The September Society clm-2

by Charles Finch

  Tom Stamp blanched. “A detective. Has George gone missing?”

  “Why do you ask?” said Lenox sharply.

  “Because I haven’t seen Bill or George, either of them, for days. I’m getting pretty damn worried.”

  “Have you contacted the police?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. I have collections-exams, you know-tomorrow morning, and I hadn’t really thought about the lads until a few hours ago. I thought I’d run over to the dean’s office in a little while if they weren’t back.”

  “Did you see anything out of the ordinary in Dabney’s room? Any signs that he had left in a rush or even of a struggle?”

  “Nothing like that, no. Hang on a sec, though-I did find this.” He motioned for Lenox to follow him into the room and then found a book and took a slip of paper out of it, which he handed over. “Make anything of it?” he said.

  Lenox narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. The artifact with which Tom Stamp had presented him seemed to confirm the conclusions he had reached after thinking the case over at Balliol. It was a plain card inscribed with the words THE SEPTEMBER SOCIETY.

  CHAPTER NINE

  T hey’re your two closest friends at Oxford?” Lenox said.

  “Easily. We do everything together.”

  “How did you meet?”

  “As first-years we went down to the Sheldonian together, all the freshers, to matriculate. Did you have matriculation in your day? Everyone puts on hats and gowns and dinner jackets, and then the chancellor reads off some Latin and you promise not to burn any books in the library, and all of it combined means I suppose that you’re an Oxonian for life. After that everyone goes to have a pint at the White Horse Tavern, just across the way, and out of our class Bill, George, and I ended up last there, still nursing our beers and having cigarettes. After that we just fell in naturally together.”

  They were sitting on a bench in the Grove Quad. It was about five o’clock by now and the day had gotten rather gray, a few drops of rain scattering across the ivy. Stamp was having a cigarette.

  He was a jovial-looking lad, under the middle height but with good, strong features. He had on a suit but no tie. Perhaps the most distinctive thing about him was the crop of fair hair that was continually falling in his face.

  “What were they like separately?”

  “Hard to think of them that way. I suppose Dabney is moodier, often worried about his work. Rather a more sturdy, Midlands type of fellow than Payson or me. But good fun most of the time, and absolutely dead loyal. Dark hair, very smart.

  “Payson is generally jollier company than either of us. He loves to go to balls in London-I think he may have had a girl down there-and sometimes said Oxford was too small for him. Bright red hair.” Lenox noted this down. “Glasses when he reads, not otherwise. Not as smart as Dabney, but then again, neither am I.”

  “What are the two of you reading?”

  “Oh, right. Should have mentioned.” He stubbed out the cigarette. “I’m on modern history. Expect I shall go into politics. My father is in it, you know.”

  Lenox resisted the urge to ask how. “And Dabney?”

  “Dabney, strict classics. As I said, the brightest of us. I could barely muddle through ten lines of Virgil at Winchester. Always most looked forward to rugger and that sort of thing.”

  “Aren’t you a bit small?” Lenox asked.

  Stamp laughed. “A bit. Helps you slide in between people. So I told myself. I hadn’t a chance when I came here, but you know how it is at school, with games between the houses. They always want more people, and everyone gets a chance.”

  “What about Payson?” Lenox already knew, but wanted confirmation.

  “Do you mean…?”

  “What was he reading?”

  “Oh-right, of course. Modern history, too, just as I am. One of the reasons he and I were perhaps a trifle closer than either of us with old Dabney. Spent all of our days together with the tutor here, a crazy sort of fellow, wears the exact same clothes every day.”

  Lenox laughed. “Different copies of the same? Or the same?”

  Stamp laughed, too. “Ah-the very question. We debated it our entire first year, until at last Payson landed on a scheme to figure it out. Always a laugh, George is. What he did was, he pretended to trip as he came in the door, and had to grab Standish’s-Standish is our tutor-Standish’s shoulder. Well, he had dipped his finger in green ink. Not a lot. Just a dab, enough to make a mark. It’s a sort of checkered coat, so it came off pretty well. We couldn’t keep a straight face the entire lesson and had to keep pretending that some rot about the Nine Years War was what made us laugh.”

  “What happened the next day?” Lenox asked.

  “Same exact jacket.” Stamp broke into peals of laughter. “Lord, I certainly hope they’re okay, you know. Both of them.”

  “About George. Wouldn’t he have had the same exam as you tomorrow? Wouldn’t you have noticed him gone?”

  “No-it was a makeup exam, you see. I was rather poorly last Trinity term. They let me defer exams until the beginning of this Michaelmas term. Hell of a way to do things. I’ve nearly broken myself in half over it. Anyway, I haven’t seen old Standish or our other tutor, Jenkyns, as much as I should have done. Payson, too.”

  “May I see your rooms more closely?” Lenox asked. “I should like a chance to look over Dabney’s things as I have Payson’s.”

  “Certainly,” said Stamp.

  As they were walking up the stairs, Lenox asked, “What made you notice the card-the one that mentioned the September Society?”

  “Only that I hadn’t heard of it and was surprised that Dabs would go in for anything I didn’t know about. And then it hadn’t been there before, I’m sure of that.”

  “Can you think of anyone that William Dabney and George Payson have in common?”

  “Me, I suppose. I’m the most obvious connection between them.” He lit another cigarette. “Lord, it makes them seem almost dead, you saying William instead of Bill. Too formal.”

  “Anyone else who connects the two of them?”

  “Oh, yes, sorry. Well. I suppose there’s Professor Hatch. He’s their advisor-just luck of the draw, we all have them. He often throws small parties at his house, a big place just past the King’s Arms on Holywell. The parties go to all hours. There was one Thursday, in fact. I was glad then that Hatch wasn’t my advisor, or I wouldn’t have done a moment of work that evening. They took that cat of theirs and let it wander around, which they often do. Sometimes they brought London girls, though not on Thursday. Anyway, they’re both rather favorites of his.”

  “About that cat-was it white?”

  “Yes, exactly. Longshanks, they called him, like Edward I-because they insisted that he was taller than the average cat. I couldn’t see it, and we got into frightful arguments about the average cat’s height.” Stamp laughed fondly. “They had him from the dean’s wife.”

  “Is there anybody else to connect them?”

  “I don’t think so. Oh-I suppose there’s Andy Scratch. He’s a decent fellow, though rather of a different crowd. A year older than us. The three of them serve on the social committee together. You can usually find him playing cards with the bartender down at the Mitre on Turl Street in the evening. Sandy-haired chap.”

  “Scratch or the bartender?”

  “Scratch.”

  They had arrived at the rooms.

  “Why did you live with Dabney?” asked Lenox. “If you were closer with Payson?”

  “Oh-I suppose I put that too strongly. We’re all about equally friendly. All three of us requested a triple room, but only Dabney and I were put together. Between you and me, I reckon it was George’s mother who intervened, because he got practically the best digs in college.”

  “Oh yes?”

  “I’d trade. Although it’s a bit lonely for him. He spends a good deal of time over here, or at the Mitre. More sociable. Payso
n’s a sociable lad. The sort who would have been friends with the cricket captain at school even though he didn’t play cricket himself. Popular, I mean to say.”

  Lenox smiled. It was a good description.

  The room offered relatively little useful evidence. There was the usual assortment of books and tennis rackets and shoes lying about, and a fair amount of paper covered with Latin translations and other incidental coursework. On the back of one of these pages, the name George Payson was written several times in script.

  “Any clue why this is here?”

  Stamp shrugged. “Probably George was bored and practiced his signature. I sometimes doodle during lectures. Same thing.”

  “Yes,” said Lenox.

  There was also a fair collection of matchboxes. “A smoker?” Lenox asked.

  “No. Perhaps he collected them.”

  “Yes, they’re all from clubs and bars.”

  “I remember now-he got quite touchy if I nicked one.”

  “Odd.”

  “Well, Dabs can be moody, as I told you.”

  A few other things-none of them really interesting. Odds and ends. Lenox couldn’t make much out about the lad from the detritus of his life.

  “Where did you find the card-the September Society card?” he asked.

  “Lying on top of all his books,” Stamp said. He was in the process of taking another match from one of Dabney’s matchbooks to light a cigarette. “Only about an hour before you came. I misplaced a biography of Cromwell. Hope it stays misplaced, actually. That’s why I was digging through here.”

  Lenox finished looking at the room, making a thorough job of it. Outside it was dark.

  “Thank you for your help.”

  “Don’t mention it. You will find them, won’t you?”

  “Where are you from?”

  Stamp pushed his hair away. “Why, London. Do you ask for a reason?”

  “If I were you I might consider returning home this weekend.”

  “Why?”

  “Both of your best friends are missing. I only suggest caution, not anxiety. But caution, certainly. This is a deep business.”

  Stamp looked surprised. “Rum, that. Perhaps I will,” he said. “Rum,” he repeated to himself.

  He showed Lenox downstairs and out into the courtyard. At his last glimpse Lenox saw anxiety dawning on the young man’s face, despite the counsel against it that he had just received.

  CHAPTER TEN

  A re you going to consult the police?” McConnell asked, lifting his glass of beer.

  “I shouldn’t think so. Not yet, anyhow. It’s been a day and a half and there’s no conclusive evidence of foul play. For all we know they may be on a trip into London. Though I doubt it.”

  It was about seven in the evening, and the violet twilight had given way to darkness outside. For a passing moment, Lenox gave in to a deep wave of exhaustion. It had been a long, long day already.

  “Sure,” said McConnell. “Kill your cat, go on a binge in Park Lane. Common enough.”

  The doctor was wearing a gray wool suit of the sort that every don at Oxford seems to live in. There was a plaid handkerchief in his pocket, an allusion to his Scottish lineage. He was still a handsome man, fit and red-cheeked, accustomed to the outdoors, though the weariness of his eyes made him look older than he was.

  At the moment he was smiling, however. “A dead cat, Lenox. Really. No wonder I became a doctor.”

  “Your whole career has been building toward this moment, has it?”

  “No doubt of it.”

  They were at the Bear, the oldest public house in Oxford. McConnell had wanted to go somewhere nicer, but Lenox put his foot down. He so rarely came back to Oxford that when he did he liked to revisit the spots of his student life. The Bear, its three tiny, dim rooms, arched over with old wooden beams, its rickety tables and delicious food, was one of the happiest places in the world to him. As it had been for students like him since the thirteenth century, 1242, if he recalled correctly.

  Lenox was having a chop in gravy and garlic potatoes, as he had every Thursday night of his third year when his friends gathered from the libraries to commiserate over the gloom of year-end examinations. McConnell was pushing around a bowl of cottage pie, but sticking mostly to beer.

  “Where do you think you’ll travel next, Charles?” he asked between sips.

  “Hard to say. I have my eye on Morocco, though.”

  There was a twinkle in McConnell’s eye. “Morocco! I never heard of a less civilized place.”

  “Oh, the French are down there, and I would love to see Tangier. It’s meant to be beautiful.”

  (If Lenox had gone on all the trips he planned, he would have been one of the great travelers of his age; inevitably, a case blocked his carefully laid plans. Still, he loved nothing more in the world than to pore over his maps and travel guides, to meet with his travel agent, to correspond with foreign consulates and plot elaborate routes through territories both known and unknown. Recently it had been Morocco; before that Persia; before that the French coast near Ville-franche. His friends loved to josh him about his grandiosity of vision, rarely fulfilled-though there had once been a remarkable trip to Russia, nearly a decade before-but it was all good-natured, of course.)

  “Is it?” said the doctor, his eyes still laughing.

  “Yes! One can hire a group of tour guides, mountain men. It’s very occasionally dangerous, but I have a friend from the Travelers’ Club who might go with me.”

  They talked about Morocco for a little while longer; then Lenox took advantage of the lightness of their conversation to slide in a dangerous question. “Is everything all right these days, Thomas?” he said nonchalantly.

  It went against every instinct in Lenox to put such a question to his friend, but Lady Jane had been worried about Toto (McConnell’s young, beautiful, tempestuous wife was Jane’s cousin) and had asked Lenox to see what he could find out. Her instincts tended to be correct-at any rate, better than his-and it was possible that McConnell’s happy appearance that morning might only have been because of the prospect of a new case, or a momentary renewal of his spirits. Who knew?

  “No, no, quite all right,” said McConnell.

  “Oh, good,” said Lenox. “Please excuse-I mean to say, it was out of bounds…”

  There was a moment’s silence. McConnell’s open, friendly face was downcast now. “To be honest, actually, Toto and I have been rowing a bit. Nothing serious at all, mind you!”

  “I’m sorry,” said Lenox. And he was.

  “Well, too much of that. Would you like to hear what I’ve found out about the dashed cat?”

  “Certainly,” said Lenox.

  “The animal was poisoned, as we originally conjectured; not enough poison to kill it, but enough to put it out for a good long time.”

  “As you originally conjectured, not me. But pray go on.”

  “It was poisoned about an hour before it died. That fact points to premeditation, clearly. Well-taken-care-of animal-expensively bred, I should say, though really I’m more expert when it comes to dogs.”

  “Any indication about the weapon?”

  “Ah, yes-a letter opener, with the letter P engraved on it, as we both saw. Dates back about twenty years-it has a manufacturer’s mark from the 1840s.”

  “Did you ever know James Payson?”

  “The lad’s father? No. What was he like?”

  “Terrible temper… had an awful scar on his throat. An unpleasant chap. At any rate, what else did you find?”

  “The remaining question is, of course, why did someone want to send the young fellow this kind of message?”

  “Do you think so? I see it rather differently.”

  “Oh yes?”

  “I think Payson himself killed the cat. Longshanks, they called him.”

  “No, really? Why on earth would he have done that?”

  “A better question would be, why would the people hunting him down have done it? It
immediately makes his disappearance suspect, doesn’t it? I think if I kidnapped somebody, I would want to make everything he left behind seem as normal as possible.”

  “Something in that.”

  “And then consider that there was that cryptic note underneath the cat. Maybe he felt he couldn’t leave a note in plain sight, so he had to kill the cat to conceal it. Difficult to focus on finding a letter when there’s a dead cat in the middle of the floor.”

  McConnell laughed wryly. “Yes, I grant you that. But why not write a more explicit note?”

  “Perhaps he felt that even with the dead cat there, he couldn’t risk it. Did he know Bill Dabney was in danger? Perhaps. Or perhaps he feared for his mother’s safety, Stamp’s safety. Any of a dozen reasons.”

  McConnell frowned. “But here’s my trump card, Lenox-the cat had been fed poison an hour before it died. If Payson were in a rush, he couldn’t have afforded an hour.”

  “I would make the same argument about our criminal, or criminals-they would be less inclined to linger in their victim’s room than anybody, wouldn’t they? In a college with round-the-clock security, where anybody unusual would instantly stand out? As for Payson, I should say that he saw the danger coming early. That would explain his detached and anxious behavior with his mother, with whom he was usually on such good terms. Or alternately, perhaps he found the cat poisoned and decided to put it to use, the poor thing.”

  “What on earth do you think it means?”

  “There you take me into deeper waters. It’s difficult to gauge whether the cat was merely used to conceal a message, or whether it was in itself a message-to us.”

  There was a pause while McConnell seemed to consider something. At last he laid his fork and knife down and said, “You know, it really is good of you to use the word ’us,’ Charles.” It had plainly been difficult for him to say.

  “Pure self-interest,” said Lenox. “I’d drop you in a second if you weren’t so useful.”

  Both men laughed. They resumed eating, and the conversation moved into other areas; while Lenox still enjoyed it, he saw the spark of involvement dying away that had lit McConnell’s face while they talked about this poor, absurd cat. Soon the Scotsman laid down his fork and knife altogether, his eyes fell slightly, and he pulled a flask from his side pocket.