The September Society

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

G reen Park, a shamrock-colored rectangle that lay behind the Houses of Parliament, was warm and beautiful that afternoon. The willow trees bent toward the lake, their lowest branches just brushing the water, and the park’s lone wanderers and couples alike walked more slowly than they had along the fast city blocks, stopping to watch for a while. Lenox always liked to watch the swans gliding serenely, birds with just the mix of beauty and danger that humans like in wildlife-for a swan, of course, could break a man’s arm.

Another curious fact about them was that every swan in England belonged to Queen Victoria. Not many people knew it, but poaching swans was an offense the crown could punish. The official swan keeper to Her Majesty wrangled the birds in the third week of July every year, when they were served at the Queen’s table and a few others across the isles, in Cambridge, Oxford, York, Edinburgh. The swans were mute, but at their deaths they found voice and sang, and the long line of wranglers always claimed to be haunted by the sound. It was the origin of the term swan song.

Lenox pondered the bizarre customs of his beloved country as he walked toward Toto and McConnell’s house. He had omitted his congratulations from the note he sent to McConnell with the coroner’s report in case the doctor wanted to announce the news himself.

When Lenox arrived at the vast house, McConnell and Toto were in the small anteroom by the door with Lady Jane. They only used the room with their closest friends, preferring its intimacy to the rest of the house’s grandeur. When they invited him in, McConnell stood up.

“Hullo again, Lennox.

I can’t stop beaming, can I? By the way, Toto and I are delighted that you’ll be the godfather. Here, sit down, sit down.”

Lenox laughed and took his place on a highly fashionable blue and white sofa that was Toto’s pride and joy-or had been at any rate, before young Henry or Anna or Elizabeth or whatever the baby would be called. The room smelled buttery, like tea and toast.

“How are you, Charles?” Lady Jane asked.

“Quite well, thanks, and you?”

“I say, Lenox,” McConnell cut in, “I haven’t had time to look at the coroner’s report you sent over. We’ve had visitors all morning, distant aunts and things, or I would have.”

“It’s not pressing by any means,” Lenox answered.

“I’ll look at it this evening, though, while Jane and my wife go to the doctor’s.” He turned to Toto. “Do you really mean to go every day of your pregnancy, darling? You do realize that I’m a doctor, after all.”

Toto laughed. “Of course I do, you dear man, but Dr. Windsor takes care of all the babies and he’s ever so cheerful about it and I like him to reassure me. Anyway, you’d rather neglect me for dead cats and coroner’s reports.”

“Yes,” said Lady Jane, “what is the coroner’s report? You’ve been secretive, Charles.”

“Have I? Not intentionally, I promise. It’s only that there’s not much to tell, unfortunately. There’s a tiny club called the September Society that may be bound up in George Payson’s murder, and one of the Society’s founders killed himself, I’m sorry to say. I sent McConnell the verdict on his death to see if it looked suspicious. That’s all.”

“It’s too sad,” said Lady Jane. “Poor Annabelle-to have both her husband and her son die in such odd and violent ways.”

As she said this Lenox looked carefully at his friend and saw again the same sorrow that had lived just beneath her exterior for the past few weeks, and again wondered what it was that could reduce her eternal cheer to its threadbare outward appearance; and wondered why an air of secrecy hung around her; and wondered who the man in the long gray coat was.

With a charming pout Toto said, “I scarcely think murders are as celebratory as toast. Have some, won’t you? And Shreve”-their butler, standing somnolently in the hallway-“be a lamb and bring a bottle of champagne. What’s a nice one, darling?”

McConnell turned to Shreve and ordered a ’51 Piper. “I don’t mind a glass. Charles?”

“Of course,” said Lenox.

The champagne came, and all but Toto had a glass-she was content to put her nose to McConnell’s glass and give a small sneeze of protest. They looked so happy that Lenox almost turned to Lady Jane and asked her to marry him there and then. Soon, though, the company broke down into two pairs as Thomas and Toto argued good-naturedly about the baby’s name and whether it would go to school in Scotland or England, if it was a boy, that was, while Lenox and Lady Jane resumed the conversation that had been ongoing between them for their entire lives.

“I feel I haven’t seen you in years!” she said. “Is it dreadful to be up there on your own?”

“Graham came up, kind soul that he is, but of course I miss home.” He just barely resisted the urge to say “and you.”

“Is the case very hard?”

“The hardest I’ve ever had, I should say.”

She took his hand and said, “It will turn out well in the end. You’ll see to that.”

He believed her. “I’m sorry to have been preoccupied.”

“Oh, not at all. I’ve missed our visits from house to house, but Mrs. Randall has supplied her company in your absence.”

Both of them laughed at this old joke. Elizabeth Randall was a widow of about ninety, well known for staring out of her drawing room window (which looked out onto Lenox’s and Lady Jane’s houses) and quietly passing judgment on their visitors. It was never a surprise to Lenox when he met Mrs. Randall on the street and she inquired nonchalantly about the particularly scruffy young man in the stovepipe hat she had seen, or the dark-looking woman in the crimson dress-even when the visits were weeks old. Her complete shamelessness was almost endearing.

“One thing that’s nice, though, is to see Oxford again.”

“Is it? That was the dullest time of my life, of course, not yet living in London and without the diversion of all you young gentlemen who had gotten to go out into the wide world.”

“They have dances now, apparently.”

“Do they! My mother would be appalled.”

“Yes, and it seems as if they’re a pretty raucous business.”

“I’ve been meaning to visit Timothy there.”

“Do you have letters from him?”

“Oh, short, polite ones, doubtless full of affection, but never with much news in them. I crave news.”

Lenox was the only person in the world who knew about Jane’s allegiance to Timothy Stills, a poverty-stricken lad, abandoned by his mother, denied by his father, who belonged to some forgotten cadet branch of Jane’s noble family. She had heard a whisper of him and gone to Manchester a dozen years ago to find him near starvation, living on what he could beg with an aunt who tolerated his presence only for what money he brought in. Jane had taken him back to London instantly, and then arranged for his schooling and had him to visit every Christmas and during the summer holidays. She never concealed his identity, but neither did she bruit it about, as some might have.

“Shall I look in on him when I return?” Lenox asked.

“Would you? You’re such a dear, Charles. He’s at Oriel. I’ll write him that you’re coming.”

“Have you been worried about him for some reason?” Lenox asked.

“Not at all,” she said, and her unhappiness remained unspoken another moment longer. “But tell me more about Oxford, won’t you?”

Lenox told her about visiting the Turf again, about his old friend Caule’s ghost story, about seeing Balliol and eating at the Bear with McConnell, and suddenly, as he told it to his friend, laughing along the way, it became real to him, and he felt better about it. Of course he would solve the case-and of course he would ask her to marry him.

They both left a little while later, Lenox promising Toto that he would think over the dozens of names she had asked his opinion of, Lady Jane promising to be at Dr. Windsor’s at five for Toto’s appointment. McConnell told Lenox again that he would send the results of the coroner’s report up to Oxford, and after a number of other little reminders and last words, they all parted.

“Well! I certainly am glad for them,” said Lady Jane, stepping into the cab that Shreve had hailed. “They seem to be awfully happy.”

“Yes, and after things had gotten worse,” Lenox added. “Will the change be permanent?”

“It’s just what Toto needs, I should say, something to dote on and love and make dozens of small but significant decisions about. And it will give Thomas an heir and less time with his thoughts. Yes, I think it will be permanent.”

“I certainly hope you’re right.”

They rode along, the two friends, until they had come to Hampden Lane.

“Are you definitely going back to Oxford, Charles?”

“Can’t be helped, I’m afraid.”

“Do stop in on Timothy, then. And hurry back afterward. I won’t be able to see you again before you go if I’m to meet Toto at her doctor’s office.”

They stood in front of their adjoining houses, the light dimming. “I meant to say, Jane-is everything quite well?”

Hurriedly, she answered, “Oh, yes, of course. It always is. Now, good-bye, Charles!”

Lenox walked back down her stoop and up his own. It was dark, and he knew that he had ahead of him a long train ride across the bleak landscape of an autumn night in England. Still, it wouldn’t do to put it off until the morning.

Sitting by the fire in his study, waiting as Samuel packed his bags and the driver rubbed down his horses for the trip to Paddington, Lenox read distractedly over an essay he had written for the upcoming Roman Historians’ Conference, which was meant to take place in Vienna in a month’s time. His tickets were booked, and he was pleased with his essay, which had to do with childhood in Augustan Rome. A friend and correspondent from Cambridge, Bertie Flint-Flagg, had sent it back in the post with his congratulations and a few minor corrections. He also mentioned a term-time teaching fellowship available at Magdalene, a small college with an excellent reputation in classics, which he thought Lenox might be suited for. As perhaps the premier amateur historian of Rome in the Isles, James Hawthendon aside, Flint-Flagg wrote (and this threw Lenox into a slight dudgeon), he really ought to try his hand at academic life. Suddenly Lenox had a vision of himself with a pipe, a small back garden, a spacious study in Magdalene or Clare or Caius, a wall full of books, the companionable presence of other scholars-and perhaps it was seeing Dallington that morning, but even as he envisioned that happy life, even as his heart leapt at the prospect, he knew that he could never abandon the hard and taxing work that won him so little worldly respect, and that he knew to be as high and noble as any calling.