The September Society clm-2

by Charles Finch

  He was a distinctly military man, with a trim mustache and tidy whiskers, a scar on his neck that looked like it had once been painful, quite black hair, and utterly average features. He wasn’t tall, but he stood quite upright, jutting his chest out, and it gave him an authoritative air. His clothes were informal but clean and creased, puttees of the standard postmilitary variety. No doubt he would exchange them for a more proper suit when he went out but felt at ease in them at home. His bearing was neither kind nor unkind, but efficient. Lenox had seen his type a hundred times, both good and bad.

  “How do you do, Mr. Lenox? May I offer you some coffee or tea?”

  “No, thanks.”

  Lysander nodded to his man, who retreated. “Well, how can I help you?”

  “You may have heard something of the death of George Payson, Captain Lysander.”

  “Indeed I have. Terribly sad. I never went to the ’varsity, of course, and in the military men die at that age many a time, but never so senselessly.”

  “I don’t suppose you knew him, did you?”

  “No, I didn’t. And I can’t quite see what connection you suppose I might have to the young man.”

  “Or Bill Dabney?”

  Lysander’s face was blank. “No, nor him.”

  “You’re a member of the September Society, aren’t you, Captain Lysander?”

  “Indeed I am, and it’s saved many of us returned from the East from losing touch and helped us in making that-well, call it that uneasy transition back to civilian life.”

  “Quite a military atmosphere there?”

  “Yes, indeed. As we like it.”

  “It’s probably nothing,” said Lenox cautiously, “but I have a duty to follow every possible clue.”

  “Quite right.”

  “And I found in Payson’s belongings several mentions of the September Society.”

  “Did you!” If Lysander’s shock was feigned it was done rather well.

  “I wondered whether you could think of any connection between the lad and your group.”

  “I wish I could help you, but I can’t think of any possible link. We’re only an assembly of twenty-five or thirty, Mr. Lenox-I suppose the exact number, if you want it, is twenty-six-and keep much to ourselves. We have our friendships outside of the Society and inside the Society, and the two rarely meet. Of course, this young man couldn’t possibly have served with us, and it’s most unlikely that an uncle or cousin would even mention such a small organization to a lad who had no prospect of joining. We firmly intend for the Society to die out with us.”

  “I see,” Lenox said. He took a different tack. “Major Butler is out of town?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid he is.”

  “Did you know I had written to him as well?”

  Lysander laughed. “I did, but no cause for suspicion. I know that you detectives often interpret every small unknown as guilt, but I only heard of the note you wrote Major Butler because we live in such close proximity and our houses trade a good deal of talk.”

  “If it’s not impertinent, Captain Lysander, why do you live so closely together?”

  “Ah-well, Major Butler served rather longer than I did. I was injured outside Lahore, you see. When I returned my parents had been dead a year, and I had inherited a comfortable sum from them, and decided to settle down in London, as so many ex-servicemen do. I had a few friends here from my school in Hampshire and a few others from the military, and I belonged to the Army and Navy, and thought I’d get along all right. So I moved into this flat, with its modest few rooms, counting-correctly-upon spending a good deal of time at my clubs and that sort of thing.”

  “I see.”

  “When Major Butler returned in ’52 he came to see me. He had been my commander in the East, but we were always pretty pally, and when he said he hadn’t anywhere to stay-well, you see. I offered him my spare room here. He declined in favor of a hotel, but through my landlord I put him onto the free rooms a few doors down.”

  “Ah-that makes a good deal of sense.”

  “It suits us both, as we’re close to our clubs and to Piccadilly. And then, our valets served together as well, both of them, and it’s nice for them to have each other’s company.”

  “Awfully considerate, that.”

  “Well, as I mentioned, the transition to civilian life can be difficult.”

  “Certainly. Could you tell me about Peter Wilson?”

  Lysander’s back went up at this. “I don’t see how that question could possibly be relevant to whatever it is you’re investigating, Mr. Lenox.”

  In a conciliatory tone, the detective said, “I had hoped to speak to him, you see.”

  “Well-he’s dead. He killed himself. It was the damnedest thing that ever happened. I loved old Wilson like a brother.”

  “I’m sorry to have brought it up. I only thought you might be able to tell me why he killed himself.”

  “I don’t know. And I wish I did.”

  “Again, I’m sorry.”

  “No, no… in fact, I’m sorry I can’t be of more help with your case,” said Lysander.

  “Not at all-it was a dark horse, as I say. Thanks awfully for your time.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Lysander said and walked Lenox to the door.

  As he said good-bye and walked down the stoop, Lenox wondered about the man. He was personally quite agreeable, not at all volatile, and he seemed honest. He might have been either a banker or a bank robber, from his demeanor. The only thing that seemed clear was that if Lysander was a criminal, he was an exceptionally level-headed one, exceptionally cool. There was little emotion in him. If he was a criminal, Lenox knew, and shuddered to think it, he would be capable of nearly anything.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  G reen Park, a shamrock-colored rectangle that lay behind the Houses of Parliament, was warm and beautiful that afternoon. The willow trees bent toward the lake, their lowest branches just brushing the water, and the park’s lone wanderers and couples alike walked more slowly than they had along the fast city blocks, stopping to watch for a while. Lenox always liked to watch the swans gliding serenely, birds with just the mix of beauty and danger that humans like in wildlife-for a swan, of course, could break a man’s arm.

  Another curious fact about them was that every swan in England belonged to Queen Victoria. Not many people knew it, but poaching swans was an offense the crown could punish. The official swan keeper to Her Majesty wrangled the birds in the third week of July every year, when they were served at the Queen’s table and a few others across the isles, in Cambridge, Oxford, York, Edinburgh. The swans were mute, but at their deaths they found voice and sang, and the long line of wranglers always claimed to be haunted by the sound. It was the origin of the term swan song.

  Lenox pondered the bizarre customs of his beloved country as he walked toward Toto and McConnell’s house. He had omitted his congratulations from the note he sent to McConnell with the coroner’s report in case the doctor wanted to announce the news himself.

  When Lenox arrived at the vast house, McConnell and Toto were in the small anteroom by the door with Lady Jane. They only used the room with their closest friends, preferring its intimacy to the rest of the house’s grandeur. When they invited him in, McConnell stood up.

  “Hullo again, Lennox.

  I can’t stop beaming, can I? By the way, Toto and I are delighted that you’ll be the godfather. Here, sit down, sit down.”

  Lenox laughed and took his place on a highly fashionable blue and white sofa that was Toto’s pride and joy-or had been at any rate, before young Henry or Anna or Elizabeth or whatever the baby would be called. The room smelled buttery, like tea and toast.

  “How are you, Charles?” Lady Jane asked.

  “Quite well, thanks, and you?”

  “I say, Lenox,” McConnell cut in, “I haven’t had time to look at the coroner’s report you sent over. We’ve had visitors all morning, distant aunts and things, or I would have.”
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  “It’s not pressing by any means,” Lenox answered.

  “I’ll look at it this evening, though, while Jane and my wife go to the doctor’s.” He turned to Toto. “Do you really mean to go every day of your pregnancy, darling? You do realize that I’m a doctor, after all.”

  Toto laughed. “Of course I do, you dear man, but Dr. Windsor takes care of all the babies and he’s ever so cheerful about it and I like him to reassure me. Anyway, you’d rather neglect me for dead cats and coroner’s reports.”

  “Yes,” said Lady Jane, “what is the coroner’s report? You’ve been secretive, Charles.”

  “Have I? Not intentionally, I promise. It’s only that there’s not much to tell, unfortunately. There’s a tiny club called the September Society that may be bound up in George Payson’s murder, and one of the Society’s founders killed himself, I’m sorry to say. I sent McConnell the verdict on his death to see if it looked suspicious. That’s all.”

  “It’s too sad,” said Lady Jane. “Poor Annabelle-to have both her husband and her son die in such odd and violent ways.”

  As she said this Lenox looked carefully at his friend and saw again the same sorrow that had lived just beneath her exterior for the past few weeks, and again wondered what it was that could reduce her eternal cheer to its threadbare outward appearance; and wondered why an air of secrecy hung around her; and wondered who the man in the long gray coat was.

  With a charming pout Toto said, “I scarcely think murders are as celebratory as toast. Have some, won’t you? And Shreve”-their butler, standing somnolently in the hallway-“be a lamb and bring a bottle of champagne. What’s a nice one, darling?”

  McConnell turned to Shreve and ordered a ’51 Piper. “I don’t mind a glass. Charles?”

  “Of course,” said Lenox.

  The champagne came, and all but Toto had a glass-she was content to put her nose to McConnell’s glass and give a small sneeze of protest. They looked so happy that Lenox almost turned to Lady Jane and asked her to marry him there and then. Soon, though, the company broke down into two pairs as Thomas and Toto argued good-naturedly about the baby’s name and whether it would go to school in Scotland or England, if it was a boy, that was, while Lenox and Lady Jane resumed the conversation that had been ongoing between them for their entire lives.

  “I feel I haven’t seen you in years!” she said. “Is it dreadful to be up there on your own?”

  “Graham came up, kind soul that he is, but of course I miss home.” He just barely resisted the urge to say “and you.”

  “Is the case very hard?”

  “The hardest I’ve ever had, I should say.”

  She took his hand and said, “It will turn out well in the end. You’ll see to that.”

  He believed her. “I’m sorry to have been preoccupied.”

  “Oh, not at all. I’ve missed our visits from house to house, but Mrs. Randall has supplied her company in your absence.”

  Both of them laughed at this old joke. Elizabeth Randall was a widow of about ninety, well known for staring out of her drawing room window (which looked out onto Lenox’s and Lady Jane’s houses) and quietly passing judgment on their visitors. It was never a surprise to Lenox when he met Mrs. Randall on the street and she inquired nonchalantly about the particularly scruffy young man in the stovepipe hat she had seen, or the dark-looking woman in the crimson dress-even when the visits were weeks old. Her complete shamelessness was almost endearing.

  “One thing that’s nice, though, is to see Oxford again.”

  “Is it? That was the dullest time of my life, of course, not yet living in London and without the diversion of all you young gentlemen who had gotten to go out into the wide world.”

  “They have dances now, apparently.”

  “Do they! My mother would be appalled.”

  “Yes, and it seems as if they’re a pretty raucous business.”

  “I’ve been meaning to visit Timothy there.”

  “Do you have letters from him?”

  “Oh, short, polite ones, doubtless full of affection, but never with much news in them. I crave news.”

  Lenox was the only person in the world who knew about Jane’s allegiance to Timothy Stills, a poverty-stricken lad, abandoned by his mother, denied by his father, who belonged to some forgotten cadet branch of Jane’s noble family. She had heard a whisper of him and gone to Manchester a dozen years ago to find him near starvation, living on what he could beg with an aunt who tolerated his presence only for what money he brought in. Jane had taken him back to London instantly, and then arranged for his schooling and had him to visit every Christmas and during the summer holidays. She never concealed his identity, but neither did she bruit it about, as some might have.

  “Shall I look in on him when I return?” Lenox asked.

  “Would you? You’re such a dear, Charles. He’s at Oriel. I’ll write him that you’re coming.”

  “Have you been worried about him for some reason?” Lenox asked.

  “Not at all,” she said, and her unhappiness remained unspoken another moment longer. “But tell me more about Oxford, won’t you?”

  Lenox told her about visiting the Turf again, about his old friend Caule’s ghost story, about seeing Balliol and eating at the Bear with McConnell, and suddenly, as he told it to his friend, laughing along the way, it became real to him, and he felt better about it. Of course he would solve the case-and of course he would ask her to marry him.

  They both left a little while later, Lenox promising Toto that he would think over the dozens of names she had asked his opinion of, Lady Jane promising to be at Dr. Windsor’s at five for Toto’s appointment. McConnell told Lenox again that he would send the results of the coroner’s report up to Oxford, and after a number of other little reminders and last words, they all parted.

  “Well! I certainly am glad for them,” said Lady Jane, stepping into the cab that Shreve had hailed. “They seem to be awfully happy.”

  “Yes, and after things had gotten worse,” Lenox added. “Will the change be permanent?”

  “It’s just what Toto needs, I should say, something to dote on and love and make dozens of small but significant decisions about. And it will give Thomas an heir and less time with his thoughts. Yes, I think it will be permanent.”

  “I certainly hope you’re right.”

  They rode along, the two friends, until they had come to Hampden Lane.

  “Are you definitely going back to Oxford, Charles?”

  “Can’t be helped, I’m afraid.”

  “Do stop in on Timothy, then. And hurry back afterward. I won’t be able to see you again before you go if I’m to meet Toto at her doctor’s office.”

  They stood in front of their adjoining houses, the light dimming. “I meant to say, Jane-is everything quite well?”

  Hurriedly, she answered, “Oh, yes, of course. It always is. Now, good-bye, Charles!”

  Lenox walked back down her stoop and up his own. It was dark, and he knew that he had ahead of him a long train ride across the bleak landscape of an autumn night in England. Still, it wouldn’t do to put it off until the morning.

  Sitting by the fire in his study, waiting as Samuel packed his bags and the driver rubbed down his horses for the trip to Paddington, Lenox read distractedly over an essay he had written for the upcoming Roman Historians’ Conference, which was meant to take place in Vienna in a month’s time. His tickets were booked, and he was pleased with his essay, which had to do with childhood in Augustan Rome. A friend and correspondent from Cambridge, Bertie Flint-Flagg, had sent it back in the post with his congratulations and a few minor corrections. He also mentioned a term-time teaching fellowship available at Magdalene, a small college with an excellent reputation in classics, which he thought Lenox might be suited for. As perhaps the premier amateur historian of Rome in the Isles, James Hawthendon aside, Flint-Flagg wrote (and this threw Lenox into a slight dudgeon), he really ought to try his hand at academic life. Sudde
nly Lenox had a vision of himself with a pipe, a small back garden, a spacious study in Magdalene or Clare or Caius, a wall full of books, the companionable presence of other scholars-and perhaps it was seeing Dallington that morning, but even as he envisioned that happy life, even as his heart leapt at the prospect, he knew that he could never abandon the hard and taxing work that won him so little worldly respect, and that he knew to be as high and noble as any calling.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  M cConnell’s report on the inquest of Peter Wilson arrived at Oxford the next evening. It had been a discouraging day for Lenox. Inspector Goodson’s sergeants had searched to the south of the town past Christ Church Meadow, not quite as far as Faringdon and Didcot, asking in pubs, post offices, and inns, but nobody had seen Dabney or Payson. Lenox’s suggestion had been well reasoned, Goodson said when the two men met, not adding that it had failed nonetheless.

  “Did you search the fields?”

  “Aye, and asked the locals too. Nothing there.”

  “Perhaps it’s best to restrict the search-bring it back in within a quarter mile of the meadow and search that quarter mile very thoroughly.”

  Goodson shook his head. “We don’t have the manpower. We’ll have to follow other leads.”

  “What has there been?”

  “We’re focusing now on the man who met Payson at the Jesus College dance that Saturday evening.”

  “Just so. Anything on him?”

  “That’s a bit better-but only a bit. We’ve tracked him to an inn at Abingdon, we believe, and he left his name there as Geoffrey Canterbury.”

  “A man of at least small literary knowledge, then.”

  “Aye, The Canterbury Tales, we thought so, too.”

  “Any further description of him?”

  “Only that he looked about fifty, dressed well, had very dark hair, a mark on his throat, and carried a heavy pocket watch that looked to the landlady-Mrs. Meade-expensive, perhaps ornamental. He seemed to check it and handle it constantly.”