Invitation to Die Read online

  The self-appointed arbiter of the impromptu fisticuffs had been—no—not a bulldog, but a don. Tall, youngish, superior and wearing one o’ them gowns. He hadn’t stuck around to give his details. Never known to acknowledge, let alone help the police, those fellers. And Dickie himself had shown a clean pair of heels. He’d even abandoned a good sum of money, some of it in sixpences, on the pavement in his hurry. Thompson had picked up four shillings and five pence and handed that in at the front desk.

  In response to Thoday’s last-minute question of, “Anything else strike you as odd about the incident?” the constable considered, then slowly said, “Might be something. There was another bloke watching what was going on. Not connected with the skirmishing, but interested. More-than-usual interested. Everyone else in the audience had drifted off about his business when the excitement was over, but this bloke popped out of the shop and watched Dickie until he turned the corner. Then he went after him. Not rushing to catch him up. More sort of . . . trailing him. They might be able to tell you more in the café about him. They have some sharp girls on the till there. Better than Aunty deserves.”

  Three days had already elapsed since the ruckus in front of Aunty’s. Thoday decided that he would not leave his interview with the staff a moment longer and headed off to the marketplace.

  The girl in charge of operations at the tea shop (the manageress, she announced with pride) was, as promised by Thompson, “sharp.” Not in manner, but in intelligence, Thoday judged. In her middle twenties, perhaps, she was confident and shrewd. And she fixed the sergeant’s attention with a pair of merry brown eyes. She was intrigued and not a little amused by the drama she’d witnessed, and was very ready to talk to the sergeant about it.

  She seated him at a discreet table and poured him a cup of tea. Alice, she said her name was, taking off her beribboned cap and settling down at his table. Alice had seen the whole episode play itself out from beginning to end, and she was a good, succinct reporter. She was aware of Dickie. He called in occasionally for a slice of fruit cake by the back door. Cake and a chat. He was a flirty old thing and must have been a bit of a heartbreaker in his youth, she thought. He could still make all the girls laugh. A real gentleman, and Alice could always tell. There were some you couldn’t turn your back on without having your posterior pinched. But she had a way of dealing with that. Her knowing glance was a clear invitation to seek further and better particulars. He enquired. She told him. She smiled an indulgent smile when, in shocked tone, he warned her that she might well be risking an accusation of grievous bodily harm and should desist. She should be careful and ring him if she had a problem with any lusty tea-drinkers. He passed his card across, and she put it away in her pocket.

  “It’s the other feller you ought to be looking for,” she said to him kindly. “Dickie was just being Dickie! You don’t say anything disrespectful to him and get away with it, whoever you are. He’s got a temper on him, but he’s a bit of a slow burner. If he attacks you, you’ve deserved it and then some!” She looked over her shoulder before continuing. “Aunty had it coming to him! Shhh, I never said that! He was smarming all over this customer in the straw boater. Flash the cash and you’ve got Aunty’s attention! A visitor, not a regular. He was with a lady, his wife, and she was very well dressed with some good jewellery. Loaded, the pair of them! And very nice manners they had. Dickie came into the café—which he’s never done before, so it must have been urgent. He was obviously keen to say something to Mr. Boater. But Aunty wasn’t having it. A tramp in his select establishment? Never! Aunty said something like, ‘Do excuse me while I eject this trash.’ Charming! And then he tried to physically remove him. Once outside they could let rip, and they resorted to, er, language. Upshot was Dickie bashed him one in the stomach. Winded him. Aunty made us ring for an ambulance and had himself taken off to Addenbrooke’s to make sure nothing had been punctured!” Alice had to break off to control her laughter. “He’s been off sick since then.” She chortled.

  “Did the customer in the boater and Dickie ever get around to exchanging words?”

  “No. Not as I saw. I don’t think the customer wanted to acknowledge him. He seemed startled and embarrassed. Look, if we’re going to go on talking about them, why don’t we use the gentleman’s correct name?”

  “Good grief! You know it? But how . . .”

  “It was quite entertaining how it happened. After Dickie had finished dancing about for the crowd and baiting the college bloke who stuck an oar in, he went off towards King Street. And that’s where it all got a bit strange. There seemed to be something of a tiff breaking out between Mr. Boater and his wife . . . Edith, he called her. She’d ordered toasted tea cakes with her pot of Earl Grey, but he told her to put her coat on, they were leaving. ‘Sod the tea cakes,’ he said, just as the waitress walked up with them, hot from the grill! Bad timing.”

  “You’re not kidding!” Thoday could conjure up with ease the buttery cinnamon- and sultana-scented treat and shared Edith’s pain at the thought of it being whisked away from under her nose.

  “Edith wasn’t best pleased. And she told him so in no uncertain terms. She had a go at him for hauling her up to Cambridge ‘just to cover for him,’ she said, and added that she was going to the shops later, intending to spend a month’s allowance in Joshua Taylor’s and stuff him! And she was going to stay and finish her tea. ‘Abe’—she called him ‘Abe’—could go and chase after a filthy old tramp if he wanted more stimulating company than hers!”

  “Ooh! Er . . . how did he react to that?”

  “Backed off straightaway. Wanted to avoid a scene. Decided to go for the generous gesture. He called me over, tore a cheque out of his cheque book and said: ‘Miss, my wife will treat herself to a slap-up lunch, if that’s what she wants. I’m signing this cheque, and you are to serve her whatever she asks for.’”

  “Hang on . . . I’m wondering why he didn’t just slip her a ten-bob note and have done. Cash?”

  “We get men like that. Businessmen, full of themselves, with records to keep and expenses to claim. He said to me: ‘Please see that she is given a receipt, Nippy. I shall need it for the tax man.’ Nippy! Where did he think he was? In a Joe Lyons? Then: ‘Edith, my love. I’ll get back as soon as I can.’”

  “How romantic!” Thoday said unguardedly. “It’s you, me and the taxman, Edith . . . But for now, for lunch, you’re on your own.” He shook his head in sadness for his sex. “Enough to put anyone off their food. Did she have much of an appetite, the lady?”

  “I’ll say! She went straight into the lunch menu! Brown Windsor soup, steak and ale pie and mash with a bottle of claret we fetched in for her from the Eagle, and she rounded it off with peach pavlova and clotted cream. Coffee and chocolate mints after. We don’t take the cheques in to the bank for deposit until Wednesdays. I’ve still got it in the till, if you’d like to see it.”

  She hurried back with the cheque. A Mr. Abel Hardy had committed himself to paying an eye-watering twelve shillings and sixpence from his account at a grand London bank.

  Thoday turned the cheque over, hoping for and finding a helpfully rubber-stamped address on the back. Not the smart Hampstead residential address he’d anticipated, but even better, perhaps—a business office in central London:

  “enquiries at,” suite 1, belvedere, the strand, london.

  Thoday took a deep breath and fought down an urge to give the girl a congratulatory kiss. The male sex was already viewed with scorn enough by this young woman. He scribbled down the address in his notebook, along with the banking details. He wondered what on earth had called a smart London businessman, the director of “Enquiries At” (whatever that concern was) to make a trip up to Cambridge with his wife in tow.

  “That’ll teach him to cancel the tea cakes!” he commented.

  “Exactly what his missis said! I liked her! She winked at me and left a large tip in cash under the saucer.�
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  This was going well. Thoday gave Alice a beaming smile and promised to come back for a leisurely cup of tea and tell her what happened when he’d made further progress with the case.

  “Case?” Alice picked him up on this at once. “What case would that be, then?”

  Remembering the affection in her voice as she had spoken of Dickie, Thoday was not prepared to spoil her afternoon, or his own chances, with this friendly girl by being the bearer of bad news. “Oh, a possible further, not-unconnected altercation at one of the colleges. It’s all a bit delicate . . . You know what they’re like, these academical types,” was the slice of fudge he fed her.

  Thoday snapped shut his notebook and raced off to his next—unscheduled—meeting. Edith Hardy. Was she still in Cambridge? Well-off tourists . . . it shouldn’t be difficult to track down the lady and her husband. A phone call or two from headquarters to the usual hotels is all it would take. And last today, with just enough time to fit it in before the scheduled meeting at six o’clock back at the nick, a viewing of the tramp’s—or, now that Thoday now felt secure enough to give him at least a Christian name, Dickie’s—clothing and possessions.

  At the other side of the marketplace, Redfyre was also having some success with his investigation.

  Bert the pie man was treating them both to a mug of tea and a dollop of culinary philosophy at the tea stall. They perched on a conveniently positioned stone boundary wall dividing the public space from the ecclesiastical and began “chewing the fat,” as Bert called the exchange of information.

  Oh yes, he’d been jellying his eels for years, and his father before him. The old man hadn’t, however, been very adventurous. Bert couldn’t blame him. Not much opportunity, really, in the olden days. Never much food to go around, and people weren’t prepared to experiment with what they had. Now, today, well, every Tommy had had the pleasure of sampling French food. Horse meat, garlic, spaghetti . . . they had the lot. And the way those frogs fried their chips! That was something to write home to Mum about. But no one had yet bothered to ask him what herbs he’d put in his eels. He looked at Redfyre with curiosity.

  “Go on, then,” Bert challenged, pointing to the small white china dish of glutinous dark matter that Redfyre was holding in his hand. “Stick your beak in there and you tell me what I’ve put in it.”

  Redfyre smiled bravely, trying to banish from his memory the sight of the same substance bottled in one of Beaufort’s jars, and stuck a fork in. He did not reply at once to the eager old eyes watching for a response. They would see through any insincere reaction.

  “Mmm . . . good, cockle-strengthening stuff! The eely bit is perfectly cooked. Tender but resilient, and mildly fishy in flavour. I could easily mistake it for freshwater trout. The jelly, however, is the triumph! It caresses your teeth and glides down the gullet, exuding an aroma of herbs as it goes. Now what is that? Parsley, of course. And a touch of mint for freshness, but mainly . . . dill? . . . That’s it! Dill.”

  Bert was pleased with the performance. And he didn’t fail to notice that Redfyre was taking a further, more generous forkful of the dish. “It’s dill, all right. I grow it myself in the back garden. But there’s something else. Celery seed! Now, who’d ever think of putting a dried seed into a fish dish? But it works a treat. Folks don’t know it’s there, but they miss it all right when I run out.”

  Redfyre had his man.

  He finished his plate and asked the question he’d warned Bert to expect. Last Friday, sometime after five o’clock—so he would have been a late customer—a man had eaten a portion of this very dish and had subsequently died. Of strangulation, Redfyre hurried to add, seeing Bert stiffen in concern. He assured the pie man that it had been the last thing the victim had enjoyed. Did Bert have any recollection of a man in an army greatcoat smacking his chops over a dish of eels at about that time?

  Bert shook his head. “Naw! Sorry. Can’t help.”

  After that facer, he went on to explain that he’d packed up early that day, straight after lunch. For the simple reason that he’d sold up. Had a good morning and midday session, and that was it. When the food’s gone, you have to pack up and go, but plan to make more next week.

  Redfyre was, for a moment, nonplussed.

  “Tell you what, though! I can tell you where old Dickie got them eels!”

  To Redfyre’s surprise, he went on. “Sounds like Dickie you’re describing. Vagrant, but Cambridge’s own vagrant. Everybody knows Dickie. I ran out of eels because I’d had a prior order. I do out-catering as well as sell from the stall. You want to try the Salvation Army canteen down Mill Road. They ordered twenty jellied eel dinners for Friday night. The Friday before, it was tripe, stewed with onions. Cheap stuff, but healthy. And I always put a dash of cream in the sauce to make it special. No, last Friday the bulk of my eel delivery went off in two stewpots down the Mill Road.”

  Redfyre thanked Bert for his wisdom and his eels and vowed to return for more while the season lasted. He made off on the double for Mill Road. He just had time to squeeze in an interview before the bat ladies claimed his attention in the graveyard.

  “Sorry, love. We’re not open yet. You’ll have to come back. There’s no one here until five.”

  Redfyre grabbed the heavy tray of plates from the bustling lady’s grasp and carried it through into the dining hall. She hadn’t been impressed by his police warrant card, his authoritative manner had left her cold and his polite attempt to lighten her load was the last straw.

  “’Ere! Are you deaf? Put that down! I said there’s no one here.”

  He persisted. “Madam, you are here. I am here. A moment of your time and the answer to a question I’m about to ask will render inessential a visit to the police station to fill in forms.”

  Braving the sighs and snorts and glowers, he asked his question. “Last Friday supper. Here. Jellied eels on the menu. I need to know—who served them?”

  “Nothing to do with me! Duties run Monday to Monday. So, last week, that would be Eliza. Eliza Campion.”

  He noted the name, pencil poised, and stared at her questioningly.

  “You’ll find her at home. That’s number fifteen, Canary Row. The one with the window boxes. It’s just off Covent Garden down the town end of the street. She won’t want to see you at this hour. She’ll be getting the tea on for her hubby. ’Ere—are you just for ornament, or are you going to make yourself useful? We are a charity, you know!”

  Well, at least Canary Row was on his way back to base. “How many are we laying for? Twenty? Got it!” Redfyre deftly began to lay out the plates on the tables with a smile. He found the cutlery and placed a knife, fork and spoon by every plate. He remembered to drop a half crown into the box before he left.

  Mrs. Eliza Campion swiftly answered the door of number fifteen when he banged on it. The doorway was the narrow entrance to a narrow, two-up, two-down house, and Mrs. Campion’s two-across bosom spanned the space impressively, the flowery pinny straining across her front like a breastplate completing the defensive front line of pink and purple petunias in the window boxes alongside.

  Taken aback momentarily by the flower-strewn parade of propriety, Redfyre raised his hat and readied himself to burble engagingly.

  Before he could speak, she said automatically, “My husband is not at home. He does not receive casual callers.” She prepared to close the door.

  Foot-in-the-door time? Redfyre had never descended to intimidation. He took a step back and offered his card enticingly. “Mrs. Campion, I do not wish to speak to Jonas, but to your good self,” he said cheerfully. “And, you’ll find, I’m not at all casual.”

  “A police inspector? CID?” She handed back the card. “What’s this all about?”

  “May I come inside? Neighbours, you know! If yours are anything like mine, they have quick eyes and meddling tongues.”

  “Ah yes. Right-oh. I can sp
are a minute before Jonas gets back, I suppose.”

  She cleared the doorway, and he stepped into a gloomy entrance hall. Somewhere in the rear of the house, where life was lived, a kettle was bubbling its way up to a boil, and a quavering voice called out, “Eliza! Who’s that at the door?”

  “Nobody, Dad! Have you got your teeth in? Just chew on your rusk for a minute, will you?”

  Redfyre was offered a chair at the table in the front parlour, a small room still crowded with Victorian furniture. There was even an aspidistra in a jardinière, its leaves dusted as meticulously as every other knick-knack. A print of the Fighting Temeraire hung on the wall, flanked by pictures of rosy-cheeked shepherdesses bringing in the flocks at eventide and milkmaids smiling happily under the weight of buckets suspended from shoulder yokes. Green velvet swags hung from a mantelshelf crowded with photographs of babies in bonnets and smooth-cheeked young men in pristine uniform about to go to war. The still air was cool but heavy with the scent of camphor and last year’s rose petals in a dish of potpourri.

  Mrs. Campion remained standing in the doorway, one ear listening out for further disturbances from her father or the arrival of her husband. Redfyre plunged directly into his story, unconsciously taking his urgency from the lady.

  “So, I’d be grateful if you could remember anything useful to us concerning a man who ate the jellied eels on Friday night when you were officiating at the shelter.”

  “I served twenty eel dinners! It’s a popular option. But that’d be Noël Coward and Maurice Moneybags you’re after,” she said decisively. “Those two are the ones you’ll be interested in.”

  “Why do you say that, Mrs. Campion?” Redfyre was intrigued.