Invitation to Die Read online

  “Father is trying to avoid mentioning the name of the Frenchman de Sade,” Rosa said primly. “But I expect he’s wasting his time trying to spare the blushes of a police inspector. Can we just agree that these fellows are twisted, inhuman creatures? What they do when the urge to inflict pain on a fellow man comes upon them is trawl the streets of Cambridge looking for a suitable victim. He must be of low intellect, eccentric, negligible on the social scale—any or all of these. With charm and grace, they engage his attention and invite him to dinner. What an honour! Once there, they ply him with the good food and wine they all enjoy and tear him to shreds. No, not physically—at least, that’s what we first thought—but mentally. They have a game, scoring points like runs at cricket for each telling quip they make. They encourage the victim to talk, express opinions, then make fun of him, and when they’ve had enough, they turn him loose back on the streets. We had a very derogatory Anglo-Saxon term for that sort of nonsense at my Academy for Young Ladies in Kent! I bet Freud has a Greek-based word for their mental condition.”

  “Several,” Redfyre said gloomily. “In the force, we come into contact with more psychopathic types than you’d believe. Nothing surprises me. Though I remind myself that, to the Greeks, ‘psyche’ was ‘the soul.’ A disease of the soul rather than of the mind, I often think, and therefore incurable by human agency. The mind is receptive to improvement, education, enlargement, but who can influence or even locate the soul? That’s what every day finds me struggling to comprehend.”

  “It was the understanding of their game that led to an entirely practical thought in my Freud-free sailor’s mind, Redfyre,” the master chipped in. “A simple man’s reaction against all this ‘try to understand their thought processes’ guff.” His glance slid unemphatically over his daughter’s head. “Who did the washing up? Hey? What? Sure as eggs they didn’t soil their hands! I had the bedder for the Cromwell wing brought to me. Mrs. Hemple was a fount of information once she got going. A cup of tea and half a dozen custard cream biscuits loosened her stays and her tongue. On these ‘dinner nights,’ she’d been requested to do extra hours and been paid double her usual rates. She and her daughter were paid to turn up at ten and tidy up. They hauled the dirty dishes away in a basket, replacing them in the pantry next morning. With careful questioning, she became quite chatty. She had arrived early one evening with Ruby to find a stranger, the guest for the evening, on his way out. The ladies thought at first there was a fight going on. ‘Some Spanish bloke,’ as Mrs. Hemple called him, was being escorted from Fanshawe’s rooms by two men in dinner jackets. Not so much escorting as ‘strong-arming’ was her impression. The foreign gentleman was loud, singing and shouting both. He seemed angry. He shook off the two Jude men, fell down a few stairs, picked himself up, yelled at them in Spanish and shot off. The Jude men, seeing Mrs. Hemple standing there openmouthed with her mop and bucket, told her to go away and report back in an hour.

  “And, this is where it gets interesting, Redfyre—the Jude men followed him down the staircase and out of the building. Like sheepdogs? It’s a tricky place to find your way about. Cromwell wing is a bit of an outlier. If you turn left instead of right as you’re rushing out, you find yourself engaged in a covered way that takes you through to my own territory. To the master’s lodge and garden and eventually on to the back door of the graveyard. They wouldn’t want a drunken, angry Spaniard plunging about the place looking for the exit. But how far did they escort him?

  “It was Mrs. Hemple’s parting shot that blew the lid off the jam jar. ‘Could it have been the same man, Master?’ she wondered. The same as the body found on the lion at the museum? It had been in all the papers. Only they said that chap had been an Argentinian. Was that the same as Spanish? Poor gentleman had been found stabbed to death with his own dagger, and set to ride one of the lions like at a Wild West rodeo.

  “I froze at that. But I found the words to get Mrs. Hemple to repeat what she’d said. The body had been discovered on the morning after the dinner party here in Jude’s, where an angry Spanish speaker had been followed from the college by two of our dons. Rosa researched the facts in the press . . .”

  “And we found that all Mrs. Hemple had to report was accurate. Mr. Ricardo de Angelis, dance instructor at an academy of terpsichore in town, had indeed been stabbed to death. No one was arrested for the crime,” Rosa said.

  “Could that be the reason you signed on at the tango school when you arrived in town, Miss Wells? Playing the detective?”

  “She doesn’t ‘play detective,’ Redfyre!” The master was quick with his reprimand. “She finds things out efficiently—faster, apparently, than the men we pay to be detectives! Things that perhaps your force ought to have established for itself some time ago. I’m here doing a job I don’t want to do because your lot have not done their job adequately.”

  Before he could apologise, Rosa stepped in, eager, he thought, to short-circuit an awkward exchange. “Yes, John, you’re right. It was the reason for joining, but I stayed for the dancing! Why don’t you come to a session this Friday? The day after tomorrow. You could warm up before the May ball. There will be people there that you know. It’s to be a special event. The last meeting of the year. Madame Dorine always takes the class outdoors and they waltz, tango and fox-trot their way down King’s Parade! She’s allowed to put a small band on the lawn by the college gates. People wander out of the bars and alehouses with their glasses in hand and join in the fun. It’s by way of being a recruitment display and everyone is in their best bib and tucker and dancing their socks off. Do say you’ll come!”

  This was the last thing Redfyre wanted to do on his Friday evening. He needed to work overtime on his notes, but above all, he did not want to expose himself to the public gaze while posturing his way incompetently through a tango. He looked regretfully into her wide blue eyes and murmured, “I shall be delighted, Miss Wells. Shall I pick you up or meet you there? Ah, you’ll be escorted by Digby Gisbourne, of course.”

  The master harrumphed and turned Redfyre’s attention back to his earlier question. “So, to this proliferation of corpses, the dance school would appear to have made its contribution. Can you reassure me, Redfyre, that it is a safe environment for my daughter? I think, Inspector, you may have fuller and more reliable records than we have here in college. Rumours? We have those in plenty. That’s different. I can give you any number of the ones that were whispered in my ear, if you want to hear them. The theme is consistent. Men—noncollege men have died not far from here following at least one of these Jude’s blowouts. May I return the question? How many, to your knowledge?”

  “We have an assortment of between six and eight unsolved cases—some of which may be discounted on further inspection, but I will give you details. Finances being restricted, staffing at a low ebb, I find myself reduced to examining closely only two of them. The possible first, the tango man, and this latest, the tramp in the graveyard. I should perhaps add that there are other features in common. A military thread, for instance, will keep gleaming through.”

  Was it wise to be confiding this information to Cornelius Wells? Redfyre felt that the master and his daughter probably had more information to impart and would respond in kind when he divulged a little of his own to them.

  “Military? You’d be looking a long time at this shower before you saw any sign of a military connection,” muttered Wells.

  “The nearest Digby Gisbourne has ever come to things military, I should imagine,” Rosa said, “is prancing his way through a set of the Lancers!”

  “Well, what about that! My dear, that card slipped out of your sleeve, and the inspector, I see, is about to pounce on it.”

  Redfyre was smiling at Rosa’s confusion. “Ah! Another bit of sleuthing? This Gisbourne the Grocer fellow—could it be that you’re getting close to him for reasons other than cheerful accompaniment, Miss Wells? Do you view him as a member of our dining club, or a
s a potential victim?”

  “We’ve got him pencilled in as a member of the group, Redfyre. No more than that. The youngest member. The rest are all dons, so he stands out as a rather unusual choice. I expect because of the clout his father wields. And by clout, I mean cash, of course. Someone pays the wine bills, after all. Who knows how the minds of these men work and what their domestic arrangements are? If it’s further names you’re looking for, I’ll tell you what we have. All supposition, rumour and blind guesswork, you understand.”

  He listed the remaining suspects he knew of: a Rupert Rendlesham, effete wine-bibber and all-round clever scallywag; Hubert Sackville and Quintus Crewe ditto. None had yet gone down. All three were still in their positions at the college.

  “But look here! Why don’t we stop faffing about and ask the chap Fanshawe a few direct questions? If he’s at home, that is. He seems to be keeping his head below the parapet. I had a call from the senate house just before you arrived. He was supposed to be at a ceremony on their lawn this afternoon, handing out certificates of some kind, but he didn’t turn up. I told them I’d look into it.”

  “Always ready for a bit of lion-bearding,” Redfyre said cheerfully. “Coming, Miss Wells?”

  The door to the set of rooms on the top floor of Cromwell wing was a formidable obstacle. Of thick wooden planks itself, it bore a further layer of defence drawing—pinned to it. oak up, it said firmly on the back of an envelope. In a Cambridge college, this signified that the traditional medieval oak screen barring entry (long vanished now) was erected. Keep out! it warned. Its authority was never breached.

  Dr. Wells and Redfyre automatically backed off on seeing it and looked at each other, puzzled and wrong-footed, neither man wishing to break with centuries-old custom.

  Rosa was unimpressed. “Such nonsense!” she said and tore the notice down. “Father, you must do something about this silly tradition. Even the bedders obey it. Look—one of them’s abandoned her bucket and mop still full of soapy water in the alcove over there, rather than carry it all the way downstairs again to the sluice room. Oak-ups are bad for housekeeping! And judging by the smell creeping out from under the door, the poor lady’s going to have her work cut out when she finally gains entrance.”

  As one, the two men stepped in front of Rosa and began to mutter suggestions that she should at this point leave matters to them.

  Pale faced, she seemed to understand. “No, Pa. No, John,” she said calmly. “Three is a more useful number. You may need a runner. Do what you have to do. I promise I won’t faint or squeal.”

  The two men eyed up the solid door and then looked at each other.

  “I’m a CID inspector,” Redfyre said firmly. “I can break into any premises I suspect of harbouring a crime without a warrant.”

  “And I’m the master of this college,” said Cornelius Wells. “Short of necks, perhaps, I can break anything I like under this roof. Your shoulder or mine? Both together?”

  With a tut of irritation, Rosa nipped in front of them. “No keyhole, so no one’s locked it from the outside. I don’t think any of these old rooms have so much as a bolt on the inside. Let’s try this first!” she said and lifted the catch.

  The door began to swing sweetly open on oiled hinges.

  The stink of rotting flesh, elevated to a peak of sensory experience by a high note of eastern spices, had both men coughing and gagging. Even Rosa, determined to impress them with her coolness, fished about in her pocket and produced a lavender-scented handkerchief to press to her nose. They stood in the doorway, ears straining, listening for a sound, anything other than the filthy noise of bluebottle flies, thick and busy at the open chafing dishes lined up along the table.

  “The flies!” Rosa objected. “Are they getting in through the windows? The curtains are drawn, but someone’s left the windows behind them wide open! Shall I shut them or leave them?”

  “Leave!” both men called together. “And draw back the curtains so we can see what we’re doing, would you?” Wells added.

  “The table’s laid for seven. A strange number,” Redfyre commented. “But no guest even sat down. Plates and cutlery are unused. The food has been carefully presented, but not a spoonful has been toothed! The claret’s uncorked but untouched. It’s the Mary Celeste all over again! Where are the diners?”

  He approached the dishes and angrily swatted at the flies. They counterattacked, loudly expressing outrage at the disturbance. In an effort to remember his professional status, Redfyre peered more closely at the dish of lamb standing in pride of place. “Ah! Where are we? Wednesday afternoon . . . Yes, I’d reckon this muck’s at least four days old. This is Friday night’s supper. I wonder what put them off their food.”

  Rosa had been prowling about the room so as to avoid a confrontation with the grubs. “Well, they got started, at any rate. They had a glass of sherry each,” she said, counting with a finger. “No. Four had a sherry. One had a glass of . . . just spa water, I think. There’s no sixth or seventh glass.” And, in a tight voice: “Inspector, do you think you ought to take a look next door? Behind the screen over there, you’ll find Fanshawe’s study-cum-bedroom, I expect.”

  A nod from Wells sent him on his way. Trying not to appear dramatic, he slipped on the pair of rubberised gloves he always kept in his jacket pocket to avoid leaving fingerprints, rounded the Spanish screen and disappeared.

  After what seemed an endless time to his companions, he reappeared. “Nothing of note. Bed’s not been slept in.”

  Wells ground his teeth in disappointment. “I must say—I thought you’d find old Fanshawe gutted and butterflied on the bed.”

  “No such luck.”

  Rosa had continued to perambulate about the room, scowling with concentration.

  “Pa!” she exclaimed. “Friday evening. We were outside on the lawn having a glass of champagne with Fanny and Louis and his brothers, do you remember?” She turned to Redfyre and added, “That’s the Robertsons, old family friends from London. We were laughing and talking and not paying attention to anything around us—you must have noticed how secluded it is down there. Louis suddenly broke off in the middle of a sentence. He has sharper ears than a horse. “What’s that?” he said. The rest of us had heard nothing. “Breaking glass and a shout. Over there.” He pointed towards the college.

  “And Pa reminded him where he was. In a college full of undergraduates celebrating the end of their year. Louis laughed and went on with his story.”

  “What time was this?” Redfyre asked.

  “We never uncork champagne before six, and we were a long way down the first and hadn’t started on the second,” Rosa said. “So it would have been between six-thirty and seven when we went inside to have the dinner the cook had left out for us. The Robertsons don’t much care to dine in hall.”

  “There’s no sign of broken glass in here,” Wells murmured.

  Rosa had gone to the central window of the three, pointing out black scuffmarks below the sill. “That’s shoe polish!” She leaned out. “Oh my! Come and look,” she said, and in a steady voice: “There’s broken glass out there in the court. Broken body, too.”

  Redfyre was with her in a stride, pulling her away from the sill. He leaned over, the master alongside, and they took in the details, muttering to each other.

  “That’s Fanshawe! I’d know that silver thatch anywhere,” Wells said. “Dead, of course.” For a moment, his deliberate calm cracked as he appealed to Redfyre. “What the hell, Redfyre? Why Fanshawe?”

  The inspector kept his response low and professional. “We’ll assume, unless the pathologist has other ideas, that if that is indeed Fanshawe, he met his end on Friday evening, falling headfirst onto a very resilient stone paving. A flower bed, he might just have survived . . . And there’s the glass. The remains of a sherry glass, is it? Look, still clutched in his right hand. And there’s the sherry bottle
—just beyond his head, that spreading dark brown stain.”

  “John, shall I go and call for the police? More police, I mean?” Rosa asked.

  He answered, “Please do that, Miss Wells. Though I’m the officer in charge . . . Superintendent MacFarlane is away in the wilds of Yorkshire.” He looked at his wristwatch. “Nearly seven. Probably sinking into his first scotch or tucking into his beef and puddings. I’m what we have left in Cambridge, I’m afraid.” His voice firming: “Tell the officer at the desk I need Sergeant Thoday and two constables as a matter of urgency. And an ambulance. I’m at a crime scene at Jude’s. I’ll be needing the pathologist, as well—Dr. Beaufort is already on the case. And I believe it’s connected.”

  Rosa gasped, repeated the names Thoday and Beaufort and ran to the door.

  Chapter 19

  Cambridge Police Station, Saturday,

  the 7th of June, 1924

  The detective in Redfyre was intellectually intrigued by the situation the prisoner had just thrown at him over the desk: an enclosed scene of a crime quickly discovered. All the possible suspects were present in the same small room, as were all potential witnesses. Guilty and innocent alike had been subject, without possible objection or quibble, to the questioning of their commanding officer, and the nonguilty had every personal interest in discovering the culprit and bringing him to justice. Counsels, judge, jury, even a choice of executioner—all were immediately available and under orders. Had the captain handled the investigation correctly? Given the eventual outwash with its flotsam of dead bodies, ruined careers and recrimination, Redfyre feared that something had gone wrong. Tremendously wrong.