Call for the Dead (2 page)

III

ELSA FENNAN

Merridale Lane is one of those corners of Surrey where the inhabitants wage a relentless battle against the stigma of suburbia. Trees, fertilised and cajoled into being in every front garden, half obscure the poky "Character dwellings" which crouch behind them. The rusticity of the environment is enhanced by the wooden owls that keep guard over the names of houses, and by crumbling dwarfs indefatigably poised over goldfish ponds. The inhabitants of Merridale Lane do not paint their dwarfs, suspecting this to be a suburban vice, nor, for the same reason, do they varnish the owls; but wait patiently for the years to endow these treasures with an appearance of weathered antiquity, until one day even the beams on the garage may boast of beetle and woodworm. Smiley arrived there on foot just after eight o'clock that morning, having parked his car at the police station, which was ten minutes' walk away. It was raining heavily, driving cold rain, so cold it felt hard upon the face. Surrey police had no further interest in the case, but Sparrow had sent down independently a Special Branch officer to remain at the police station and act if necessary as liaison between Security and the police. There was no doubt about the manner of Fennan's death. He had been shot through the temple at point blank range by a small French pistol manufactured in Lille in 1957. The pistol was found beneath the body. All the circumstances were consistent with suicide. Number fifteen Merridale Lane was a low, Tudor-style house with the bedrooms built into the gables, and a half-timbered garage. It had an air of neglect, even disuse. It might have been occupied by artists, thought Smiley. Fennan didn't seem to fit here. Fennan was Hampstead and au-pair foreign girls. He unlached the gate and walked slowly up the drive to the front door, trying vainly to discern some sign of life through the leaded windows. It was very cold. He rang the bell. Eisa Fertnan opened the door. "They rang and asked if I minded. I didn't know what to say. Please come in." A trace of a German accent. She must have been older than Fennan. A slight, fierce woman in her fifties with hair cut very short and dyed to the colour of nicotine. Although frail, she conveyed an impression of endurance and courage, and the brown eyes that shone from her crooked little face were of an astonishing intensity. It was a worn face, racked and ravaged long ago, the face of a child grown old on starving and exhaustion, the eternal refugee face, the prison-camp face, thought Smiley. She was holding out her hand to him--it was scrubbed and pink, bony to touch. He told her his name. "You're the man who interviewed my husband," she said; "about loyalty." She led him into the low, dark drawing-room. There was no fire. Smiley felt suddenly sick and cheap. Loyalty to whom, to what. She didn't sound resentful. He was an oppressor, but she accepted oppression. "I liked your husband very much. He would have been cleared." "Cleared? Cleared of what?" "There was a prima facie case for investigation--an anonymous letter--I was given the job." He paused and looked at her with real concern. "You have had a terrible loss, Mrs. Fennan... you must be exhausted. You can't have slept all night...." She did not respond to his sympathy: "Thank you, but I can scarcely hope to sleep today. Sleep is not a luxury I enjoy." She looked down wryly at her own tiny body; "My body and I must put up with one another twenty hours a day. We have lived longer than most people already. "As for the terrible loss. Yes, I suppose so. But you know, Mr. Smiley, for so long I owned nothing but a toothbrush, so I'm not really used to possession, even after eight years of marriage. Besides, I have the experience to suffer with discretion." She bobbed her head at him, indicating that he might sit, and with an oddly old-fashioned gesture she swept her skirt beneath her and sat opposite him. It was very cold in that room. Smiley wondered whether he ought to speak; he dared not look at her, but peered vaguely before him, trying desperately in his mind to penetrate the worn, travelled face of Eisa Fennan. It seemed a long time before she spoke again. "You said you liked him. You didn't give him that impression, apparently." "I haven't seen your husband's letter, but I have heard of its contents." Smiley's earnest, pouchy face was turned towards her now: "It simply doesn't make sense. I as good as told him he was... that we would recommend that the matter be taken no further." She was motionless, waiting to hear. What could he say: "I'm sorry I killed your husband, Mrs. Fennan, but I was only doing my duty. (Duty to whom for God's sake?) He was in the Communist Party at Oxford twenty-four years ago; his recent promotion gave him access to highly secret information. Some busybody wrote us an anonymous letter and we had no option but to follow it up. The investigation induced a state of melancholia in your husband, and drove him to suicide." He said, nothing. "You call yourself the State, Mr. Smiley, you have no place among real people. You dropped a bomb from the sky: don't come down here and look at the blood, or hear the scream." She had not raised her voice, she looked above him now, and beyond. "You seem shocked. I should be weeping, I suppose, but I've no more tears, Mr. Smiley--I'm barren; the children of my grief are dead. Thank you for coming, Mr. Smiley; you can go back, now--there's nothing you can do here." He sat forward in his chair, his podgy hands nursing one another on his knees. He looked worried and sanctimonious, like a grocer reading the lesson. The skin of his face was white and glistened at the temples and on the upper lip. Only under his eyes was there any colour: mauve half-moons bisected by the heavy frame of his spectacles. "Look, Mrs. Fennan; that interview was almost a formality. I think your husband enjoyed it, I think it even made him happy to get it over." "How can you say that, how can you, now this...." "It's not the letter, Mr. Smiley, that I'm thinking of. It's what he said to me." "How do you mean?" "He was deeply upset by the interview, he told me so. When he came back on Monday night he was desperate, almost incoherent. He collapsed in a chair and I persuaded him to go to bed. I gave him a sedative which lasted him half the night. He was still talking about it the next morning. It occupied his whole mind until his death." The telephone was ringing upstairs. Smiley got up. "Excuse me--that will be my office. Do you mind?" "It's in the front bedroom, directly above us." Smiley walked slowly upstairs in a state of complete bewilderment. What on earth should he say to Maston now? He lifted the receiver, glancing mechanically at the number on the apparatus. "Walliston 2944." "Exchange here. Good morning. Your eight-thirty call." "Oh--Oh yes, thank you very much." He rang off, grateful for the temporary respite. He glanced briefly round the bedroom. It was the Fennans' own bedroom, austere but comfortable. There were two armchairs in front of the gas fire. Smiley remembered now that Eisa Fennan had been bedridden for three years after the war. It was probably a survival from those years that they still sat in the bedroom in the evenings. The alcoves on either side of the fireplace were full of books. In the furthest corner, a typewriter on a desk. There was something intimate and touching about the arrangement, and perhaps for the first time Smiley was filled with an immediate sense of the tragedy of Fennan's death. He returned to the drawing-room. "It was for you. Your eight-thirty call from the exchange." He was aware of a pause and glanced incuriously towards her. But she had turned away from him and was standing looking out of the window, her slender back very straight and still, her stiff, short hair dark against the morning light. _ Suddenly he stared at her. Something had occurred to him which he should have realised upstairs in the bedroom, something so improbable that for a moment his brain was unable to grasp it. Mechanically he went on talking; he must get out of there, get away from the telephone and Maston's hysterical questions, get away from Eisa Fennan and her dark, restless house. Get away and think. "I have intruded too much already, Mrs. Fennan, and I must now take your advice and return to Whitehall." Again the cold, frail hand, the mumbled expressions of sympathy. He collected his coat from the hall and stepped out into the early sunlight. The winter sun had just appeared for a moment after the rain, and it repainted in pale, wet colours the trees and houses of Merridale Lane. The sky was still dark grey, and the world beneath it strangely luminous, giving back the sunlight it had stolen from nowhere. He walked slowly down the gravel path, fearful of being called back. He returned to the police station, full of disturbing thoughts. To begin with it was not Eisa Fennan who had asked the exchange for an eight-thirty call that morning.

IV

COFFEE AT THE FOUNTAIN

The C.I.D. Superintendent at Walliston was a large, genial soul who measured professional competence in years of service and saw no fault in the habit. Sparrow's Inspector Mendel on the other hand was a thin, weasel-faced gentleman who spoke very rapidly out of the corner of his mouth. Smiley secretly likened him to a gamekeeper--a man who knew his territory and disliked intruders. "I have a message from your Department, sir. You're to ring the Adviser at once." The Superintendent indicated his telephone with an enormous hand and walked out through the open door of his office. Mendel remained. Smiley looked at him owlishly for a moment, guessing his man. "Shut the door." Mendel moved to the door and pulled it quietly to. "I want to make an enquiry of the Walliston telephone exchange. Who's the most likely contact?" "Assistant Supervisor, normally. Supervisor's always in the clouds; Assistant Supervisor does the work." "Know the number?" "Walliston 2944. Subscriber Samuel Fennan, I should think." Mendel moved to the telephone and dialled 0. While he waited for a reply he said to Smiley: "You don't want anyone to know about this, do you?" "No one. Not even you. There's probably nothing in it. If we start bleating about murder we'll..." Mendel was through to the exchange, asking for the Assistant Supervisor. "Walliston C.I.D. here, Superintendent's office. We have an enquiry... yes, of course... ring me back then... C.I.D. outside line, Walliston 2421." He replaced the receiver and waited for the exchange to ring him. "Sensible girl," he muttered, without looking at Smiley. The telephone rang and he began speaking at once. "We're investigating a burglary in Merridale Lane. Number 18. Just possible they used No.15 as an observation point for a job on the opposite house. Have you got any way of finding out whether calls were originated or received on Walliston 2944 in the last twenty-four hours?" There was a pause. Mendel put his hand over the mouthpiece and turned to Smiley with a very slight grin. Smiley suddenly liked him a good deal. "She's asking the girls," said Mendel; "and she'll look at the dockets." He turned back to the telephone and began jotting down figures on the Superintendent's pad. He stiffened abruptly and leaned forward on the desk. "Oh yes." His voice was casual, in contrast to his attitude; "I wonder when she asked for that?" Another pause... "19.55 hours... a man, eh? The girls sure of that, is she?... Oh, I see, oh, well, that fixes that. Thanks very much indeed all the same. Well, ^ at least we know where we stand... not at all, you've been very helpful... just a theory, that's all... have to think again, won't we? Well, thanks very much. Very kind, keep it under your hat... Cheerio." He rang off, tore the page from the pad and put it in his pocket. Smiley spoke quickly: "There's a beastly caf'own the road. I need some breakfast. Come and have a cup of coffee." The telephone was ringing; Snliley could almost feel Maston the other end. Mendel looked at him for a moment and seemed to understand. They left it ringing and walked quickly out of the police station towards the High Street. The Fountain Caf'Proprietor Miss Gloria Adam) was all Tudor and horse brasses and local honey at sixpence more than anywhere else. Miss Adam herself dispensed the nastiest coffee south of Manchester and spoke of her customers as "My Friends." Miss Adam did not do business with friends, but simply robbed them, which somehow added to the illusion of genteel amateurism which Miss Adam was so anxious to preserve. Her origin was obscure, but she often spoke of her late father as "The Colonel." It was rumoured among those of Miss Adam's friends who had paid particularly dearly for their friendship that the colonelcy in question had been granted by the Salvation Army. Mendel and Smiley sat at a corner table near the fire, waiting for their order. Mendel looked at Smiley oddly: "The girl remembers the call clearly; it came right at the end of her shift--five to eight last night. A request for an 8.30 call this morning. It was made by Fennan himself--the girl is positive of that." "How?" "Apparently this Fennan had rung the exchange on Christmas Day and the same girl was on duty. Wanted to wish them all a Happy Christmas. She was rather bucked. They had quite a chat. She's sure it was the same voice yesterday, asking for the call. 'Very cultured gentleman,' she said." "But it doesn't make sense. He wrote a suicide letter at 10.30. What happened between 8 and 10.30?" "Who the devil's she?" "Sorry, sir. What we call your Adviser, sir. Pretty general in the Branch, sir. Very sorry, sir." How beautiful, thought Smiley, how absolutely beautiful. He opened the folder and looked at the fascimile. Mendel went on talking: "First suicide letter I've ever seen that was typed. First one I've seen with the time on it, for that matter. Signature looks O. K., though. Checked it at the station against a receipt he once signed for lost property. Right as rain." The letter was typed, probably a portable. Like the anonymous denunciation; that was a portable too. This one was signed with Fennan's neat, legible signature. Beneath the printed address at the head of the page was typed the date, and beneath that the time: 10.30 p.m.: "Dear Sir David, After some hesitation I have decided to take my life. I cannot spend my remaining years under a cloud of disloyalty and suspicion. I realise that my career is ruined, that I am the victim of paid informers. Yours sincerely, Samuel Fennan." Smiley read it through several times, his mouth pursed in concentration, his eyebrows raised a little as if in surprise. Mendel was asking him something: "How d'you get on to it?" "On to what?" "This early call business." "Oh, I took the call. Thought it was for me. It wasn't--it was the exchange with this thing. Even then the penny didn't drop. I assumed it was for her, you see. Went down and told her." "Down?" "Yes. They keep the telephone in the bedroom. It's a sort of bed-sitter, really... she used to be an invalid, you know, and they've left the room as it was then, I suppose. It's like a study, one end; books, typewriter, desk and so forth." "Typewriter?" "Yes. A portable. I imagine he did this letter on it. But you see when I took that call I'd forgotten it couldn't possibly be Mrs. Fennan who'd asked for it." "Why not?" "She's an insomniac--she told me. Made a sort of joke of it. I told her to get some rest and she just said: 'My body and I must put up with one another twenty hours a day. We have lived longer than most people already.' There was more of it--something about not enjoying the luxury of sleep. So why should she want a call at 8.30?" "Why should her husband--why should anyone? It's damn nearly lunch time. God help the Civil Service." "Exactly. That puzzles me too. The Foreign Office admittedly starts late--ten o'clock, I think. But even then Fennan would be pushed to dress, shave, breakfast and catch the train on time if he didn't wake til 8.30. Besides, his wife could call him." "She might have been shooting a line about not sleeping," said Mendel. "Women do, about insomnia and migraine and stuff. Makes people think they're nervous and temperamental. Cock, most of it." Smiley shook his head: "No, she couldn't have made the call, could she? She wasn't home till 10.45. But even supposing she made a mistake about the time she got back, she couldn't have gone to the telephone without seeing her husband's body first. And you're not going to tell me that her reaction on finding her husband dead was to go upstairs and ask for an early call?" They drank their coffee in silence for a while. "Another thing," said Mendel. "Yes?" "His wife got back from the theatre at quarter to eleven, right?" "That's what she says." "Did she go alone?" "No idea." "Bet she didn't. I'll bet she had to tell the truth there, and timed the letter to give herself an alibi." Smiley's mind went back to Eisa Fennan, her anger, her submission. It seemed ridiculous to talk about her in this way. No: not Eisa Fennan. No. "Where was the body found?" Smiley asked. "Bottom of the stairs." "Bottom of the stairs?" "True. Sprawled across the hall floor. Revolver underneath him." "And the note. Where was that?" "Beside him on the floor." "Anything else?" "Yes. A mug of cocoa in the drawing-room." "I see. Fennan decides to commit suicide. He asks the exchange to ring him at 8.30. He makes himself some cocoa and puts it in the drawing-room. He goes upstairs and types his last letter. He comes down again to shoot himself, leaving the cocoa undrunk. It all hangs together nicely." "Yes, doesn't it. Incidentally, hadn't you better ring your office?" He looked at Mendel equivocally. "That's the end of a beautiful friendship," he said. As he walked towards the coin box beside a door marked "Private" he heard Mendel saying: "I bet you say that to all the boys." He was actually smiling as he asked for Maston's number. Maston wanted to see him at once. He went back to their table. Mendel was stirring another cup of coffee as if it required all his concentration. He was eating a very large bun. Smiley stood beside him. "I've got to go back to London." "Well, this will put the cat among the pigeons." The weasel face turned abruptly towards him; "or will it?" He spoke with the front of his mouth while the back of it continued to deal with the bun. "If Fennan was murdered, no power on earth can prevent the Press from getting hold of the story," and to himself added: "I don't think Maston would like that. He'd prefer suicide." "Still, we've got to face that, haven't we?" Smiley paused, frowning earnestly. Already he could hear Maston deriding his suspicions, laughing them impatiently away. "I don't know," he said, "I really don't know." Back to London, he thought, back to Maston's Ideal Home, back to the rat-race of blame. And back to the unreality of containing a human tragedy in a three-page report. It was raining again, a warm incessant rain now, and in the short distance between the Fountain Caf'nd the police station he got very wet. He took off his coat and threw it into the back of the car. It was a relief to be leaving Walliston--even for London. As he turned on to the main road he saw out of the corner of his eye the figure of Mendel stoically trudging along the pavement towards the station, his grey trilby shapeless and blackened by the rain. It hadn't occurred to Smiley that he might want a lift to London, and he felt ungracious. Mendel, untroubled by the niceties of the situation, opened the passenger door and got in. "Bit of luck," he observed. "Hate trains. Cambridge Circus you going to? You can drop me Westminster way, can't you?" They set off and Mendel produced a shabby green tobacco tin and rolled himself a cigarette. He directed it towards his mouth, changed his mind and offered it to Smiley, lighting it for him with an extraordinary lighter that threw a two-inch blue flame. "You look worried sick," said Mendel. "I am." There was a pause. Mendel said: "It's the devil you don't know that gets you." They had driven another four or five miles when Smiley drew the car into the side of the road. He turned to Mendel. "Would you mind awfully if we drove back to Wallis-ton?" "Good idea. Go and ask her." He turned the car and drove slowly back into Wallis-ton, back to Merridale Lane. He left Mendel in the car and walked down the familiar gravel path. She opened the door and showed him into the drawing-room without a word. She was wearing the same dress, and Smiley wondered how she had passed the time since he had left her that morning. Had she been walking about the house or sitting motionless in the drawing-room? Or upstairs in the bedroom with the leather chairs? How did she see herself in her new widowhood? Could she take it seriously yet, was she still in that secretly elevated state which immediately follows bereavement? Still looking at herself in mirrors, trying to discern the change, the horror in her own face, and weeping when she could not? Neither of them sat down--both instinctively avoided a repetition of that morning's meeting. "There was one thing I felt I must ask you, Mrs. Fennan. I'm very sorry to have to bother you again." "About the call, I expect; the early morning call from the exchange." "Yes." "I thought that might puzzle you. An insomniac asks for an early morning call." She was trying to speak brightly. "Yes. It did seem odd. Do you often go to the theatre?" "Yes. Once a fortnight. I'm a member of the Wey-bridge Repertory Club you know. I try and go to everything they do. I have a seat reserved for me automatically on the first Tuesday of each run. My husband worked late on Tuesdays. He never came; he'd only go to classical theatre." "But he liked Brecht, didn't he? He seemed very thrilled with the 'Berliner Ensemble' performances in London." Smiley had a fleeting vision of Eisa Fennan as a child--a spindly, agile tomboy like George Sand's 'Petite Fadette'--half woman, half glib, lying girl. He saw her as a wheedling Backfisch, fighting like a cat for herself alone, and he saw her too, starved and shrunken in prison camp, ruthless in her fight for self-preservation. It was pathetic to witness in that smile the light of her early innocence, and a steeled weapon in her fight for survival. "I'm afraid the explanation of that call is very silly," she said. "I suffer from a terrible memory--really awful. Go shopping and forget what I've come to buy, make an appointment on the telephone and forget it the moment I replace the receiver. I ask people to stay the week-end and we are out when they arrive. Occasionally, when there is something I simply have to remember, I ring the exchange and ask for a call a few minutes before the appointed time. It's like a knot in one's handkerchief, but a knot can't ring a bell at you, can it?" Smiley peered at her. His throat felt rather dry, and he had to swallow before he spoke. "And what was the call for this time, Mrs. Fennan?" Again the enchanting smile: "There you are. I completely forget."