But Lenox pushed these memories aside now and concentrated on the site where George Payson’s body had been fifteen hours before.
There were five or six policemen around the roped-off area, as well as another dozen curious passersby. The men from the force were spending their time either classifying footprints or keeping people back from the site. To Goodson’s credit, they had left the scene in good working order, and the imprint of the body was still visible. Lenox noticed that it was slightly deeper toward the middle.
“The person who dropped George Payson’s body must have been carrying him like this”—Lenox demonstrated—“just the way you carry a bride across the threshold, if you see what I mean, and then simply dropped him.”
“I figured as much,” said Goodson rather testily.
“Oh, certainly,” said Lenox. “This has all been done in a first-rate way—a sight better than some I could name from London might have done. I was only straightening the thing out in my own head. That means, then, that the person’s footprints are probably just ten inches to the left of the body—ah, a dense patch, I see,” he said, responding to Goodson’s pointing out the spot. “I really have to congratulate your thoroughness. The only other point to gather here, then, is that Payson must have been newly dead, garroted only a few moments before the killer dropped him here.”
“Why?” Goodson asked.
“Because the arms were splayed out above the head,” said Lenox, pointing to where the arms had left indentations in the soil. “They were still loose. The killer wouldn’t have carried him with his arms like that. Too unwieldy, too easily noticeable. He left the body as it fell. McConnell, how long would rigor mortis have taken to set in?”
“It can take anywhere from five minutes to two hours, but in this case, given how the body has loosened again, probably on the shorter side—call it fifteen minutes.”
“There you have it, Inspector,” said Lenox.
“What do you mean?”
“Even if the killer had some means of transport, the scene of the murder can’t have been far off at all. And this park is only accessible by foot, which cuts down the distance even further.”
“Ah,” said Goodson, writing on his pad. “So the fight could only have taken place within a fifteen-minute walk of this spot.”
“Call it a four-minute walk, actually—perhaps a six-minute perimeter south of here, figuring that one walks much less quickly when carrying so much weight.”
“All right—I’ll tell the lads.”
“Just a moment,” Lenox said. “What about objects near the body?”
“At the station. Here, Ramsey, take these gentleman to the station when they’re ready to go and show them the box of things we found. All right, Mr. Lenox, Mr. McConnell.” With a nod Goodson walked off to give the men by the river to the south their instructions, stopping on the way to bark at the crowd that had gathered until they dispersed.
Ramsey came over. “On your signal, then,” he said.
Lenox nodded. “Give it ten minutes, if that’s all right?”
“Just as you say.”
When they were alone, McConnell said, “What do you reckon?”
“Well, above all I’m grateful to you for finding a way for us to see this place. My other two thoughts are that we’re dealing with someone remarkably clever and that if there’s no sign of Dabney anytime soon it looks a bit black against him. Now what about the body?”
“We’ve covered some of the details these past few minutes. There’s not much else to tell. He was garroted, but he put up a damn good fight. I’d say the murderer will have some wounds to show for it. It was a standard stud chain garrote.”
“What’s that?”
“A long leather loop with a metal chain on the end.”
“How easy do you reckon it is to acquire one of those?
I most often see scarves or fishing line as garrotes. Piano wire once.”
“Quite easy. It was a stud chain, the kind used to whip horses. You can find one in any stable.”
Lenox thought for a moment, then said, “Go on.”
“There were two other singular circumstances that Morris and I discovered. One, the body was bloody and badly mauled around the face and torso.”
“Unrecognizably so?”
“No, perhaps not, but badly. It’s strange, given how short a time the body was exposed to the elements.”
“Animal wounds?”
“That’s hard to say.”
“What was the other singular circumstance?”
“How closely shorn his hair was.”
“Disguise, I would have thought.”
“On his head, to be sure—but the hair was shorn from all over his body, you know, not just his head.”
“That’s passing strange.”
“We thought so, too.”
The doctor and the detective discussed George Payson’s corpse for another moment and then made their way to look at the objects found around the body with Constable Ramsey.
At the station the constable brought out a small cardboard box, filled with a random and, truth be told, somewhat unsatisfactory collection of odds and ends, most of which had probably been simply dropped in the park and never cleared away. There was a white feather, a receipt for a new hat to be picked up in a day’s time, several candy wrappers, a child’s mitten, a muddy and blank sheet of small paper, and a pin that was, Lenox saw with a thrill undercut by doubtfulness, the color red.
“Disappointing lot,” he said to Ramsey.
“It is, yes. ’Spector Goodson was ’opin to find a bit more. If that’s all, sir?”
“Yes, yes, thanks.”
As they left the police station and walked up Cornmarket Street, McConnell pulled Lenox into a doorway.
“One more thing, old man,” he said. “I kept it aside for you.”
“What is it?”
“We found Payson’s university identification in his pockets, cigarettes, some money, a pair of eyeglasses—and this.” He handed Lenox a scrap of paper. “I thought it might be important.”
“You were right,” Lenox said in a low, startled voice. There was a long pause during which he cycled rapidly through the list of clues he had made.
“What do you make of it?”
“For one thing it proves, I think, that we have a third companion in the search for the murderer: Payson himself is helping us.”
He looked at the scrap of paper again: a flimsy card, blank except for the words THE SEPTEMBER SOCIETY, which were written in red ink.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Lenox sat drinking a cup of coffee in the back room at the Turf, wondering whether Goodson had made any progress. Likely they had at least found something that would help establish that Payson had been staying in the fields to the south of Oxford—but, he thought with a sigh, where would that get them? Unless Dabney had left behind a witnessed and notarized description of what had happened, there would probably be little to gather from the site where they had stayed.
Then, just as he found himself sinking into pessimism again, Lenox saw something delightful hovering by the bar, looking respectfully toward him. It was a welcome sight: Graham.
“Graham! Good Lord!”
“I hope I haven’t startled you, sir?”
“A bit, yes. Rather like seeing Banquo’s ghost in gray spats. Why are you here, anyway? Not that it’s not jolly to have you, of course.”
“I took the liberty, sir, of catching the morning train. I thought I might be of some assistance.”
(Graham often helped Lenox with his cases, possessing as he did an uncanny ability to discover information that seemed lost or buried, and understanding intuitively what mattered and did not. It was another example of their unusual friendship, so different than any other in London.)
“Dead right,” said Lenox warmly. “I’ve never needed it more. What of home?”
“Sir?”
“Everything calm there, I mean?”
“Ah�
�yes, sir. I’ve brought your post as well.”
“Thank you very much, Graham. I really am glad to have you here.”
“There’s not much in it, sir, though you’ve had another visit from John Best.”
“Whose card I had the other morning?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Who the devil is he?”
“I cannot say, sir.”
“Odd.”
“Yes, sir. I trust the case is progressing?”
“It’s hard to tell. Hopefully.”
“Yes, sir.”
Lenox thought for a moment. “I say, Graham, why don’t you check us into the Randolph over on Magdalen Street?”
“Sir?”
“I’ve been staying here, but it would be appalling of me to impose my nostalgia on you. I doubt you’d see the charm in the place if you hadn’t been dropped here before every term.”
“I shall attend to it straight away, sir.”
“Mrs. Tate?” Lenox called out, and the Turf’s proprietor popped her head around the corner. “Mrs. Tate, do you mind awfully if I leave for the Randolph?”
“Is everything all right, Mr. Lenox?” she said.
“Oh—perfect, of course. It’s only that my valet here has come up, too, and I think it would rather stretch your hospitality to find a bed for him.”
She gave an understanding nod. “It won’t be too long before we see you again, though, will it?”
“Oh, definitely not,” said Lenox. “It had been too long since I last visited Oxford.”
“Certainly had, sir. Ah—a customer!”
When she was gone, Lenox said, “Can I talk something over with you, Graham?”
“Of course, sir.”
“Have a seat here. Anything to eat?”
“No, thank you, sir.”
“Good enough. The problem is this fellow Hatch, the professor at Lincoln. He’s got his back up about me, I’m sure, because I went around and asked him about the two lads. I think he may be at the bottom of all this somehow, whether he’s the primary mover or not.”
“Indeed, sir?”
Lenox briefly recapitulated his conversation with Hatch, emphasizing the two lies the professor had told. “He’s at 13 Holywell Street, just around the corner. Queer fellow, you know.”
“How so, sir?”
“From what I can gather, he’s better friends with the students than with the other dons, acts somewhat debauched, in fact, as a student might. My impression was that he was unhappy, if that makes sense. I only say so because I’ve found that unhappiness can disguise a multitude of sins.”
“Yes, sir.”
“So I’d like you to get round him, Graham. See if you can discover anything about his relationship with George Payson and Bill Dabney, and see as well what he gets up to—what his daily life is like, whether he would have had the chance to kill somebody in the dead of night, for instance, or whether his servants keep a pretty close watch over him. And of course what he was doing yesterday evening.”
“I shall endeavor to learn all I can of his activities and character, sir.”
“Good of you, Graham, thanks. That’s exactly what I’m after.”
“Not at all, sir.”
“Good as well to see a friendly face, now that I’m over the shock of it.”
“I apologize again, sir,” said Graham with a low laugh.
Lenox waved a hand. “Oh, not at all. This is a baddish problem, and I admit I felt defeated after McConnell got that wire about Payson. Time for all good men to rally round, I mean.”
“Of course, sir.”
“Good enough, then, and you’ll check on the Randolph? I’m going to go up to the Bodleian.”
“Yes, sir. With your consent, sir, I shall send a note up to you at the library confirming that the rooms have been secured.”
“Perfect. I should be there for a few hours, at any rate, and then I’m sure I’ll see McConnell and Inspector Goodson.”
“Very good, sir.”
“Excellent.”
After Graham had gone, Lenox read the Times. News of Payson’s death had made the front page of the paper, underneath a somber headline that read MURDER AT LINCOLN. Lenox pictured all of the proud old Lincoln alumni in the far-flung provinces of the empire reading the news and feeling as shaken as he would have if the case had happened at Balliol. There were only a few things Lenox took special pride in, but as he read the Times he realized that Oxford was one of them, and told himself that if he couldn’t solve this case he might as well retire.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
It was late in the afternoon, perhaps four o’clock, and Lenox was in the Bodleian Library’s Upper Reading Room, leaning back in his chair and rubbing his tired eyes with his knuckles. He had been there for two hours and received very little recompense for his assiduousness, but had hopes that the next hour would bring greater success.
The Bodleian above anything else made Oxford what it was to the university’s alumni. If there were diverse college allegiances, club allegiances, and sporting allegiances that fractured Oxford, what unified the undergraduates was the Bod, lying in all of its beauty at the center of life in the city. There was something incommunicably grand about it, something difficult to understand unless you had spent your evenings there or walked past it on the way to celebrate the boat race, a magic that came from ignoring it a thousand times a day and then noticing its overwhelming beauty when you came out of a tiny alley and it caught you unexpectedly. A library—it didn’t sound like much, but it was what made Oxford itself. The greatest library in the world.
At the heart of it was the Old Schools Quad, a hushed cobblestone square. Its high carved walls gave it the feeling of a tower. Along the walls were the low, dark doors where the original schools had been, each bearing a Latin description of what was taught inside—philosophy became Schola Moralis Philosophiae, music became Schola Musicae –in high black and gold lettering above the doorways. Painted on the doors in blue was Oxford’s motto, Dominus Illuminatio Mea, the Lord is my light. Walking past students in their black gowns and white ties that afternoon, treading the quiet stone steps worn away by time and traffic, the beautiful, intricately worked stone walls reaching up on high toward a statue of James the First, the famous dreaming spires reaching heavenward—confronted with all of it, Lenox had been lost for words, lost even for thoughts.
He looked up at the graceful stained glass window of Duke Humfrey’s Library, which housed the most extensive collection of rare books in the world; he looked in through the broad doors of the Divinity School, the oldest surviving university building in the world, its famously intricate Gothic vaulted stone ceiling serenely accepting the worship of a few scattered sightseers; he looked through the narrow walkway that led out to Oxford’s most famous building, the circular library called the Radcliffe Camera; and as his eyes traveled over these familiar sights his main feeling was that he had come home. These buildings, the Clarendon, Sheldonian, Bodleian, these were the first home that belonged solely to him, to his adult self. Now, in the twilight of early fall, he felt almost breathless in the face of all the memories they held, all the promise spent, all the students like him who had turned out one way or another, whatever their first dreams had been when they arrived.
The appearance of the librarian jerked him out of his reverie.
“Doing all right, Mr. Lenox?”
“Quite well, thanks, Mr. Folsom. What are those?” he asked, nodding toward the papers in the other man’s hands.
“Ah—a few more we found on the September Society.”
“I’m awfully obliged.”
“Oh, and here’s a note that came up for you from one of the pages at Jesus College.”
The note, to Lenox’s surprise, was from a woman named Rosie Little, asking him to come visit her the next morning at Jesus—the place, he noted, where Payson had been to the dance on Saturday evening. He wrote back to her saying that he would come, and then turned to the papers.
&n
bsp; Lenox had ascertained a few bare facts about this Society that kept popping up, but only a very few, and the work was slow going. He was trawling through old newspapers that the library had cross-referenced and through the books of club and society histories, as well as the histories of eastern military action by the British Empire. In this hodgepodge of sources he had found nine references to the September Society, three of them entirely incidental, five ancillary, and one that was more intriguing. The three incidental mentions all came in the middle of long lists of organizations, groups with a representative at a conference, for example, or groups that had all donated to a single cause.
Of the five ancillary mentions, two were interesting to Lenox. The first reported that select members of the September Society had been received by Queen Victoria. It was in a copy of the Times about ten years old. The second was about the same event, but was slightly more specific and had appeared about a week later in the Spectator. Its chief usefulness to Lenox was that it gave the number of members of the Society (roughly thirty, awfully small) and a more detailed account of the club’s formation by a group of officers who had served together in eastern India and all received high military decorations.
This added information to the most interesting of the sources, a book called A History of the Pall Mall, about ten years old, which had an appendix entitled “Club and Society Profiles.” The entry on the September Society was instructive.
Opposite the War Office in Carlton Gardens is a building occupied by the Biblius Club (ref. p. 502) on the lower floor and the September Society in the upper two. The Sept. Society was founded in 1848 by Maj. Sir Theophilus Butler and Maj. Peter Wilson, and is open to veterans of the military action in India who served between 1847 and 1849, attained the rank of captain or higher, and have received approval from the admissions committee. The Society’s mission statement reads: “For the promotion of the values and memory of the heroes of Punjab and their families.” The floors contain a dining room, a library emphasizing military history, upper and lower lounges, billiards room, and card room. Two servants are in full-time employ, and the Society shares a kitchen and cook with the Biblius. The Society is closed to the public without exception. It has limited reciprocal privileges with the 40s Club in Devon, a club with a similar membership but open to all officers who served in the East during the 1840s. Prospective members may apply to Capt. John Lysander, 116 Green Park Terrace, W1.
The September Society Page 9
