优质杀手 (1962)

A Murder of Quality is the second novel by John le Carré, published in 1962. It features George Smiley, the most famous of le Carré's recurring characters, in his only book set outside the espionage community.

Plot summary

In the early 1960s, having retired from Britain's intelligence service after World War II, Ailsa Brimley is now editor of a small Christian nonconformist magazine in London called Christian Voice. Many of its readers and their families have been supporters of the magazine since its inception. Brimley, who personally runs the magazine's advice column, receives a letter from a reader, Stella Rode, who claims that her husband, a public school junior master in the town of Carne, is plotting to kill her. Because Stella's family has been connected with the magazine for generations, Brimley takes the matter seriously. She approaches her former wartime colleague, retired intelligence officer George Smiley, and asks him to help. Smiley was a good friend of the late brother of Terence Fielding, now a senior master at the Carne School. Fielding must know Stella and her husband, so Smiley telephones him. He learns that Stella was found murdered in her home the previous night. Brimley, horrified that Stella's fears have come true, implores Smiley to go to Carne and look into the matter. Smiley agrees.

Smiley is introduced to Rigby, the local police detective in charge of the investigation. Rigby, learning of Smiley's connection to the school, welcomes his help in getting information from school personnel who have so far been reluctant to talk to the police. Stella was beaten to death in her home; her body found by her husband Stanley when he returned late at night from Fielding's house. The Rodes had been at Fielding's for a dinner party earlier that evening, and Stanley had forgotten his briefcase there. He had to go back to Fielding's to retrieve it because it contained exam papers which needed marking urgently. In his absence, Stella was murdered.

Footprints of large Wellington boots are found approaching the house in the snow, but none are found leaving it. The boot prints and the manner of the killing tell the police that the culprit was a tall, strong man, but Rigby's superior believes that the murder was perpetrated by a homeless madwoman, Janie Lyn, whom Stella had befriended. The apparent murder weapon, a piece of thick electrical cable, is found in a ditch four miles away, stained with blood and Stella's hair. This electrical cable had been used by Stanley several weeks earlier in a science lesson, but he could not have abandoned it in four miles away because he had been under observation the whole time.

Presenting himself as a representative of Brimley's magazine who is writing Stella's obituary, Smiley talks to some of the Carne School faculty and to others in the town who knew the Rodes. Smiley finds a class division between "town and gown" at Carne, as well as religious hostility between adherents of the Church of England among the Carne faculty and Nonconformists like Stella. None of this however seems to provide a credible motive for murder.

While walking back to his hotel from the Rodes' house, he is startled by the appearance of Janie. She tells him that she witnessed the Devil flying on "silver wings" at the time of the murder. The police eventually find her squatting in an abandoned village church, with some beads she took from the body, and they arrest her for the crime.

The examination of the murder scene has told the police that the murderer must have been "covered in blood" and used leather gloves. Smiley learns that Stella had volunteered to collect secondhand clothing for a refugee charity in London. At his request, Brimley goes to the charity's headquarters to examine parcels of clothing sent there from Carne. In one such parcel she finds clothing stained with blood, including a plastic raincoat (the "silver wings" described by Janie), the gloves, and the boots. The killer put the items into one of the parcels that were sent on to the charity.

Another key piece of evidence seems to be Stanley's briefcase containing the exam papers, left unattended for a time at Fielding's house on the night of the murder. When Tim Perkins, a boy in Fielding's school house, achieves a suspiciously high score on the exam, it looks as though he may have cheated by examining the contents of the briefcase before Stanley retrieved it later that night. Perkins is killed in a bicycle accident. Smiley visits Fielding, who appears devastated by the death of Tim Perkins. Smiley was already aware that Fielding was to retire at the end of the current school term. Fielding tells Smiley that he will have to get another job since he will not receive a pension like other retired masters — he was considered a "temporary" master at the school due to a criminal conviction for homosexual acts dating from many years earlier. Fielding tells Smiley that Perkins didn't cheat on the exam, but that he cheated for the boy, who was in danger of losing his place at the school due to his poor academic performance. Fielding himself, he claims, altered the boy's exam paper so that he would get a higher grade. He also says that he saw in Stanley's briefcase the piece of heavy electrical cable, that police believe was the murder weapon.

Smiley returns to London, only to find that Stanley has gone there to see him and Brimley. Stanley reveals that Stella was a pathological liar and a sadist, who delighted in obtaining damaging information about the backgrounds of people at Carne and using the threat of revealing it to torment them.