The Dog It Was That Died

The Dog It Was That Died is a play by the British playwright Tom Stoppard.

Written for BBC Radio in 1982, it concerns the dilemma faced by a spy over whom he actually works for. The play was also adapted for television by Stoppard, and broadcast in 1988. The title is taken from Oliver Goldsmith's poem "An Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog".

Rupert Purvis works for "Q6", a department of an unnamed espionage agency of the British Government. As the play begins, he is in the process of committing suicide by jumping off Waterloo Bridge into the Thames. However, the attempt goes wrong when he falls not into the water but onto a passing barge, breaking his legs and killing a dog which was on the deck.

Over the course of the play, the reasons for this emerge. Some years ago, Purvis was approached by a Soviet spy named Rashnikov, who asked him to work as a double agent. Purvis reported this to his British superiors, who told him to pretend to work as a Soviet double agent whilst really working for them. However, Purvis also recalls that Rashnikov had told him to tell his British masters that he was being recruited, effectively setting up a double bluff ahead of time. Purvis also told this to the British – but is worried that when he did so, it was again because Rashnikov told him to do so. The upshot is that the British and the Russians have been using Purvis to shuttle false information between each other; but to allay the other side's suspicions, each has been giving real information to the other as well.

The result of this is that Purvis is no longer sure who his employer is – is he really working for the Russians or the British? Purvis's manager Giles Blair visits Purvis at Clifftops, a rest home on the Norfolk coast which is maintained by the agency for former spies who have suffered breakdowns. In the process of finding Purvis, Blair encounters not one but two inmates, both of whom pose as medical staff. The result is that when he finally meets the real administrator, Doctor Seddon, he is highly suspicious, and when Seddon tries to interest him in the guano he has found from a colony of bats in the bell tower (Blair: "Bats? In the belfry?!" Seddon: "Mmm. Had 'em for years and never realised."), he makes hasty excuses and runs away, bumping into Purvis as he does so.

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