A Murder of Quality (14 page)

‘I’m sorry to be a nuisance,’ Miss Brimley began, ‘but a friend of mine in the country has asked me to make some inquiries about a parcel of clothes that was sent up a day or two ago. She’s made rather a stupid mistake.’

‘Oh, goodness, how awful,’ said the girl pleasantly. ‘Would you like to come in? Everything’s frightfully chaotic, I’m afraid, and there’s nothing to sit on, but we can give you powdered coffee in a mug.’

Miss Brimley followed her in, closing the door firmly on the seven children, who were edging gently forward in her wake. She was in the hall, and everywhere she looked there were parcels of every kind, some wrapped in jute with smart labels, some in brown paper, torn and clumsy, some in crates and laundry baskets, old suitcases and even an antiquated cabin trunk with a faded yellow label on it which read: ‘Not wanted on voyage.’

The girl led the way upstairs to what was evidently the office, a large room containing a deal table littered with correspondence, and a kitchen chair. An oil stove sputtered in one corner, and an electric kettle was steaming in a melancholy way beside it. ‘I’m sorry,’ said the girl as they entered the room, ‘but there just isn’t anywhere to talk downstairs. I mean, one can’t talk on one leg like the Incas. Or isn’t it Incas? Perhaps it’s Afghans. However did you find us?’

‘I went to your West End office first,’ Miss Brimley replied, ‘and they told me I should come and see you. I think they were rather cross. After that I relied on children. They always know the way. You are Miss Dawney, aren’t you?’

‘Lord, no. I’m the sort of daily help. Jill Dawney’s gone to see the Customs people at Rotherhithe – she’ll be back at tea time if you want to see her.’

‘Gracious, my dear, I’m sure I shan’t keep you two minutes. A friend of mine who lives in Carne – ’(‘Goodness! How grand,’ said the girl) ’she’s a sort of cousin really, but it’s simpler to call her a friend, isn’t it? – gave an old grey dress to the refugee people last Thursday and now she’s convinced she left her brooch pinned to the bodice. I’m sure she hasn’t done anything of the sort, mind you – she’s a scatter-brain creature – but she rang me yesterday morning in a dreadful state and made me promise to come round at once and ask. I couldn’t come yesterday, unfortunately – tied to my little paper from dawn till dusk. But I gather you’re a bit behind, so it won’t be too late?’

‘Gosh, no! We’re miles behind. That’s all the stuff downstairs, waiting to be unpacked and sorted. It comes from the voluntary reps at each school – sometimes boys and sometimes staff – and they put all the clothes together and send them up in big parcels, either by train or ordinary mail, usually by train. We sort them here before sending them abroad.’

‘That’s what I gathered from Jane. As soon as she realised she’d made this mistake she got hold of the woman doing the collecting and sending, but of course it was too late. The parcel had gone.’

‘How frantic … Do you know when the parcel was sent off?’

‘Yes. On Friday morning.’

‘From Carne? Train or post?’

Miss Brimley had been dreading this question, but she made a guess:

‘Post, I believe.’

Darting past Miss Brimley, the girl foraged among the pile of papers on her desk and finally produced a stiff-backed exercise book with a label on it marked ‘Ledger’. Opening it at random, she whisked quickly back and forth through the pages, licking the tip of one finger now and then in a harassed sort of way.

‘Wouldn’t have arrived till yesterday at the earliest,’ she said. ‘We certainly won’t have opened it yet. Honestly, I don’t know how we shall
ever
cope, and with Easter coming up we shall just get worse and worse. On top of that, half our stuff is rotting in the Customs sheds – hullo, here we are!’ She pushed the ledger over to Miss Brimley, her slim finger pointing to a pencilled entry in the central column: ‘Carne, parcel post, 27 lb.’

‘I wonder,’ said Miss Brimley, ‘whether you would mind awfully if we had a quick look inside?’

They went downstairs to the hall.

‘It’s not quite as hideous as it looks,’ the girl called over her shoulder. ‘All the Monday lot will be nearest the door.’

‘How do you know where they come from if you can’t read the postmark?’ asked Miss Brimley as the girl began to forage among the parcels.

‘We issue volunteer reps with our printed labels. The labels have an originator’s number on. In other cases we just ask them to write the name of the school in capitals on the outside. You see, we simply can’t allow covering letters; it would be
too
desperate. When we get a parcel all we have to do is send off a printed card acknowledging with thanks receipt of a parcel of such and such a date weighing so and so much. People who aren’t reps won’t send parcels to this address, you see – they’ll send to the advertised address in Belgrave Square.’

‘Does the system work?’

‘No,’ replied the girl, ‘it doesn’t. The reps either forget to use our labels or they run out and can’t be bothered to tell us. Ten days later they ring up in a rage because they haven’t had an acknowledgement. Reps change, too, without letting us know, and the packing and labelling instructions don’t get passed on. Sometimes the boys will suddenly decide to do it themselves, and no one tells them the way to go about it. Lady Sarah gets as mad as a snake if parcels turn up at Head Office – they all have to be carted over here for repacking and inventories.’

‘I see.’ Miss Brimley watched anxiously as the girl foraged among the parcels, still talking.

‘Did you say your friend actually
taught
at Carne? She must be terribly grand. I wonder what the Prince is like: he looks rather soft in his photographs. My cousin went to Carne – he’s an utter wet. Do you know what he told me? During Ascot week they all … Hello! Here we are!’ The girl stood up, a large square parcel in her arms, and carried it to a table which stood in the shadow of the staircase. Miss Brimley, standing beside her as she began carefully to untie the stout twine, looked curiously at the printed label. In its top left-hand corner was stamped the symbol which the Committee had evidently allocated to Carne: C4. After the four the letter B had been written in with ballpoint pen.

‘What does the B mean?’ asked Miss Brimley.

‘Oh, that’s a local arrangement at Carne. Miss D’Arcy’s the rep there, but they’ve done so well recently that she co-opted a friend to help with dispatch. When we acknowledge we always mention whether it was A or B. B must be terribly keen, whoever she is.’

Miss Brimley forbore from inquiring what proportion of the parcels from Carne had originated from Miss D’Arcy, and what proportion from her anonymous assistant.

The girl removed the string and turned the parcel upside down in order to liberate the overlap of wrapping paper. As she did so Miss Brimley caught sight of a faint brown smudge, no more, about the size of a shilling, near the join. It was consistent with her essential rationalism that she should search for any explanation other than that which so loudly presented itself. The girl continued the work of unwrapping, saying suddenly: ‘I say, Carne was where they had that dreadful murder, wasn’t it – that master’s wife who got killed by the gipsy? It really
is
awful, isn’t it, how much of that kind of thing goes on? Hm! Thought as much,’ she remarked, suddenly interrupting herself. She had removed the outer paper, and was about to unwrap the bundle inside when her attention was evidently arrested by the appearance of the inner parcel.

‘What?’ Miss Brimley said quickly.

The girl laughed. ‘Oh, only the packing,’ she said. ‘The C4Bs are usually so neat – quite the best we get. This is quite different. Not the same person at all. Must be a stand-in. I thought so from the outside.’

‘How can you be so sure?’

‘Oh, it’s like handwriting. We can tell.’ She laughed again, and without more ado removed the last wrapping.‘Grey dress, you said, didn’t you? Let’s see.’ With both hands she began picking clothes from the top of the pile and laying them to either side. She was nearly halfway through when she exclaimed, ‘Well,
honestly
! They must be having a brainstorm,’ and drew from the bundle of partworn clothes a transparent plastic mackintosh, a very old pair of leather gloves, and a pair of rubber overshoes.

Miss Brimley was holding the edge of the table very tightly. The palms of her hands were throbbing.

‘Here’s a cape. Damp, too,’ the girl added in disgust, and tossed the offending articles on to the floor beside the table. Miss Brimley could only think of Smiley’s letter: ‘Whoever killed her must have been covered in blood.’ Yes, and whoever killed her wore a plastic cape and a hood, rubber overshoes and those old leather gloves with the terra-cotta stains. Whoever killed Stella Rode had not chanced upon her in the night, but had plotted long ahead, had waited. ‘Yes,’ thought Miss Brimley, ‘had waited for the long nights.’

The girl was talking to her again: ‘I’m afraid it really isn’t here.’

‘No, my dear,’ Miss Brimley replied, ‘I see that. Thank you. You’ve been very sweet.’ Her voice faltered for a moment, then she managed to say: ‘I think, my dear, you should leave the parcel exactly as it is now, the wrapping and everything in it. Something very dreadful has happened, and the police will want to … know about it and see the parcel … You must trust me, my dear – things aren’t quite what they seem …’ And somehow she escaped to the comforting freedom of York Gardens and the large-eyed wonder of its waiting children.

She went to a telephone box. She got through to the Sawley Arms and asked a very bored receptionist for Mr Smiley. Total silence descended on the line until the Trunks operator asked her to put in another three and sixpence. Miss Brimley replied sharply that all she had so far had for her money was a three-minute vacuum; this was followed by the unmistakable sound of the operator sucking her teeth, and then, quite suddenly, by George Smiley’s voice:

‘George, it’s Brim. A plastic mackintosh, a cape, rubber overshoes, and some leather gloves that look as though they’re stained with blood. Smudges on some of the wrapping paper too by the look of it.’

A pause.

‘Handwriting on the outside of the parcel?’

‘None. The Charity organisers issue printed labels.’

‘Where is the stuff now? Have you got it?’

‘No. I’ve told the girl to leave everything exactly as it is. It’ll be all right for an hour or two … George, are you there?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who did it? Was it the husband?’

‘I don’t know. I just don’t know.’

‘Do you want me to do anything – about the clothes, I mean? Phone Sparrow or anything?’

‘No. I’ll see Rigby at once. Good-bye, Brim. Thanks for ringing.’

She put back the receiver. He sounded strange, she thought.He seemed to lose touch sometimes. As if he’d switched off.

She walked north-west towards the Embankment. It was long after ten o’clock – the first time she’d been late for Heaven knows how long. She had better take a taxi. Being a frugal woman, however, she took a bus.

Ailsa Brimley did not believe in emergencies, for she enjoyed a discipline of mind uncommon in men and even rarer in women. The greater the emergency, the greater her calm. John Landsbury had remarked upon it: ‘You have sales resistance to the dramatic, Brim; the rare gift of contempt for what is urgent. I know of a dozen people who would pay you five thousand a year for telling them every day that what is important is seldom urgent. Urgent equals ephemeral, and ephemeral equals unimportant.’

She got out of the bus, carefully putting the ticket in the rubbish compartment. As she stood in the warm sunlight of the street she caught sight of the hoardings advertising the first edition of the evening papers. If it hadn’t been for the sun, she might never have looked; but the sun dazzled her and made her glance downwards. And so she did see; she read it in the plump black of the wet newsprint, in the prepacked hysteria of Fleet Street: ‘All-night search for missing Carne boy.’

15 The Road to Fielding

Smiley put down the receiver and walked quickly past the reception desk towards the front door. He must see Rigby at once. Just as he was leaving the hotel he heard his name called. Turning, he saw his old enemy, the night porter, braving the light of day, beckoning to him like Charon with his grey hand.

‘They’ve been on to you from the police station,’ he observed with undisguised pleasure. ‘Mr Rigby wants you, the Inspector. You’re to go there at once. At once, see?’

‘I’m on my way there now,’ Smiley replied irritably, and as he pushed his way through the swing doors he heard the old man repeat: ‘At once, mind; they’re waiting for you.’

Making his way through the Carne streets, he reflected for the hundredth time on the obscurity of motive in human action: there is no true thing on earth. There is no constant, no dependable point, not even in the purest logic or the most obscure mysticism; least of all in the motives of men when they are moved to act violently.

Had the murderer, now so near discovery, found contentment in the meticulous administration of his plans? For now it was clear beyond a doubt; this was a murder devised to the last detail, even to the weapon left inexplicably far from the place of its use; a murder with clues cast to mislead, a murder planned to look unplanned, a murder for a string of beads. Now the mystery of the footprints was solved: having put the overshoes into the parcel, the murderer had walked down the path to the gate, and his own prints had been obscured by the subsequent traffic of feet.

Rigby looked tired.

‘You’ve heard the news, sir, I suppose?’

‘What news?’

‘About the boy, the boy in Fielding’s house, missing all night?’

‘No.’ Smiley felt suddenly sick. ‘No, I’ve heard nothing.’

‘Good Lord, I thought you knew! Half past eight last night Fielding rang us here. Perkins, his head boy, hadn’t come back from a music lesson with Mrs Harlowe, who lives over to Longemede. We put out an alert and started looking for him. They sent a patrol car along the road he should have come back on – he was cycling, you see. The first time they didn’t see anything, but on the way back the driver stopped the car at the bottom of Longemede Hill, just where the water-splash is. It occurred to him the lad might have taken a long run at the water-splash from the top of the hill, and come to grief in the dip. They found him half in the ditch, his bike beside him. Dead.’