Invitation to Die (An Inspector Redfyre Mystery)

“Invitation to Die is the perfect book for those who like a little humor served with their murder. Recommended.”

While lighter in tone than Barbara Cleverly’s Joe Sandilands Investigations series, Invitation to Die, featuring Detective Inspector Redfyre, has a few dark streaks of violence and murder of its own to remind one that life can be unfair, and justice can be a tradeoff between a perfect conclusion and a pragmatic one.

Cambridge, England, May 1924, final exams for university students, dancing in the streets, all light-hearted fun now that the horrible war and its hundreds of thousands of dead is six years in the past, with only war memorials, absent relatives and friends buried under white crosses, and the occasional homeless soldier in his greatcoat begging on Cambridge streets.

It is one such homeless soldier that Rupert Rendlesham, academic of St. Bede’s College and member of a secret dining club, Amici Apicii, finds in the midst of an altercation with the owner of a posh tea room.

“What on earth were you doing, mounting an incursion into a douce tea shop by the front door? . . . Your feral odour risked overpowering the fragrance of the Earl Grey, wouldn’t you say?”

The tramp doesn’t appreciate Rendlesham’s comment, but agrees to attend the dinner. “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 . . .”

The tramp in the greatcoat is not what he seems. He is a former captain of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, a veteran of “that business” in South Africa, better known as the Boer War.

Neither is the dinner invitation a charitable gesture to a poor homeless veteran, but an opportunity for the members of Amici Apicii to ridicule and humiliate one of the “great unwashed.”

The dons of St. Bede find that the tramp, called Dickie by all who know him in Cambridge, can give as good as he gets, which is not what the Amici Apicii intended. Dickie is looking for a way to escape the sadistic dons when an unexpected guest arrives at the exclusive dinner, one that he recognizes from his past.

Dickie is already suspicious of any of the soldiers he commanded during a mission during the Boer War. Someone among the six men on that mission is killing the other members, although waiting 20 years to do so is a puzzle Dickie hasn’t yet solved.

Another soldier, nicknamed Oily, on that mission tells Dickie that “We can’t go on, Dickie, living under the threat of death by someone unknown for some unknown reason . . . I intend to flush him out and deal with him permanently.”

Unaware of Dickie and the dinner party, and Oily and his threats, Detective Inspector John Redfyre of the Cambridge CID is walking his Jack Russell terrier Snapper after warning him to behave. “One more ankle-chewing, one more escape, one more hysterical woof and you’re out, mate! I’ll replace you with a nice quiet Labrador.”

Snapper isn’t worried as he runs into a cemetery and begins yapping at a tramp in a greatcoat resting against a gravestone. Snapper has found a new friend of the traveling brotherhood. He is particularly fond of homeless tramps as they always smell so fragrant.

However, this tramp is unresponsive to Snapper since he is dead. Hands folded across his chest, no signs of violence that Redfyre can see, yet the detective senses that the deceased didn’t just lie down and peacefully pass away. There is a still discernable path from the eight-foot wall of the headmaster of Jude’s garden to the dead tramp.

Who opened the massive gate to let the tramp out? What was the tramp doing at the university? Why does the corpse smell of brandy, hardly a drink available to vagrants? Why are his hands, although rough like a working man’s, clean and his nails clipped? Why do his shoes not fit?

All these questions need to be answered even though Redfyre’s boss, Detective Superintendent MacFarlane would like the cause of death to be natural. But that is not the case. Dr. Beaufort, Redfyre’s favorite pathological, decides the corpse has been strangled.

MacFarlane shows Redfyre his file of unsolved cases, all homicides left on Cambridge streets, or other places sacred to the town, such as the body of a dancing teacher left straddling the sculpture of a lion. Another case involved a corpse found propped against a war memorial. All the cases have two things in common: The bodies are displayed and each man has a military connection.

Invited to tea by the daughter of the headmaster of St. Bede, Redfyre examines the room where the Amici Apicii hold their dinner parties. There is a broken widow and Oliver Fanshaw, don of St. Bede and the leader of Amici Apicii, also strangled and soaked in brandy, lies in some disarray beneath it.

Redfyre must decipher the military connections of the corpses, the identities of the six men who shared a mission with Dickie, but most of all he must learn the secret that binds the six together.

Invitation to Die is a tale of confiscated gold, stolen diamonds, and the betrayal by a fellow soldier, a reminder that the past is not something you leave behind however much you want to, but a portent of the present.

Cleverly’s characters, from the good-natured but determined Redfyre; to the curmudgeon Detective Superintendent MacFarlane; to Redfyre’s Aunt Hetty, dedicated to winning the vote for woman while attempting to find a suitable wife for Redfyre, are three-dimensional and delightful in their eccentricity.

Cleverly’s plot is intricate, but not linear, with Dickie’s story interspersed with chapters recounting the investigation. This can be confusing if one isn’t paying attention. A light-hearted, humorous mystery does not mean a plot suitable for eight year olds; in fact, humor can either hide or reveal character flaws.

Invitation to Die is the perfect book for those who like a little humor served with their murder. Recommended.