At the station the constable brought out a small cardboard box, filled with a random and, truth be told, somewhat unsatisfactory collection of odds and ends, most of which had probably been simply dropped in the park and never cleared away. There was a white feather, a receipt for a new hat to be picked up in a day’s time, several candy wrappers, a child’s mitten, a muddy and blank sheet of small paper, and a pin that was, Lenox saw with a thrill undercut by doubtfulness, the color red.
“Disappointing lot,” he said to Ramsey.
“It is, yes. ’Spector Goodson was ’opin to find a bit more. If that’s all, sir?”
“Yes, yes, thanks.”
As they left the police station and walked up Cornmarket Street, McConnell pulled Lenox into a doorway.
“One more thing, old man,” he said. “I kept it aside for you.”
“What is it?”
“We found Payson’s university identification in his pockets, cigarettes, some money, a pair of eyeglasses-and this.” He handed Lenox a scrap of paper. “I thought it might be important.”
“You were right,” Lenox said in a low, startled voice. There was a long pause during which he cycled rapidly through the list of clues he had made.
“What do you make of it?”
“For one thing it proves, I think, that we have a third companion in the search for the murderer: Payson himself is helping us.”
He looked at the scrap of paper again: a flimsy card, blank except for the words THE SEPTEMBER SOCIETY, which were written in red ink.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
L enox sat drinking a cup of coffee in the back room at the Turf, wondering whether Goodson had made any progress. Likely they had at least found something that would help establish that Payson had been staying in the fields to the south of Oxford-but, he thought with a sigh, where would that get them? Unless Dabney had left behind a witnessed and notarized description of what had happened, there would probably be little to gather from the site where they had stayed.
Then, just as he found himself sinking into pessimism again, Lenox saw something delightful hovering by the bar, looking respectfully toward him. It was a welcome sight: Graham.
“Graham! Good Lord!”
“I hope I haven’t startled you, sir?”
“A bit, yes. Rather like seeing Banquo’s ghost in gray spats. Why are you here, anyway? Not that it’s not jolly to have you, of course.”
“I took the liberty, sir, of catching the morning train. I thought I might be of some assistance.”
(Graham often helped Lenox with his cases, possessing as he did an uncanny ability to discover information that seemed lost or buried, and understanding intuitively what mattered and did not. It was another example of their unusual friendship, so different than any other in London.)
“Dead right,” said Lenox warmly. “I’ve never needed it more. What of home?”
“Sir?”
“Everything calm there, I mean?”
“Ah-yes, sir. I’ve brought your post as well.”
“Thank you very much, Graham. I really am glad to have you here.”
“There’s not much in it, sir, though you’ve had another visit from John Best.”
“Whose card I had the other morning?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Who the devil is he?”
“I cannot say, sir.”
“Odd.”
“Yes, sir. I trust the case is progressing?”
“It’s hard to tell. Hopefully.”
“Yes, sir.”
Lenox thought for a moment. “I say, Graham, why don’t you check us into the Randolph over on Magdalen Street?”
“Sir?”
“I’ve been staying here, but it would be appalling of me to impose my nostalgia on you. I doubt you’d see the charm in the place if you hadn’t been dropped here before every term.”
“I shall attend to it straight away, sir.”
“Mrs. Tate?” Lenox called out, and the Turf’s proprietor popped her head around the corner. “Mrs. Tate, do you mind awfully if I leave for the Randolph?”
“Is everything all right, Mr. Lenox?” she said.
“Oh-perfect, of course. It’s only that my valet here has come up, too, and I think it would rather stretch your hospitality to find a bed for him.”
She gave an understanding nod. “It won’t be too long before we see you again, though, will it?”
“Oh, definitely not,” said Lenox. “It had been too long since I last visited Oxford.”
“Certainly had, sir. Ah-a customer!”
When she was gone, Lenox said, “Can I talk something over with you, Graham?”
“Of course, sir.”
“Have a seat here. Anything to eat?”
“No, thank you, sir.”
“Good enough. The problem is this fellow Hatch, the professor at Lincoln. He’s got his back up about me, I’m sure, because I went around and asked him about the two lads. I think he may be at the bottom of all this somehow, whether he’s the primary mover or not.”
“Indeed, sir?”
Lenox briefly recapitulated his conversation with Hatch, emphasizing the two lies the professor had told. “He’s at 13 Holywell Street, just around the corner. Queer fellow, you know.”
“How so, sir?”
“From what I can gather, he’s better friends with the students than with the other dons, acts somewhat debauched, in fact, as a student might. My impression was that he was unhappy, if that makes sense. I only say so because I’ve found that unhappiness can disguise a multitude of sins.”
“Yes, sir.”
“So I’d like you to get round him, Graham. See if you can discover anything about his relationship with George Payson and Bill Dabney, and see as well what he gets up to-what his daily life is like, whether he would have had the chance to kill somebody in the dead of night, for instance, or whether his servants keep a pretty close watch over him. And of course what he was doing yesterday evening.”
“I shall endeavor to learn all I can of his activities and character, sir.”
“Good of you, Graham, thanks. That’s exactly what I’m after.”
“Not at all, sir.”
“Good as well to see a friendly face, now that I’m over the shock of it.”
“I apologize again, sir,” said Graham with a low laugh.
Lenox waved a hand. “Oh, not at all. This is a baddish problem, and I admit I felt defeated after McConnell got that wire about Payson. Time for all good men to rally round, I mean.”
“Of course, sir.”
“Good enough, then, and you’ll check on the Randolph? I’m going to go up to the Bodleian.”
“Yes, sir. With your consent, sir, I shall send a note up to you at the library confirming that the rooms have been secured.”
“Perfect. I should be there for a few hours, at any rate, and then I’m sure I’ll see McConnell and Inspector Goodson.”
“Very good, sir.”
“Excellent.”
After Graham had gone, Lenox read the Times. News of Payson’s death had made the front page of the paper, underneath a somber headline that read MURDER AT LINCOLN. Lenox pictured all of the proud old Lincoln alumni in the far-flung provinces of the empire reading the news and feeling as shaken as he would have if the case had happened at Balliol. There were only a few things Lenox took special pride in, but as he read the Times he realized that Oxford was one of them, and told himself that if he couldn’t solve this case he might as well retire.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I t was late in the afternoon, perhaps four o’clock, and Lenox was in the Bodleian Library’s Upper Reading Room, leaning back in his chair and rubbing his tired eyes with his knuckles. He had been there for two hours and received very little recompense for his assiduousness, but had hopes that the next hour would bring greater success.
The Bodleian above anything else made Oxford what it was to the university’s alumni. If there were diverse college allegiances, club allegiances, and sporting allegiances that fractured Oxford, what unified the undergraduates was the Bod, lying in all of its beauty at the center of life in the city. There was something incommunicably grand about it, something difficult to understand unless you had spent your evenings there or walked past it on the way to celebrate the boat race, a magic that came from ignoring it a thousand times a day and then noticing its overwhelming beauty when you came out of a tiny alley and it caught you unexpectedly. A library-it didn’t sound like much, but it was what made Oxford itself. The greatest library in the world.