The September Society Read Online Free PDF Page A

well—Tom Tower at Christ Church, the shining dome of the Radcliffe Camera, the ridged flutes rising from the towers of All Souls. It would only be a moment until Magdalen Bridge.
    A dead cat! Well, but who knew.
    Lady Payson stirred. “You’ve no idea how lovely it was to shut my eyes. Do please excuse me, though.”
    “I’m happy you could rest.”
    “Do you have children, Mr. Lenox? I don’t think you do.”
    “No, I don’t—not yet.”
    There was a haunted pause, and then she steeled herself. “Where do you plan to stay?” she asked.
    “I thought I might look in at the Turf, actually. I probably ought to stay somewhere else, but I can’t help my sentimentality. I spent a number of undergraduate nights there, you see. And you? Shall you return to your brother’s house?”
    She laughed humorlessly. “I certainly couldn’t leave Oxford. I’ll be at the Randolph Hotel.”
    “Sound choice, from all I hear.”
    “My usual one. It opened just before George came up to Oxford.”
    The Randolph was the best hotel in Oxford, and despitebeing new looked like one of the ancient colleges, made as it was of the same golden stone, covered with the same red and green ivy. It faced the Ashmolean Museum (one of Lenox’s favorite places in the world, full of beautiful paintings, Roman sculpture, and old, strange British treasures) on Beaumont Street.
    Both Lenox and Lady Annabelle were silent. Oxford is a quiet and gentle river town, interrupted at its center by a cluster of buildings that happen to be among the most beautiful mankind has ever produced. They were reaching that center now, passing the botanical gardens and Queen’s College into the very heart of town. Lenox took his satchel from the empty seat opposite and put it on his lap.
    “Shall we meet in an hour, Lady Payson?”
    She seemed more determined and imperial, less wholly fretful, than she had a few hours before in Hampden Lane. “May I ask why we should delay, Mr. Lenox?”
    He smiled gently. “I’m afraid I need a few moments to collect myself, perhaps tackle a cup of tea and a bite of something.”
    “The Turf, as I understand it—never having been, myself—is on Holywell Street? Yes? Well, then, it’s only a few steps from Lincoln. Shall we meet at the college gates in three-quarters of an hour?
    Lenox nodded. “As you please,” he said agreeably. It was a bother. Still, he didn’t envy her the position she was in. “Oh—I say, you can let me out here, driver.”
    “Are you sure, Mr. Lenox?” asked Lady Annabelle.
    “Oh, yes,” he said. They were just by Hertford College. “I’ll go in by the back way.”
    One could reach the Turf by Holywell, or else by a wending little cobblestone alley, probably not wider than an average man’s shoulders. The alley was darkly lit, and even at this hour Lenox had to turn his back to the wall and make way fora thin stream of students. Many of them were wearing the undergraduate subfusc, in various states of dishevelment. Perhaps they had finished their second-year examinations the day before. Passing by the used brown kegs as he approached the door, a smile he couldn’t wipe away on his face, Lenox went inside.
    It was a low-ceilinged place that dated to the 1300s. (Still leaving it a few hundred years shy of being the city’s oldest continuous drinking establishment.) Once it had been a strong-cider bar, and then briefly a pub called the Spotted Cow, but even to the oldest gents at the stile it had always been and would always be the Turf, hidden away from all but those who really knew Oxford. The wood on the walls was darkened by smoke and time, though the beams holding the roof up were freshly painted white. There was a bar in the front room—above it was the famous first menu of the Turf, a wooden plank with DUCK OR GROUSE written on it—and another in the back room, just by a staircase leading to the rooms above. It was by the staircase that Lenox found himself confronted by a lad of