Invitation to Die Read online

  “Or a camp follower?” someone suggested peevishly.

  “I’d have said, rather, a regimental pipe band, all raucous squeals and no sabres,” sneered Hubert Sackville.

  “Nothing like pinning your colours to the mast,” Rendlesham offered.

  “But you must be prepared to have them instantly shot to ribbons.” Fanshawe wagged a warning finger.

  Dickie thought he must be the first person to have mentioned the female cause—or possibly even the word “female”—within these walls. Judging by their startled reaction and the quips that followed thick and fast, he’d annoyed the hell out of them. He’d begun to understand how their game worked.

  The hounds fell silent, eyeing him, assessing his lies and the confidence with which he’d reeled them off. Looking for his strengths? More likely homing in on the jugular, he decided.

  As pack leader, Fanshawe broke the silence. He took a careful sip of his sherry to demonstrate a state of effortless superiority, then asked, “Did someone just sound les trois coups? Give a blast on the trumpet? I missed it.” He directed a humourless smile at Dickie. “You have drawn our attention—what do you now propose? Is this the moment you produce your battered attaché case and try to sell each of us a souvenir Girton tie? A set of Trinity apostle spoons in white metal? A winsome teddy bear sporting a Jude’s scarf?” He turned to the others, hands raised in appeal. “Rendlesham, you didn’t warn us that you were offering us an itinerant haberdasher! A wandering huckster!”

  “No salesman’s pitch, I assure you!” Dickie said cheerfully. “The university outfitters carry stocks and can supply any gentleman wishing to display his support for the ladies. They open at nine. Mind you don’t get trampled in the rush.”

  With understanding of the game they were playing had come a stomach-wrenching spasm of contempt, but also a measure of self-assurance. Several sharp barbs had been launched at his hide, but he had shrugged them off and lowered his horns. He knew what to do next. He’d snort a bit, paw the ground, choose from among them a target for his utter derision and charge. No need for a massacre. It would be enough to leave one ceremonial corpse behind in the sand as a warning to the others.

  He began to relax. He even felt the stirrings of embarrassment that he’d sunk so far into idiocy as to prepare himself for an actual physical attempt on his life. What a chump! He loosened his grip on the knuckleduster he’d borrowed from Solly at the shelter and hoped the ugly metal contraption wasn’t detectable in his jacket pocket. Overkill! The last time he’d used Solly’s Sweetener in earnest, he’d nearly severed his own finger.

  He glanced, still smiling, at the lineup of adversaries. A row of weeds! The worst he could suffer from this lot was a bruised ego. He’d settle for that. This was a deluded, self-congratulatory, twisted bunch of nincompoops, he reckoned, and he was looking forward now to giving them a comeuppance they would understand.

  “Sadism”? Was that the word for their mental affliction?

  Common enough behaviour, taking pleasure from inflicting pain on others. And as old as mankind. You had to wonder why it had had to wait until the present day to acquire a name for itself. The Marquis de Sade? One hundred years in the grave now, and good riddance! That aristocratic libertine had been a bursting boil on the face of humanity, Dickie thought, the one-man cesspit of the ancien régime. But he was a symptom of the disease, and no one man, however evil, deserved to have his name forever linked with such a condition. In his violent life, Dickie had seen many examples of cruelty, had even felt the hot surge towards it in himself, recognised it for what it was and controlled it.

  But it seemed to be a mental condition readily inherited. Children, left unchecked, took delight in taunting and humiliating other weaker children. Some never responded to the civilising influences of kindly mothers and fathers, priests and schoolmasters. Some, indeed, were pushed deeper down into the pit by those very angels who were meant to inspire and correct them.

  The row of weeds lined up against him deserved his pity, not his anger. For all their advantages of wealth and education, their veneer of civilisation, they were rotten at their core, and it was too late to save them. By the natural laws of survival of the species, they should be put down like rabid dogs. He’d shot down without compunction lines of men much less deserving of annihilation than this selection. Their supper parties, he calculated, were the mental equivalent of the snaring and torture of a defenceless kitten by a gang of little boys. They trawled the streets looking for someone who would provide them with good sport. A stranger who, with the lure of a place at their dinner table, would be a butt for their cruel jokes, their twisted wit. An hour’s entertainment for them. A continuing shame for the victim.

  Dickie knew what he had to do. He had to exact retribution. A retribution concerning which they would not be able to lodge a formal complaint to the university authorities or the police. In other words, no knuckle sandwiches on offer, no cracked shins or bloodied noses. Shame, but there were other, less dangerous victories to be won.

  Satisfied with his arrangements, the chef caught the eye of Fanshawe, bowed and excused himself, leaving the dinner party to “wait on itself.”

  Dickie cast an eye over the table, taking in its opulence. White linen, gleaming silver, hock standing in a chilling bucket, claret in its jug, brandy on the sideboard and a series of fragrant dishes lined up in battle order. None of which delights Dickie had any intention of tasting. Let these self-indulgent toads guzzle their way through the feast; he could never bring himself to “break bread” with such excuses for men. No one seemed eager to rush to table, and Dickie remembered that Rendlesham had told him: “Knives and forks at seven.” Judging by the level of sherry in the glasses of his fellow diners, Dickie calculated they were counting on a further ten minutes’ fluidity of formation. Testing their weapons. Encircling their prey. Digby Gisbourne helped himself to a second glass of sherry.

  The bell had rung for round two, and Dickie decided to come out fighting. Against all the rules of chivalry, they had chosen the adversary, the place and the weapons. They could hardly complain if he used their choice of weapon against them.

  When facing a group attack, always take out the leader first. He turned to Fanshawe with an affable smile. “The college of St. Jude . . . With more than a score of colleges to choose from, I’m wondering what drew you to enlist with the patron saint of Hopelessness and Lost Causes?”

  Bad move. Dickie cursed himself. This was clearly not the first time Fanshawe had addressed such a challenge, judging by the swiftness and length of his defensive response. Finding himself sucked into their repugnant game, Dickie was tempted to open his own score sheet. Quintus Crewe took up the bowling from the other end and suggested smoothly that an elderly itinerant gentleman ought, rather better than most, to understand the concept of hopelessness. Was Mr. Coward prepared to regale the company with stirring tales of his descent—or could it be ascent?—to his present position in life? A position that might be defined as a few square yards of a public space where pennies from the pockets of the generous rained down to support the indigent?

  Ouch! Uncomfortably close to the jugular. Even young Digby flinched and looked concerned, he was pleased to notice.

  Dickie stood tall and squared his shoulders, but before he could answer for himself, Digby Gisbourne had begun to speak, his tone emollient. “Dr. Crewe, you were perhaps not present when Rendlesham told us that our guest is an old soldier? That he served with distinction in the African war, last century? He could have chosen to appear at our table with a chest clanking with medals, outdoing any of us in a show of manly endeavour rewarded by a grateful country. We are all eager to hear, Mr. Coward, whether you would condescend to explain something of what transpired. These things are so quickly forgotten. We college types in our ‘ivory tower,’ as you call this splendid stone monument to learning, can list all the warriors and the skirmishes of classical times, fro
m Agamemnon and the Trojan War to Mark Antony at Actium, but we have retained the vaguest knowledge of—what shall we say?—the Disaster at Koonspruit? The exploits of ‘Bobs’ of Kandahar?” His voice took on an artless innocence. “And I, for one, would love to know exactly how Baden-Powell of the Boy Scouts helped relieve the siege of Mafeking. How Captain Dunne of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, Captain Richard Dunne, thief and looter, escaped from the Pretoria jail, abandoning his deluded men to rot away in unjust incarceration?”

  There it was! The challenge! The puff of smoke that betrayed the enemy’s position. And it had come from the least likely quarter. There was no good reason that Digby Gisbourne should be in possession of his name and rank and history.

  “You little rat!” Dickie said, but he said it only to himself.

  So he had not been mistaken. He was, indeed, for all his fancy footwork, firmly fixed in someone’s crosshairs. And had been for some time. Sufficient time to set up this farcical banqueting scene. His encounter with Rendlesham in the market square had not been by chance. He’d dismissed these men as eccentrics, sickening but harmless. But he’d deceived himself. Losing his sharp edge? The death of Richard Dunne, he judged, was firmly on the menu for at least one of these men tonight. The bonne bouche, he calculated, rather than the aperitif. They would spin out his mental torment until boredom set in. And all thanks to wretched Oily’s maneuvering. We could make a stand in the marketplace . . . Well, come and play cards with me and Edith . . . You’re mad to attempt it, but if you insist on going into that college, at least wear a tie. He’d been given a choice, three choices, his decision delicately steered towards one. A choice of three killing grounds. Any one would have been acceptable to this adaptable, light-stepping killer.

  But who would attempt the killing blow, and when? A gunshot would never be risked within a college building. For discretion, the blow would have to be delivered by hand. Up close. Eye to eye. None of these five clots was capable of that. He reckoned that, if he took them by surprise and knocked out the vigorous-looking Digby first, he could lay low the whole boiling in seconds, the ones that hadn’t fled the scene screaming. So where was their weapon? Who was their weapon?

  With a chill, he remembered the number of place settings. Seven. Where, then, was the seventh man? Surely it must be approaching seven o’clock by now? Seven guests for the seventh hour? That’s what they were waiting for. His muscles tensed, his breathing quickened, his eyes flicked from side to side. A professional assessing the danger, realising from where it would come and preparing his muscles for the collision. Eager young Digby, in his inexperience, had given away the game too soon and had put him on his guard.

  The deceptively innocent smile of polite enquiry on the face of this youngest weed was stirring a sickening memory. That expression of self-satisfaction—he’d seen it not long ago. In a newspaper? Dickie had a good memory for faces and names, and it had served him well in the past. His mind scurried this way and that, and suddenly he had it. In a library last year, reading the Yorkshire Post, he’d seen a photograph, an official record of a deeply boring and pompous assembly of local personages, fat old windbags, and he’d hardly glanced at it. One of the figures, the central one—philanthropist or lord mayor, something of the kind—had snagged his attention. On taking a second look at the bald, portly fellow, hung about with sashes and ceremonial chains, every inch the masonic manipulator Dickie despised, he’d dismissed his outlandish notion. The dignitary’s name, when he checked, was at that time unknown to him: Gisbourne.

  Dickie stared, assessed, added a few years to the cherubic countenance and subtracted a few curls from the shepherd-boy mop head, calculated, at last understood and hated. Every sinew in his body tightened. His breathing deepened. His greased fingers slipped into the knuckleduster in his pocket.

  His voice was steady as he replied, beaming with good humour. “Ah, child! I fought side by side with men your age or younger. Boys whose voices had scarcely broken when they sang along with rest of us:

  Such was the day for our regiment

  Dread the revenge we will take.

  Dearly we paid for the blunder—

  A drawing-room general’s mistake.

  “We don’t remember the names of the generals for good reason. But I will never forget the names of my fellow fighters . . . Abel, Ralph, Ernest, Herbert and Sydney.”

  “Ah. I’m sorry, sir. What charmingly unpretentious names! They sound like the salt of the earth! All deceased, are they?” Digby enquired.

  “No. The salt of the earth—or the common as muck, as I think you wrongly interpret that phrase—these men are not ‘deceased,’ nor do they ‘pass over.’ They die. As plainly as they have lived. But the men I speak of are not all dead, I’m happy to say. The Ernies, the Herberts and the Syds of the British army don’t die that easily, even when they’re being used as cannon fodder. My men were what Wellington considered ‘the dregs’ of the army, but they were tenacious of life. At the last roll call, I discovered that they are, for the most part, very much alive and kicking. And still killing.”

  He watched one face carefully as he spoke.

  “But how dull this is!” he continued jovially. “Rendlesham, I would have certainly turned down your invitation had I had warning that I was expected to wallow in past military disasters. If you suffer from such self-flagellating patriotic propensities—may I suggest—to enter into the spirit of things—you clear the tabletop after the second bottle of brandy and have some illustrative equipment brought in? We could have a salt-cellar sergeant or two, a pepper-pot private, a claret-jug general, a front line of petits fours and a battery of brandy glasses bringing up the rear. I believe these are the items most frequently put to use by fuddy-duddy old fire-eaters to illustrate their unremarkable campaigns before they retire to the snooker room. We could refight the Relief of Kimberley! We could follow on with Ladysmith and Mafeking for the best of three Reliefs!”

  Even his list of tedious dinner service items did not distract Digby Gisbourne from his hunt for information. “Tell me, sir. The young men who ‘paid dearly for the blunder’—should the world still fear ‘the dread revenge they will take’?”

  Dickie’s eyes narrowed, and his voice lost its cheery enthusiasm. It took on the cold threat of a steel bayonet held within lunging distance of a man’s throat. “Oh yes, young Gisbourne. It’s not the world, however . . . not even the drawing-room generals who should walk in fear . . . but if I were a certain pepper-pot private, a certain conniving, murderous Judas, I’d be shitting my britches. I’d be looking over my shoulder. Constantly. Until the day I saw creeping up on me, my Nemesis in khaki.”

  They all were visibly startled by the rap on the door, though at least three of them were expecting it.

  Dickie turned to look back over his shoulder but maintained his position, defensive and aggressive at the same time. Was he two steps away from his own easy exit, or a threatening obstacle to anyone trying to get away?

  Fanshawe recovered quickly and called out a peremptory “Come in!”

  The buttery boy put his head round. “Sorry to disturb you, sir. Here’s your second guest. He’s signed in.”

  He flung the door open to admit a dark-suited man.

  Dickie was the first to find words. “Well, I never! Is this the moment to say: ‘I get sick to death of seeing your ugly mug every time I turn my head’? I believe it is. Come in, man, and state your hellish business.”

  Chapter 8

  Cambridge, Sunday, the 18th of May, 1924

  Detective Inspector John Redfyre tucked his terrier under his right arm, struggling to keep the wriggling bundle of whipcord muscle in a half nelson. His door opened directly onto the cobbled lane leading down to the river, and even at this early hour on a Sunday morning, there was a good chance that there would be some energetic types out taking air. And anyone passing in front of Magnolia Cottage was fair gam
e for a nasty nip from Snapper.

  Jack Russells! Pathetically, Redfyre delivered the ultimatum every day—“One more ankle-chewing, one more escape, one more hysterical woof and you’re out, mate! I’ll replace you with a nice quiet Labrador.” The threat fell on deaf ears, and the energetic little dog grinned back, secure in his master’s love.

  How do you explain to a dog bred on the desolate Yorkshire moors for the express purpose of chasing down and killing rats that he was now a city dog and should mind his manners? Particularly tricky when the city—this city—offered a seductive patchwork of wild green spaces. Grasses everywhere you looked, whether short-shaven lawns or unkempt wilderness lapping up against sober grey stone buildings. In just a few strides, Snapper’s morning walk took him from neat civic pavement into the riotous water meadows of Coe Fen, where a herd of cows grazed, providing milk for the local dairy. It gave Redfyre a quiet satisfaction that the rich milk he stirred into his morning porridge had travelled less than a mile to reach his doorstep. The cows would suffer no disturbance from his dog.

  He checked that the dog lead Snapper so despised was coiled in the deep pocket of his mackintosh, ready for an emergency. He believed that the terrier had at last got the message that he was allowed to walk and run and cavort freely, only on condition that he responded at once to a command to come to heel.

  There was no one about. Redfyre breathed in the fresh Sunday morning air. He relished that blissful moment after the winds had blown away the night’s stale air and before the maids of the town set about re-creating the sooty reek by lighting the kitchen fires. The sun was up and already gilding the creamy flowers of the magnolia in the graveyard opposite. The sight startled his senses awake and filled him with delight. Not English, the magnolia. Exotic. A recent import from China, or was it Japan? Out of place in a Saxon graveyard. But, by God! How could anyone not be stirred by the fleshy roundness of those blooms? As smooth as Aphrodite’s thigh. As far as he knew, their quality had not yet been expressed on canvas. Unknown to the Dutch masters, overlooked by Manet and Fantin-Latour. Even Sargent had confined himself to lilies and roses.