Invitation to Die Read online

  Search over. Rupert had found his man.

  “Good left jab! Where did you learn that? Military man, are you?”

  “I’ve a matching right one! Want to sample it?” His eyes flashed with the pathetic challenge of a cornered mongrel.

  “Sir! I asked a polite question.”

  “So you did. Sir. And delivered a compliment. At least I think it was a compliment.” The tramp paused, then added, “King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. Once upon a time.”

  Rupert surveyed his target from head to toe with fresh eyes. Even he was aware of the fire-eating reputation of the regiment. “KOYLIs, eh? Well, the king would be looking at you a long time before he recognised one of his own, I’m afraid. Down on your luck, you’re going to tell me? But I’m puzzled. Help me out . . . What on earth were you doing, mounting an incursion into a douce tea shop by the front door?” He wrinkled his nose. “Your feral odour risked overpowering the fragrance of the Earl Grey, wouldn’t you say?”

  The sharp features hardened as the tramp studied his face, and Rupert understood that, unusually, he was being regarded with dislike, and—more disturbingly—his prey was about to break loose. Pity. For a moment, there had been something promising, even intriguing, in his manner. Rupert acknowledged that he’d gone too far. The fish was off the hook. He’d have to take a step back and select a different, more attractive lure.

  “I mean to say—Aunty’s of all places! Whatever possessed you? You couldn’t drag me in there to join that clientele even with the promise of a pot of Lapsang Souchong and a petite madeleine to soak it up. Just look at the hats!” He pointed through the window. “All feathers and frills nodding at one another over the china.”

  He’d chosen the right tack, it seemed. The scruffy gent was nodding. Even producing a grudging response. “Right. I haven’t seen so many pink frou-frous outside a tart’s boudoir.”

  A comment calculated to challenge and silence a monastic academic, Rupert judged, but he replied anyway. “And the conversation!” he said heartily. “The conversation, if similarly elevated, would render us catatonic in thirty seconds, eh?”

  The man had not made off into the crowds, but the scorn in his eyes told Rupert that his attempt at comradeship was despised. “It’s none of your business, sir, but I happened to see a soldier from my old regiment going in there for a cuppa. Stupid, but I wanted to see him again. Make sure he was all right. He was in a pretty bad state last time I clapped eyes on him. Being stretchered off a Transvaal battlefield, covered in blood. Shrapnel bullet, they said.”

  “Ah. The Transvaal? That bloody business in South Africa? He was your officer?” Rupert asked, spinning out the conversation, reeling in the line and wondering how long it took for a bobby to run from Parker’s Piece to the marketplace.

  “No, he was my sergeant. And—yes, that bloody business.” The man’s eyes flicked back regretfully to the shop window. “Still—as I say—stupid of me. I was probably mistaken.” He shrugged. “He couldn’t possibly have survived. And he’d never recognise me after all these years anyway. It was just that feeling of someone walking over my grave . . .” He gave an exaggerated shudder to illustrate his thought, then, “I’d best be off. But thank you for your kind intervention, sir. Truly—it was much appreciated.”

  Rupert seized him by the arm. “Look here . . . when did you last eat?” he asked bluntly.

  “Lord! Dunno!” The tramp frowned in mock concentration, then: “Ah! How could I have forgotten the unctuous tripes à la mode de Caen? Washed down with a tankard of eau du robinet. Last week, courtesy of the Sally Bash down the Mill Road Shelter. Tripe. Familiar with tripe, are you? The lining of a cow’s stomach, stewed up with onions and washed down with a measure of best Cambridge tap water. They know how to treat a bloke with respect, the Sally.”

  Rupert took the jibe on the chin and managed to produce a sympathetic smile. “You’ve earned a damn good meal, I think. And I don’t have a Bath Bun in mind. I say . . .” Head cocked on one side as though the thought had just occurred to him, he added, “What about a slap-up dinner in congenial company this very evening? There’ll be a couple of pals. We always treat ourselves to something special on a Friday evening. Accompanied by fine wines, of course.” His eyes gleamed as he added his ultimate temptation: “A refined hock and a hearty burgundy? You’d be very welcome, frisky chap like you. Here.” He fished about in an inside pocket and took out a printed card.

  The tramp took it between grimy fingers, looked at it in disbelief and read:

  INVITATION TO DINE.

  You are cordially invited

  to break bread with the Amici Apicii.

  Please bring this card with you

  when you attend.

  “Well, I never . . . ! Sure you didn’t mean a refined cock and a hearty buggery?”

  “Oh! I say!”

  The tramp grinned, enjoying the embarrassment and indignation his crude observation had caused. He handed the card back to the spluttering don. “Well . . . bit vague, isn’t it? No names, no pack-drill, no rendezvous. What sort of a mug do you take me for? And who the hell is this crew? Body snatchers? White slavers? Or just a bunch of tosspots who can’t manage to get a fourth for a hand of bridge?” He leered unpleasantly. “Seems to me I risk being boiled up for glue, shafted or bored out of my brains.”

  “Sir! May I remind you that this is Cambridge! We are not savages. Quite the reverse. We take our name from an ancient Roman cook whose lavish yet refined cuisine has come down to us through the Middle Ages. One of our members is even now working on a translation into English of the original text. The . . . erm, Amici—the Friends—are a group of bons viveurs—aesthetes. Our group is fastidious regarding the choice of dinner guests for our intimate soirées,” Rupert objected, stiff with shock and anger. He hesitated, and his eyes glazed over as he remembered whom he was addressing. Had he made himself clear?

  “Toffs, are you saying, Your Honour? Afficionados of the philosopher Epicurus? I thought they’d all died out, what with the recent privations. Or don’t you suffer from food rationing like the common man if you know a bit of Latin?”

  Oh joy! They’d caught themselves a socialist! And a pretentious word-juggler at that. This was promising. Could Fanshawe have been aware? His shock and anger were somewhat mollified as he persisted with his explanation. “Our guests are carefully selected—and not for the pecuniary value of their various body parts.” He ran a scathing eye over the pathetic figure in front of him. “For bones, buggery or bridge, be assured I should be seeking plumper prey,” he said haughtily. The man’s appearance was certainly a drawback. Rendlesham couldn’t be certain whether he resembled Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner—the greybeard loon—or one of the more disreputable Vikings of the Sagas. Ulf the Unwashed, perhaps? Had they, after all, wasted precious time on a nonstarter? Perhaps he ought now to abandon this squalid scene and move on? He added a rehearsed mechanical formula, distancing himself as he spoke. “The invitation stands. Were you to decide to accept, it would be for sherry at six, knives and forks at seven. Over by ten in case you have plans to go on somewhere.”

  The tramp uttered a guffaw instead of the snarl of derision Rupert had expected. With some aplomb, he stood upright, shoulders back, grasped the lapel of his greatcoat with one hand and extended the other in an affected gesture he’d most probably seen on a page of the Gamages catalogue. “Frightfully sorry, old man,” he said, “I didn’t pack an evening suit. Hadn’t realised Cambridge was so hospitable . . . so socially experimental. I’m dressed, as you see, for the Salvation Army shelter. I believe we’re to have jellied eels tonight, and I may even go on afterward to the dog races down the Newmarket Road if I can charm sixpence out of the hatched-faced old dears in bonnets who dispense the hospitality. So—ta, but no ta!”

  He handed back the card.

  “Very good. Well understood,” Rupert said hurriedly. “
A man like you is not to be tempted by food and wine. I had rather been thinking you might have been starved over this last bit of something more essential to your well-being. A convivial and uncensored exchange of views and experience between equal minds? Intelligent conversation! You could tell us how—and, perhaps more pertinently, why—you defeated the Zulus. Or was it the Boers?” he finished with an engaging smile.

  His remark had certainly caught the man’s attention. Rupert flinched at the sharpness of the glare launched in his direction. Two deadly, steel-grey eyes locked on to his with the menace of a Lee Metford or whatever blunderbusses those pre–Great War riflemen had used. Aware that he had said something deeply annoying, Rupert looked away, bit his lip and came to a decision. “Listen carefully.” He could not prevent himself from looking shiftily to the right and left to ensure they were not being overheard. “Should you change your mind, present yourself on the steps of the Wren Chapel in Trumpington Street at six this evening and show this card to the man who will greet you.”

  Ignoring the man’s smile of disbelief and the scathing comments of the “Coo, er! What? No password? Shall I carry a copy of the Times under my left arm and a carnation in my teeth?” style, he slipped the card back into the tramp’s hand and pressed on. A dislike and suspicion of this subject was taking hold in Rupert’s normally insensitive bosom. He tried, with not much success, to hold back his distaste and his growing desire to see the man squirm. “Come exactly as you are. We don’t stand on ceremony. Though you may well, er, feel more comfortable in company if you were to spend this sixpence at the slipper baths.” He produced a handful of change from the bottom of his sleeve, selected a sixpenny coin and handed it over.

  Too late, Rupert sensed that he had again misjudged the situation. The tramp, icily polite, took the coin and looked at it carefully. “I usually find the fee for a hot bath including soap and towel on a Friday afternoon is twopence. Extra-special Derbac nit soap costs a further penny. Why not? Let’s push the boat out! I’m sure delousing is a prerequisite for the entertainment on offer. So—that’ll be threepence change.” He bent and picked up three pennies from the pavement and put them in Rupert’s hand.

  The don flinched at the insult and his hand quivered at the contact with coins from the gutter, but he decided to go down fighting, with his flag—though beginning to look a bit tattered—still flying.

  “That’s the spirit! May I further suggest you take a postbath stroll down King Street and seek out a barber’s shop?” A quick assessment of the tramp’s shaggy beard and overgrown thatch prompted him to add a half crown to the sixpence. “Raymond at the Select Salon should be equal to the task, but . . . um . . . no need to . . .”

  “Mention your name, sir? Wouldn’t dream of it. Even if I knew it,” the man replied briskly, pocketing the coin. “You haven’t introduced yourself.” He frowned. “And evidently your dining club friends are equally incurious concerning the names of their guests. Odd, that . . . Something of a breach in etiquette, one might say? Don’t you want to know who I am? Even the angels down at the shelter are particular as to the identity of their guests. I usually sign in as ‘Charlie Chaplin’ or ‘Kaiser Bill.’”

  Rendlesham gave him a strained smile. “I had already assumed you were Noël Coward, dear boy. The ready wit, the insouciance, the insistence on the social niceties . . . Commendable attributes, but a dead giveaway!” He reined in his flash of petulance and produced an inviting smile. “Come now! Don’t disappoint me.”

  His smile could not quite mask the uneasy realisation that he was now himself being played. “Noël Coward” was eyeing him with, yes, a twinkling mischief.

  “Mmm . . . the Friends of Apicius, eh?” the tramp drawled. He was studying the invitation card with a raised eyebrow. “Well, just as long as you can guarantee that you’ve not got your old Roman mate with his pinny on, officiating in the kitchens . . . I can’t be doing with larks’ tongues. And ostrich ragout—believe one who has experienced it—is vastly overrated.”

  Seeing, from the corner of his eye, a policeman turn the corner of Peas Hill and come running towards the tea shop, Rendlesham’s target came to a swift decision. He tucked the card away carefully into an inside pocket of his greatcoat, saluted and shot off.

  As they went their separate ways, neither man was aware of the watchful presence, standing half-hidden by the curtains in the back corner of the tea shop. Dismissing Rendlesham, the watcher focused his attention on the tramp until he was lost to view, heading straight through the market crowds in the direction of King Street.

  A flustered waitress approached the table bearing a tray of toasted tea cakes and a pot of tea. He waved away the tray impatiently and spoke urgently to his female companion. “Get your coat, Edith. Sod the tea cakes! We have to leave. Now, Edith!”

  Chapter 2

  Cambridge, Friday, the 16th of May, 1924

  “Your usual chair, sir?”

  Stanley’s Barber Shop was conveniently quiet between the busy morning session and the late afternoon rush to spruce up for a Friday night on the tiles. The proprietor himself was at the shop this afternoon and alone in the parlour, his sole assistant taking a minute off in the back room to brew up a pot of tea. Stan greeted his customer with a grin, allowing him to remove his greatcoat and hang it up on the hat stand himself with the ease of one familiar with the routine.

  He settled his customer and made a face at him in the mirror. “And not before time, Your Hairiness! Dickie! Where the hell have you been? Just look at the state of you! I’ve seen less luxuriant quiffs on Highland cattle! You haven’t set foot in a cutting shop since I last had the pleasure sometime last year.”

  “I’ve been away, tramping the Yorkshire Moors. Cold, wet and unwelcoming. The people, ditto,” was the smiling response. “Glad to be back where the cash is! And the open pockets! I put on a lunchtime concert in the market square just now. Did well! So—give it your best shot, Stan! I can cover it. And pay what I owe you. I think I’ve got two bob on the slate, but you’re too polite to mention it.”

  The tramp settled into his favourite chair, sighing with anticipation as the warm towel was tucked about his shoulders and under his chin. “Hold back on the scent spray, Stan! I’ve just left the baths. I’m neat and sweet and smelling faintly of coal tar soap and I don’t want your eau de hammam Turc spoiling the effect. Only a shearing needed to civilise me. Hair first, then a shave.”

  “Right-oh. From haystack to gigolo in twenty minutes. Tell me where to stop. I wouldn’t want to oversteer. Any special requirements?”

  “Yes, I do have a special request . . . Just for fun, why don’t you use all your expertise and turn me into Noël Coward? If you know who I mean?”

  He looked along a display of current heartthrobs of stage and screen, offered as inspiration to the customers. His eye lit on a signed publicity photograph of a pale, smooth-faced young man whose dark hair gleamed with the sleek perfection of a raven’s wing. The unsmiling subject was wearing a white dinner jacket, a carnation in his buttonhole and he was smoking a cigarette in a short ebony holder.

  “There he is! Third from the left between Gilbert Roland and Adolphe Menjou.”

  “Gerraway, man! That’d take more than skill—that’d take magic. You’re twenty years too old and far too butch. And, anyway, you’ve just not got the essentials.” He held up a springy lock of salt-and-pepper hair. “This is wire wool, not patent leather I have to work with. How about a Harpo Marx?”

  “It’s what I want.”

  “You sure? That’s full shave, short back and sides, left parting, heavy on the bay rum. Touch of brilliantine to catch the stage lights if you’re auditioning for something? I can even supply the buttonhole, but you’ll have to provide your own Balkan Sobranie.”

  “Best you can do, Stan.”

  Stan smirked. “Well, the last client who asked for that look was well pleased with the result! Take a
look at this!” With a pantomime of modesty he plucked the photograph from the shelf and put it in front of the nose of the tramp, who at once burst out laughing.

  He read out the inscription in blue ink written sideways over the lower part of the white jacket: “‘For Stan, coiffeur sans pareil! From Noël, artiste sans pareil!’ Well, well!”

  “He was down here on tour last year, starring in his own play, The Young Idea. Fast, witty stuff! I sat through two shows, matinée and evening. Full of bounce—it went down well in Cambridge, where ‘young’ is the only idea. Lovely bloke! Barrel of laughs and no airs and graces. We were Stan and Noël before you could say ‘razor.’ Elegant bloke, too! Shame about the ears. Now then, face first. Shears, I think for the preliminaries, then I’ll close in with the old cutthroat.”

  He worked away with deft fingers and soothing chatter, conscious that his client’s mind was elsewhere and that his eyes never left the mirror that reflected the scene in the street behind him. Probably watching out for the local rozzers. The boys in blue always harassed the vagrants at this time of year. Bastards! Always on the lookout for an easy target or an easy mark. Stan felt his client’s slight twitch of alarm when the doorbell tinkled and a customer strolled in.

  “Good afternoon, sir!” Stan greeted him. “Take a seat. Someone will be with you directly. Ambrose!” he called, summoning his assistant from his tea break. “Forward, please! Client for chair three.” Swiftly assessing the quality of the man’s blazer and flannel bags and deciding between rich tourist and Maurice Chevalier slumming it, he added in a teasing, fluting tone, “Take care of the gentleman’s canotier, would you, Ambrose?”