Invitation to Die Read online

“They’re sending a written report. I want you both to read it carefully the minute it arrives. It’s coming down the Great North Road in the saddlebag of a motorcycle dispatch rider. That’s the importance they’re attaching to the case. But for the moment, enough to say—both heroes and villains. The regiment is still interested in a small unit of six men who managed to get their names recorded for various reasons in the Boer War. We’re looking at a mixed bag of mixed-up individuals. Don’t trust any of them if you come face-to-face with them.”

  “Them, sir? I thought we had dealings with two men, the tramp Dickie and now Abel Hardy, his possible killer. Exactly how many men are still involved in this case?”

  “Six, when it all kicked off. Though some may be dead. I want them all gone over, every detail. Past and present. I’ll decide if they have a future! That coffin file case of the corpse at the war memorial? Jessup? Anybody check his regiment? KOYLI! They’ve got him recorded as dead. He could be number one. With Dunne and Hardy either perished or on the loose, we’re reduced to three to interview. They’re dropping like flies. I want the remaining trio found and interrogated, whatever their state of health or wealth. Write these names down: Herbert Sexton, Ralph Merriman, Sydney Fox—and you can add that madam Abel Hardy was or is married to, Edith. Go down to London and fetch her up here, Thoday. We’ll have a little chat. And, if all else fails, what about, as a wild card—find out if Sydney Fox’s mother is still alive. He was the youngest . . .” He consulted his notes. “Seventeen at the time. She may be still with us. How old would she be? Um, er—in her seventies, would you say? Not impossible. Young Sydney may have confided something in his old ma.”

  He marshalled his thoughts, drew his notebook closed again and began.

  “Don’t want to bore you with stuff you’re already familiar with . . . Look, how much do you fellows know about that ghastly business in South Africa?”

  Redfyre answered first. “My uncle saw action there, sir. I’ve helped him—or hindered him—many times as a youngster to refight some of those battles. Magersfontein, Modder River, Bloemfontein, Spion Kop . . .”

  Thoday smiled, bemused and out of his depth. Too young for even the Great War, to him the Boer War was very ancient history. “I was a Boy Scout, sir,” he offered. “I dutifully read our founder Baden-Powell’s accounts of his exploits in Mafeking. And I’ve always enjoyed The Boy’s Own Paper adventure stories. But that’s it.”

  MacFarlane grunted. “Our two blokes, the tramp Richard Dunne and the man he tried to contact, Abel Hardy, in fact knew each other well. Their army records chime with each other step for step for many months in South Africa. Dunne was captain to Hardy’s lieutenant. Both men were promoted virtually on the battlefield as the Boer, crafty sods, learned very early on how to pick out and shoot dead the enemy officer rank. Records say both men were deserving of the ranks they held. Outstanding courage, leadership qualities and initiative shown by both.

  “Following on the battle of the Modder River, they were sent off with a small company of men—a total of six—as a penetrative unit with reconnaissance and stealth attack potential to take control of and survey damage to the railway line north to Kimberley in the middle of Boer-held terrain. ‘Hold position until relieved’ was the instruction. In other words, a suicide squad.”

  “Poor souls,” Redfyre murmured.

  “They survived. I can’t say ‘against all expectations’ because there were, you can bet, no expectations at all. No, the men survived thanks, I’m judging, to the extraordinary leadership and boldness of our tramp, Dickie Dunne. After relief by engineering elements of the Ninth—about a month later—he marched them back into base, now under the command of Lord Roberts—with my General Whitcliffe at his side. So I had an eyewitness account just now of the unit’s procession into camp with their well-gotten gains!”

  “Sorry, sir—gains?”

  “The buggers! They’d somehow killed off the Boers who were holed up in the place they were to occupy and relieved them of a cargo of gold ingots they’d intercepted. Gold on its way down to—we presume—Cape Town and shipment on to Blighty. They handed the whole lot over to Bobs—Lord Roberts, freshly in charge of the British forces. Along with the horse that had been carrying them. Plus a lot of valuable survey information, which helped get the rail and wireless communications going again in double-quick time. It was quite a feat for a bunch of raw recruits with a fortnight’s fighting under their belts. The general was impressed and took an interest in their future careers. Luckily for them, as it transpired. Whitcliffe is a doughty advocate. A man you’d want in your corner. The six were all decorated, given a special medal for constancy or initiative or something. The Queen’s Own Award for Duty Done.”

  “Gold? Kimberley? Smuggling? Why does that make my whiskers twitch?” Redfyre said.

  “Because you’ve been reading The Boy’s Own Paper, too?” suggested Thoday. “The latest adventure, ‘To Kimberley with Captain “Duty” Dunne?’”

  “Mmm . . . well, no work of fiction ever had a conclusion as painful as the one that overtook our boys. That early chapter of derring-do ended all too soon for them. In crime, betrayal, disgrace and imprisonment. A four-year sentence of hard labour breaking rocks and laying track under a blistering South African sun.” MacFarlane sighed. “And when I tell you the end of the tale, you’ll wonder, as I do, why on earth the six men who all survived and made it back eventually into good old civvy street, lived on peaceably for another twenty years, each thriving in his own way, many miles apart, before suddenly rediscovering one another and fighting like ferrets in a sack. Why? What was the trigger? What really happened to them all in South Africa? We’ve got the KOYLI dates and listings coming down to us. We’ll know what medals they won, the dates of their trial, imprisonment and release, but we won’t know their story. If we can’t shake the truth out of the survivors, we shall have to get hold of their nearest and dearest and”—he paused and considered—“ask them to confide. Find that trigger, the change in circumstances. A sudden revelation and we’ve got the motive for two, possibly three murders. And I don’t intend to stand by and arrest the last man standing!”

  Chapter 16

  Cambridge, Tuesday, the 20th of May, 1924

  The documents sent down from Yorkshire were pounced on next morning, examined, exclaimed over, absorbed and mined for information. Actions were planned, tasks divided and handed out by MacFarlane.

  “From London to Leeds,” he said with grim satisfaction. “We’re spreading our net wide, but needs must! No one’s wriggling out of this through inattention. There, that’s you lads fixed up for the next three days. And you can thank your lucky stars and your self-sacrificing governor that you haven’t been handed the mucky end of the stick. Never send a man where you wouldn’t go yourself. I hope you’re marking and learning. One of us has to do it—go to Yorkshire. To interview an old lady who is most likely gaga.” He sighed a sigh of martyrdom. “I’m assigning this task to myself. I’m bound for Leeds tomorrow morning. No, no need to be concerned for me—the local lads are sending a squad car to pick me up from the nearest railway station, and I’m spending the night with an old mate. I shall be back by Friday afternoon. During my absence, Redfyre, you’ve got the ship.”

  Redfyre and Thoday were ready for a breath of fresh air. Leaving the superintendent to work through a list of phone calls, they walked together to the morgue, where Redfyre checked on Thoday’s extraordinary theory concerning the feet of the dead man. He stood, boots in one hand, staring at the well-tended feet of the corpse.

  “By God, you’re right, Sarge! Placing the boots so carefully—jokingly, almost—it wasn’t the killer ’avin’ a larf at our expense. He had to do it because their feet were different sizes. This poor chap isn’t our hero Captain Richard Dunne, everyone’s favourite tramp, at all. It’s someone else. Someone he’s met down in the graveyard or over the wall in Jude’s College grounds and decided to
kill. Using the approved and taught commando silent killing technique. He decides to cover up the murder—for as long as he can, to allow himself chance to get away—by swapping clothes and identity with his own. He doesn’t mind ‘dying.’ If we fall for the story he’s built up for us, the blundering cops will take one look and say, ‘Dead vagrant. Drunk as a skunk. Another one.’ Without further enquiry, the corpse will be noted and dated by the coroner and shovelled into a pauper’s grave without a name. If it should be identified as ‘Old Dickie,’ well, that’s no problem. As a tramp, he’s ditched his identity years ago. He’ll just change his name again. Either way, he’s away free as a bird and no one’s looking for him.”

  Back to practicalities, Thoday speculated: “So he left him wearing undergarments and suit that were unidentifiable and difficult to change in the dark on a corpse, then put his greatcoat on top. With everything taken from the pockets.”

  “Except for the half crown, Sarge. He knew the police couldn’t just have him shovelled away as a vagrant if he had the price of a night’s lodging on him. Them’s the rules! He knows what we know of legal etiquette and left it there deliberately, I’d say. Why else pass up half a crown? It’s a goodly sum for a vagrant. No—Dickie Dunne wanted the body identified as Richard Dunne of Cambridge, logged and buried under that name.

  “Then there’s the dining club invitation card. I wonder if he overlooked that or left it in the inside ticket pocket because he wanted some sharp chaps to find it and investigate? I’m seeing a pattern. But the really tricky part was the socks and shoes. He couldn’t expect to pass off as a man of the roads a corpse with manicured, bunion-free feet with—let’s guess—fine wool socks and Trickers handmade half brogues that fitted beautifully. Shoes bearing the maker’s individual last number, which would establish with one phone call the customer’s name. Off come socks and shoes and he replaces them with his own disreputable ones. Except that he puts the worn right sock on the left foot. And—more important—he can’t put the shoes on because they won’t fit!”

  “The assistant and I struggled. Couldn’t be done, sir.”

  “Do we have any information on the height or size of feet of our second gentleman of interest? Mr. Abel Hardy?”

  “Fits the bill, sir. Listed in the notes and service records that came down from Yorkshire. Hardy is tall—six one with size-ten shoes. Dunne smaller—five eleven with size nines.”

  “So he leaves the smaller shoes—the size-nine brogues—neatly by the tombstone in a soldierly way. Meanwhile he pulls onto his own feet the socks and the larger shoes of the man he’s just killed. No problems there for a tramp. They prefer a roomy shoe, padding them out with wool and even newspaper. And, tracks covered, or at least, blurred, off he marches into the night in his shiny new city shoes.”

  “We’ll be needing a positive ID of our corpse, sir. Teeth? There’s a record of dentistry carried out in Doc Beaufort’s notes. There’s always fingerprints, but dental records are faster.”

  “Good thought! Do that first, Sarge. Find out who Hardy’s dentist is and check with him. If we get a match, that will be the moment for you to haul in Mrs. Hardy.”

  Two impossible tasks! Remembering what Edith Hardy had said about her ability to disappear, Thoday responded with less-than-eager agreement.

  “Teeth first, then Edith,” Thoday reminded himself. Back at the nick, armed with the doctor’s diagram of the corpse’s teeth, he settled himself at the telephone and worked out his plan of attack. How do you locate a possible victim’s possible dentist, with, possibly, a practice in London? He looked again at the plan of the teeth. Several gold fillings—that was the most distinctive feature. A rich man, his dentistry wasn’t going to be done by a suburban bloke who’d fire in cheap fillings from a distance; a hardworking man, he wasn’t going to travel far from his office to get a toothache treated. Thoday calculated that his appointments would be made for him by a secretary from his office phone. He wouldn’t have entrusted care and concern for his teeth to Edith. He thought for a moment then decided that low cunning was his best bet.

  He lifted the earpiece and asked the operator to connect him with Enquiries At in the Strand. A cool female voice answered.

  Thoday remembered that Hardy’s discreet and well-trained office staff had given the police the cold shoulder when they had first contacted them. If Edith’s account was true and this was indeed a detective agency her husband was running, then discretion would certainly be a priority. As a police sergeant, he would always be given a frosty reception at Enquiries At.

  He introduced himself: “Hello. Regency Hotel, Cambridge here, and this is the manager speaking: Mr. George Smithson.” He explained that her employer, a guest at present staying with them, had been laid low by a problem with a wisdom tooth . . . impacted, most likely . . . much pain was being suffered along with the not-unexpected fever. An excellent local dentist was being called in to deal with it, of course . . . Mrs. Hardy had left the day before and was unavailable for consultation . . . would Miss . . . er . . . Chapel kindly supply the name and number of Mr. Hardy’s own dentist, whose number he was too confused and feverish to remember, in case the local chap needed to confer with him and check on Mr. Hardy’s dental history? “You know what these dentists are like!” he added confidentially. “Worse than doctors when it comes to territory and discretion. Best to get it right!”

  Miss Chapel was all concern. Oh dear! That had flared up again, had it? Of course she could help. The information was right at her fingertips in the Kardex file. A moment later Thoday was in possession of Hardy’s dentist’s name, Harley Street address and telephone number.

  “Mr. Sharpe? Cambridge CID here. I have a question regarding one of your patients, Mr. Abel Hardy . . . Now, if I read off to you the contents of his mouth, perhaps you could confirm that they do correspond to your patient’s record? . . . That’s it! Right down to the gold fillings and single porcelain jacket crown.” Thoday tried not to sound too triumphant. He expressed his warm thanks to Mr. Sharpe and somehow managed to dodge the dentist’s concerned question about the state of health of his well-heeled client.

  So the chap on the slab was confirmed: Dunstan was Mr. Abel Hardy. And his friend and suspected killer, Dickie Dunne, was out there dancing in the breeze, showing a clean pair of calloused heels. Thoday left a note of that important piece of news for the boss before he set off in pursuit of Mrs. Hardy.

  He was off to the railway station, but he didn’t think he would be dashing off to London. Not if he’d read Edith and her dangling luggage label right. Just to be sure, he rang again the number she’d given him. The same carefully enunciating maid answered, “Sorry, sir, the mistress is not available at the moment. She has gone to Cambridge with Mr. Hardy.” Gotcha, Edith! he thought and grabbed his trilby hat.

  Midday was a slack hour at the station. Neither of the two porters prowling about in action was the one he was looking for, so he went to the small, tobacco-smoke-filled room at the end of the platform where he thought he might find them with their mugs of tea in hand. The four men of assorted ages assembled in the snug were sullen and suspicious, but willing to hear him out when he showed his credentials.

  “Four minutes before the London train gets in and we get to work, so off you go, then, Sergeant,” the eldest told him firmly.

  He introduced himself and asked pleasantly if he might know their names.

  Jim and Fred Pearson, Enoch Smith and Christopher Sands declared themselves in age order.

  “Thank you, gentlemen. It’s actually Fred I need to speak with. I recognise you from yesterday afternoon. About four-fifty,” he added.

  “Thought it might be me you were after,” the young man replied cheerfully. “I remember the moustache. Done a runner, has she?”

  “Could you just confirm which platform you carried the lady’s luggage to, Fred?”

  “Course! Number six, Peterborough train. And it�
��s all change at Peterborough for stations north.” He added slyly, “Still, that’s the lady’s own business, ain’t it? Why should I give her away just cos you ask nicely? You might be ’er ’usband for all I know.”

  “I assure you, young man, that there is a very good reason. But I respect your concern for the female sex. She’s not married to me, or anyone, I think, at the moment. And she may be in danger,” he added, lying to grease the wheels. Well, not entirely a lie, since MacFarlane had her in his sights. “I’m investigating a serious case, and I just need you to confirm something I already know. So you’re giving nothing away. The lady has nothing to fear from me.”

  The hoot of an approaching train had every man including Fred on his feet, tapping out pipes and downing tea mugs. As he dashed for the door, Thoday grabbed him by the arm and yelled over the noisy free-for-all: “Woodleigh Spa, Lincolnshire? That’s what it said on her luggage labels, isn’t it?”

  The porter rolled his eyes suggestively. “Yer! That’d be it! Lucky for some, eh?” and raced for the approaching train.

  Oh, Edith, Thoday thought, shaking his head. When I report this to MacFarlane, he’s going to have to ask you to leave your green haven in the English countryside, the golf, the swimming pool, the Kinema in the Dell, the cocktails at six and the unquestioned if questionable goings-on with—I’m guessing—a gentleman who is definitely not your husband. And exchange that blissful setting for an interrogation cell in his nick.

  MacFarlane’s chortle was as bone-chilling as a knock on the door from the Spanish Inquisition.

  Thoday felt sorry for poor Edith. Her barely disguised excitement, her French perfume, her coquettish manner were all, in retrospect, due to anticipation of an amorous interlude in a notoriously louche pleasure ground, deep in the middle of the English countryside. Brighton? She’d planted the notion of a flight south in his head, and any other bloke without detective training would have missed that luggage label. She’d turned left instead of right at the railway station and gone north. Thoday had done his job, though with some regrets, and could now in all conscience chuck Edith into MacFarlane’s lap.