Smiley returns to Rode, anxious to obtain any more information about Stella in the hope that he can catch both her and Perkins' murderer, believing both crimes to be linked. Under pressure, Stanley Rode buckles and admits that his wife was severely two-faced. In public, she would present herself as apparently pious and ostentatious, whilst in private, his wife was a pathological liar who emotionally abused him and viciously beat her own dog in order to portray him as mentally insane. Smiley also learns that Stella's social situation in Carne was brought on by her own actions, in which she habitually humiliated, blackmailed, and terrorised the town's residents, unable to be touched on account of her knowledge of intimate details of people's social faux pas and private secrets, as well as her kindly external demeanour.