# A Murder of Quality

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 the editor of a small Christian noncomformist 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, the 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 reaches out to him. From Fielding he learns that Stella was found murdered in her home a few days ago. Brimley, horrified that Stella's fears have actually 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. It seems Stella was found beaten to death in her home, found by her husband Stanley when he returned late at night from walking over to Fielding's house. The Rodes had been at Fielding's for a dinner party earlier that evening, and Stanley had absentmindedly left his briefcase there. He had to go back to Fielding's to retrieve it because it contained the questions for an exam he was giving his students. The footprints near the house 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, Janey Lynn, whom Stella had befriended. Smiley and Rigby are unconvinced. Smiley finds an invidious class division between "town and gown" at Carne, as well as religious hostility between adherents of the Church of England among the Carne School faculty and Nonconformists like Stella. But none of this seems to provide a credible motive for murder.
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. While walking back to his hotel from the Rodes' house, he is startled by the appearance of Janey. She tells him that she witnessed the Devil flying on "silver wings" at the time of the murder. The local police eventually find her squatting in an abandoned village church and arrest her for the crime.
The examination of Stella's body has told the police that the murderer must have been "covered in blood," but little physical evidence was found at the crime scene. 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 Janey; apparently the killer wore it to protect himself from bloodstains and then put it into one of the boxes that was sent on to the charity. Another key piece of evidence seems to be Stanley's briefcase containing the exam questions, left unattended for a time at Fielding's place on the night of the murder. When Tim Perkins, a boy in Fielding's school house, achieves a suspiciously high score on the exam after Stella's death, it looks as though he may have cheated by examining the contents of the briefcase before Stanley retrieved it later that night. Suspicion grows when Perkins is found lying dead at the side of the road after being killed in a hit and run. Did he see something in the briefcase that revealed the identity of Stella's killer?
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, used the information in the briefcase to alter the boy's exam paper before it could be corrected so that he would get a higher grade. He also says that he saw in the briefcase a piece of heavy coaxial cable once used by Stanley in a class demonstration, an item that Stanley later told police he had lost and that police believe must have been the murder weapon. When Rigby hears of this he obtains his superior's permission to arrest Stanley, but finds that Stanley is missing.
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 in using the threat of revealing it to torment them in any way she could. Stanley insists that though he had come to hate Stella, he did not kill her.
Later that week Smiley hosts Fielding, who is in London to interview for a job, for dinner at his home. He reveals he has found that Fielding's story about the briefcase is a lie – police examination of Perkins' exam paper shows that everything written was done in Perkins' own hand. This means that Fielding was attempting to frame Stanley and is himself the killer of both Stella and Perkins. Smiley believes Fielding was one of the people Stella was blackmailing. She had learned of Fielding's conviction and was threatening to disclose the information to make it impossible for Fielding to get another position. Perkins had to die because he had cheated for himself on the exam, meaning that he had seen the contents of the briefcase the night of Stella's murder and could expose Fielding's attempt to frame Stanley. By prearrangement with Smiley, Rigby and his men arrive to arrest Fielding. Beseeching Smiley to intervene and save him, Fielding is taken away as Smiley looks sadly after him.

## Characters in A Murder of Quality

* George Smiley – an officer of the Circus
* Ailsa Brimley – The editor of a magazine Christian Voice.
* Stella Rode – A long time subscriber to Christian Voice.
* Stanley Rode – A grammar-school educated teacher at Carne school. Stella Rode's husband.
* Terence Fielding – A history teacher at Carne school.
* Janie Lynn – A homeless woman. Murder suspect.
* Tim Perkins – Head boy in Fielding's House.
* Miss Truebody – Housekeeper to Terence Fielding.
* Inspector Rigby – A local police officer investigating the murder.

## Television and radio adaptations

John le Carré himself adapted the novel for Thames Television. A Murder of Quality was shown on the ITV network in 1991. It stars Denholm Elliott as George Smiley, Glenda Jackson as Ailsa Brimley, Joss Ackland as Terence Fielding, Billie Whitelaw as Mad Janie, David Threlfall as Stanley Rode and a teenage Christian Bale as Tim Perkins.
The novel was read on BBC Radio 4's Story Time in 1976, and dramatised on the same station in 1981. More recently, in 2009, BBC Radio 4 broadcast A Murder of Quality as the second in a series which featured all the Smiley novels (The Complete Smiley), with Simon Russell Beale in the main role.