The September Society Read online

  “Every last one!”

  Ancient, homey, and comfortable, Calum’s was one of the best bookshops around, small and a little dark with rows of crammed bookshelves along the walls. Mr. Chaffanbrass’s squat counter stood in the middle of the room, just next to a freestanding oven that usually had a kettle on and a comfortable chair beside it. The owner himself was a very small, cheerful man, with red cheeks, tidy white hair, and a large belly. He wore perfectly round spectacles and a tweed suit, and the majority of his life was spent behind the counter and next to the warmth of the oven, reading. There was always a turned-down book on the arm of his chair.

  “Anything else new?” asked Lenox.

  “Nothing you haven’t seen, no. Wait, though!” As Mr. Chaffanbrass skittered to the back of the store, Lenox looked idly through the books on the counter. Presently the gentleman came back with a small volume in his hand.

  “What do you make of that, Mr. Lenox?” he said. “A new translation.”

  Lenox looked at the flyleaf. It was a thin, pebbled brown copy of The Praise of Folly by Erasmus, with an accompanying essay by one of the dons at Cambridge.

  “Why not. May I take it?”

  “Yes, of course. A poor bookseller I’d be if I said no,” said Mr. Chaffanbrass, placing his hands on his stomach and chortling.

  “Thanks. I’ll be off, then.”

  “Wrapped?”

  “No,” said Lenox. “I need something to read straight away.”

  “As you please,” said Mr. Chaffanbrass, taking a short stub of pencil from his breast pocket, opening a ledger, and making a small tick. “On your bill, then?”

  “Graham will be around on the fifteenth.”

  “No doubt of it. I set my calendar by him!”

  He said this with satisfaction and then shook Lenox’s hand with great vigor, getting redder and redder and smiling furiously. After this brief ceremony he sat down again with a sigh and took his book up, groping with his other hand for a piece of toast on the stovetop. He would burn himself sooner or later. As far as Lenox could tell, the bookseller’s diet consisted of dozens of pieces of toast a day, each followed by a cup of milky coffee. Not the regimen recommended by the best physicians, perhaps, but it suited him.

  On the street again, wet smoke clouded the air. The drizzle continued. It had been a beautiful late summer until then, but perhaps they were in for a wet September, he thought. It would be too bad. He looked back across the street toward his brightly lit house and saw his carriage waiting, the horses occasionally stamping their feet and the driver huddled underneath a thick black coat to keep the rain off, with only a pipe protruding out of the coat’s hood, its ember occasionally brightening to orange. Lenox dodged another cab and stepped into the carriage, and with a word to the driver he was on his way to meet his brother.

  And while he was looking forward to lunch—and while he took pleasure in examining his new book—he could not rid himself of the question he had been asking himself for weeks, as well as that entire morning: How on God’s green earth was he supposed to ask one of his oldest friends, Lady Jane Grey, to be his wife?

  CHAPTER TWO

  The sun rose mild the next morning, a rich, burnished gold that flooded the back of Parliament and the stone houses along the Thames, a light with pink at its edges. The air was cool, but warming. Along the windswept boulevards that ran by the river, lonely men on anonymous errands hurried past. On the currents, watermen poled their skiffs down each bank, collecting rubbish or ferrying supplies out to small ships. A single long barge, covered with coal, proceeded regally down the center of the river, demanding a wide berth. And under the shadow of Big Ben, on the river’s western edge, Lenox gave a great final stroke of his oars, ran aground on the gravelly bank, and bent over his knees, panting.

  Two or three mornings a week—providing he didn’t have a case—he brought his single scull out to the river by Hammersmith and had a long pull back to his neighborhood, Mayfair, which stood behind Parliament. The person who liked this least was the driver of his carriage, who had to fit the scull to the roof and then wait for Lenox’s slow return to fetch it again. But to Lenox himself it was a singular pleasure. He loved to row in the morning, his body warming itself with the world.

  It was an old habit. At his school, Harrow, one of the beaks from his house, Druries (where Lord Byron had been, not to mention Lord Palmerston, who had died only a year before), had noticed Lenox’s height and asked him to come row for the house team. After that he had rowed at Oxford, in the Balliol college eight (he had never been big enough to row for the Blues) and upon graduation had made himself a present of a single scull. It was battered and old-fashioned now, but he still loved it. The exercise kept him trim, and simply to be on the river was a great privilege.

  Lenox took a last gulp of air and stepped out of the vessel. His driver was waiting with a cup of cold tea and a cloak—and when he had placed the latter on Lenox’s shoulders, hoisted the scull over his head and moved slowly toward the carriage. Lenox sipped the tea gratefully, thirsty, and called out, “I’ll walk home,” to the driver. Then he climbed the stairs from the riverbank to the street, every muscle in his legs crying out for mercy, and with an exhausted happiness filling his body started on the short trot home.

  It was a little past seven in the morning, and Lady Jane was coming to have breakfast at eight. When he reached home, Lenox hurriedly bathed and dressed, checked to see what Ellie, the cook, was preparing, and with a quarter of an hour till his friend’s arrival sat down to look over the morning post. There wasn’t much in it, beyond a letter about Hadrian’s Rome from one of his Italian correspondents, who wrote half in English and half in Latin, and who disagreed vociferously with Lenox about the social breadth of slavery. Lenox read the letter with some amusement and then tucked it into the book he had bought the day before to remind himself to respond to it. There was also the card of a man named John Best, whom Lenox had never heard of.

  “John Best?” he said to Graham.

  “A young man, sir. He was here late yesterday evening.”

  “Don’t know him.”

  Soon there was a tap at the door, and Lenox knew that Lady Jane had come. His heart fluttered a little, and he had that hollow, happy feeling of unspoken love. Checking his tie, he stood and made his way toward the hall, where Graham would be taking her things.

  “Hullo!” he cried out cheerfully upon seeing her.

  She turned from Graham, with whom she had been speaking. “Oh, Charles, hello! I’m delighted to see you.”

  “Likewise, of course. Have you been well?”

  She was taking off her gloves, then removing her scarf, then handing over her jacket. “Yes, quite well. But I haven’t seen you in ages, Charles.”

  “It’s true,” he said. “I’m forced to blame you.”

  Indeed, it was true. Though their usual routine brought them together every day, or near it, in the past few weeks she had been less available to him than at any time he could remember in the last fifteen years, and just when he most yearned for her presence. He hadn’t yet broached the most mysterious point of all: that he had seen her carriage emerge from the low, poor tenements of the Seven Dials one afternoon the week before.

  “Come, it’s only been a few days.”

  “Yes, but neighbors who are friends ought to see each other every day.”

  She laughed. “You feel firmly about that?”

  He frowned, pleasantly. “I do.”

  “Then I shall make more of an effort.” She met him halfway down the hall and gave him a light kiss on the cheek. “I apologize, Charles.”

  Lady Jane Grey had been a young widow, her husband, the heroic and much loved Lord Deere, having died in battle only a few months after their marriage. She was from one of the oldest families in Sussex—older, in fact, than Lenox’s—and the two of them had grown up neighbors, belonging to the two leading families of their tucked-away cove of countryside. She was a pretty and lovable but perhaps
not a beautiful woman, with wide, intelligent, peaceful eyes and a smiling mouth that ran pink and red depending on the weather. She rarely dressed inside the fashion, yet always managed to look fashionable, and while there were those in London society who condemned her curling, unostentatious hair as dull, there were others who thought it her best asset. Lenox, of course, stood with this latter group.

  In any case, her greatest charm wasn’t in her looks. It was in her character. Her mind was wide-ranging but never pretentious, and a loving sense of humor always lay beneath her speech. She sat at the apex of society in London, and in Sussex when she visited her brother, the Earl of Houghton, at home, but she wore the power that came with her friendships and connections lightly. Rarely was she mercurial in her affections. She had happy friendships awaiting her wherever she went.

  Yet people whispered that a kind of sadness trailed her cheerful figure: solitary for so many years, childless, and a widow, after all. Lenox knew that loneliness played no significant role in her life, but he also wondered whether it sometimes came to her in brief, uncertain moments. Still, he never stepped an inch over their friendship’s wide borderlines to discover whether his speculation might be correct. When he thought he detected sadness in her mien, he only aimed to be a better friend to her.

  That was Lady Jane Grey; Charles Lenox’s best friend, and the woman he loved better than anyone else in the world.

  They walked arm in arm to the dining room—the room next to Lenox’s study, straight down the front hall—where food and coffee were laid out at the far end of a long mahogany table with intricately carved legs and high-backed chairs all around it.

  “Well, how have you been?” she asked as Lenox held her chair. “Solved anything recently? Seen much of Edmund?”

  “I had lunch with him yesterday, actually. He’s quite well. There’s some upset with the Ordnance’s finance at the moment, but he’s working to clear it.” Lenox sat across from her. “No cases, though. I wish one would come along.”

  “I could rob a bank, if you like.”

  “Would you? Thanks.”

  She laughed. “But perhaps it’s nice to have a break, don’t you think? Plan out a trip somewhere”—Lenox was a great armchair explorer, though his elaborate plans were often sidetracked by real life—“and figure out what they ate breakfast off of in ancient Rome? Rest your mind, until your next case arrives?”

  “You’re right, of course. I ought not to complain.”

  “What did they eat off of, back then?”

  “Plates, I should have said.”

  “Charles,” she said in a tone of mock exasperation.

  He laughed. “I’ll find out. Promise.”

  “I’ll hold you to that promise.” She took another corner of toast from the tray that lay between them and set it by her egg. “Do you know who I saw last night?”

  “Who?”

  “You won’t like it.”

  “Ah,” said Lenox grimly. “Barnard, then?”

  “Yes.”

  George Barnard was the director of the National Mint, a former Member of Parliament, one of the richest men in London, and—Lenox was certain—one of the worst thieves in England’s history. For the past several months he had been slowly untangling the web of protection Barnard had built around himself, dismantling the high fortifications of rank and reputation that obscured the truth. He had discovered a seam in the Hammer Gang—Barnard’s henchmen—that he might exploit, and had traced back north a possible instance of the director’s treachery. But it was long, slow work, and because he had to do it secretly took twice the time with half the results it would have if Barnard had been a common and well-known criminal.

  “Was he in good form?” Lenox asked, grumpily pushing a fried mushroom around with his fork. Thinking about Barnard had even managed to dispel his quiet happiness at being alone with Lady Jane.

  “Oh, yes, talking about some silver urn he had acquired for his collection.”

  Lenox snorted. “Collection.”

  “Don’t make that noise,” said Lady Jane, though tolerantly. “Have you found anything else out about him?”

  “I’m waiting for Skaggs to return from Sheffield. I expect he’ll have news.”

  “Remind me who Skaggs is?”

  “The private investigator I use from time to time. He finds the pub an easier fit than I do. Useful chap. More coffee, Jane?”

  “Yes, please,” she said, and Lenox beckoned a maid to fetch it. In addition to her absence, here was another thing: She seemed—as she had in previous weeks—slightly preoccupied, careworn, and fretful over some secret anxiety. He did his best to cheer her, and wondered how he could discover what that anxiety was.

  Their talk turned to the parties that were to occur that week, touched on politics, veered off toward a painter Jane had discovered, and then moved on to a mutual acquaintance of theirs, one Mr. Webb, who had been discovered cheating at the racetrack.

  In all their long conversation, however, Lenox never said the only words he had hoped to before her arrival.

  CHAPTER THREE

  That night in the small hours, just past four o’clock, Lenox lay dreaming beneath the heavy covers of his bed when there was a knock at his door. At first it just nudged his consciousness, and he turned over, hugging the blankets close to his chin. At the second knock, however, he started out of his rest.

  “Yes?” he called out.

  “May I enter, sir?”

  “What? Oh, yes, certainly, Graham. Come in.”

  Graham opened the door and came a few feet into the room.

  “Just a social visit, then?” Lenox said with a smile.

  “I’m afraid you have a guest, sir.”

  “Who is it?” he said, sitting upright and blinking his eyes awake. “Is anything the matter? Is it Jane?”

  “No, sir,” said Graham, and Lenox’s shoulders relaxed an inch. “It is Lady Annabelle Payson.”

  Annabelle Payson? He had met her once or twice. She must have had a pressing reason to come, as it was well known that she detested London. At eighteen she had made a spectacularly unhappy marriage to James Payson, a captain in the army and lad-about-town in the forties, who had moved her into his West End flat. They had had one son before he died off in the East (some said shot over a card table, though others said it was in battle), and now she lived entirely in the country with her brother.

  “Has she said why she’s come, Graham?”

  “No, sir, though I might venture to say that her ladyship seems agitated.”

  “Very well,” Lenox said with a sigh. “It’s a bit of a bother. Do give her some tea, though, won’t you? And I’d like a cup myself. I’ll be down as soon as I can.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Decent of you to be so stoic about the interruption to your own rest, by the way.”

  “Not at all, sir,” said Graham.

  After the butler left, Lenox went to the west window of his bedroom, which stretched from his knees to the ceiling. Outside there was a dense fog, though he could make out a few figures on Hampden Lane, heads bowed, on late errands of mercy and menace. The sound of wet leaves dropping from the trees made its way to him. And a small smile crept onto his face. A cup of tea, and who knew what after that? Another case in play, and all the better that it came at this hour. These late ones were often the most interesting.

  He appeared downstairs a while later, changed from his striped blue and white pajamas into a gray suit.

  “How do you do, Lady Annabelle?” he said.

  He could have answered his own question: She was not at all well. A gaunt and frightened-looking woman, she wore a dark brown dress that bespoke her long widowhood. Once she had been pretty but no longer. She was several years older than Lenox, perhaps forty-five. He racked his brains for a memory of the terrible Payson. Handsome; awful temper; that mystery around his death. He had fought somewhere or other and picked up a violent red scar on his neck, Lenox remembered. It was the strangeness of h
is death more than anything else that stood out in his scant memory of the man.

  “I’m terribly sorry to bother you, Mr. Lenox,” she said, worriedly clutching at a long stone necklace she wore.

  “No, no, don’t be,” he said. “I’m an early riser anyway.”

  “I should have waited until morning, I know, but sometimes a problem is so burdensome that one feels it cannot wait.”

  “Of course,” he said. “You wouldn’t have slept. What is the problem?”

  “I need your acumen, Mr. Lenox.”

  “And my discretion?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  Lenox shrugged. “Well, if you’ve come to me I suppose you haven’t gone to the police.”

  “That’s correct, Mr. Lenox, you’re correct. You see, in the first place, I wouldn’t want to go to the police. But in the second place, I think the police would have laughed. I know you won’t laugh.”

  “Certainly not, no.”

  “You can’t go to the police and simply say, ’There’s a dead cat in my son’s rooms at college,’ can you. They’d think you mad.”

  “A dead cat?”

  “Yes, Mr. Lenox; that’s the root of all the problems.” Again she reached for her necklace.

  Wearily he thought, Oh, no, not one of these.

  “You seem preoccupied, Lady Payson. Would you like a cup of tea?”

  “Yes, please,” she said as he motioned to Graham, “but Mr. Lenox, will you come to Oxford with me?”

  “I suppose that depends,” he said. “Is the problem a dead cat? Is that the only problem?”

  She seemed slightly calmer. “It’s certainly not the only problem.”

  “What is, then?”

  “I’ve come because my son, George, has disappeared.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  In Warwickshire there were two families: the Lucys and the Wests.

  The Lucys were the more famous of the two, for one thing because of the long-told, possibly apocryphal story that Shakespeare had been a tutor in the family of Sir Thomas Lucy and even poached his deer. But the Wests were richer. A West had played an important role in the crucial Battle of Edgehill during the Revolution, and now they lived in the north of the shire on land the King had granted to them after the Restoration, around the large towns of Nuneaton and Bedworth. It was far from the glory of Stratford and the beauty of the southern canals, but it was where the money lay.