a DPhil and get a University job.”

  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 behin
d 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.”