A Murder of Quality

'That I have been playing to an empty house. But now I'm comforted to think that no one remembers how I forgot my words or missed an entry. So many of us wait patiently for our audience to die. At Carne no one will remember for more than a Half or two what a mess I've made of life. I was too vain to realize that until recently.' He put the glass down in front of him and smiled suddenly at Ailsa Brimley. 'That is the peace I mean. Not to exist in anyone's mind, but my own; to be a secular monk, safe and forgotten.'

Smiley gave him more wine: 'Miss Brimley knew your brother Adrian well in the war. We were all in the same department,' he said. 'She was Adrian's secretary for a while. Weren't you, Brim?'

'It's depressing how the bad live on,' Fielding declared. 'Rather embarrassing. For the bad, I mean.' He gave a little gastronomic sigh. 'The moment of truth in a good meal! Übergangsperiode between entremets and dessert,' and they all laughed, and then were silent. Smiley put down his glass, and said:

'The story you told me on Thursday, when I came and saw you…'

'Well?' Fielding was irritated.

'About cheating for Tim Perkins… how you took the paper from the case and altered it…'

'Yes?'

'It isn't true.' He might have been talking about the weather. 'They've examined it and it isn't true. The writing was all one person's… the boy's. If anyone cheated, it must have been the boy.'

There was a long silence. Fielding shrugged.

'My dear fellow, you can't expect me to believe that. These people are practically moronic.'

'Of course, it doesn't necessarily signify anything. I mean you could be protecting the boy, couldn't you? By lying for him, for his honour so to speak. Is that the explanation?'

'I've told you the truth,' he replied shortly. 'Make what you want of it.'

'I mean, I can see a situation where there might have been collusion, where you were moved by the boy's distress when he brought you the papers; and on the spur of the moment you opened the case and took out his paper and told him what to write.'

'Look here,' said Fielding hotly, 'why don't you keep off this? What's it got to do with you?' And Smiley replied with sudden fervour:

'I'm trying to help, Fielding. I beg you to believe me, I'm trying to help. For Adrian's sake. I don't want there to be… more trouble than there need, more pain. I want to get it straight before Rigby comes. They've dropped the charge against Janie. You know that, don't you? They seem to think it's Rode, but they haven't pulled him in. They could have done, but they haven't. They just took more statements from him. So you see, it matters terribly about the writing-case. Everything hangs by whether you really saw inside it; and whether Perkins did. Don't you see that? If it was Perkins who cheated after all, if it was only the boy who opened the case and not you, then they'll want to know the answer to a very important question: they'll want to know how you knew what was inside it.'

'What are you trying to say?'

'They're not really moronic, you know. Let's start from the other end for a moment. Suppose it was you who killed Stella Rode, suppose you had a reason, a terribly good reason, and they knew what that reason might be; suppose you went ahead of Rode after giving him the case that night—by bicycle, for instance, like Janie said, riding on the wind. If that were really so, none of those things you saw would have been in the case at all. You could have made it up. And when later the exam, results came out and you realized that Perkins had cheated, then you guessed he had seen inside the case, had seen that it contained nothing, nothing but exam papers. I mean that would explain why you had to kill the boy.' He stopped and glanced towards Fielding. 'And in a way,' he added almost reluctantly, 'it makes better sense, doesn't it?'

'And what, may I ask, was the reason you speak of?'