A Murder of Quality

'Stella would have liked that.'

'If you are not too upset, perhaps I could call round tomorrow for one or two details?'

'Certainly.'

'Eleven o'clock?'

'It will be a pleasure,' Rode replied, almost pertly, and they walked together to the churchyard gate.

Chapter 9—The Mourners

It was a cheap trick to play on a man who had suddenly lost his wife. Smiley knew that. As he gently unlatched the gate and entered the drive, where two nights ago he had conducted his strange conversation with Jane Lyn, he acknowledged that in calling on Rode under any pretext at such a time he was committing a thoroughly unprincipled act. It was a peculiarity of Smiley's character that throughout the whole of his clandestine work he had never managed to reconcile the means to the end. A stringent critic of his own motives, he had discovered after long observation that he tended to be less a creature of intellect than his tastes and habits might suggest; once in the war he had been described by his superiors as possessing the cunning of Satan and the conscience of a virgin, which seemed to him not wholly unjust.

He pressed the bell and waited.

Stanley Rode opened the door. He was very neatly dressed, very scrubbed.

'Oh hullo,' he said, as if they were old friends. 'I say, you haven't got a car, have you?'

'I'm afraid I left it in London.'

'Never mind.' Rode sounded disappointed. 'Thought we might have gone out for a drive, had a chat as we went. I get a bit fed-up, kicking around here on my own. Miss D'Arcy asked me to stay over at their place. Very good people they are, very good indeed; but somehow I didn't wish it, not yet.'

'I understand.'

'Do you?' They were in the hall now, Smiley was getting out of his overcoat, Rode waiting to receive it. 'I don't think many do—the loneliness I mean. Do you know what they've done, the Master and Mr D'Arcy? They meant it well, I know. They've farmed out all my correcting—my exam, correcting, you understand. What am I supposed to do here, all on my own? I've no teaching, nothing; they've all taken a hand. You'd think they wanted to get rid of me.'

Smiley nodded vaguely. They moved towards the drawing-room, Rode leading the way.

'I know they did it for the best, as I said. But after all, I've got to spend the time somehow. Simon Snow got some of my division to correct. Have you met him by any chance? Sixty-one per cent he gave one boy—sixty-one. The boy's an absolute fool; I told Fielding at the beginning of the Half that he wouldn't possibly get his remove. Perkins his name is, a nice enough boy; head of Fielding's house. He'd have been lucky to get thirty per cent… sixty-one, Snow gave him. I haven't seen the papers yet, of course, but it's impossible, quite impossible.'

They sat down.

'Not that I don't want the boy to get on. He's a nice enough boy, nothing special, but well-mannered. Mrs Rode and I meant to have him here to tea this Half. We would have done, in fact, if it hadn't been for…' There was a moment's silence. Smiley was going to speak when Rode stood up and said:

'I've a kettle on the stove, Mr…'

'Smiley.'

'I've a kettle on the stove, Mr Smiley. May I make you a cup of coffee?' That little stiff voice with the corners carefully defined, like a hired morning suit, thought Smiley.

Rode returned a few minutes later with a tray and measured their coffee in precise quantities, according to their taste.

Smiley found himself continually irritated by Rode's social assumptions, and his constant struggle to conceal his origin. You could tell at the time, from every word and gesture, what he was; from the angle of his elbow as he drank his coffee, from the swift, expert pluck at the knee of his trouser leg as he sat down.

'I wonder,' Smiley began, 'whether perhaps I might now…'

'Go ahead, Air Smiley.'

'We are, of course, largely interested in Mrs Rode's association with… our Church.'

'Quite.'

'You were married at Branxome, I believe.'

'Branxome Hill Tabernacle; fine church.' D'Arcy wouldn't have liked the way he said that; cocksure lad on a motor-bike. Pencils in the outside pocket.

'When was that?'

'September, fifty-one.'

'Did Mrs Rode engage in charitable work in Branxome? I know she was very active here.'

'No, not at Branxome, but a lot here. She had to look after her father at Branxome, you see. It was refugee relief she was keen on here. That didn't get going much until late 1956—the Hungarians began it, and then this last year…'

Smiley peered thoughtfully at Rode from behind his spectacles, forgot himself, blinked, and looked away.

'Did she take a large part in the social activities of Carne? Does the staff have its own Women's Institute and so on?' he asked innocently.

'She did a bit, yes. But, being Chapel, she kept mainly with the Chapel people from the town… you should ask Mr Cardew about that; he's the Minister.'

'But may I say, Mr Rode, that she took an active part in school affairs as well?'

Rode hesitated.

'Yes, of course,' he said.

'Thank you.'