The September Society Read online

  “I certainly hope he is, and I certainly think there’s a good chance,” said Lenox.

  “You don’t know George, Mr. Lenox. Nothing would have made him miss our lunch except a crisis—and no explanation, no note! Some sons might be capable of that, but not George. Only real trouble could have made him leave me like that.”

  “At any rate, I shall try my best to find him. That is what I can promise you. Would you rather I went in alone? Or will you come?”

  “I’ll come,” she said stoutly.

  “Just as you please, though I must ask you not to touch anything. Unless you have already?”

  “No, I left everything as it was. Why?”

  “It may be important to see what George left behind—whether he left in haste or deliberately, for instance, whether there’s any sign of forced access to a window or door.”

  “I see. No, I shan’t touch anything. I only sat in the chair by the window when I was here before. That may be slightly disturbed, but otherwise the rooms are as George left them.”

  Lady Payson nodded to the porter on duty, and she and Lenox walked along the stone path that circled the lawn, toward an entrance at the rear of the Front Quad.

  “Does anybody at the college know of anything amiss?” he asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Best to keep it that way, perhaps. What do the porters think of your coming and going?”

  “I told them I was visiting, and asked if I could have leave to enter the college freely. They said I could, on the word of the master.”

  “And you haven’t spoken to any of his friends?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever met any of them?”

  “Only very briefly.”

  They reached a slim stone stairwell in which the morning light angled through the mullioned windows on each landing. On the third and top floor, Lady Payson pointed to a door. Lenox took the lead.

  The sitting room looked as familiar as the back of his hand, and immediately Lenox took a liking to the young man who inhabited it. There was a grate just by the door, full of ready coals (a sensible proposition—no use fumbling in the coal with wet hands as you got in), and by it there was a single armchair, maroon and stuffed, accompanied by a medium-sized circular table on which there were several books and a battered sort of walking stick. Walking boots, heavy with mud, sat on their sides in the chair.

  In case of a guest there was a small table and two chairs by the window, which looked out over the Front Quad and had a view of the Radcliffe Camera, the domed library at the center of Oxford. On it were the remains of a breakfast that the scout had yet to remove—from two days before, it would seem, as Lady Annabelle confirmed that it had been a day old the day before. Lenox wondered about this and made a quick note of it on a pad that he whisked from the inner pocket of his jacket.

  There was a bookcase, stacked with old newspapers and bric-a-brac, along with a few volumes on Tudor history. The center of the room was covered by a thick, ornate rug, which Lady Payson explained her late husband had sent back from India. Stooping to examine it, Lenox saw several small artifacts of the missing man’s life: a frayed piece of string about two feet long of the sort you might bind a package with, half of a pulpy fried tomato, which was too far from the breakfast table to have been dropped, a fountain pen, and lastly a card, which said on the front THE SEPTEMBER SOCIETY. Lenox turned it and was surprised to discover on the back two pen lines, one pink, one black, forming an χ.

  The September Society—hadn’t been an Oxford club in his day. What was interesting about the items on the rug was that they were all scattered within a few inches of each other, while the rest of the rug was spotless. He stood up. Why this spot? It had but a poor angle on the window: too far from the fire for warmth, and too far from the desk (opposite the bookcase was a desk, which was tidy—in contrast with the mess on the carpet) for glancing over papers. Its only distinguishing mark was that it was in a kind of no-man’s-land in the room.

  He examined the rest of the room and found only one thing that he thought enough of to add to his notebook: a messy line of ash from a pipe, on the floor just beneath the window.

  “Was your son much of a smoker?” he asked Lady Payson, who was lingering in the doorway.

  “No, not that I know of. He didn’t smoke when he came home.”

  “I don’t see a pipe in this room, at any rate. He might have carried it on his person—but why not tap the ash outside the window, within arm’s length, rather than on the floor just by it?”

  “I confess I don’t know, Mr. Lenox. Have you any clue of what happened yet?”

  “Clues—but no clue yet. Still, we shall see. I think I may proceed to the bedroom now, Lady Payson. Would you like to sit in the armchair? I could light a fire.”

  “No, no,” she said. “I’ll come in.”

  Just then, however, there was a clattering on the stairs behind them, and they both turned. A voice said, “Really, I quite assure you that I am expected—really,” while the voice of a porter said, “But sir, we can call up—no problems on that account.” The first voice said, “Ah, but it’s a matter of urgency.” Then there was a brief silence—the coin of the empire changing hands, perhaps?–and the first voice came to the door, found it open, and walked in.

  “A dead cat?” the voice said. “Has your grade of case declined?”

  Lenox smiled, and said, “Why, hullo, McConnell. How good of you to come.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The bedroom was narrow and dark, with only a diamond-shaped window letting any light in. Like the sitting room it was plain, and like the sitting room it was untouched by the scout—the bed unmade, books strewn on the floor by an armchair that stood under the window, and clothes on the floor by the wardrobe. Still, the room retained the amiable hominess that was recognizable in the sitting room. Lenox liked George Payson, no mistaking it.

  Lady Payson was sitting by the grate, which McConnell had lit.

  “Much too chilly in here,” he had said. “No evidence in it, is there?”

  Now he and Lenox were walking gingerly through the room. Its only remarkable point was the dead cat lying in the center of it.

  “Will you tell me what I ought to know?” McConnell said.

  The doctor hadn’t looked better in years; not since before he began to drink. He was a tall, handsome Scot, with wry and caring eyes. A talented surgeon, he had let his practice lapse after making a brilliant marriage to a young, charming, beautiful, rich, and high-strung woman called Toto. The marriage had been a rocky one, however, at some points even on the verge of divorce. The sorrow of those first years had driven McConnell to drink. Recently, though, as the doctor had unbended and Toto had grown, things had been better. The secrets of a marriage are impenetrable, but the secrets of a man are not: McConnell was happier, especially when he worked with Lenox. Toto was, too. Both were older and sadder, but they had made it to the other side. Or so their friends ardently hoped. McConnell still had the sunken eyes of the flask, yet there was some jolliness in his face that Lenox could only ascribe to the partial reconciliation with Toto.

  Lenox briefly explained the outline of the case. “Hope I haven’t called you here for naught,” he said.

  “I daresay the cat will be as interesting as anything else that comes my way this week. Animal, vegetable, mineral, you know—I’m not a real doctor any longer, I’ll take them all.”

  He smiled as he said this, though Lenox detected in the smile a customarily wan aspect.

  The cat itself was white and glossy, well taken care of, without any markings at first glance. It was stabbed once through the neck. Turning on a lamp, Lenox leaned down to verify that the weapon was indeed a letter opener. It was of the old-fashioned kind, he saw, broad and silver, inscribed with a cursive P. McConnell stooped down with Lenox and ran his hand through the cat’s fur.

  “Only the one wound,” he said. “Odd, that.”

  “Why?”

 
McConnell stroked his chin. “Have you ever tried to stab a cat?”

  “Oh, dozens of times.”

  He laughed. “But really, cats aren’t docile, you know. They squirm and dash about. I love dogs, myself—a good Scottish terrier.”

  “In a murderous mood, you mean?”

  “Don’t joke, there’s a good fellow.”

  “You’re right, though, it would have been difficult.”

  “Even for a strong man—it wouldn’t matter. There would be more than one mark, as the person tried to hit the right spot. In fact, there would probably be seven or eight lighter ones, I’d guess. Here there’s a single deep one.”

  “So either two people did it,” said Lenox, “or the cat was drugged.”

  “I’ll find out for you.”

  “Let’s lift it.”

  McConnell gingerly worked the letter opener out (it was plunged straight through to the floor) and dropped it into the pocket of a cloth bag he had brought. Rigor mortis had set in, and the body was stiff. He picked the cat up and dropped it into the main pouch of the bag.

  “What’s this?” said Lenox.

  In the blood on the floor was a damp red note, which had been stabbed through at its center by the letter opener. He picked it up and examined it. One corner was untouched by blood, and he saw a blue edging on it. Writing paper. It was folded in half, and he opened it.

  “It says … it says, ’x12/43 21 31 25/x2.’ “Lenox looked at McConnell, puzzled. “Any meaning you can gather?”

  “That’s your area.” The doctor held out a little bag, and Lenox, after making sure there were no markings anywhere else on it, placed it inside.

  “What kind of code could it be?” Lenox muttered. “I wonder.”

  He walked across the room, stooping here and there to look. He found little of interest, and nothing so singular as the collection of objects on the Indian rug. Still, he left with one thing: On the bedside table was an empty dance card for a ball that had apparently taken place the night before at Jesus College, with a note on the reverse that said, Yes, sir, that will be fine, and was signed Roland Light. According to Lady Annabelle, this was the hallway’s scout, who cleaned the rooms, lit the fires, and made meals. Otherwise, their inspection yielded nothing.

  “Bit of lunch?” McConnell whispered.

  “I shall have to look after Lady Annabelle.”

  “See what she means to do.”

  “Yes, all right,” said Lenox.

  She was sitting by the coals, warming her hands. There was a dazed look in her eyes.

  “Shall I ever see my son again?” She felt for her necklace.

  “I certainly hope you shall, Lady Payson.”

  She turned to him. “Can I trust you?” she said. “Are you a good enough detective?”

  “Fair enough, yes. If you would like to go to the police, I recommend it wholeheartedly.”

  “Oh, the police,” she said with a wave of her hand.

  “At any rate, I think the best thing now would be rest. Perhaps you should withdraw to your brother’s house.”

  “Perhaps,” she said tiredly. “What do you mean to do?”

  “This afternoon I shall interview whomever I’m able to find. This evening I’ll consider all that I’ve learned. Tomorrow morning, I think, I shall return to London. I have plenty to work on.”

  “Leave Oxford!”

  “Only for a day, possibly two, Lady Payson. And I will not leave without an ally in place here.”

  “Who?”

  “I cannot answer that, I’m afraid.”

  Gradually it was settled that she would leave, and with a great deal of trouble Lenox managed to send her off in her handsome, dejected carriage, with a promise of keeping in close touch.

  McConnell was waiting in the courtyard of Lincoln eating an apple, his cloth bag at his side.

  “Saw her off?” he said.

  “Yes,” said Lenox thoughtfully. “Poor woman.”

  “She barely seems to be holding on.”

  They set off up the High and turned onto Cornmarket Street, then into St. Giles. A little ways up St. Giles at number 12, Lenox led McConnell into the familiar doors of the Lamb and Flag—one of his favorite pubs in Oxford, companion to the Turf in that respect. (Inevitably a tour of Oxford becomes a tour of its pubs.) It was an old coaching inn, the kind that had been so important to British travel in the eighteenth century but had only just straggled into modern times, where horses could be fed and stabled, groups could meet and stay the night before traveling north, and there was always a pint and something good to eat available, no matter how late or wet it was. It was still the best place to order a cab or fly in Oxford. St. John’s College had always owned it, since 1695. There was a distinguished look about it—a place where kings had slept and beggars had drunk, all within the six or eight dim rooms, odd shaped and illogical, crammed under their ancient black beams.

  Lenox and McConnell sat at a table overlooking a broad field by St. John’s, talking easily. They had been working together more and more frequently in the past few years, and an intimacy had sprung up between them. For half an hour they lingered over a pint of beer before McConnell decided to order lunch.

  “What do you reckon is safe?” he asked when they looked over the menu.

  “Oh—I’ve eaten all of it in my time,” said Lenox.

  He didn’t have anything now, however, having eaten a large breakfast. McConnell ordered the round steak with a fried egg and mashed potatoes, and both of them ordered pints of autumn ale. The fat, red bartender brought it all out, along with a cold chicken sandwich and a bottle of beer that Lenox meant to save for later.

  As the two men talked and drank, the detective recalled his undergraduate days in these rooms; but his happiness and nostalgia were tinged with anxiety over George Payson, whom he knew he would like.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  On some unrecorded day in the 1090s, perhaps a little earlier, perhaps a little later—the Battle of Hastings still in memory, at any rate, and the Domesday Book not more than a decade old—an anonymous cleric and one or two students gathered by appointment in a small room (was it at an inn? in a church?), and the University of Oxford was born. Soon students from the University of Paris staged a minor revolt and joined those unremembered pioneers, and Oxford began to flourish. It was the first university in England and one of the few in Europe; before a century had passed it was the greatest institution of higher learning in the world. It had an astonishing number of books, for one thing—hundreds. Thanks to these books and the men who taught from them, generations of clergymen began to share, in their far-flung parishes, an Oxford education, an Oxford way of thinking and teaching. Thus was created a world of ideas, a world of the mind, which collapsed the difference between Devon and Yorkshire, which for the first time aligned the beliefs of the people all over England—and indeed, Europe.

  Then on some equally uncertain day in the 1200s, one of the constituent colleges of Oxford began, perhaps Merton College, perhaps University College, probably at first just a house where students could rent a room and have a meal; and then slowly, as the years washed over them, the colleges consolidated, joined by other colleges, until sometime in the 1400s when Oxford truly began to look and feel like Oxford.

  There was something that age bestowed, Lenox thought. A depth and richness to the afternoon light in the windows; a kind of holiness even in the buildings that weren’t religious. When you became a student at Oxford you realized both your own mortality, in the flow of this near-millennium of students, and also the small particle of immortality that attaches to you when you begin to belong to an immortal place.

  Lenox strode across the cobblestones of the forecourt of Balliol College, the site of his undergraduate days, gazing at the high windows he had once known so well. There was a smile upon his face, that mostly happy but slightly sad smile people have when they go back to a place they have loved. This had been a place of wonder for him, cut loose as he was from chil
dhood and the halls of Lenox House, with new friends and new studies. Even the few streets of central Oxford had seemed huge to him, lined with a bewildering number of shops stretching the quarter mile from St. Giles to St. Aldate’s, from St. John’s College to Christ Church.

  He was older now and felt it. Nearly forty. Unmarried still. Caught up with some of his dreams, fallen behind in others. He had thought since he was a boy that he would enter Parliament, and it had never happened. He had wanted a son. That was what he had found: The things one assumed would happen sometimes never did. It was a lesson his undergraduate self wouldn’t have understood.

  For an hour or so Lenox sat in the Balliol courtyard and thought about the case; one result of this brown study was the increased seriousness he now saw that it merited. The distracted manner in which George Payson had greeted his mother the morning before had tended rather to mitigate the case’s depth than add to it; Lenox remembered that all students had private lives that they guarded from all but their friends, and thought that if he had seen his mother even an hour early in his day he also would have been distracted. Too close a rub against his independence. With the step back, now Lenox saw that the strange, almost intentional dishevelment of Payson’s room, along with the presence of the white cat, which since he had seen it in the flesh had grown more eerie than comical, could hardly be anything but grave.

  As he stood up and left, he was more puzzled—but had a better grasp, too, of what he was puzzled about.

  Although now he had to shift into a different mood.

  Being a detective requires many skills, and just then he was an actor, attempting a kind of genial frivolity: He was leaning up against the gilt steel front gate of Lincoln, where he had just come from Balliol, and pretending that he was George Payson’s carefree visiting uncle. He swung his cane and hummed a tune, looked around curiously, and all the while waited for the right person to come out of the gate—a student who wouldn’t mind a few prying questions. As he waited he read the Times.