Invitation to Die Read online

  “Not very compelling as evidence of a pattern, sir, surely? These things happen all the time. People succumb to war wounds, the Spanish ’flu, starvation, cold . . . Their bodies might well have been moved on to make them someone else’s problem. I’ve known bartenders who were a whizz at discreetly spotting and removing the dead drunk—so why not the drunken dead? Are there any other features in common?”

  MacFarlane wrenched his focus back from the past onto the keen, handsome face in front of him and prepared to watch it crumple. “One. They all seem to have belonged to the same dining club. A weekend feast, washed down with a claret and topped off with . . . a rare brandy. A condemned man’s last supper? Who caught, tried and condemned him, Redfyre? And of what sin was he found guilty?”

  Chapter 10

  Cambridge, Sunday, the 18th of May, 1924

  Did he really have time for this? Redfyre paused by the entrance to the church. On his way home to smarten up for his own lunch engagement, an inconvenient professional niggle had stayed him in his stride.

  All was silent here. The morning worshippers had gone off to reward themselves for two hours’ devotion with a roast and Yorkshire pudding and an afternoon’s snooze to restore their strength for evensong. He rattled the side gate opposite his house in the lane and found it locked as usual. Someone had posted a handwritten notice asking the public to avoid the area, since demolition work was being undertaken in the churchyard and their safety could not be guaranteed. Any queries to be addressed to the vicar. The Reverend Turnbull had grudgingly appended his signature to this lie, bowing to the greater good and police pressure. Redfyre had personally advised the vicar that the body of a poor unfortunate had been found in the churchyard and asked him to tactfully ensure that parishioners and church employees were kept away from the scene until the police force had done its duty and tidied up.

  Satisfied with the response to his requests, Redfyre could have walked on. But he gave in to an impulse and decided to climb over the iron grille and enter the crime scene for the second time that morning.

  Although confident that the information he wanted would be contained in Sergeant Thoday’s meticulous report, he kicked himself for having failed at the time of discovery to inspect the wooden gate in the dividing wall between the college and the graveyard to ascertain whether the key had been left in the keyhole or had been removed. The omission was troubling him. He retraced his steps past the yew tree and the unoccupied tomb top and found the gate. The venerable old piece of oak had black iron fixtures and bindings, and the keyhole itself, vast in size, was also bound in black iron. Although clearly a Victorian Gothick flourish, it would not have disappointed as the door to an eleventh-century castle built by the Norman conqueror. Redfyre calculated that the key fitting such a piece of design must itself also be of some consequence. It was hardly the sort of implement you could pop into your back pocket and forget about or even dangle from a girdle. It was either still in the lock or hanging from a stout hook in some secure location.

  He decided to put his eye to the keyhole. Would he be able to make out traces of a struggle or a continuation of the drag marks he’d found in whatever horticultural features were to be found beyond the boundary? A deep, damp flower bed would suit him very well. Redfyre had no firm hope, but since an immediate incursion into college territory had been banned by his boss, peering through the bloody keyhole was the best he could do.

  No key obstructed his vision, and the hole gave him a surprisingly generous view of the neighbouring garden. Sadly but not unexpectedly, the telltale long grass that might have retained a trace ended on this side of the doorway and was replaced by a lawn, close-cropped and reticent as to recent activity. Beyond, he saw an arc of tall trees and bushes and could just make out the beginnings of a flower border. Here, an explosion of early peonies in various shades of pink made him smile. Exactly as he had expected. The lucky master had an enviable space for his private garden—south-facing and walled to the north. The very place to nurture your own English heaven.

  As he peered, he was taken aback by a flash of colour passing across his field of vision. Lavender? Purple? He blinked and the figure—he was sure it had been a figure—passed back again with the same unnatural sideways motion. Stalking back and forth. At the same moment, he became aware of a musical sound. Singing? Well, why not? The city was full of glee clubs. Every college had one. He’d sung baritone himself with the King’s Minstrels during his college years, and with the Clippers Barber Shop Quartet since he’d been back in Cambridge. He knew most of the other amateur groups and was aware that they were quite likely to pop up on the slightest pretext to serenade someone or other, and usually in eye-catching surroundings with a photographer present to record the spontaneous outpouring. There was St. Cecilia’s feast day in November, St. Nicholas in December, the first day of May on Clare Bridge—why not the second Sunday of Easter term in the master’s garden in full springtime fig? Intrigued, he put his ear to the keyhole. What he was hearing was not a Sunday hymn, nor yet the old English madrigal the setting would have prompted Redfyre to offer up in praise of Nature. He would have launched heartily into “Flora Gave Me Fairest Flowers” or “Banks of Green Willow.” But this young-sounding solo female singer was looking to a more exotic climate for her inspiration.

  He recognised the tune from the first six notes. It was very near the top of his own stack of gramophone records. It was the latest hit he’d bought, along with the sheet music, at Millers music shop in Sidney Street. He’d been entranced by the rhythms and had played it many times, singing along, learning the words. Puzzled, Redfyre wondered why a solitary young woman would be dancing the tango in a purple dress in a back garden, singing—and in Spanish, too—the sensuous words of “Mi noche triste.”

  His ridiculous posture, louting about at a keyhole like a badly trained butler or a third-rate private eye, embarrassed him. This questionable behaviour, even if unobserved, was untenable. He shot upright in confusion, but his inquisitive nature, which he countenanced as “professional spirit of enquiry,” won out over discretion. Looking about him, he spotted, lying on its side, a stout water butt he assumed had been overturned and emptied by his squad in the morning’s meticulous search of the site for evidence. He dragged it over to the wall and climbed on top, remembering to clear his throat loudly in warning of his presence as he made the ascent.

  Sticking his head and shoulders boldly over the rim of the wall he belted out his version of the song:

  “Percanta!” he growled down to her, catching her attention with his gravelly baritone.

  Que me amuraste

  En lo mejor de mi vida,

  Dejandome el alma herida

  Y espina en el corazon?

  He ended the verse with an accompanying flourish miming the pain of the alleged thorn in the region of his heart. He followed the pantomime with what he hoped was a disarming grin.

  The purple vision swirled to a halt with a yip of astonishment. Instead of fleeing at once, as he feared she might, she held her ground. She adopted an aggressive posture. A cross face stared up at him in challenge. This was a girl who could deliver a thorn to the heart or a kick to the privates, he judged. If he’d been down there at her level, he would have checked her for concealed catapults or half bricks.

  “Hey! Who do you think you’re calling a whore?” she wanted to know.

  His grin would appear to be losing its potency.

  “Oh, I say, I do beg your pardon, Miss—er, I had no intention of—”

  “Then why use that word to get my attention? Percanta—that’s what you called me! It’s Spanish. And it’s not at all polite!”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Um, What about ‘naughty minx,’ then? Shall we settle for that? I don’t happen to have a Spanish dictionary on me at the moment.”

  “You wouldn’t find it there, anyway. I’ve looked. It’s too rude for inclusion. I had to ask Carlos. He
learned it in the conventillos of Buenos Aires, he says.”

  Redfyre decided not to interpret this as an invitation to wander off in dubious company on a word hunt down a South American backstreet and fell silent. They watched each other for a moment, ill at ease, seeking an acceptable means of disconnection from the situation and finding none, rather like a pair of terriers circling each other when token meaningless growling will go on until one backs off. Redfyre decided he was the clumsy oaf who had caused the offence and he would be the one to roll over in submission.

  Before he could apologise, she decided to throw another log onto the fire of her glowing anger. “If you’re not going to arrest me for disturbing the peace of the Sabbath, Mr. Copper, you can sling your hook and let me get on with my practice. Good Lord! Is there no corner of Cambridge where I can have a bit of privacy to polish my corrida garabito? Some of us have May balls coming up, you know, and a girl has to have something more adventurous than the waltz and the fox-trot in her repertoire these days. I’m paying a fortune for these tango lessons, and I’m not a natural dancer. I have to work hard and practice where I can. I thought I was quite safe here, halfway between the dead”—she gestured in the direction of the graveyard—“and the dying.” Another flick of the hand towards the college was accompanied by a derisory sniff.

  Alarmed, Redfyre immediately asked, “Dying?”

  “Oh, no need to sound the alarm! Put your bugle down and stand at ease, copper. There’s nothing to interest you here! I was speaking figuratively. I meant in the sense of ‘moribund.’ Elderly, stuck in their last-century ways. Some are over eighty, some are just eighteen, but they’re all stiff-collared stuffed shirts. Nasty, hide-bound, misanthropic old fossils! Have they engaged you to spy on me? You wouldn’t believe how—”

  “Hang on a minute!” He interrupted her outburst. The girl was clearly deluded, if not completely loopy. “Copper, did you say?” he asked. “But how on earth . . . ? You can’t see my flat feet from down there!”

  “My bedroom window overlooks your front door.” Another vague wave in the direction of the upper storeys of the master’s lodge gave an explanation. “I see you coming and going with your little white dog and your tall dark sergeant. The handsome chap . . . looks like an advertisement for Dr. Benson’s Beef-U-Uppo pills. Before starting the treatment.”

  “Ah yes. His figure, indeed, lacks substance, but his moustache makes up for it. It is much admired about town. Name of Thoday. The man, I mean . . .” he burbled.

  “So glad you changed the colour of your front door,” she said inconsequentially. “Green is a much more suitable colour for that house. The shiny black was too . . . citified. This isn’t Downing Street in London, though the troops of helmeted bluebottles you attract to your doorstep give the impression of Bow Street. All you lack is the blue light above the door.”

  Redfyre had heard enough.

  This was an entirely predictable, overexcited reaction to being discovered engaging in what she clearly judged to be a dubious activity, he reasoned, but he decided to call a halt to her outpouring. Wiping the smile from his face and raising an eyebrow in an expression he hoped would give a stern dignity to his demeaning posture teetering atop a water butt, he cut short her stylistic evaluations. “I see my life is under the microscope, or should I say telescope?” he said, meaning it to cut. “Is this the moment when I ask you: Have they engaged you to spy on me? Well? Miss, er . . . ?”

  “Oops!” Suddenly speechless, she smiled, recognising and acknowledging her mistake with a shrug. “Fair cop, Mr. Copper!”

  “Ah! Then we are each confessing to episodes of Peeping Tommery?” he asked lightly. “Shall we find ourselves guilty and let us off with a caution?”

  She smiled again and he realised he was speaking to a very pretty girl with an uncontrolled fuzz of light brown hair, large brown eyes and a trim figure. Not quite doolally perhaps, though he could not be certain about the concealed catapult.

  “Very well. I agree. Off you go, then! I wouldn’t want to keep you from your mystery solving.” She turned on her heel, flashed a cheeky back boleo with her right leg and set off back across the lawn.

  Now, who in hell was that? Redfyre asked himself as he scrambled down from his perch. Mystery solving? The wretched girl had just added another one to his list.

  “Ah! There you are, Johnny darling!”

  Redfyre had dashed into his front room and grabbed the telephone receiver before it stopped ringing.

  “And that’s precisely where you should not be!” said his aunt Henrietta in reprimand. “You ought to be here in my drawing room, sipping your first sherry. You’re expected for lunch here in Madingley. Had you forgotten? Your cousin Hugh arrived half an hour ago, and he’s making himself useful. And very much at home . . .”

  Redfyre sank disconsolately into his chair, and starting with an anguished “Lord! Can it really be one o’clock already?” began to mumble his excuses. A short but punchy account of his action-packed morning followed.

  Aunt Hetty was all understanding. “How exciting! I can’t wait to hear about it. I shall go back into the drawing room and give out the reason for your delay at once. Discovering and ministering to a corpse in a graveyard, I shall say. That will entertain the girls! We have two female guests, new to the village—absolute corkers, both!—and they’re dying to meet my dashing nephew. So, nephew, dash! It’s ten minutes on your cycle. You’ll be in time for the soup if I press everyone to have a second aperitif. Oh, and Johnny? Graveyards? Corpses? Be very sure to wash your hands, won’t you?”

  Chapter 11

  Grantchester, Sunday, the 18th of May, 1924

  “Emma and Genevieve! Well, for once, Aunt, you did not exaggerate!” Redfyre said. “Top-notch young ladies, in their different ways. Sensible Emma or sparkling Genevieve? I think I can squeeze another cup out of this,” he said, waving the coffeepot temptingly under her nose. Companionably, they finished off the last of the coffee, smiling to hear intermittent snores from Uncle Gerald’s armchair and pleased to be able to speak frankly to each other in the peace of the drawing room.

  “I thought you’d like them. They’ll be a welcome addition to the village. Sociable, outspoken, active . . .”

  “Potential recruits, are you thinking, for your illicit group of female desperadoes? Your hive of hexagons, buzzing with charming workers who tempt a man with honey and then sting him in the derrière? Your Third Way Forward Suffragists?”

  “I can think of more attractive and more accurate ways of expressing it. But yes, why not? They will both have an entrée into university life once they’re settled. They could be of use to us. I shall introduce them to Suzannah and Earwig, and they will judge general ability, identify particular skills and connections and advise as to deployment.”

  “Great Heavens! It’s like taking a briefing from the head of MI5!” Redfyre smiled in a vain attempt to hide his irritation. “What are you, Aunt? Special advisor to M?”

  “No, but she is pretty chummy with K!” The voice rumbled up from the depths of Gerald’s buttoned leather armchair. “Vernon Kell. Since last month, we should say Colonel Kell, don’t you know. State security wallah. Runs the show. Very much in favour of the police—you ought to know that—and a fan of Sherlock Holmes. Hetty knows his wife . . . Constance, is it? Pretty little thing, she used to be. Has had a lot to put up with. All that China business . . . Puts a strain on a marriage, that sort of thing.” He went back to his snoring.

  “Ah,” Redfyre said, subdued. “Another sheet in your CID file I have not been granted sight of, Aunt?”

  He was teasing about the file. It did not exist, at least as far as he was aware. As he was the officer who had discovered the existence of his aunt’s clandestine guerrilla women’s group, he would surely have been asked to initiate such a document. And he would have been left chewing his pencil at the first line. For a start, he would never have b
een able to come up with a title for such an amorphous, anonymous gang of shape-shifters; it was hard to grasp the essence of a unit whose members had smartly chosen not to give themselves a name. And to go on, he could have written nothing intelligible about their activities and organisation. What were they? A secret suffragist society? Political pressure group? He knew what MacFarlane’s comment would have been on viewing a draft of such a report: A mob of underemployed, overprivileged trouble-seekers. Now the older ones have got the vote, they’ll turn their attention to some other cause . . . banning things: beer, betting, dog-racing, St. Bruno’s Rough Shag and anything else they think men are fond of.

  They never met as a group, and most of them had no idea of the identity of the others or the scope of the whole organisation. Hetty’s husband, Gerald, had been an officer in the South African War over twenty years before, and perhaps his tales had inspired her in devising the tactics of the group. Like the much-feared yet admired Boer commando fighting units, they operated in small cells of about half a dozen, comrades who defended one another to the death and never left their wounded behind. And, in common with those leathery old Dutch farmers, Hetty’s girls knew their terrain, appeared from nowhere, shot from the hip and disappeared into the bush. Redfyre would have been vastly entertained by the whole concept and cheered them on, had he not been chilled to the bone by their determination to achieve their aims by a ruthless cunning and disregard for their own safety.