Charles Finch - The September Society

“How about the cook and the footmen? Do they go to the September meeting?”

“No, sir, only their personal butler, who was in the military with them-a private, I guess, we call him Private Dove.”

“And he’s there for the September meeting?”

“Oh, he’s always there. Lives in the attic.”

Changing tacks, Lenox said, “And Major Wilson, he was sound? More polite than Lysander, for example, or Butler?”

“Yes, sir, I’d say so.”

“Did he ever seem low in his spirits?”

“Oh, no, sir, the opposite-he was the only one who always had a good word for you. About the weather, about the society pages… nice to have a few minutes pass by in conversation, it was. I was sorry to see him go.”

The man obviously had a brightness and quickness that were going to waste in his job. The perfect spy, in other words.

“Would you mind meeting again, Thomas? I can’t say how helpful you’ve been.”

He nodded circumspectly. “Yes, I suppose.”

“Can I generally catch you here around this time?”

“Generally.”

“All right. Good. Excellent. And you must let me buy your breakfast-the least I can do.”

Lenox laid a few more coins in the bartender’s palm, nodded to Hallowell, and walked past the drinking men, slumped low at their tables, and out again into the gray, wet air. It was almost a relief after the dismal and smoke-stained pub.

When he returned home wet, Mary fussed over him, taking his coat and shoes and thrusting him by the fire with a glass of hot wine, which he took a sip of and then ignored.

The fire was bright and lovely, though, and again his thoughts fell to the case, circling and circling around its perimeter, looking for the hidden point of access to its heart. Could it be as simple as a scar on a neck-was Lysander Geoffrey Canterbury, and was Geoffrey Canterbury the murderer? What were they after, these people? How did they all live so comfortably on their army pensions-beyond their army pensions? (For, of course, Green Park Terrace was an exclusive and expensive place.)

Nearing noon, just as he had taken up Felix Holt to read, there was a knock at the front door. He first heard Mary go to the door and then a low, unclear, but obviously urgent conversation that pulled him out of his chair. He stood indecisively, trying to hear the murmurs. After a moment Mary pulled open the double doors of the library, and Lenox saw that the person at the door had been George Payson’s friend and Bill Dabney’s roommate, Tom Stamp.

“Tom, how can I help you? Have a seat, have a seat.”

The young man looked pale. “Mr. Lenox, I couldn’t turn to anybody else.”

“Why, what’s happened?”

Stamp paused and gulped for air; obviously he had made haste in coming. “I think I’m going to be killed-I think they’re after me, whoever they are.”

“Why do you think so?”

“Look at this.”

Stamp produced a September Society card.

“Turn it over,” he said.

On its reverse was written, Who can you trust?

D o you recognize the handwriting?” Lenox asked. “I suppose not-perhaps a better way of asking the question is: Do you think the writer was trying to disguise his handwriting?”

It was some minutes later, and Mary had produced a glass of brandy and the dusty bottle for Stamp, who was slumped low in the other armchair by the fireplace. Ashen and dismayed, one of his two best friends recently dead, he seemed worlds away from the jovial and high-spirited young man Lenox had met in Lincoln’s Grove Quad less than a week ago. There was no fight in him-at the moment, anyway.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Stamp. “Who can say?”

“It’s important-could it be Dabney’s handwriting? Hatch’s?”

“No, no, I don’t think either of them. If it is disguised, it’s so the police can’t match it down the road, I bet.”

Well, of course, Lenox thought, for the first time in their unproductive conversation verging on impatience. But would somebody from the September Society be so incredibly brazen? Dallington’s report on Lysander’s whereabouts for the last week would be useful about now.

After another desultory half hour of interrogation, most of it devoted to Lenox reassuring Stamp, the detective left his young friend with a chop and a glass of decent Madeira for a late lunch. They had decided that Stamp would go to an uncle in the north for a few days, if not until the case had been solved. Lenox bade him farewell and left, intending to find his brother.

First, though, he stopped at McConnell’s. He found the doctor, his wife, and Lady Jane in the small anteroom again. Jane was knitting something-a shawl for Toto, as it turned out-and when he heard the familiar, intimate sound of her needles clicking he almost dropped to one knee and asked her to marry him then and there. He didn’t know how many more small moments of her goodness, of her strength and intelligence and well-ordered generosity, he could take.

“Well,” said Toto, the instant all the formalities had been disposed of, “we’ve decided on a name.”

“Have you?” Lenox asked, arching his eyebrows at Mc-Connell.

“Oh-well, I suppose, perhaps,” said the doctor.

“Perhaps!” Toto said this to her husband accusingly. “Don’t backslide now! The name is Margaret. I think it’s ever so lovely.”

“No doubt of it,” said Lenox. “Jane, does it have your approval?”

“She suggested it, so there.” This was Toto. “And none of you can say a word against it or I’ll never speak to you again.”

“What an unkind fate that would be,” murmured McConnell into a glass of-Lenox’s heart fell-was it Scotch?

Toto didn’t seem to mind, though, only chiding him to be kinder and then moving to Jane’s side to see how the shawl’s infant stages were matching her pregnancy’s.

“I say, Lenox, do you mind a quick word?” said McConnell.

“Not at all.”

The two men retreated a few paces away, settling by a small glass and mahogany bookcase with a brass key in its lock. “I had a word with old Harry.”

“Did you?” This was a reference to Arlington, who had arranged for Lenox to see James Payson’s military file. “All in order, I hope?”

“Oh, yes-nothing amiss at all. But about that third sheet.”

Lenox’s interest was suddenly intense. “Yes?”

“Well, this hardly seems to be more than confirmation-but the last person to request the file was Maran.”

“Good gracious.”

“Yes.”

“How did you convince Arlington to tell you that?”

“I guessed at a few names, and one of them was correct. Apparently it hadn’t been taken out in a decade, up until a month ago. After that Maran took it out, then held it over for an extra day.”

“The third sheet, then, must have been his doing.”

McConnell grimaced. “I wish it were that easy. According to Harry’s secretary-an assiduous young chap from Peter-house, name of Backer-he checks all outgoing and incoming files for errors, missing sections, and so forth. The Payson file went out to Maran and returned in its original condition.”

“How can that be?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

Lenox was silent for a moment.

“Back to the women?” McConnell suggested.

Before he left, Lenox managed to sneak in a word with his old friend and new beloved. Absurd, of course, that his face felt flushed and his heart was racing, when he had spoken with her a thousand times, a hundred thousand times-absurd, that was, but true.

“I see nothing of you any longer, Charles,” she said, her voice sensible and steady but not, he thought, without beauty. She wore a plain brown dress and a pink ribbon in her hair, which complimented the pink in her cheeks. “I hope you haven’t dropped me.”