'A distilling company,' said Mr Pelling grandly. 'My daughter Elizabeth owned and managed one of the major distilling concessions in that wartorn country.'
'And the name?'
'She was selling kegs of unbranded whisky to American layabouts,' said Mrs Pelling, to the window. 'On commission, twenty per cent. They bought their kegs and left them to mature in Scotland as an investment to be sold off later.'
'They, in this case, being... ?' Smiley asked.
'Then her lover went and filched the money,' Mrs Pelling said. 'It was a racket. Rather a good one.'
'Sheer unadulterated balderdash!' Mr Pelling shouted. 'The woman's insane. Disregard her.'
'And what was her address at that time, please?' Smiley asked.
'Put down representative,' said Mr Pelling, shaking his head as if things were quite out of hand. 'Distiller's representative and secret agent.'
'She was living with a pilot,' said Mrs Pelling. 'Tiny, she called him. If it hadn't been for Tiny, she'd have starved. He was gorgeous but the war had turned him inside out. Well, of course it would! Same with our boys, wasn't it? Missions night after night, day after day.' Putting back her head, she screamed very loud: 'Scramble!'
'She's mad,' Mr Pelling explained.
'Nervous wrecks at eighteen, half of them. But they stuck it. They loved Churchill, you see. They loved his guts.'
'Blind mad,' Mr Pelling repeated. 'Barking. Mad as a newt.'
'I'm sorry,' said Smiley, writing busily. 'Tiny who? The pilot? What was his name?'
'Ricardo. Tiny Ricardo. A lamb. He died you know.' she said, straight at her husband. 'Lizzie was heartbroken, wasn't she, Nunc? Still, it was probably the best way.'
'She wasn't living with anyone, you anthropoid ape! It was a put-up, the whole thing. She was working for the British Secret Service!'
'Oh my Christ,' said Mrs Pelling hopelessly.
'Not your Christ. My Mellon. Take that down, Oates. Let me see you write it down. Mellon. The name of her commanding officer in the British Secret Service was M-E-L-L-O-N. Like the fruit but twice as many l's. Mellon. Pretending to be a plain simple trader. And making quite a decent thing of it. Naturally, an intelligent man, he would. But underneath' — Mr Pelling drove a fist into his open palm making an astonishingly loud noise — 'but underneath the bland and affable exterior of a British businessman, this same Mellon, two l's, was fighting a secret and lonely war against Her Majesty's enemies and my Lizzie was helping him do it. Drug dealers, Chinese, homosexuals, every single foreign element sworn to the subversion of our island nation, my gallant daughter Lizzie and her friend Colonel Mellon between them fought to check their insidious progress! And that's the honest truth.'
'Now ask me where she gets it from,' said Mrs Pelling, and leaving the door open, trailed away down the corridor grumbling to herself. Glancing after her, Smiley saw her pause and seem to tilt her head, beckoning to him from the gloom. They heard a distant door slam shut.
'It's true,' said Pelling stoutly, but more quietly. 'She did, she did, she did. My daughter was a senior and respected operative of our British Intelligence.'
Smiley did not reply at first, he was too intent on writing. So for a while there was no sound but the slow scratch of his pen on paper, and the rustle as he turned the page.
'Good. Well then, I'll just take those details too, if I may. In confidence naturally. We come across quite a lot of it in our work, I don't mind telling you.'
'Right,' said Mr Pelling, and sitting himself vigorously on a plastic-covered dumpty, he pulled a single sheet of paper from his wallet and thrust it into Smiley's hand. It was a letter, handwritten, one and a half sides long. The script was at once grandiose and childish, with high, curled I's for the first person, while the other characters appeared more cautiously. It began 'My dearest darling Pops' and it ended 'Your One True Daughter Elizabeth', and the message between, the bulk of which Smiley committed to his memory, ran like this: 'I have arrived in Vientiane which is a flat town, a bit French and wild but don't worry, I have important news for you which I have to impart immediately. It is possible you may not hear from me for a bit but don't worry even if you hear bad things. I'm all right and cared for and doing it for a Good Cause you would be proud of. As soon as I arrived I contacted the British Trade Consul Mister Mackervoor a British and he sent me for a job to Mellon. I'm not allowed to tell you so you'll have to trust me but Mellon is his name and he's a well-off English trader here but that's only half the story. Mellon is Dispatching me on a mission to Hong Kong and I'm to investigate Bullion and Drugs, pretending otherwise, and he's got men everywhere to look after me and his real name isn't Mellon. Mackervoor is in on it only secretly. If anything happens to me it will be worth it anyway because you and I know the Country matters and what's one life among so many in Asia where life counts for naught anyway? This is good Work, Dad, the kind we dreamed of you and me and specially you when you were in the war fighting for your family and loved ones. Pray for me and look after Mum. I will always love you even in prison.'
Smiley handed back the letter. 'There's no date,' he objected flatly. 'Can you give me the date, Mr Pelling? Even approximately?'
Pelling gave it not approximately but exactly. Not for nothing had he spent his working life handling the Royal Mails.
'She's never written to me since,' said Mr Pelling proudly, folding the letter back into his wallet. 'Not a word, not a peep have I had out of her from that day to this. Totally unnecessary. We're one. It was said, I never alluded to it, neither did she. She'd tipped me the wink. I knew. She knew I knew. You'll never get finer understanding between daughter and father than that. Everything that followed: Ricardo, whatever his name was, alive, dead, who cares? Some Chinaman she's on about, forget him. Men friends, girl friends, business, disregard everything you hear. It's cover, the lot. They own her, they control her completely. She works for Mellon and she loves her father. Finish.'
'You've been very kind,' said Smiley, packing together his papers. 'Please don't worry, I'll see myself out.'
'See yourself how you like,' Mr Pelling said with a flash of his old wit.
As Smiley closed the door, he had resumed his armchair, and was ostentatiously looking for his place in the Daily Telegraph.
In the dark corridor the smell of drink was stronger. Smiley had counted nine paces before the door slammed, so it must have been the last door on the left, and the furthest from Mr Pelling. It might have been the lavatory, except the lavatory was marked with a sign saying 'Buckingham Palace Rear Entrance'. He called her name very softly and heard her yell 'Get out.' He stepped inside and found himself in her bedroom, and Mrs Pelling sprawled on the bed with a glass in her hand, riffling through a heap of picture postcards. The room itself, like her husband's, was fitted up for a separate existence, with a cooker and a sink and a pile of unwashed plates. Round the walls were snapshots of a tall and very pretty girl, some with boy friends, some alone, mainly against oriental backgrounds. The smell was of gin and cat.
'He won't leave her alone,' Mrs Pelling said. 'Nunc won't. Never could. He tried but he never could. She's beautiful, you see,' she explained for the second time, and rolled on to her back while she held a postcard above her head to read it.
'Will he come in here?'
'Not if you dragged him, darling.'
Smiley closed the door, sat in a chair, and once more took out his notebook.
'She's got a dear sweet Chinaman,' she said, still gazing at the postcard upside down. 'She went to him to save Ricardo and then she fell in love with him. He's a real father to her, the first she ever had. It's all come out right after all. All the bad things. They're over. He calls her Liese,' she said. 'He thinks it's prettier for her. Funny really. We don't like Germans. We're patriotic. And now he's fiddling her a lovely job, isn't he?'