Rosamund appeared moved, and in an effort to better understand the circumstances, asked a few simple questions of Redfyre. “At which end was his head? . . . You say his boots were . . . here? At the foot? Why? If he took them off himself, he must have been attacked while he was lying stretched out trying to get to sleep? The boots tell you that he was not killed on our back lawn. I’m rather glad of that! Or else that he was throttled to death and then his murderer went to the trouble of removing his victim’s footwear and placing it tidily by his side?”

“But such a natural gesture!” Dr. Wells commented. “Exactly what an old soldier—or an old sailor—would do. Done just the same myself for years . . . Had you thought, Redfyre, that if he didn’t just stroll in on his own two feet and place himself on the stone, ready for death, it would have been quite a task for anyone to heave and drag his body all the way across my back lawn, through the locked gate—showing intimate knowledge of the college grounds—then undertake an ad hoc valeting service on the corpse and its clothing?”

“I certainly had,” Redfyre managed to say before the master in his enthusiasm rushed on.

“And the clothing . . . you say he was wearing an army greatcoat? Well, anyone can acquire one secondhand these days. Anything useful in the pockets? Like a receipt for a meal at the Savoy or a ticket stub for the Palladium?”

Was the shove in the right direction fortuitous or calculated? Redfyre wondered.

“As a matter of fact, we were lucky enough to find one item. Overlooked by whoever cleaned out the coat. In an inside ticket pocket . . .”

Redfyre took out his notecase and produced the Invitation to Dine card from the Amici Apicii, watching the master’s face carefully.

Cornelius Wells took it with a wondering look, read the script on the front and then turned it over to check, as Redfyre had done, for pencilled messages or reminders on the back.

The inspector had expected a stone-faced, professional response, but was rewarded with a series of changing expressions that flitted in apparent spontaneity across the unguarded features. Astonishment, disbelief, anger, satisfaction and resolve—Redfyre identified all these emotions.

Finally, “Let’s go and sit down in my drawing room again and consider this,” Wells said. “I have something to tell you in return, Inspector. High time to show you my pitiful hand of cards, I think. Rosa, come. You must hear this, too. I’m afraid, in my overconfidence, I may have exposed you to something very dark and distasteful.”

Chapter 18

Chapter 18

Cambridge, Wednesday, the 21st of May, 1924