The September Society by Charles Finch

either of us. He loves to go to balls in London—I think he may have had a girl down there—and sometimes said Oxford was too small for him. Bright red hair.” Lenox noted this down. “Glasses when he reads, not otherwise. Not as smart as Dabney, but then again, neither am I.”
    “What are the two of you reading?”
    “Oh, right. Should have mentioned.” He stubbed out the cigarette. “I’m on modern history. Expect I shall go into politics. My father is in it, you know.”
    Lenox resisted the urge to ask how. “And Dabney?”
    “Dabney, strict classics. As I said, the brightest of us. I could barely muddle through ten lines of Virgil at Winchester. Always most looked forward to rugger and that sort of thing.”
    “Aren’t you a bit small?” Lenox asked.
    Stamp laughed. “A bit. Helps you slide in between people. So I told myself. I hadn’t a chance when I came here, but you know how it is at school, with games between the houses. They always want more people, and everyone gets a chance.”
    “What about Payson?” Lenox already knew, but wanted confirmation.
    “Do you mean …?”
    “What was he reading?”
    “Oh—right, of course. Modern history, too, just as I am. One of the reasons he and I were perhaps a trifle closer thaneither of us with old Dabney. Spent all of our days together with the tutor here, a crazy sort of fellow, wears the exact same clothes every day.”
    Lenox laughed. “Different copies of the same? Or the same?”
    Stamp laughed, too. “Ah—the very question. We debated it our entire first year, until at last Payson landed on a scheme to figure it out. Always a laugh, George is. What he did was, he pretended to trip as he came in the door, and had to grab Standish’s—Standish is our tutor—Standish’s shoulder. Well, he had dipped his finger in green ink. Not a lot. Just a dab, enough to make a mark. It’s a sort of checkered coat, so it came off pretty well. We couldn’t keep a straight face the entire lesson and had to keep pretending that some rot about the Nine Years War was what made us laugh.”
    “What happened the next day?” Lenox asked.
    “Same exact jacket.” Stamp broke into peals of laughter. “Lord, I certainly hope they’re okay, you know. Both of them.”
    “About George. Wouldn’t he have had the same exam as you tomorrow? Wouldn’t you have noticed him gone?”
    “No—it was a makeup exam, you see. I was rather poorly last Trinity term. They let me defer exams until the beginning of this Michaelmas term. Hell of a way to do things. I’ve nearly broken myself in half over it. Anyway, I haven’t seen old Standish or our other tutor, Jenkyns, as much as I should have done. Payson, too.”
    “May I see your rooms more closely?” Lenox asked. “I should like a chance to look over Dabney’s things as I have Payson’s.”
    “Certainly,” said Stamp.
    As they were walking up the stairs, Lenox asked, “What made you notice the card—the one that mentioned the September Society?”
    “Only that I hadn’t heard of it and was surprised that Dabs would go in for anything I didn’t know about. And then it hadn’t been there before, I’m sure of that.”
    “Can you think of anyone that William Dabney and George Payson have in common?”
    “Me, I suppose. I’m the most obvious connection between them.” He lit another cigarette. “Lord, it makes them seem almost dead, you saying William instead of Bill. Too formal.”
    “Anyone else who connects the two of them?”
    “Oh, yes, sorry. Well. I suppose there’s Professor Hatch. He’s their advisor—just luck of the draw, we all have them. He often throws small parties at his house, a big place just past the King’s Arms on Holywell. The parties go to all hours. There was one Thursday, in fact. I was glad then that Hatch wasn’t my advisor, or I wouldn’t have done a moment of work that evening. They took that cat of theirs and let it wander around, which they often do. Sometimes they