John le Carré - A Murder of Quality

Rigby hesitated.

'As a matter of fact, we have,' he said at last. 'From long ago. But nothing to do with this kind of thing.'

'It was during the war,' said Smiley. 'His brother told me. Up in the North. It was hushed up, wasn't it?'

Rigby nodded. 'So far as I heard, only the D'Arcys knew; and the Master, of course. It happened in the holidays—some Air Force boy. The Chief was very helpful…'

Smiley shook hands with Rigby and made his way down the familiar pine staircase. He noticed again the vaguely institutional smell of floor polish and carbolic soap, like the smell at Fielding's house.

He walked slowly back towards the Sawley Arms. At the point where he should have turned left to his hotel, however, he hesitated, then seemed to change his mind. Slowly, almost reluctantly, he crossed the road to the Abbey Close, and walked along the southern edge towards Fielding's house. He looked worried, almost frightened.

Miss Truebody opened the door. The rims of her eyes were pink, as though she had been weeping.

'I wonder if I might see Mr Fielding? To say good-bye.'

She hesitated: 'Mr Fielding's very upset. I doubt whether he'll want to see anyone.' He followed her into the hall and watched her go to the study door. She knocked, inclined her head, then gently turned the handle and let herself in. It was a long time before she returned. 'He'll be out shortly,' she said, without looking at him. 'Will you take off your coat?' She waited while he struggled out of his overcoat, then took it from him and hung it beside the Van Gogh chair. They stood together in silence, both looking towards the study door.

Then, quite suddenly, Fielding was standing in the half-open doorway, unshaven and in his shirt-sleeves. 'For Christ's sake,' he said thickly. 'What do you want?'

'I just wanted to say good-bye, Fielding, and to offer you my condolences.'

Fielding looked at him hard for a moment; he was leaning heavily against the doorway; 'Well, good-bye. Thank you for calling.' He waved one hand vaguely in the air. 'You needn't have bothered really, need you?' he added rudely. 'You could have sent me a card, couldn't you?'

'I could have done, yes; it just seemed so very tragic, when he was so near success.'

'What do you mean? What the devil do you mean?'

'I mean in his work… the improvement. Simon Snow was telling me all about it. Amazing really, the way Rode brought him on.'

A long silence, then Fielding spoke: 'Good-bye, Smiley. Thanks for coming.' He was turning back into the study as Smiley called:

'Not at all… not at all. I suppose poor Rode must have been bucked with those exam. results, too. I mean it was more or less a matter of life and death for Perkins, passing that exam, wasn't it? He wouldn't have got his remove next Half if he'd failed in science. They might have superannuated him, I suppose, even though he was head of the house; then he couldn't have sat for the Army. Poor Perkins, he had a lot to thank Rode for, didn't he? And you, too, Fielding, I'm sure. You must have helped him wonderfully… both of you did, you and Rode; Rode and Fielding. His parents ought to know that. They're rather hard up, I gather; the father's in the Army, isn't he, in Singapore? It must have been a great effort keeping the boy at Carne. It will comfort them to know how much was done for him, won't it, Fielding?'

Smiley was very pale. 'You've heard the latest, I suppose,' he continued. 'About that wretched gipsy woman who killed Stella Rode? They've decided she's fit to plead. I suppose they'll hang her. That'll be the third death, won't it? You know, I'll tell you an odd thing—just between ourselves, Fielding. I don't believe she did it. Do you? I don't believe she did it at all.'

He was not looking at Fielding. He had clasped his little hands tightly behind his back, and he stood with his shoulders bowed and his head inclined to one side, as though listening for an answer.

Fielding seemed to feel Smiley's words like a physical pain. Slowly he shook his head:

'No,' he said; 'no. Carne killed them; it was Carne. It could only happen here. It's the game we play: the exclusion game. Divide and rule!' He looked Smiley full in the face, and shouted: 'Now for God's sake go! You've got what you want, haven't you? You can pin me on your little board, can't you?' And then, to Smiley's distress, he began sobbing in great uncontrollable gulps, holding his hand across his brow. He appeared suddenly grotesque, stemming the childish tears with his chalky hand, his cumbersome feet turned inwards. Gently, Smiley coaxed him back into the study, gently sat him before the dead fire. Then he began talking to him softly and with compassion.

'If what I think is true, there isn't much time,' he began. 'I want you to tell me about Tim Perkins—about the exam.'

Fielding, his face buried in his hands, nodded.

'He would have failed, wouldn't he? He would have failed and not got his remove; he'd have had to leave.' Fielding was silent. 'After the exam, that day, Rode gave him the writing case to bring here, the case that contained the papers; Rode was doing chapel duty that week and wouldn't be going home before dinner, but he wanted to correct the papers that night, after his dinner with you.'

Fielding took his hands from his face and leant back in his chair, his great head tilted back, his eyes closed. Smiley continued:

'Perkins came home, and that evening he brought the case to you, as Rode told him to, for safe keeping. Perkins, after all, was head of your house, a responsible boy… He gave you the case and you asked him how he'd done in the exam.'

'He wept,' said Fielding suddenly. 'He wept as only a child can.'

'And after breaking down he told you he had cheated? That he had looked up the answers and copied them on to his paper. Is that right? And after the murder of Stella Rode he remembered what else he had seen in the suitcase?'

Fielding was standing up. 'No! Don't you see? Tim wouldn't have cheated to save his life! That's the whole point, the whole bloody irony of it,' he shouted. 'He never cheated at all. I cheated for him.'

'But you couldn't! You couldn't copy his handwriting!'

'He wrote with a ball-pen. It was only formulae and diagrams. When he'd gone, and left me alone with the case, I looked at his paper. It was hopeless—he'd only done two out of seven questions. So I cheated for him. I just cribbed them from the science book, and wrote them with blue ballpoint, the kind we all use. Abbots' sell them. I copied his hand as best I could. It only needed about three lines of figures. The rest was diagrams.'

'Then it was you who opened the case? You who saw…'

'Yes. It was me, I tell you, not Tim! He couldn't cheat to save his life! But Tim paid for it, don't you see? When the marks were published. Tim must have known something was wrong with them. After all, he'd only attempted two questions out of seven and yet he'd got sixty-one per cent. But he knew nothing else, nothing !

For a long time neither spoke. Fielding was standing over Smiley, exultant with the relief of sharing his secret, and Smiley was looking vaguely past him, his face drawn in deep concentration.

'And of course,' he said finally, 'when Stella was murdered, you knew who had done it.'

'Yes,' replied Fielding. 'I knew that Rode had killed her.'

Fielding poured himself a brandy and gave one to Smiley. He seemed to have recovered his self-control. He sat down and looked at Smiley thoughtfully for a time.

'I've got no money,' he said at last. 'None. Nobody knows that except the Master. Oh, they know I'm more or less broke, but they don't know how broke. Long ago I made an ass of myself. I got into trouble. It was in the war, when staff was impossible. I had a boys' house and was practically running the school—D'Arcy and I. We were running it together, and the Master running us. Then I made an ass of myself. It was during the holidays. I was up North at the time, giving a course of talks at an R.A.F. educational place. And I stepped out of line. Badly. They pulled me in. And along came D'Arcy wearing his country overcoat and bringing the Master's terms: Come back to Carne, my dear fellow, and we'll say no more about it; go on running your house, my dear fellow, and giving of your wisdom. There's been no publicity. We know it will never happen again, my dear fellow, and we're dreadfully hard up for staff. Come back as a temporary. So I did, and I've been one ever since, going cap in hand to darling D'Arcy every December asking for my contract to be renewed. And, of course—no pension. I shall have to teach at a crammer's. There's a place in Somerset where they'll take me. I'm seeing their Headmaster in London on Thursday. It's a sort of breaker's yard for old dons. The Master had to know, because he gave me a reference.'