The September Society clm-2

by Charles Finch

  When he boarded the train he was still thinking, and as it began to move he asked himself: Could it be a coincidence that Payson had left the odd assortment of objects on his floor and then asked to have his room left alone?

  More important, he thought as he gazed out over the low, misty fields south of Oxford, set back from the Thames: Could it be a coincidence that all of the objects-the pen, the long, frayed string, and, of course, the tomato-were the color red?

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  H e arrived at Paddington just in time to have a late lunch at the Marlborough Club, where he ran into several people he knew. After speaking with them he sat in the long front hall, whose windows looked out over the street from just a few feet above it, and wrote a letter to the Oxford police, stating the case as he saw it.

  In his heart he felt guilty for leaving Oxford, and this letter helped defray that guilt. He wasn’t proud of his return to London, however brief he made it, but he felt that he had to see Lady Jane.

  A September breeze blew mildly down the streets, which were sparkling and slippery after a morning rain. Lenox sent a message to Graham asking for the carriage to come round. It gave him time to sit in the club and smoke a pipe waiting for it. In fact, if he were honest with himself, he didn’t truly want to go back to Hampden Lane straight away.

  His friend Lord Cabot had taken the afternoon away from the House of Lords, and the two men sat talking about politics, Cabot excitedly disagreeing with Lenox’s every word, leaning forward, both hands on top of his cane, which he occasionally stamped if he was making what he thought to be an especially salient point.

  He left for home a little while later, peering thoughtfully through the window of his carriage. Funny how he disliked to leave London even for a day, even to go to a place he loved as much as Oxford. Was it because of Jane, he asked himself? Because he was an old bachelor, set in his ways? The only place he could truly stand to visit was Lenox House, and that because Edmund lived there and Lenox himself had spent the first years of his life there.

  In the past month he had given longer attention to himself, to his own virtues and flaws, than at any time in his entire life. By nature he was introspective, analytical, second-guessing, but now he forced himself toward self-evaluation. Lady Jane deserved that, before he put their friendship in peril with such a dangerous question.

  What had he discovered? Well, he thought, he was too ingrained in his ways, too much a bachelor with his clubs, friends, and habits. He liked his eggs poached a certain way, to rise at a certain time, to take certain walks every evening, to make certain social rounds. He liked to read the papers in the morning and again in the evening-it consumed an alarming amount of time. He could occasionally be cross when his patterns were disrupted. His and Graham’s strange, useful friendship might not accommodate a third party well.

  He didn’t think that he had any major flaws, no particular vices, but all of these small things perhaps added up to one: He was growing increasingly resistant to change. It was a quality he truly disliked in others. There were two sides to that coin; either it was all the more reason to change his life, to make a radical gesture (though that was secondary to his real, enduring love), or else it would be ungentlemanly to impose his foibles on the person he most admired and loved in the world.

  What were his virtues? He was honest. He was happy and cheerful. He had little trouble admitting that to himself. For the sake of inquiry he also overcame his dislike of self-congratulation by admitting that he was generous. His generosity fell short of Jane’s, but he was generous-that is, not only with money but with time and tolerance, generous toward people’s bad impulses. They were well matched in that respect.

  Was he ambitious enough? Was he a dilettante? Didn’t Lady Jane deserve to be the partner, the equal companion and helpmeet, of a Prime Minister or a bishop? His life was something of a disappointment to him in this way; he had hoped to be Prime Minister when he was young. He had assumed it would come to him. Instead he had gotten sidetracked and into this field-which was in no way shameful, and which he held his head high when discussing, but upon which the world bestowed very little prestige.

  All of this flashed across his mind, swerving this way and that, sometimes even before words attached to the idea, sometimes more deliberatively.

  By the time he arrived home he was nervous. Lack of courage, he thought, add that to the list of flaws. Faint heart never won fair lady. He decided to knock on her door.

  Just as he stepped out of his coach, however, he saw a tall, slim man, about his own age, leaving Lady Jane’s house. His heart turned over-nobody he recognized. This was the peril of propinquity. Of course, Jane did go out more than he. (Not social enough, add that to the list.) He quickly changed course for his own door, though he stopped on the step to watch the man hail a cab. He was in a long gray morning coat. No beard, but a few side-whiskers. He had no watch chain, which Lenox found odd.

  Then he felt ashamed of himself and went inside, determined to put the man out of his mind.

  Later that afternoon, getting toward five, he asked Graham to take an invitation for tea next door.

  “An invitation?” said Graham, plainly disconcerted. Usually the two friends dropped in on each other.

  “She may have other plans today. I’m not sure, I was away.”

  Graham said nothing more, but nodded and took the note.

  In about five minutes Lady Jane came into the library. “An invitation? Is the Queen visiting?”

  They both laughed. He was struck at her beauty, the sort of simple beauty he admired most, perhaps because that was his taste or perhaps because he associated it with her. It was the beauty of the good and the considerate.

  “How do you do?” he asked, rising and smiling.

  “Quite well, quite well-not a dull moment. There was that little party you missed at Toto’s last night. She nearly fainted because McConnell came in late with a dead cat in a bag. She has you to blame for that, hasn’t she?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  She was her usual cheerful self, brimming with good humor, but once again Lenox detected in her some slightly careworn aspect.

  “At any rate, they had a row of furious whispers, and all that saved the day was Edward Leicester arriving and tripping over the threshold, to everyone’s amusement.”

  She was busy taking off her gloves, smoothing her gray skirt out, checking that her hair was still in place-all the minor offices Lenox was so accustomed to seeing her complete and yet were so estranged from his daily life, from the solitude of bachelorhood.

  “Yes,” he said, “I’m afraid McConnell and Toto are rather backsliding. Fighting, I guess. It’s the absolute devil. We had a talk together, and he seemed like his old despondent self, I’m sorry to say.”

  She nodded wisely and unhappily. “Toto is restless too.

  I should have spotted it earlier. Perhaps I’ll take her on a trip to Bath so they can have some time separately. They married when she was too young, as I’ve said to you a thousand times. She had the maturity to love, but not to be married.”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, but here I am prattling on like a girl. Ridiculous. How are you, more importantly, Charles?”

  The look of affection in her eyes when she said this wrecked him. But all he said was, “Oh, very well, thank you. A puzzling case in Oxford. Two lads missing, no sign or reason why.”

  “How odd.”

  “It is, actually. There’s something more than usual at the bottom of it, I think, but I can’t say what it is because I don’t know.” He paused in thought and then shook himself out of it. “But tell me something of life here. I’m out of touch.”

  She laughed. “After two days?”

  She told him about the dinner party the night before, then about the rumors circulating that there would be a change in Parliament, and so they talked on in their usual fashion, laughing and conspiring, old jokes passing between them. A dozen times the fateful words rose to Len
ox’s lips, and a dozen times he left them unspoken.

  Then, as she rose to go, there was a frantic knock on the door, and McConnell rushed in.

  “Oh, hullo, Jane,” he said. “Sorry to barge in, but I have urgent news-for you, Charles.”

  “What is it?” both Lenox and Lady Jane asked at once.

  “I’ve had a telegram from my friend Radley.”

  “Radley?”

  “Up at Oxford. He’s a don there. It seems the police have found a body.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  L enox would never forgive himself for returning to London. Of all the selfish acts in his life, was there any worse than this? Had he lost his mind?

  Sitting on the train, watching the dim and ashen light of evening spread over the countryside, its darkness his own, he asked these questions again and again in his mind. For once there was no solace in the prospect of finding the killer. For once no comfort rallied to dethrone his self-doubt.

  “Whose body?” he had asked McConnell back in London.

  “It was Payson’s, I believe. My friend sent the telegram off hastily, though, so it might well be a false alarm.”

  “I’m certain it’s not. I’ve been unfathomably stupid. Found where?”

  “Christ Church Meadow, just behind-is it Merton?”

  “That’s right,” Lenox said. “I say, could I see that telegram?” McConnell handed it over. It read: THOMAS BODY FOUND STOP CH CH MEADOW

  STOP PAYSON STOP DASHED SORRY RADLEY STOP

  It had been sent from the post office opposite Pembroke.

  “Radley?” said Lady Jane.

  “A friend of mine from the Royal Society. Awfully good chap. Not at all alarmist, I shouldn’t say. I went round to his rooms for a visit while you were with Lady Annabelle and told him about the case.”

  There was a long moment of stunned silence in the room. Then Lady Jane had done something Lenox was already grateful for, even in the dark pessimism of the train ride. She had said, “Well, Charles, you had better pack your bag and go.”

  It didn’t seem like much, but it was one of those small instances when a friend’s decisiveness means the world. She had bothered over his coat, his hat, his suitcase, tut-tutting, asking Graham for an article he had overlooked, while McConnell whipped back home to get his things. Then, when Lenox had tried to thank her, she had said, “No time for that-off with you, and we’ll speak soon,” and hustled him out to the waiting hansom.

  Now McConnell was in the seat across the compartment, having a sip from his flask and reading over Lenox’s notes.

  “Rum business,” he said, sealing the flask. He smiled weakly at his own pun.

  “I’m to blame,” Lenox answered dully. “I made two errors. I shouldn’t have left Oxford, and I shouldn’t have delayed in contacting the police.”

  “Perhaps the first, but not the second,” McConnell answered. “Lady Annabelle asked you to keep it from the police.”

  “Lady Annabelle’s not a detective, Thomas.”

  “And you’re not the boy’s mother.”

  Lenox shrugged, ignoring the kindly look in his friend’s face, and they passed the rest of the trip in silence.

  When they arrived in Oxford, they took a cab straight to Lincoln. There was general alarm on the Front Quad, students ringed around the lawn in small groups, and the dons standing above them on the steps leading to the chapel. Everywhere were worried faces and anxious voices.

  Lenox spotted Stamp, who was as pale as a ghost. “They’re saying it was Payson, poor chap. Somebody garroted him. I shipped my train.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Lenox said.

  “It’s not your fault, of course,” said the young man, brushing the hair away from his face.

  “What do you plan to do?”

  “Unless I’m needed, I’m leaving in ten minutes-I’ve hired a coach. No use messing about any longer. What a fearful thing to happen!”

  They bade each other a quick good-bye. As Stamp wandered away, shaking hands with a few of his classmates, the head porter came over to Lenox and McConnell. He was more collected, subdued, somber, but with an unmistakable efficiency in his demeanor.

  “No fault of your own, Mr. Lenox,” he said.

  “How did they know it was Payson?”

  “It was him, though they didn’t confirm so for some time. The body was badly mauled, and there was a terrible amount of blood. The hair on his head was cut close, nearly shaved-as a disguise, we all suppose. But once he was clean somebody identified him, I think Professor Hatch, perhaps, or Master Banbury. It’s all settled now. Confirmed by his clothes, his papers, his billfold, his eyeglasses, his brand of cigarettes. The family is on its way.” He sighed. “Awful business, of course. At Lincoln!”

  McConnell shook his head sympathetically. “A horrifying sort of death, strangulation. It takes looking your victim in the face.”

  Lenox nodded. He saw four bobbies at the other end of the quad and after shaking Kelly’s hand walked toward them.

  “Hello,” he said when he reached them. “I’m Charles Lenox.”

  The one who appeared to be in charge said, “May we help you?”

  “I’ve been looking into this matter in the past few days.”

  “Ah, that one,” said the same man. As he turned away, he said, “Might’uv told us before just now. Might’uv helped.”

  “Well, I’d like to help now, if I may.”

  The man looked at him scornfully. “Come by the station, then,” he said. “Ask for Goodson, he’s in charge of this investigation. But don’t think of looking at the crime scene.”

  As the bobby walked away, McConnell said, “Don’t be too hard on yourself, Charles.”

  Lenox grimaced. “Look-we’ll just have to figure it all out, that’s all.”

  “Damn right,” said McConnell tersely.

  “Can you devise a way to have a look at the body?”

  “May be hard.”

  “If you can think of a way to do it-make friends with the coroner, offer to assist him, anything-give it a chance, would you?”

  “That’s the spirit. Off I go. I’ll be at the Randolph Hotel tomorrow morning if you’d like to have breakfast. Say eight? All right. And really, don’t be too angry with yourself. You were only gone eight hours.”

  The two men parted, while Lenox debated with himself what his next move should be and thought the case over.

  He would have to start with Professor Hatch and the head porter. Somehow neither seemed to him like the type to murder a man in cold blood, but then again neither seemed entirely guileless. For now, he would go back to the hotel and think over what he already knew, searching for the line of clues that would lead him irrevocably toward the truth. Surveying the quad one last time, he turned on his heel and went out of the gate, into the sudden and startling quietness of Turl Street.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  T he Turf Tavern was bright and loud with merriment, full of students in the back bar sipping pints of ale and the local gents sitting in the front bar with their strong cider. Lenox remembered that division between the old townsmen and the young university ones, the two sets united by an unspoken love for Sally, who had been the serving girl then. Lenox’s friend George Caule had always stopped into the front room to have a drink with old Hedges, who had once run the tuck-shop. Their friendship had sprung up eerily: over a ghost.

  The story was that Caule had been studying alone at the Turf in Trinity term of their first year. He was maths, was Caule, and had the legendarily terrifying Mead as his don at Balliol. Lenox strained to remember what had occurred. Had he been-yes, that was right, he had been smoking a cigarette to wake himself up when at last he dozed off, the last person in the deserted room. Just as he had dropped the cigarette onto the tinder pile by his feet, a girl of perhaps ten had brushed by him, nudging him just enough on the arm to wake him up. He had quickly stamped out the fire and then left for the night, realizing he was too tired to study any longer.

 
; Caule described the little girl so well-how she had blond pigtails, a dainty little dress, and a pearl and obsidian necklace, how she carried a tray of mustard jars. When he had returned the next day to thank the girl’s parents, though, nobody could identify her, and he discovered that the mustard jars had been long collected by that late hour.

  Unbeaten, Caule had asked around. Only Hedges had recognized the description.

  “Small girl, pigtails, blond, ten, mustard jars?” Hedges had asked in his uniquely concise speech, gruff-voiced and cautious. “To be certain. Polly Millwall. She was a year younger than me. Daughter of the last chap who owned the Turf. She died in the fire that killed them all, perhaps forty years ago. Then Edmonds bought the place.”

  “Oh, I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood,” Caule had said. “I’ve-”

  He broke off when Hedges pointed upward, to an exact portrait of the girl who had nudged him awake, just when he was in danger of starting the fire in the tinder pile and burning the Turf to the ground.

  Lenox sighed. How the years passed! Caule was still one of his closest friends-and still swore by the story-but lived up all the way up at Stettleton Hall in Lancashire, a genial, rather broken-down place. He hadn’t been south to London in two years. As Lenox went inside, past the portrait of the blond girl that still took pride of place over the bar, he wondered for the hundredth time whether Caule had been so tired that delusion had set in or whether maybe, just maybe, something inexplicable had happened.

  “Back already, Mr. Lenox?”

  “I’m afraid so, Mrs. Tate. Could I have a room?”

  “Why, of course,” she said. “Anything to eat?”

  “That’s all right, thanks. I suppose I only need some sleep.”

  She looked at him sympathetically. “All right,” she said. “You know where the room is. Here’s the key.”

  Tramping up the staircase again, Lenox felt none of the same thrill of return. The room now seemed bare and comfortless, too small, the memories it held inconsequential. As he sat in the hard, narrow chair by the window, he was full of the deepest self-recrimination he had ever felt. The starless sky refused to return his gaze, absorbing the darkness of his thoughts: She would never consent to marry him, and quite rightly. What was he? A small-time detective, pretending he was better than those who did the same job for their bread and butter.