The September Society

by Charles Finch

  They were on the right ground again. The doorman gave his nose a final, emphatic tap of secrecy. Lenox left his card behind, found out the man’s name was Thomas Hallowell, and promised to return soon. As he walked back to Pall Mall, once looking back and up to see whether he could decipher anything from the curtained windows in the top two floors, he thought over what he should do. He could try the two houses at Green Park Terrace, though from the sound of it Lysander and Butler both kept odd hours. Then there was Peter Wilson, the suicide. That had an air of suspicion about it.

  The detective took a hansom cab to Scotland Yard and was closeted briefly with Inspector Jenkins, a young chap on the rise in the force with whom Lenox had once briefly worked in the matter of a murdered parlor maid, though Inspector Exeter had quickly taken over the job. Jenkins asked about George Payson and offered whatever help he could give Lenox. He also said that he would send over the coroner’s report and the Yard’s file on the case as soon as he could lay his hands on them.

  Though he had been uncertain of whether he knew Jenkins well enough to ask him for the favor, Lenox was glad that he had. Like many favors, it had bound the two people involved a little tighter, and Jenkins had made it plain that he was happy to lend a hand now and then where he could, while Lenox had made it equally plain that he was always good for a consultation. There were one or two people who trusted Lenox at the Yard, but he felt it was good to have a real friend in situ there, at a place where his work had mostly generated suspicion and surliness over the years.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The dim, final strands of sunlight were failing when Lenox returned home from Scotland Yard, but he noticed that Lady Jane’s house was bright. He thought he might go over straight away but then reconsidered and went inside his own house instead. Sitting at his desk by the window overlooking the street, he wrote Major Butler and Captain Lysander identical notes, asking in a line or two whether he might call on them either at the Society or in Green Park Terrace the next day in order to discuss a troubling criminal matter in which the September Society played a peripheral role. Sending them off with Mary—still flustered by the majesty of her position in the house and curtsying at nearly every word Lenox spoke—he wondered how the two men would react.

  He called Mary in again after he had taken a more leisurely look at several of the letters he had received and only glanced over that afternoon.

  “I think I’ll dine out,” he said to her.

  “Very good, sir.”

  “Could you please keep an eye out for the nine thirty post, and for any return messages from Green Park Terrace?”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  “And is everything here running smoothly in Graham’s absence?” He had no illusions about his own instrumentality to the organization of the household.

  “Quite smoothly, sir, though of course not as smoothly as when Mr. Graham is here, sir.” Evidently thinking this a pretty bright answer, she curtsied with a little stumble.

  “All right,” said Lenox. “Thanks very much.”

  Only after these little means of stalling his visit did Lenox rise with the intention of going to Lady Jane’s. Damning himself as he did it, he looked his features over in the mirror and tidied his clothes. A sort of heartsickness deep within him rose into his throat, but, as he reasoned to himself, there probably had been a Lenox at Agincourt, and he might as well walk toward certain death just as boldly as his ancestor had.

  Kirk, Lady Jane’s butler, answered the door deliberatively, as befitted such an oversized man, and greeted the visitor with a grave “How do you do, Mr. Lenox?” Still with some trepidation, Lenox approached the drawing room—only to hear two voices and the rolling, silvery peals of laughter that so clearly belonged to Toto McConnell.

  “Charles!” she said effervescently, rising to her feet to kiss his cheek. “How well you look!”

  “Thank you,” he said. “You look lovely. Is everything well?”

  “Oh, I’ve been having a delightful time listening to my husband talk dead cats over supper.” She sighed dramatically and then chuckled. “Still, better than dead fish, which he always rattles on about after he goes north.”

  Lenox laughed. As it always did, her charm made him feel warmer and somehow more gallant. In turn he greeted Lady Jane, who was more subdued but also had laughter in her eyes.

  “It’s awfully good to see you, Charles. How is your case?”

  “Not bad, thanks. I expect we’ll have the solution out soon enough. Sad for Lady Annabelle, of course. She seems a wreck.”

  “She’s going off to spend the winter in France,” said Toto. “Apparently for her health. Duch”—this was her nickname for the Duchess of Marchmain—“tried to invite her into London so that she could be among friends, but Annabelle said no.”

  “Dreadful, that.”

  Throughout this Toto’s face still bore its initial enchantment, which Lenox thought rather odd. Then, however, looking at Lady Jane, he saw that she had it, too. He was too polite, of course, to ask after it, but his old friend spotted it instantly.

  “Toto,” she said, “you had better tell him the news.”

  “Oh, Charles, I’m going to have a child!” said Toto. Her whole body was alive with happiness as he congratulated her and was rewarded with a flurry of kisses. “Oh, and I don’t know if I’m to mention it, but would you stand godfather to the baby? Thomas wanted to ask you specially. Jane will be godmother, with Duch, of course. I always believed in two godmothers because one always forgets to send presents. Jane, you’ll be the one to send presents and little silver cups and things, won’t you?”

  Smiling, Lady Jane nodded her assent.

  “I know it’s frightfully popish to have godparents, of course,” said Toto, fairly brimming with joy, “but it’s a great tradition in our family.”

  “I know,” said Lenox. “My father stood as your father’s.”

  “That’s right! At any rate you’ll just have to do it, and the two of you will make a delightful pair on the altar—of course you’ll come to the baptism—and, Charles, I do hope it’s a girl, don’t you? They’re so much nicer I think.”

  “Thomas must be awfully happy,” Lenox said.

  “Oh, he is! He was sorry to leave Oxford when I called him down, but he is!”

  In Lady Jane’s face, which he could read so well, Lenox saw that she hoped the baby would be the panacea that Toto and McConnell needed to cure their marriage’s intermittent discontent—and he partook of both the overt happiness in the room at the news and this quieter, naturally unspoken happiness underlying it.

  The conversation moved on to baby names (Toto liked the thought of Henry for a boy, and the list of girls’ names she liked was close in length to a biblical genealogy—including Margaret, Anne, Anna, Elizabeth, Louise, and dozens of others, all of them to be immediately replaced by a dozen nicknames when they were actually implemented) and then to what schools the child would go to as a boy (Eton, though Lenox made a strong case for Harrow) and what sort of person the child would marry if it was a girl (one just like her father). The room was full of goodwill and happiness, and though Lenox was delighted for Toto and McConnell, a small, ignominious part of him was sad that he didn’t have the same kind of joy in his bones.

  At one point in their conversation, Toto asked Lenox what he meant to do for dinner.

  “I thought I’d go to the Devonshire and hunt up a companion or two,” he said.

  “Nonsense! Have dinner with Thomas—I’m going to eat with Duch and Jane later to celebrate, and probably a few other people. I can’t bear to think that he’ll be all alone, fussing over his poor dear dead animals. Won’t you take him out and have a bottle of champagne or something?”

  “Terrific idea,” Lenox said. “In fact, perhaps I’ll invite a few others, too—Hilary, Dunstan, perhaps my brother, that sort of a crowd.”

  “Brilliant!” said Toto and then resumed her exegesis on the perfect shade of yellow paint she would put i
nto the nursery if the child was a girl.

  Lenox excused himself and stepped out of the room to write a few notes, to McConnell and about five others, naming a restaurant in Piccadilly called Thompson’s, which he knew to be cheerful. He was looking forward to it himself. Between the death of George Payson and his reticence with Lady Jane he hadn’t realized how low his spirits had gotten, despite his determination to direct all of his energy into the case. One too many glasses of wine and a night of good company would be just the thing, he thought, to leave him ready for a fresh try the next morning.

  “I’ve written the notes,” he said, coming back.

  “Oh, good,” said Toto.

  “Will you be in London long, Charles?” Lady Jane asked.

  “I won’t, I’m afraid. Too much of the case is in Oxford—I’ll have to return tomorrow. But it will be over soon, I hope.”

  “I hope so, too,” said Lady Jane, with something indeed hopeful in her voice.

  But here again the line separating friendship and love was unclear, and he couldn’t decipher her feelings, usually so plain to him. He wondered for the thousandth time about the man in the long gray coat whom he had seen visiting her, and for the thousandth time reproached himself for his vulgar curiosity. The special misery of undeclared love again rose within him, but he pushed it back down and listened intently to what Toto had to say about February birthdays and their astrological luck.

  Toto and her news were what both prevented and saved Lenox from speaking to Lady Jane alone, of course. But there was a moment toward the end of their conversation when Toto went off to look in the mirror in the hallway and all of the unsaid words underneath the two old friends’ conversation began to fill the room as slowly and surely as rising water. Just when Lenox had built up some particle of courage Toto came back—and the two of them left Jane a little while later, both promising to return soon.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The next day, his higher spirits worth a terrible morning head, Lenox woke up to a note and a visitor. The note was from Captain Lysander. It was written on heavy paper with the September Society’s seal embossed in the upper right-hand corner and Lysander’s name at the bottom, and said:

  Mr. Lenox,

  By all means come see me, though I don’t know how much help I can be to you. I shall be in Green Park Terrace at 2:30 this afternoon. Incidentally, Major Butler, in case you desired to speak to him as well, is out of town.

  Yours &c,

  Captain John Lysander, 12th Suffolk 2nd

  Funny, thought Lenox, that he would mention Butler. Had Hallowell, the Society’s doorman, mentioned Lenox’s visit there? Perhaps.

  The visitor was just as mysterious. For propriety’s sake, it was a footman, Samuel, who had given Lenox the note and announced the visitor, not Mary. The card he bore on his tray only had the name John Best written on it, without any further explanation. So this was the man who had been dogging Lenox’s steps, leaving his card at the house every few days.

  “Did he say anything else? The name doesn’t ring a bell,” Lenox said as he dressed, pausing now and then to sip the lifesaving cup of coffee on his table.

  “No, sir,” said Samuel, “though he assured me that you knew him.”

  “Did he? Cheek, that—I haven’t the foggiest idea who he is. Are you sure he isn’t asking for money or selling tastefully designed Christmas wreaths?”

  “He assured Mary, sir, that he was on no such mission.”

  “Dress?”

  “Quite high, sir.”

  Lenox shrugged. “I must see him, I suppose. If you haven’t already, offer him something to drink and tell him I’ll be down in a moment.”

  He ate a ruminative apple slice—no sense in hurrying to see a man who had come at this early hour—and checked a list of what he would do that day. He would look at the coroner’s report, if Jenkins had sent it; he would meet with John Lysander in the afternoon; he would call on Lady Jane; and then he would take the train back to Oxford, where Graham would hopefully have completed his research about Hatch. It was the third of these tasks that reigned in his mind. Sighing, he took a final sip of coffee and put on his tie.

  When Lenox went downstairs, he found a man of perhaps twenty-two or twenty-three, dressed quite well, who said, “Where’s Graham, then? I’ve been curtsied roughly a thousand times by a creature called Mary.”

  “John Dallington?” said Lenox, much surprised.

  “No other. I thought John Best was a lovely touch, though. Had a hundred of the cards printed up.”

  “What for? Why have you visited? Not that I’m not always happy to see you, of course. It must be a year or so.”

  Lord John Dallington was the youngest of the Duke and Duchess of Marchmain’s three sons, and a notorious anxiety to his parents. In person he was short, trim, handsome, dark-haired, and deep-eyed, with an amused look always lurking in his face and an air of boredom in how he stood. In his buttonhole, as ever, was a perfect carnation, his trademark. He looked a bit like Napoleon, in fact, if Napoleon had decided to drink at the Beargarden Club every evening rather than conquer Russia.

  His reputation across London was set; he was known to be the most determined drinker, partygoer, and cad in the West End. Instead of entering the military or the church, as most third sons might have done, he had elected to idle until he discovered what he wanted to do in life. Such a discovery would have shocked everyone, however, and though Dallington gave the impression that it was daily expected, even his partisans admitted that a long life of dissolution seemed most probable.

  Lenox sometimes met Dallington in Marchmain House in Surrey during hunting season, and less often in London. Lady Jane, on behalf of her friend the duchess, had once asked Lenox if he might talk to the lad, but Lenox had put his foot down smartly and averred to his friend that under no circumstances would he be dragged into a conversation doomed to end in failure and, worse still, awkward silence. However, the mountain will now and then come to Mohammed, and here Dallington was, and at this early hour. For Lenox, it had the same surreal quality as running into the Emperor of Japan in the Turf would have.

  “I was hoping to speak to you about something, Mr. Lenox. You know my father is fond of you, and I’ve always liked you, too—I haven’t forgotten, of course, the timely half crown you delivered to me before I left for school, and which bought me many an illicit cigarette in those early days—and I have something serious on my mind.”

  “Do you?” The pronouncement would have made happy news for the duke and duchess. For Lenox it was simply perplexing.

  “Though I left my card before, at the moment I’m especially keen, because I know you’re working to find out who murdered George Payson.”

  Surprised, Lenox said, “I am, yes.”

  Dallington paused, looking as if he were weighing in his mind the best means of expressing something larger than his powers of articulation. At last he said, “As you may have heard, I’ve been casting around for a career that I fancy, and while I’d love to make the governor happy and became some dratted vicar or general, the idea that keeps returning to me is that I become a detective.”

  There was a long pause. “I’m astonished,” Lenox said, and he had never spoken truer words.

  “I’ve had my wild times now and then—more than my share perhaps—and I don’t think I’ll give them up, because I like them too well. But I have also always had a very fine sense of justice. It’s really the highest praise I can give myself. Criticism is easier, of course. I’m a spendthrift—I play with girls’ hearts—I drink too much—don’t give a whit for the family escutcheon—don’t always listen to the mother and father. Still, though, weighed against all that, for as long as I can remember this sense of justice, of fair play, was what I liked best in myself.”

  “I see,” said Lenox.

  “Part of it is the playing fields of Eton sort of thing, that old sense of never ratting and always sharing out and that, but I also remember earlier examples. As a
child I always confessed to my crimes when there was any chance of another person getting blamed. Which was out of character, as I never minded the crimes themselves, you see.”

  “But to be a detective takes more than that—it takes as well doggedness and humanity, John. And humility.”

  “You mean to remind me that I’m a dilettante, of course. I don’t deny it. Still, I feel deeply that this is the profession I’d like to follow. I wouldn’t take your time lightly.”

  “Your parents will be upset.”

  “No doubt—but then again, they might be pleased to see me settling to something, and of course there’s no worry over money.”

  “That’s the other thing that would worry me about your following this path, if I may be frank.”

  “Of course.”

  “The victims of murder are a variable lot, as variable as any set of mankind you’ll find. Finding justice for George Payson is well and good, but what about the cabman who beat his wife and died of a blow to the back of the head? Will you follow the clues in a case like that? What about the louse-and-dirt-covered body in a ditch by the side of the road?”

  Very openly, Dallington said, “I can only promise that I’ll try as hard as I know how to treat every case equally. At any rate, I mentioned Payson for a reason—he was a fresher in Lincoln when I was spending that fourth year at Trinity, and I saw some of him and always rather liked him. It was seeing a mutual friend of ours the other day that finally galvanized me to come make this proposal.”

  “Proposal?”

  “I’d like to apprentice myself to you.”

  There was another long pause. “I assumed you meant to ask for advice about joining Scotland Yard.”

  “Oh, no, of course not. For the same reason you didn’t. Men of our rank could never serve there, could they?”

  “Yes, I see that,” Lenox said. Again he paused, turning it over in his mind. At last he said, his words measured and contemplative, “I find it difficult to reject what you’ve asked of me. And it’s a large request—I can’t hand you a magnifying glass and see you off. The reason I find it difficult is that mine is a neglected profession. I would scarcely say so if you hadn’t asked me this question, but it is, in my mind at least, both one of the least respected professions among our kind of people and one of the most important and noble in its purpose. If you are a detective and a gentleman, expect to be unheralded—misunderstood except by your friends, and even by them sometimes—looked on as somewhat odd, if harmless. It will help that you have a position and money, as it has helped me, but it won’t save you from a certain, rather hard to bear kind of disrepute.”