John le Carré - A Murder of Quality

'… 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 the 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 Hecht eventually drifted away from them, still frowning and withdrawn, and stood ostentatiously alone near the door.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 forbears, 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 D.Phil, 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.'