A Murder of Quality by John le Carré Read Free Book Online Page A

gone like snow in the fire. They’ve died in a ditch, maybe, or they’ve took ill and crept away like a cat. Janie’s not the only queer one round here. There’s a lot of excitement because we found a spare set of footprints running along the fringe of trees at the far end of the garden. They were a woman’s prints by the look of them, and at one point they come quite close to the conservatory. Could be a gypsy or a beggar woman. Could be anything, but I expect it’s Janie right enough. I hope to Heaven it was, sir; we could do with an eyewitness, even a mad one.’
    Smiley stood up. As they shook hands, Rigby said, ‘Goodbye, sir. Ring me any time, any time at all.’ He scribbled a telephone number on the pad in front of him, tore off the sheet and gave it to Smiley. ‘That’s my home number.’ He showed Smiley to the door, seemed to hesitate, then he said, ‘You’re not a Carnian yourself by any chance, are you, sir?’
    ‘Good heavens, no.’
    Again Rigby hesitated. ‘Our Chief’s a Carnian. Ex-Indian Army. Brigadier Havelock. This is his last year. He’s very interested in this case. Doesn’t like me messing round the school. Won’t have it.’
    ‘I see.’
    ‘He wants an arrest quickly.’
    ‘And outside Carne, I suppose?’
    ‘Good-bye, Mr Smiley. Don’t forget to ring me. Oh, another thing I should have mentioned. That bit of cable …’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Mr Rode used a length of the same stuff in a demonstration lecture on elementary electronics. Mislaid it about three weeks ago.’
    Smiley walked slowly back to his hotel.
My dear Brim ,
As soon as I arrived I handed your letter over to the CID man in charge of the case – it was Rigby, as Ben had supposed: he looks like a mixture of Humpty-Dumpty and a Cornish elf – very short and broad – and I don’t think he’s anyone’s fool.
To begin at the middle – our letter didn’t have quite the effect we expected; Stella Rode evidently told Cardew, the local Baptist Minister, two weeks ago, that her husband was trying to kill her in the long nights, whatever they are. As for the circumstances of the murder – the account in the Guardian is substantially correct.
In fact, the more Rigby told me, the less likely it became that she was killed by her husband. Almost everything pointed away from him. Quite apart from motive, there is the location of the weapon, the footprints in the snow (which indicate a tall man in Wellingtons), the presence of unidentified glove-prints in the conservatory. Add to that the strongest argument of all: whoever killed her must have been covered in blood – the conservatory was a dreadful sight, Rigby tells me. Of course, there was blood on Rode when he was picked up by his colleague in the lane, but only smears which could have resulted from stumbling over the body in the dark. Incidentally, the footprints only go into the garden and not out.
As things stand at the moment, there is, as Rigby points out, only one interpretation – the murderer was a stranger, a tramp, a madman perhaps, who killed her for pleasure or for her jewellery (which was worthless) and made off along the Okeford road, throwing the weapon into a ditch. (But why carry it four miles – and why not throw it into the canal the other side of the ditch? The Okeford road crosses Okemoor, which is all cross-dyked to prevent flooding.) If this interpretation is correct, then I suppose we attribute Stella’s letter and her interview with Cardew to a persecuted mind, or the premonition of death, depending on whether we’re superstitious. If that is so, it is the most monstrous coincidence I have ever heard of. Which brings me to my final point.
I rather gathered from what Rigby didn’t say that his Chief Constable was treading on his tail, urging him to scour the country for tramps in bloodstained blue overcoats (you remember the belt). Rigby, of course, has no alternative but to follow the signs and do as his Chief expects, but he is clearly