George Smiley is called by a wartime colleague, Miss Brimley, who now publishes a small Christian magazine, to investigate a "death menace" letter sent by a reader who claims her husband, a boarding school instructor, is trying to kill her. The brother of Fielding, a classics professor who was one of Smiley's close wartime associates in the Circus, is also an instructor at the school where the woman's husband teaches, the famous Carne College.
Unfortunately, the woman is killed before Smiley can even talk to her, and Smiley goes to the school to investigate, in an effort to ease Miss Brimley's concern that her failure to call the police was in some way a cause of the woman's death |
