A Murder of Quality

He passed the main entrance to the school and came at once upon the municipal part of the town, a lugubrious nineteenth-century fairyland in local stone, stitched together by a complexity of Gothic chimneys and crenel windows. Here was the town hall, and beside it, with the flag of St George floating at its masthead, the Carne Constabulary Headquarters, built ninety years ago to withstand the onslaughts of archery and battering rams.

He gave his name to the Duty Sergeant, and asked to see the officer investigating the death of Mrs Rode. The Sergeant, an elderly, inscrutable man, addressed himself to the telephone with a certain formality, as if he were about to perform a difficult conjuring trick. To Smiley's surprise, he was told that Inspector Rigby would be pleased to see him at once, and a police cadet was summoned to show him the way. He was led at a spanking pace up the wide staircase in the centre of the hall, and in a matter of moments found himself before the Inspector.

He was a very short man, and very broad. He could have been a Celt from the tin-mines of Cornwall or the collieries of Wales. His dark grey hair was cut very close; it came to a point in the centre of his brow like a devil's cap. His hands were large and powerful, he had the trunk and stance of a wrestler, but he spoke slowly, with a Dorset burr to his soft voice. Smiley quickly noticed that he had one quality rare among small men: the quality of openness. Though his eyes were dark and bright and the movements of his body swift, he imparted a feeling of honesty and straight dealing.

'Ben Sparrow rang me this morning, sir. I'm very pleased you've come. I believe you've got a letter for me.'

Rigby looked at Smiley thoughtfully over his desk, and decided that he liked what he saw. He had got around in the war and had heard a little, just a very little, of the work of George Smiley's Service. If Ben said Smiley was all right, that was good enough for him—or almost. But Ben had said more than that.

'Looks like a frog, dresses like a bookie, and has a brain I'd give my eyes for. Had a very nasty war. Very nasty indeed.'

Well, he looked like a frog, right enough. Short and stubby, round spectacles with thick lenses that made his eyes big. And his clothes were odd. Expensive, mind, you could see that. But his jacket seemed to drape where there wasn't any room for drape. What did surprise Rigby was his shyness. Rigby had expected someone a little brash, a little too smooth for Carne, whereas Smiley had an earnest formality of manner which appealed to Rigby's conservative taste.

Smiley took the letter from his wallet and put it on the desk, while Rigby extracted an old pair of gold-rimmed spectacles from a battered metal case and adjusted the ends carefully over his ears.

'I don't know if Ben explained,' said Smiley, 'but this letter was sent to the correspondence section of a small Nonconformist journal to which Mrs Rode subscribed.'

'And Miss Fellowship is the lady who brought you the letter?'

'No; her name is Brimley. She is the editor of the magazine. Fellowship is just a pen-name for the correspondence column.'

The brown eyes rested on him for a moment.

'When did she receive this letter?'

'Yesterday, the seventeenth. Thursday's the day they go to press, their busy day. The afternoon mail doesn't get opened till the evening, usually. This was opened about six o'clock, I suppose.'

'And she brought it straight to you?'

'Yes.'

'Why?'

'She worked for me during the war, in my department. She was reluctant to go straight to the police—I was the only person she could think of who wasn't a policeman,' he added stupidly. 'Who could help, I mean.'

'May I ask what you yourself, sir, do for a living?'

'Nothing much. A little private research on seventeenth-century Germany.' It seemed a very silly answer.

Rigby didn't seem bothered.

'What's this earlier letter she talks about?'

Smiley offered him the second envelope, and again the big, square hand received it.

'It appears she won this competition,' Smiley explained. 'That was her winning entry. I gather she comes from a family which has subscribed to the magazine since its foundation. That's why Miss Brimley was less inclined to regard the letter as nonsense. Not that it follows.'

'Not that what follows?'

'I meant that the fact that her family had subscribed to a journal for fifty years does not logically affect the possibility that she was unbalanced.'

Rigby nodded, as if he saw the point, but Smiley had an uncomfortable feeling that he did not.

'Ah,' said Rigby, with a slow smile. 'Women, eh?'

Smiley, completely bewildered, gave a little laugh. Rigby was looking at him thoughtfully.

'Know any of the staff, do you, sir?'

'Only Mr Terence Fielding. We met at an Oxford dinner some time ago. I thought I'd call round and see him. I knew his brother pretty well.'

Rigby appeared to stiffen slightly at the mention of Fielding, but he said nothing, and Smiley went on: