“It’s over, at any rate.”
“Yes. I wish this matter with Dabs and Payson weren’t going on, or I could have a drink to celebrate.”
“Has anything further come to you? Perhaps a conversation with one of them? Or a trip they had talked about?”
“The only thing I thought of after you left yesterday was that Dabney sometimes talked of getting digs in London after we leave Oxford, the three of us. It couldn’t possibly be related, but he did talk it over a good deal.”
“Were they spontaneous?”
“Not exceptionally, and I would be surprised if they had done something off the cuff without me.”
“What do you think of your head porter here? Reliable fellow?”
“Red?”
“Is that his name?”
“Well, we call him that. His real name is Kelly. He’s Irish, though.”
“Ah.”
“I don’t know if I’ve heard anyone call him his real name in my life, other than the junior dean or the chaplain or some dour chap like that. The lads’ mothers.”
“Is he reliable?”
“I should say so, yes. Pretty steady with us, doesn’t make trouble if you’re a moment or two past lock-in. All of the porters around the college belonged to one company in some regiment of the army—can’t remember which, maybe the Royal Pioneer Corps?–and we got more or less lucky. Nice chaps. The worst is at Queen’s, down the lane. They have the Scots Guards. Absolute dragons, they say. It’s a pretty miserable lot over there anyway. The students, I mean.”
“Have you thought about my advice? A spell at home?”
“I’ve thought about little else. More about that than Oliver Cromwell, unfortunately. Or Charles II and the Restoration or Dryden as court poet or anything like that.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.”
“Well, it’s not ideal, but I do appreciate it. I think I’ll go to see my aunt in London for five days—until my next tute. They’re good about letting you use the British Library there, if you run into the right librarians. My aunt doesn’t have a world-class collection of modern histories, unfortunately.”
Lenox laughed. “I’m glad to hear you’ll be safe down there,” he said. “I’m leaving in an hour if you’d like to share the train.”
“Nice of you, but I’ll go this afternoon. Have to send a few hours’ warning.”
Lenox handed Stamp a card. “Please come see me if you like, or if you think of anything. I live round St. James’s Park.”
“I say, that’s decent of you. I shall.”
They said good-bye, and Lenox went up to George Payson’s room again.
It had been tidied since yesterday, books straightened, old tea removed, boots cleaned, so Lenox went back downstairs to find the head porter.
He was a man of middling size wearing a black suit and a pair of thin silver spectacles that were just perched on his nose. When he spoke there was no trace of his country of origin, and his hair was in fact black, not red. Some long-graduated student’s idea of an Irish joke.
“Mr. Kelly?” Lenox said.
“You’ve found me—but call me Red.”
“I’m Charles Lenox.”
“Ah, Mr. Lenox. How do you do?”
“Not badly, thanks. May I ask a housekeeping question?”
“Certainly.”
“Did you know that the scout had cleaned George Payson’s room since yesterday?”
“Yes, as usual.”
“He hadn’t for two or three days prior.”
“True enough—at the student’s special request. But it had been two days since we cleaned it.”
“Is it common for students to request that the scout not clean their rooms?”
“Not uncommon, if they’re studying for an exam and have their papers and things as they like. Or if they’ve lost something.”
“Did Payson ask you or his scout?”
“His scout. I would have discouraged the lad.”
“Why did you ask for it to be cleaned today?”
“As I say, I discourage it as a policy. A porter’s second concern is always cleanliness in the college.”
“His first?”
“Security.”
Lenox thought it best not to point out the irony of this. “To be sure. How did you discover that the room was untouched?”
“From the scout himself. I get weekly reports, and it so happens this morning was his.”
“Any ideas about Payson’s whereabouts?”
“I should say on a trip to London. He didn’t report it, but again that’s not entirely uncommon. We try not to send students down for relatively minor infractions like that any longer.”
“Wise policy. Different than my day.”
“Times change.”
“Can you think of any other places where Payson might have gone?”
“I’m afraid I can’t, no.”
“Thank you, Mr. Kelly.”
“Call me Red, as I say,” he said.
“Well, in that case, thank you, Red.”
“Pleased.”
Lenox wandered down Broad Street, its bookstores and cafés busy with students from the nearest colleges—Trinity, Wadham, Jesus, and Lenox’s own, Balliol—and thought over the case.
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
He 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 Lenox’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
Lenox 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 m
ade 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.”
The September Society Page 7
