A Murder of Quality (George Smiley Series Book 2)

by John Le Carré

used to think it was clever to confuse comedy with tragedy. Now I wish I could distinguish them.’ He

The Voice had been founded at the turn of the century by old Lord Landsbury, together with a Nonconformist daily newspaper and the Temperance Gazette.

‘The value of intelligence depends on its breeding.’ That was John Landsbury’s favourite dictum. Until you know the pedigree of the information you cannot evaluate a report.

And what was more, there was not a doubt in Smiley’s mind that Fielding had seen it too, that in that look which passed between them was a pact of fear, a warning perhaps, so that from that moment Fielding’s manner changed, he grew sullen and preoccupied, in a way that puzzled Smiley long afterwards.

D’Arcy was much in evidence, fluttering here and there before the ceremony like an anxious beadle; and Mr Cardew had come to guide poor Stella through the unfamiliarities of High Anglican procedure.

once in the war he had been described by his superiors as possessing the cunning of Satan and the conscience of a virgin, which seemed to him not wholly unjust.

Smiley himself was one of those solitaries who seem to have come into the world fully educated at the age of eighteen. Obscurity was his nature, as well as his profession.

But this fear, this servility, this dependence, had developed in Smiley a perception for the colour of human beings: a swift, feminine sensitivity to their characters and motives. He knew mankind as a huntsman knows his cover, as a fox the wood.

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.

She was marvellous at helping without managing. The rest of the wives,’ she added bitterly, ‘are awfully good at managing, but don’t help at all.’

had been one of Smiley’s cardinal principles in research, whether among the incunabula of an obscure poet or the laboriously gathered fragments of intelligence, not to proceed beyond the evidence. A fact, once logically arrived at, should not be extended beyond its natural significance.

Urgent equals ephemeral, and ephemeral equals unimportant.’

David Cameron’s Cabinet is not as blessed in this respect as Eden’s was, but London’s Mayor is widely regarded as his principal competitor for the top job, and he of course is an Old Etonian, so we may all breathe safely.

surely be unique in providing an educational gravy train that enables a self-selected few to arrive at the top of the social ladder without the smallest notion of how the other ninety-odd per cent live, work, skimp and strive.