“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…”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
W hy September?
Over supper at home, Lenox kept lowering Felix Holt to ask himself that one question. The club was called the September Society, it had its formal annual meeting in September-but there was no explicit link between the club’s purpose and its name. After pushing his plate aside, he walked to the farthest bookcase in his study and pulled down volume S of the encyclopedia.
A small assortment of facts about the month of September: It is the month of the autumnal equinox; its birthstone is the sapphire; its flower the morning glory; in 1752, September 2 was followed by September 14 because of an alteration in the calendar; Queen Elizabeth was born on the seventh of the month, 1533; Samuel Johnson had been born on the nineteenth, 260 years later; the Great Fire, of course, as he had discussed with Chaffanbrass; William the Conqueror had landed on English soil in late September 1066; dozens of harvest festivals had happened for thousands of years in September; the traditional month to dine on goose; acorns on the ground traditionally indicated a snowy winter; on Holy Rood Day, the fourteenth, children were by long custom permitted to leave school so that they could gather nuts.
Lenox read this with mild interest. For good measure, when he returned volume S of his encyclopedia to its usual slot he took down volume R to look up the color red, as he had been meaning to do. The information was interesting: Red was the first color the cavemen had used in their paintings, for example; in cartography red was the symbol of Britain’s empire; the Roman armies, as Lenox had known, wore red so that their blood would be invisible, a valuable illusion both for morale and against an enemy; the Queen’s new “mail boxes” were red; in Russia, red had always been the color that denoted great beauty. Interesting, but useless. It seemed clear that those red objects referred to Red Kelly-and it seemed clear that he needed to turn his attention back to the porter.