The September Society

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

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.”

Lenox laughed. “Better that I did than you found your way to danger again.”

“Not much better,” she said and squeezed his hand.

Saved-and ruined-by Toto. “Is Marian better, after all?” she asked. “I did love Maid Marian when I was a girl. Marian McConnell.”

“Malory, Margaret, Marian-are you determined to make this girl’s name into a nursery rhyme? Girl! What am I saying! What if it’s a boy!” said McConnell.

“Oh, if it’s a boy we’ll call it Thomas, but I do hope it’s a girl!”

“If I were the Earl of Cadogan you wouldn’t say that.”

“That’s why I thank the Lord every evening in my prayers that you’re not the Earl of Cadogan. Well, that and his awful drooping chin.”

This forced a smile to McConnell’s face. “Well,” he said, relenting a bit, “how about Elizabeth.”

“Elizabeth! That is dear! Jane, do you like it?”

Before the conversation got carried away on another tide of speculation, Lenox took his leave, thanking McConnell as he did so for having forged another link (as Stamp’s strange and flustered appearance had) in the increasingly strong chain between the September Society and both Payson father and Payson son. But why? Why? Motive was the great mystery here. Motive, and the whereabouts of Bill Dabney.

When he arrived home Stamp had gone, replaced in the armchair by Dallington, who was again reading a copy of Punch. Strange how quickly his presence had come to seem natural.

“Oh, hullo, Lenox,” he said. “Been out for a swim?”

“It’s raining, actually.”

“You didn’t fall in anything?”

Despite himself Lenox laughed. “Have you found out about Lysander’s week?”

“Yes,” said Dallington. “He’s not our man, unfortunately. At least, he didn’t wield the garrote that killed George.”

“Can you be sure of that?”

Dallington consulted a small notebook, bound in calf’s leather and full of surprisingly careful writing. “On the precise day in question he was in the city of Bath, visiting an elderly aunt who lives in the Royal Crescent and intends to leave him her small fortune.”

“Did he spot you?”

“No, he didn’t.”

“Ah, excellent. How did you come by your information?”

“The usual mix-train conductors, shop salesmen.”

“I must say, I’m impressed by your precocity.”

“I’ve read a lot of mystery stories, you see.” He pointed at Punch . “These magazines are my weakness.”

“Your one weakness, then?”

Dallington grinned devilishly. “That’s right.”

“What else did you find out about Lysander?”

“Nothing all that interesting, unfortunately. He keeps up a pretty steady daily routine between one or two clubs, a restaurant called Marilyn’s, which is just by St. Martin-in-the-Fields, and Major Butler’s house.”

“Butler’s back on the premises?”

“Never left.”

“Of course, of course. Does Lysander have a girl? Someone he strolls around Hyde Park with?”

“Not as far as I can tell. His life seems pretty monkish. He’s forever reading some long, dull history of the wars nobody cares about.”

“Which are those?”

“Oh, in the East, or the little wars when Spain got snippy, those. Give me the Crusades.”

“Or Punch.”

“Or Punch. Exactly.”

“Thanks, Dallington. That’s a great help. Now, would you mind another task?”

The young lord shook his head.

“There’s a chap called Maran…”