“Oh, that’s interesting!” Redfyre took a white card from the ticket pocket and, holding it by the edges, showed it to Beaufort. ‘Invitation to Dine,’ does that say?”

“Someone dropped an n somewhere along the line,” Beaufort remarked. “And—‘invited to break bread with’? Who uses such precious prose these days?”

“The pretentious clots who think it’s stylish to call their dining group the ‘Amici Apicii.’ Friends of Apicius. It is the Roman cook we’re talking about, isn’t it? The one who wrote a cookery book? With rather exotic recipes, rotting fish sauce and all?”

“I believe so, though you won’t find it on your kitchen shelf. No one’s yet thought to publish the text in English, though it’s available in Latin. Or Middle German. The chap was no Mrs. Beeton! ‘First, catch your hare and joint it . . . Five economical ways of cooking a turnip,’ and all that . . . This old Latin was famous for expensive and exotic ingredients like suckling pig and nightingales’ tongues. And his suppers consisted of several lavish courses.”

The doctor frowned with the effort of struggling to dust off his classical schoolboy knowledge. He added thoughtfully: “These hosts, whoever they are, must be a very particular little appreciation society. Classicists and bons vivants. They shouldn’t be too difficult to track down. Oh dear! Harmless entertainment if you can afford it, I suppose. But what’s it doing in the pocket of a poor old tramp? He can hardly have been a dinner guest.” He grunted. “Six years or so of a starvation diet, followed by a festive blowout . . . well, that could result in a collapse of the digestive system and seizure, leading to death. Is someone secretly carrying out a socio-culinary experiment?”

Redfyre pulled a rueful face. “This is Cambridge, as people are always reminding me. It’s entirely possible, but we won’t know until the learned paper’s published. Perhaps if we’re lucky, they’ll pass it to you for expert review, but I wouldn’t count on it. All we can do, Doc, is open him up and take a look at yesterday’s menu. Vital information! It’ll tell us whether he dined at the Hôtel Régence or Willie’s Whelk Stall. Lord knows what you’ll find; perhaps he washed it down with brandy! It was ‘a surfeit of lampreys’ that did it for King John when he sampled the culinary delights of Norfolk, and I don’t suppose he was particularly malnourished to start with.”

Even the experienced doctor blanched a little, Redfyre judged mischievously, at the thought of untangling an overindulgence of young eels from a dead man’s innards.

“No, indeed. Though it wasn’t eels or songbirds’ tongues that killed this chap, let’s not forget, however intriguing the thought. It was a short, sharp throttling.”