The stories in the paper were comfortably familiar. There was a long article condemning the new speed limits that had been introduced that summer, of two miles per hour in towns and four miles per hour in the countryside. An infringement on people’s daily lives, the editor argued. There was an update on the search for John Surratt, who had fled to Canada and then across the Atlantic after being implicated in Abraham Lincoln’s death. (Like many other Englishmen, Lenox had a deep admiration of the president and had closely followed the American Civil War. He thanked God it was over.
The death counts listed in the papers alone could throw him into a horrible mood for days.) The Austro-Prussian War was just over as well, making it a good year for lovers of peace. Then there were the reports of the first months of marriage of Princess Helena, Victoria’s third daughter, who had been wed that summer to … Lenox peered at the paper to sound out the name for himself … to Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg. Gracious. And most thrilling to Lenox, who had his age’s deep love of the new and revolutionary, the Atlantic Cable was nearly complete. As he understood it—and he would be the first to admit that he didn’t quite—the cable would allow people to telegraph between Europe and America! What would my grandfather have said, thought Lenox? Brave new world …
All the while he had his eye on the slow trickle of students coming in and out of the college. He passed the first one up, a tall, censorious-looking fellow in glasses. The second wouldn’t do either, a terrified first-year from the looks of him. The third shot out of the gate as fast as he could and didn’t give Lenox a chance to approach. The fourth student, though, evidently a temperate second-year, judging from the flower in his buttonhole, looked hale and likely. Lenox threw out a studied word, relishing his role.
“Oh—I say there, would you mind stopping a moment? I’m Charles Payson—awfully sorry to trouble you.” He shook hands with the student, who looked bewildered but nodded politely, as if strange men introduced themselves to him at random moments throughout every day.
“I thought I might bother you. You see, my nephew is here in Lincoln—George Payson—and I thought I’d pop in on him while I was passing through Oxford, you know, but I can’t track him down.”
“Ah,” said the young man, who had brightened at Payson’s name.
“You couldn’t tell me the name of a friend of his, could you? It’d be a favor.”
“I shouldn’t want to give out information that might … well, I don’t know what it might do.”
“No, quite understandable,” said Lenox. He looked up at the sky. “You know, I was at Lincoln too. Great place, isn’t it?” He sounded even to himself like a bluff clubman up from London, the role he had decided he would play. “Games and youth, I mean. Full of promise. Well, please, be on your way. Sorry again to stop you.”
The young man said, “Oh—I suppose it can’t hurt. His uncle, you say? Father’s brother, I guess?”
Lenox nodded.
“Well, they’re a real trio—Payson, Bill Dabney, and Tom Stamp. Dabney and Stamp live in three rooms toward the front of the Grove Quad—by Deep Hall, you may remember, through that old stone stairway.”
Lenox hadn’t the faintest idea of where the place was in Lincoln, but nodded cheerfully. “Beautiful there, ain’t it?” he said, inwardly thinking that perhaps he should have been on the stage. He had already formulated a military history for himself if the conversation somehow wound its way there.
“It is. Good luck finding Payson. Nice chap, your nephew.”
“Cheers,” said Lenox and shook the boy’s hand.
Lenox walked into the college whistling a low tune and contemplating which story he would tell the porter to gain entrance to the college. Luckily, however, the porter’s head was turned toward a student requesting his mail, and Lenox was able to walk into the Front Quad without any trouble. The Grove Quad—a piece of luck—was marked clearly, through the back corridors of the front square, and he followed it with the young second-year’s instructions in mind.
In the Grove Quad there was bright green ivy on the walls and covering even the doors, but he found the right one without too much difficulty and walked up the stairwell. He knocked on the first door he saw. The bleary-eyed student who opened it appeared to have come straight from bed.
“Dabney and Stamp?” Lenox asked.
“Next floor up and to the left,” said the young man and unceremoniously closed the door.
Climbing the stairs, Lenox found the spot easily enough. The door was ajar. He knocked, and a fair-haired young man came forward. The room behind him was a bit of a mess, and from the look of the desk where he had been studying, it was work, not sleep, that made this one bleary-eyed. Still, he seemed pleasant.
“Bill Dabney?” Lenox asked.
“No, I’m Tom Stamp,” he said. “May I ask who you are?”
“Charles Lenox.” They shook hands. “I’m here because I was hoping to have a word with you and your roommate about George Payson.”
“Are you a relation? Something of that sort?”
“No, I’m a detective.”
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
They’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 D
abney, 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. Payson’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
Are 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 passi
ng 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.)
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