A Murder of Quality by John le Carré Page A

gestures and their words, record the interplay of glance and movement, as a huntsman can record the twisted bracken and the broken twig, or as a fox detects the signs of danger.
    Thus, while he waited patiently for Glaston’s reply and recalled the crowded events of the last forty-eight hours, he was able to order and assess them with detachment. What was the cause of D’Arcy’s attitude to Fielding, as if they were unwilling partners to a shabby secret? Staring across the neglected hotel gardens towards Carne Abbey, he was able to glimpse behind the lead roof of the Abbey the familiar battlements of the school: keeping the new world out and the old world secure. In his mind’s eye he saw the Great Court now, as the boys came out of Chapel: the black-coated groups in the leisured attitudes of eighteenth-century England. And he remembered the other school beside the police station: Carne High School; a little tawdry place like a porter’s lodge in an empty graveyard, as detached from the tones of Carne as its brick and flint from the saffron battlements of School Hall.
    Yes, he reflected, Stanley Rode had made a long, long journey from the Grammar School at Branxome. And if he had killed his wife, then the motive, Smiley was sure, and even the means, were to be found in that hard road to Carne.
    ‘It was kind of you to come,’ said Glaston; ‘kind of Miss Brimley to send you. They’re good people at the Voice ; always were.’ He said this as if ‘good’ were an absolute quality with which he was familiar.
    ‘You’d better read the letters, Mr Glaston. The second one will shock you, I’m afraid, but I’m sure you’ll agree that it would be wrong of me not to show it to you.’ They were sitting in the lounge, the mammoth plants like sentinels beside them.
    He handed Glaston the two letters, and the old man took them firmly and read them. He held them a good way from him to read, thrusting his strong head back, his eyes half closed, the crisp line of his mouth turned down at the corners. At last he said:
    ‘You were with Miss Brimley in the war, were you?’
    ‘I worked with John Landsbury, yes.’
    ‘I see. That’s why she came to you?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Are you Chapel?’
    ‘No.’
    He was silent for a while, his hands folded on his lap, the letters before him on the table.
    ‘Stanley was Chapel when they married. Then he went over. Did you know that?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Where I come from in the North, we don’t do that. Chapel was something we’d stood up for and won. Almost like the Vote.’
    ‘I know.’
    His back was as straight as a soldier’s. He looked stern rather than sad. Quite suddenly, his eyes turned towards Smiley, and he looked at him long and carefully.
    ‘Are you a schoolmaster?’ he asked, and it occurred to Smiley that in his day Samuel Glaston had been a very shrewd man of business.
    ‘No … I’m more or less retired.’
    ‘Married?’
    ‘I was.’
    Again the old man fell silent, and Smiley wished he had left him alone.
    ‘She was a great one for chatter,’ he said at last.
    Smiley said nothing.
    ‘Have you told the police?’
    ‘Yes, but they knew already. That is, they knew that Stella thought her husband was going to murder her. She’d tried to tell Mr Cardew …’
    ‘The Minister?’
    ‘Yes. He thought she was overwrought and … deluded.’
    ‘Do you think she wasn’t?’
    ‘I don’t know. I just don’t know. But from what I have heard of your daughter I don’t believe she was unbalanced. Something roused her suspicions, something frightened her very much. I don’t believe we can just disregard that. I don’t believe it was a coincidence that she was frightened before she died. And therefore I don’t believe that the beggar-woman murdered her.’
    Samuel Glaston nodded slowly. It seemed to Smiley that the old man was trying to show interest, partly to be polite, and partly because if he did not it would be a confession that he had lost interest in life