The September Society

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

T he 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 amp;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.”

Dallington nodded. “I won’t mind.”

“Won’t you? I hope not.”

“I haven’t yet. You couldn’t fathom the things that are said of me, you know. The most incredible falsehoods!”

“Yes,” Lenox said. He sighed. “You had it in mind to begin straight away?”

“Yes, I did. As I say, because of Payson, poor chap.”

“Would you mind giving me the morning to consider what you’ve said and what course of action to take?”

“Oh, certainly,” said Dallington, suddenly jolly again. “I’m absolutely famished, and I thought I’d pop round to the Jumpers and have a spot of breakfast if any of the lads are there.”

“You’re welcome to stay for breakfast here-”

“Oh, no, I wouldn’t like to impose-and really, I think I had better let you alone. My absence, I reckon, will improve my campaign.”

He laughed a high, youthful laugh and bade Lenox goodbye, promising to return at noon. Before the door was shut, however, Lenox knew that he would assent to Dallington’s request. For several reasons: because he believed what he had said about the nobility and neglect of the profession, because the solitary life of the detective at times weighed on him, because he really did like the lad, and most of all because he was generous, and found it difficult to decline any earnest and thoughtful appeal, whatever it might be.