books by the ­author

The Joe Sandilands Investigations

The Last Kashmiri Rose

Ragtime in Simla

The Damascened Blade

The Palace Tiger

The Bee’s Kiss

Tug of War

Folly du Jour

Strange Images of Death

The Blood Royal

Not My Blood

A Spider in the Cup

Enter Pale Death

Diana’s Altar

The Detective Inspector Redfyre Investigations

Fall of Angels

Invitation to Die

Copyright © 2019 by Barbara Cleverly

Published by

Soho Press, Inc.

853 Broadway

New York, NY 10003

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cleverly, Barbara, author.

Invitation to die / Barbara Cleverly.

Series: An Inspector Redfyre mystery ; 2

ISBN 978-1-64129-027-2

eISBN 978-1-64129-028-9

I. Title

PR6103.L48 I58 2019 823’.92—dc23 2018060875

Interior design by Janine Agro, Soho Press, Inc.

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

With many thanks to my friend Polly who inspired this Cambridge story.

And dedicated to the memory of ancestor Mark Cooper,
a fifteen year old cavalryman in the South African War.

“A gentleman in khaki ordered south.”

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Cambridge, Friday, the 16th of May, 1924

Struck by a rare lapse in confidence, Rupert Rendlesham pulled up sharply in the middle of the King’s Parade on his way down to the market square. At half past eleven on a Friday in May, the street was almost deserted. Examination papers and desperate last-minute revision had cleared undergraduates from the streets, and there was no one about to raise an eyebrow at the sudden break in the stride, the fleeting frown of indecision. Nevertheless, he looked furtively from side to side before turning to check on his reflection in the window of the gents’ outfitters he was passing. Vanity? No. “Judicious self-awareness,” he would have called his decision to indulge in a little light preening. Rupert was too vain ever to suspect himself of vanity.

There was another, less shaming trigger for his sudden spasm of doubt. This was no everyday expedition into the realms of the Great Unwashed he was undertaking. He was on a mission. A manhunt. His mind, steeped in medieval literature, dared to add: a quest. And he was running out of time. He had one hour to secure the trophy that would see him garlanded in praise by his fellows before the day was out. Amused by his own whimsy, Rupert twirled the end of an imaginary moustache and shared a flirtatious leer with his reflection.

A cheeky wolf whistle caught him in midpose. A further rude comment on his parentage from a butcher’s boy pedalling by on a bike distracted and annoyed him.

“You ignoramus!” he hurled back. It occurred to Rupert that his choice of insult, if indeed apt, would be incomprehensible to the target. “Oik!” he added for clarity. “And your granny!”

Mild enough, but he regretted at once descending into mindless repartee. What the hell! He could do better than indulge in surreptitious self-examination for the entertainment of the lower classes.