Charles Finch - The September Society

“Next floor up and to the left,” said the young man and unceremoniously closed the door.

Climbing the stairs, Lenox found the spot easily enough. The door was ajar. He knocked, and a fair-haired young man came forward. The room behind him was a bit of a mess, and from the look of the desk where he had been studying, it was work, not sleep, that made this one bleary-eyed. Still, he seemed pleasant.

“Bill Dabney?” Lenox asked.

“No, I’m Tom Stamp,” he said. “May I ask who you are?”

“Charles Lenox.” They shook hands. “I’m here because I was hoping to have a word with you and your roommate about George Payson.”

“Are you a relation? Something of that sort?”

“No, I’m a detective.”

Tom Stamp blanched. “A detective. Has George gone missing?”

“Why do you ask?” said Lenox sharply.

“Because I haven’t seen Bill or George, either of them, for days. I’m getting pretty damn worried.”

“Have you contacted the police?”

“Not yet.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I have collections-exams, you know-tomorrow morning, and I hadn’t really thought about the lads until a few hours ago. I thought I’d run over to the dean’s office in a little while if they weren’t back.”

“Did you see anything out of the ordinary in Dabney’s room? Any signs that he had left in a rush or even of a struggle?”

“Nothing like that, no. Hang on a sec, though-I did find this.” He motioned for Lenox to follow him into the room and then found a book and took a slip of paper out of it, which he handed over. “Make anything of it?” he said.

Lenox narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. The artifact with which Tom Stamp had presented him seemed to confirm the conclusions he had reached after thinking the case over at Balliol. It was a plain card inscribed with the words THE SEPTEMBER SOCIETY.

T hey’re your two closest friends at Oxford?” Lenox said.

“Easily. We do everything together.”

“How did you meet?”

“As first-years we went down to the Sheldonian together, all the freshers, to matriculate. Did you have matriculation in your day? Everyone puts on hats and gowns and dinner jackets, and then the chancellor reads off some Latin and you promise not to burn any books in the library, and all of it combined means I suppose that you’re an Oxonian for life. After that everyone goes to have a pint at the White Horse Tavern, just across the way, and out of our class Bill, George, and I ended up last there, still nursing our beers and having cigarettes. After that we just fell in naturally together.”

They were sitting on a bench in the Grove Quad. It was about five o’clock by now and the day had gotten rather gray, a few drops of rain scattering across the ivy. Stamp was having a cigarette.

He was a jovial-looking lad, under the middle height but with good, strong features. He had on a suit but no tie. Perhaps the most distinctive thing about him was the crop of fair hair that was continually falling in his face.

“What were they like separately?”

“Hard to think of them that way. I suppose Dabney is moodier, often worried about his work. Rather a more sturdy, Midlands type of fellow than Payson or me. But good fun most of the time, and absolutely dead loyal. Dark hair, very smart.

“Payson is generally jollier company than either of us. He loves to go to balls in London-I think he may have had a girl down there-and sometimes said Oxford was too small for him. Bright red hair.” Lenox noted this down. “Glasses when he reads, not otherwise. Not as smart as Dabney, but then again, neither am I.”

“What are the two of you reading?”

“Oh, right. Should have mentioned.” He stubbed out the cigarette. “I’m on modern history. Expect I shall go into politics. My father is in it, you know.”

Lenox resisted the urge to ask how. “And Dabney?”

“Dabney, strict classics. As I said, the brightest of us. I could barely muddle through ten lines of Virgil at Winchester. Always most looked forward to rugger and that sort of thing.”

“Aren’t you a bit small?” Lenox asked.

Stamp laughed. “A bit. Helps you slide in between people. So I told myself. I hadn’t a chance when I came here, but you know how it is at school, with games between the houses. They always want more people, and everyone gets a chance.”

“What about Payson?” Lenox already knew, but wanted confirmation.

“Do you mean…?”

“What was he reading?”

“Oh-right, of course. Modern history, too, just as I am. One of the reasons he and I were perhaps a trifle closer than either of us with old Dabney. Spent all of our days together with the tutor here, a crazy sort of fellow, wears the exact same clothes every day.”

Lenox laughed. “Different copies of the same? Or the same?”

Stamp laughed, too. “Ah-the very question. We debated it our entire first year, until at last Payson landed on a scheme to figure it out. Always a laugh, George is. What he did was, he pretended to trip as he came in the door, and had to grab Standish’s-Standish is our tutor-Standish’s shoulder. Well, he had dipped his finger in green ink. Not a lot. Just a dab, enough to make a mark. It’s a sort of checkered coat, so it came off pretty well. We couldn’t keep a straight face the entire lesson and had to keep pretending that some rot about the Nine Years War was what made us laugh.”

“What happened the next day?” Lenox asked.

“Same exact jacket.” Stamp broke into peals of laughter. “Lord, I certainly hope they’re okay, you know. Both of them.”

“About George. Wouldn’t he have had the same exam as you tomorrow? Wouldn’t you have noticed him gone?”

“No-it was a makeup exam, you see. I was rather poorly last Trinity term. They let me defer exams until the beginning of this Michaelmas term. Hell of a way to do things. I’ve nearly broken myself in half over it. Anyway, I haven’t seen old Standish or our other tutor, Jenkyns, as much as I should have done. Payson, too.”

“May I see your rooms more closely?” Lenox asked. “I should like a chance to look over Dabney’s things as I have Payson’s.”

“Certainly,” said Stamp.

As they were walking up the stairs, Lenox asked, “What made you notice the card-the one that mentioned the September Society?”

“Only that I hadn’t heard of it and was surprised that Dabs would go in for anything I didn’t know about. And then it hadn’t been there before, I’m sure of that.”

“Can you think of anyone that William Dabney and George Payson have in common?”

“Me, I suppose. I’m the most obvious connection between them.” He lit another cigarette. “Lord, it makes them seem almost dead, you saying William instead of Bill. Too formal.”

“Anyone else who connects the two of them?”

“Oh, yes, sorry. Well. I suppose there’s Professor Hatch. He’s their advisor-just luck of the draw, we all have them. He often throws small parties at his house, a big place just past the King’s Arms on Holywell. The parties go to all hours. There was one Thursday, in fact. I was glad then that Hatch wasn’t my advisor, or I wouldn’t have done a moment of work that evening. They took that cat of theirs and let it wander around, which they often do. Sometimes they brought London girls, though not on Thursday. Anyway, they’re both rather favorites of his.”

“About that cat-was it white?”

“Yes, exactly. Longshanks, they called him, like Edward I-because they insisted that he was taller than the average cat. I couldn’t see it, and we got into frightful arguments about the average cat’s height.” Stamp laughed fondly. “They had him from the dean’s wife.”