A nybody who has ever studied at Oxford loves Christ Church Meadow. With water to one side and the tall, beautiful college spires to the other, it is quintessentially English, almost like a picture by Constable in which water, grass, and a building so old it seems like part of nature itself all breathe against each other. To Lenox, it was most beautiful in the long golden light of springtime, when its green expanse seemed limitless and the soft water sounds of rowers and punters floated on the air, while in the distance cattle grazed in the lower water meadow. The line of boathouses down at one end was a happy place, too, for a day spent punting with friends along the Cherwell, drinking champagne (or champs, as they called it at Oxford) and eating cold chicken, was as close to heaven as this earth could get. A day of punting could erase weeks of dark Bodleian nights from the memory.
But Lenox pushed these memories aside now and concentrated on the site where George Payson’s body had been fifteen hours before.
There were five or six policemen around the roped-off area, as well as another dozen curious passersby. The men from the force were spending their time either classifying footprints or keeping people back from the site. To Goodson’s credit, they had left the scene in good working order, and the imprint of the body was still visible. Lenox noticed that it was slightly deeper toward the middle.
“The person who dropped George Payson’s body must have been carrying him like this”-Lenox demonstrated-“just the way you carry a bride across the threshold, if you see what I mean, and then simply dropped him.”
“I figured as much,” said Goodson rather testily.
“Oh, certainly,” said Lenox. “This has all been done in a first-rate way-a sight better than some I could name from London might have done. I was only straightening the thing out in my own head. That means, then, that the person’s footprints are probably just ten inches to the left of the body-ah, a dense patch, I see,” he said, responding to Goodson’s pointing out the spot. “I really have to congratulate your thoroughness. The only other point to gather here, then, is that Payson must have been newly dead, garroted only a few moments before the killer dropped him here.”
“Why?” Goodson asked.
“Because the arms were splayed out above the head,” said Lenox, pointing to where the arms had left indentations in the soil. “They were still loose. The killer wouldn’t have carried him with his arms like that. Too unwieldy, too easily noticeable. He left the body as it fell. McConnell, how long would rigor mortis have taken to set in?”
“It can take anywhere from five minutes to two hours, but in this case, given how the body has loosened again, probably on the shorter side-call it fifteen minutes.”
“There you have it, Inspector,” said Lenox.
“What do you mean?”
“Even if the killer had some means of transport, the scene of the murder can’t have been far off at all. And this park is only accessible by foot, which cuts down the distance even further.”
“Ah,” said Goodson, writing on his pad. “So the fight could only have taken place within a fifteen-minute walk of this spot.”
“Call it a four-minute walk, actually-perhaps a six-minute perimeter south of here, figuring that one walks much less quickly when carrying so much weight.”
“All right-I’ll tell the lads.”
“Just a moment,” Lenox said. “What about objects near the body?”
“At the station. Here, Ramsey, take these gentleman to the station when they’re ready to go and show them the box of things we found. All right, Mr. Lenox, Mr. McConnell.” With a nod Goodson walked off to give the men by the river to the south their instructions, stopping on the way to bark at the crowd that had gathered until they dispersed.
Ramsey came over. “On your signal, then,” he said.
Lenox nodded. “Give it ten minutes, if that’s all right?”
“Just as you say.”
When they were alone, McConnell said, “What do you reckon?”
“Well, above all I’m grateful to you for finding a way for us to see this place. My other two thoughts are that we’re dealing with someone remarkably clever and that if there’s no sign of Dabney anytime soon it looks a bit black against him. Now what about the body?”
“We’ve covered some of the details these past few minutes. There’s not much else to tell. He was garroted, but he put up a damn good fight. I’d say the murderer will have some wounds to show for it. It was a standard stud chain garrote.”
“What’s that?”
“A long leather loop with a metal chain on the end.”
“How easy do you reckon it is to acquire one of those?
I most often see scarves or fishing line as garrotes. Piano wire once.”
“Quite easy. It was a stud chain, the kind used to whip horses. You can find one in any stable.”
Lenox thought for a moment, then said, “Go on.”
“There were two other singular circumstances that Morris and I discovered. One, the body was bloody and badly mauled around the face and torso.”
“Unrecognizably so?”
“No, perhaps not, but badly. It’s strange, given how short a time the body was exposed to the elements.”
“Animal wounds?”
“That’s hard to say.”
“What was the other singular circumstance?”
“How closely shorn his hair was.”
“Disguise, I would have thought.”
“On his head, to be sure-but the hair was shorn from all over his body, you know, not just his head.”
“That’s passing strange.”
“We thought so, too.”
The doctor and the detective discussed George Payson’s corpse for another moment and then made their way to look at the objects found around the body with Constable Ramsey.
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.