Invitation to Die

by Barbara Cleverly

  Watching Redfyre turning out the pockets of the greatcoat, he added, “Anything?”

  “Hardly anything. Linen handkerchief. Bit of change—a few pennies. Ah, and a half crown.”

  Beaufort nodded, recognising the significance of the coin. “Which means we can’t officially log him as ‘destitute.’ Fair enough! He has the price of a night’s lodging on him. Show that to any copper challenging him and he couldn’t be moved on for vagrancy. Accordingly, I shall enter him as ‘identity not established, no known abode, occupation unknown’ on my sheet.”

  “That would appear to be all in here. No fluff. And that’s a bit odd. You wouldn’t believe the contents of a tramp’s pockets! But there always are contents. They carry their most vital possessions about with them, and the pocket fluff you can expect to be an inch deep and a rich mixture of tobacco crumbs, bread crumbs, birdseed, half-sucked Fisherman’s Friend lozenges . . . Nothing like that here. Let’s take a look at the other one . . . Ah! A bottle of brandy. Half-drunk. Good stuff, too!” He showed the label to the doctor. “A prewar cognac, bottled by and bearing the label of Jude’s College cellars, no less.” He raised a speculative eye to the ornate roofscape of the neighbouring college building just visible over the wall between the thickening green canopies of chestnut, beech and larch.

  “Many of these old establishments have trading or family connections with southwest France,” the doctor commented. “Bordeaux . . . Cognac . . . once an English province, Aquitaine. I’ve sampled many a liquid-gold memento of more spacious times at college dinners around the town. Look, I’ll take that with me to the labs,” he offered.

  Both men handled the bottle with care, their hands sheathed in rubberised gloves.

  “Um . . . birdseed, Redfyre? I’m sure you mentioned birdseed. Am I missing something?”

  Redfyre smiled. “I’m not inventing! It’s not unknown for vagrants to lure the town pigeons with a trail of seed, nab them, wring their necks and pop them into the pot they keep on boil down in the meadows. I sometimes take them an offering myself—a bag of pearl barley’s always welcome, or a pound of marrow bones . . . a pheasant in the season.”

  “A sort of potluck supper?” The doctor found the idea entertaining. “Good lord! Well, power to their elbows! Too many of the blighters fouling up the pavements. Birds, I mean.”

  “Well, that would seem to be it,” Redfyre said, turning the pocket inside out. “Our chap doesn’t seem to have been a pigeon fancier. And there’s no door key, no penknife, not even a pencil stub or a cigarette end. Again—no pocket fluff.”

  “Try the inside pocket,” the doctor suggested. “My coat had a discreet ticket pocket on the inside left, I remember. Just big enough for a love letter, a photograph, or . . . well, a ticket.”

  “Oh, that’s interesting!” Redfyre took a white card from the ticket pocket and, holding it by the edges, showed it to Beaufort. ‘Invitation to Dine,’ does that say?”

  “Someone dropped an n somewhere along the line,” Beaufort remarked. “And—‘invited to break bread with’? Who uses such precious prose these days?”

  “The pretentious clots who think it’s stylish to call their dining group the ‘Amici Apicii.’ Friends of Apicius. It is the Roman cook we’re talking about, isn’t it? The one who wrote a cookery book? With rather exotic recipes, rotting fish sauce and all?”

  “I believe so, though you won’t find it on your kitchen shelf. No one’s yet thought to publish the text in English, though it’s available in Latin. Or Middle German. The chap was no Mrs. Beeton! ‘First, catch your hare and joint it . . . Five economical ways of cooking a turnip,’ and all that . . . This old Latin was famous for expensive and exotic ingredients like suckling pig and nightingales’ tongues. And his suppers consisted of several lavish courses.”

  The doctor frowned with the effort of struggling to dust off his classical schoolboy knowledge. He added thoughtfully: “These hosts, whoever they are, must be a very particular little appreciation society. Classicists and bons vivants. They shouldn’t be too difficult to track down. Oh dear! Harmless entertainment if you can afford it, I suppose. But what’s it doing in the pocket of a poor old tramp? He can hardly have been a dinner guest.” He grunted. “Six years or so of a starvation diet, followed by a festive blowout . . . well, that could result in a collapse of the digestive system and seizure, leading to death. Is someone secretly carrying out a socio-culinary experiment?”

  Redfyre pulled a rueful face. “This is Cambridge, as people are always reminding me. It’s entirely possible, but we won’t know until the learned paper’s published. Perhaps if we’re lucky, they’ll pass it to you for expert review, but I wouldn’t count on it. All we can do, Doc, is open him up and take a look at yesterday’s menu. Vital information! It’ll tell us whether he dined at the Hôtel Régence or Willie’s Whelk Stall. Lord knows what you’ll find; perhaps he washed it down with brandy! It was ‘a surfeit of lampreys’ that did it for King John when he sampled the culinary delights of Norfolk, and I don’t suppose he was particularly malnourished to start with.”

  Even the experienced doctor blanched a little, Redfyre judged mischievously, at the thought of untangling an overindulgence of young eels from a dead man’s innards.

  “No, indeed. Though it wasn’t eels or songbirds’ tongues that killed this chap, let’s not forget, however intriguing the thought. It was a short, sharp throttling.”

  “Serves me right for asking!” Detective Superintendent MacFarlane rolled his eyes in exaggerated exasperation. “Have you quite done, Redfyre? When I trip across my inspector roaming the station on a Sunday morning and I enquire as to what the blazes he’s doing here, that’s just me being polite—I don’t actually want him to tell me. I expect him to say, ‘Just on my way out. Sorry to disturb you, sir.’”

  He eyed his smiling, nonchalant inspector and added, “The good folk of the town are in church or chapel; the lowlifes are sleeping off Saturday night’s junketing. Even criminals need a day of rest, and this is it. Bugger off home, Redfyre. I’m not in a mood to be treated to chapter and verse of your morning’s adventures with a dead tramp in a graveyard.”

  “But we must consider the potential degrading of the crime scene, sir . . .”

  “Who says it’s a crime scene? You can’t know yet. Oh, sit down for a minute and listen.” His attention drifted for a moment to a letter open on the top of a pile in his in-tray, and he said thoughtfully, “If you’d kept better control of your dog, our corpse would still be peacefully tucked up awaiting discovery next week by the Bat Botherers, or whatever those interfering old biddies are calling themselves these days.” He shook with silent laughter. “I kid you not! They’re booked in for an inspection of your St. Mary’s Church and its graveyard.” He looked briefly at the sheet. “Oh, look! It’s scheduled for Monday teatime. That’s tomorrow!” He savoured the imagined moment of discovery of the corpse by a group of very earnest and vocal city ladies. “Ho, ho! Can you hear the shrieks and screams? Can you imagine the flutterings and faintings?”

  “A pipistrelle preservation team on manoeuvres?” Redfyre was charmed by the notion and exchanged a glance of boyish delight with his boss.

  “Glad to hear you’re an admirer,” MacFarlane said cryptically. “Personally, I can’t abide ’em! All nasty little claws, sharp teeth and dribble.”

  “And the bats they preserve are scarcely more attractive,” Redfyre supplied dutifully.

  “You’re not wrong, sonny. And these pipi-what’s-its, they’ve got leathery wings—fair makes you shudder! If they all caught the bat plague and died off tomorrow, really, who’d notice?”

  Redfyre grinned. “It’s because there are people like you about the place, sir, that we need people like the Bat Brigade. But I do know the group you mean. If I have it right, they are in some way involved with my Aunt Henrietta’s feminist group. Secretive, amorphous and deadly. But I’d ad
vise you not to underestimate them. In fact, I think you’ve got them quite wrong! Lady Laetitia and her handmaidens are a competent outfit. Had they stumbled upon the scene before Snapper, they would have proceeded from discovery of the body to solution of the case by teatime. They’d have had our man logged as an endangered species and the vicar arrested for keeping a disorderly graveyard.”

  “Don’t! I’ve locked antlers with that lot before! Believe me—they’ve got antlers. Sharpened ones. Whenever they’re out and about, accusations of bodily assault, trespass and foul language flow in and pile up on my desk. Accusations that are usually lodged against Lady L. herself. The ones that aren’t are by the lady against me. Can’t say I much mind being called ‘an oafish police lout with violent proclivities,’ but it’s the paperwork! Weeks of paperwork follow on every sodding outing! The ‘Fur, Fin and Feather Folk,’ they call themselves officially.” He allowed himself a moment to scorn the ear-catching alliteration, then, “Newly in association with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, I’m told. And now they’re taking bloody bats under their wing—”

  “Fur, Fin, Feather and Leather?” Redfyre could not resist.

  A crafty expression flitted across MacFarlane’s craggy features, and his eyes shifted again to his in-tray. “The vicar’s notified me of the invasion, and he requires that we provide him with a protection squad. Ha! Some hopes! I was going to ask you, as a neighbour, to stroll across and smile a bit, keep an eye out and see that they do no damage to the fabric of the church. Or the fabric of the vicar.” He sighed. “No green space or wild creature in Cambridge is safe from their ministrations. I blame Eleanor Roosevelt!”

  Better not to press enquiries, Redfyre thought, and eager to cut off a diatribe about the “wimmin” of Cambridge and now apparently the “wimmin” of the USA, he remarked brightly, “But at least the body’s not going anywhere, sir. He’s in safe hands.”

  “Ah! They sent you Doc Beaufort?”

  “They did. And lucky old us, that the good doctor is conscientious enough to put down his prelunch sherry glass, pop his chop back onto the pantry shelf and pick up his scalpel, don’t you agree, sir? He should have some results for us by tomorrow morning.”

  His shaft appeared to have hit home, since the superintendent glowered and said, “That’s enough of your bloody cheek! I say again—it’s a Sunday. I’m not supposed to be here. Nor are you. I just dropped in to get out from under the wife’s feet. We’ve got roast beef, and her mother’s helping in the kitchen. And if you detain me any longer with your exploits, I shan’t get it rare.”

  “Sorry, sir! I’ll think of you tucking into the pink sirloin and the horseradish in an hour’s time when I’m down at the dissecting table, examining the contents of the murdered man’s stomach,” Redfyre replied with an easy smile. It was a lie. He was attempting—unsuccessfully—to prick the super’s conscience. His arrangement to attend Beaufort’s autopsy was for Monday morning. But he’d noted that his boss, despite the bluff and bluster, was intrigued. He’d expected to find him at the station. On a Sunday morning, his warm, wood-panelled office on the first floor of the ugly building in St. Andrew’s Street regularly became MacFarlane’s redoubt. A swift visit to the next-door off-licence to buy drinks for lunch had become a ritual. Redfyre let his gaze drift without emphasis over the array of bottles lined up on the superintendent’s desk. He noted six half-pints of India pale ale to wash down the Sunday roast, along with two bottles of Mackeson’s stout on the side in recognition of a mother-in-law visiting day.

  MacFarlane sighed. “Go on, then! Help yourself to one of those glasses and pour yourself one of these, why don’t you?” he invited his inspector. “No? Well, make it quick. So, the doc reckons it’s a case of murder, does he? Strangulation? Funny, that . . . Not many blokes get themselves strangled. Bashed over the head, shoved off a height, shot with grandpa’s old rifle, lynched even. But a hands-on throttling . . . nah! One chap with his hands around another chap’s neck?” MacFarlane grimaced at the uncomfortable thought. “That’s not natural!”

  “In Cambridge perhaps, sir, but not unknown in a military situation. Trench raiding, overcoming a sentry, an occasion where silence is necessary or where no other weapon is . . . er . . . to hand. I believe it to be an aggressive combat technique now taught to His Majesty’s troops as a matter of course. I rather think the handbooks refer to it as a ‘self-defence skill.’”

  MacFarlane grunted. “A gross euphemism, but none the less effective for that. Still, why would anyone waste their time and energy topping a down and out?”

  “Down on his luck, certainly but I’m not sure about ‘out.’”

  “Ah yes, the half crown. Marks him as a professional destitute, at least. Knows the rules and plays by them. He’s probably on record at the shelters. Follow that up tomorrow, will you, Redfyre? And a white linen hankie, you say? That’s a novel touch, isn’t it? Mucky red spotted square of cotton is what they usually carry about.”

  “May have been bought at a local store, sir. Something else I can ask Thoday to track down.”

  “But the brandy? Do you reckon he nicked it? There’s only one place you can get this stuff, after all, and it’s proudly displayed on the label. You can’t get the likes of that over the counter at the Beer-Off shop.”

  “Perfectly possible. But only if he could get into the college in the first place, and we all know how hard that is to do. I doubt Houdini could manage it! They won’t let the police in unless they’re waving warrants and police-issue Brownings.”

  “And once inside, how in hell did he penetrate as far as the wine cellar? It’s hardly the first room you wander into. And, for obvious reasons, college wine cellars are always under lock and key and the key in the pocket of a gimlet-eyed male custodian.”

  “Could he have swiped it from the drinks cabinet in the master’s lodge?”

  “Even harder to access, I should imagine. Either way, we’re going to need to get hold of a plan of the college buildings.” MacFarlane frowned in dismay, anticipating the difficulty and the tediousness of the task before them. “I say . . .”

  Reading his thoughts and approving them, Redfyre was already on his feet and reaching down two beer glasses from a shelf. “Sure you can spare a couple?”

  “The wife won’t be counting. Hands off the stout, though. That’s for Hilda, my mother-in-law.”

  “Two stouts, sir?”

  “That’s what it usually takes.”

  “I thought you got on well with your mother-in-law?”

  An unattractive expression of piety flitted across the superintendent’s face as he said modestly: “In twenty years, she’s never heard a disobliging word from me. Because I’ve never yet managed to interrupt her! Ply her with a couple of milk stouts, though, and she’ll collapse into her apple crumble and spend the afternoon snoring on the sofa. Works a treat!”

  MacFarlane took a deep swig of his beer and, fortified, said carefully: “Bloody colleges! Unless you’re perfectly sure of your information and facts, don’t think of going near them! You are not to approach that college, Redfyre, until you have a full report from Beaufort, have established an identity for this bloke and get clearance from me. Understand?”

  “Well, I wasn’t thinking of ringing the front doorbell and asking if they were missing a corpse! Wouldn’t dream of storming the college authorities without backup and from a securely defended position, sir.”

  “That’s the ticket! Wish I could believe you. But on that understanding, I say formally: you have the case and may call on Sergeant Thoday for assistance. Plus any uniform you need. That new lad—Constable Jenkins—seems handy, though he’s got a bit of a mouth on him. You should get on well. And we’ve always got Dr. Beaufort in our corner . . . Be interesting to hear what our subject spews forth. Brandy, though . . .

  “Oh my God! Brandy!” MacFarlane took another swig of his ale, his mind app
arently somewhere in the past. A past he was revisiting, Redfyre judged, with a chill blend of horror and guilt.

  “Inspector, there’s more to this than meets the eye. Even a sharp eye like yours.” He stirred in his seat, ill at ease, then, coming to a decision: “Look here—if you have a minute, you might try glancing through that black box file over there. Third shelf down.” He pointed with his pencil.

  Redfyre looked over his shoulder. “The one with the silver pull handle? It looks like a coffin, sir!”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what it is. A miniature coffin. A container for dead things . . . old bones, regrets, mistakes and memories. It predates you, Redfyre. Predates me! It goes back quite a few years, in fact. I inherited it from my predecessor, and I’m sad to say I’ve been obliged to add to it myself over the years.”

  He fell silent for a moment, then, responding to Redfyre’s questioning eyebrow: “Dead cases. It represents—records, if you like—our failures. Unsolved crimes. Shamingly, you’ll find about twenty of them. Thinning out latterly, I’m glad to say, as our techniques and training improve. Still, I’d rather nail it down and not have to add any more.”

  “But you think this present case is headed for the coffin box, I’m guessing?”

  “It’s got that feel about it. I can always tell. And this is the odd thing, Redfyre—and the reason I’m inviting you to make free with our darkest secrets—there’s a precedent. Well, make that three or four precedents. Going back over six years or so, I’d say. If you sift through, you’ll find a number of odd bods: some transients, all male, all unknowns and untraceable. Don’t you worry your pretty little head, though: I’ll mark your card and draw your attention to one or two that chime with this tramp killing of yours. All found dead on Cambridge streets. Their bodies deposited with no attempt to hide them.”