Stages of Grey

by Clea Simon

  ‘What is it, Dulcie?’ he asked, his voice tensing up with concern. ‘If you feel dizzy or anything …’

  ‘No. It’s not me. They – this is crazy.’ She looked up at him. ‘It’s a survey. They’re asking people what they thought of the performance.’ She was starting to get angry as she hit the button to respond. ‘I’m going to give them a piece of my mind.’

  He reached over and put his hand over hers. ‘It’s probably automatic, Dulce.’ Esmé took the opportunity to jump back on to the table. ‘You know, something that’s been programmed to go out the night of a show.’

  ‘Yeah, you’re right.’ She put the phone down. ‘I guess I don’t have any slack left.’

  ‘Time for bed then.’ He reached for her mug, and they both stood. ‘And we’ll see how you feel in the morning.’

  ‘You coming?’ Dulcie turned back toward Esmé. But the cat simply sat there, the light from the phone reflected in her green eyes.

  SIXTEEN

  The night grew wild, the Storm brew’d Clouds obscuring e’en the lambent Moon. Still, her nerve held Strong, supported in this by her help-mate in this endeavor, the faithful maid, upon whom tonight’s Escape depended. For she would Flee, with the aid of this kind Lady, and ne’r more be made the Slave of one so invirtuous and so Cruel. Too long had she awaited her Release. This very night, though the heavens would scowl and glower, she would Dare, thanks be to the faithful Lady, her Demetria.

  Demetria! Dulcie woke with a start. The night had indeed grown stormy. She could hear the windows rattling. But now that she was awake, any thoughts of ‘fleeing’ were banished. She looked over at Chris, who murmured and turned on to his side. He might be acting odd, and he certainly had been keeping a more watchful eye on her as she had gotten ready for bed. But he wasn’t the focus of her dream.

  No, the person she had been in her dream – a persona lifted from her reading – was in a much different kind of relationship. Thinking about it as she lay there, Dulcie wondered if she had somehow cast herself as Hermetria, the heroine of The Ravages of Umbria. After all, Hermetria had been betrayed, which you could sort of say was enslavement, first by her caregivers, who had stolen her family fortune, and then, more insidiously, by her companion, Demetria.

  It was a theme, Dulcie was learning, that this author returned to. Some of that was the genre: Gothic novels were filled with betrayed maidens and duplicitous servants and suitors both. In the novel Dulcie was piecing together now, a second previously forgotten work by the author of The Ravages, the female narrator seemed to have been imprisoned, tricked into some kind of abusive relationship that must have acted like catnip on the readers of the time. Even today, it was thrilling, ever so much better than that soft-core best-seller she’d caught some of her students passing around, giggling.

  In part, Dulcie suspected, that’s because the protagonist in the older book had some spine. From the bits Dulcie had been able to reconstruct, it seemed she had managed to escape from her captor – at least as far as Dulcie could tell. It was frustrating to get so caught up in a book and not be able to finish it, but what she had read spurred her to work harder.

  The bits she had managed to pull together told of a wild night-time chase in which the heroine found help from a stranger in grey. A still-unnamed heroine. Not, she shook her head to clear it, a woman named Demetria. That was The Ravages.

  Dulcie slipped out of bed. Clearly, she had conflated the two works. Her dreams had been growing ever more jumbled, even before she had fallen and hit her head. Throw in her own growing suspicions that both these novels were in some way drawn from the author’s life, and her confusion was almost total. What was real and what wasn’t? Maybe Chris had reason to be worried about her.

  ‘More likely it was the cocoa,’ Dulcie muttered to herself as she slipped on her robe. Or maybe, she admitted silently to herself, it was Trista. More and more often these days, Dulcie found herself annoyed at her friend, and longing for the faithful buddy of old. What she didn’t know was whether Trista had changed, or she had simply grown less tolerant. What she needed, she decided as she made her way into the kitchen, was some time with Suze.

  Why hadn’t her friend called her back? Unless she had, and Dulcie simply hadn’t gotten her message. Her phone was still on the table, although Esmé had long gone, and she reached for it with a smattering of hope.

  Hello Dulcie! The page that appeared at her touch wasn’t what she expected, and for a moment the greeting unsettled her. Since when did her devices know her touch? As she blinked, she woke up enough to remember: she had clicked through to the URT survey, meaning to type in an angry response, before putting the phone down in disgust. That’s what she was looking at now.

  ‘Quit, please.’ She knew it made no sense to talk to an inanimate object. It wasn’t like the phone was a cat or something. Still, she couldn’t help addressing it even as she scrolled to the bottom of the page, looking for an exit or an X to click on. ‘Hello?’

  Hello Dulcie! The salutation appeared again, the screen now glowing with life. Won’t you tell us about your evening with the University Rep?

  ‘You don’t want to know,’ she said, as she glided over the page. There was a ‘submit’ button, for after she had filled out the form. No ‘quit’ or ‘exit’.

  Hello Dulcie! This was getting annoying. To make matters worse, Esmé had woken, too, and while she had started off rubbing against Dulcie’s ankles, she was now bouncing around her feet, jumping on her bare toes as if they were prey.

  ‘Hang on, Esmé.’ The little cat wanted to play, that much was clear. ‘I just want to see if Suze has called. Ouch!’ Not willing to be ignored, Esmé had bitten her hard. While this would usually be Dulcie’s cue to pick her up, Dulcie had been trying very hard lately to follow her own advice: ignoring the cat when she misbehaved was better than rewarding the bad behavior with attention. And so she sat, tucking her bare feet beneath her, and turned her attention to the phone.

  ‘All right, all right.’ If Chris were awake, she could ask him for help. There had to be some way of getting out of this annoying program. As it was a little past two, Dulcie bowed to the inevitable. ‘Seats were fine. Program was fine. Service was …’ She stopped. The blonde – Heath had called her Amy – had been their waitress. Even though she’d only answered two questions, she hit submit.

  Thank you for your feedback! The screen flashed, and then went blank.

  The effort was worth it. When Dulcie flipped over to her voicemail, she saw that Suze had indeed called her back. The message, however, was not what she wanted to hear.

  ‘Hey, Dulcie,’ her friend had said. ‘Yes, it’s been too long. I’m sorry I’ve been out of touch. I’m caught up in this crazy credit-card fraud. Everybody thinks they can get something for free. I’ve got clients getting credit-card bills for thousands of dollars.’ There was a pause, and Dulcie thought the message had ended. ‘But call me. We’ll talk. And don’t give anyone your bank account info!’

  Good old Suze. Dulcie should have known her long-time friend wouldn’t desert her. Just the sound of her voice was cheering, and the fact that she was helping people with few other resources – her clients were the low-income patrons of a legal clinic – made her efforts seem even more worthwhile. Credit fraud. How despicable, especially when the crooks were preying on the poor and elderly. But how … well, how peaceful, Dulcie had to admit to herself. Mean but, well, bloodless. Dulcie was beginning to feel like herself again. Esmé had calmed down, as well, and now lay curled at the base of her chair.

  She listened to the message again, just to hear her friend’s voice. There was no chance of calling her at this hour. Even when they had roomed together, Suze had tended to be a morning person. Dulcie had often come home from the library to find her asleep over her books. That didn’t mean she couldn’t respond, though.

  Suze, she began the text. Gd to hear your voice! She paused at that point long enough for the screen to go black. This was the problem with tex
ts, as with email. How could she tell her friend what had happened without alarming her? How could she reach out without giving her the whole picture?

  Went to URT tonight. Terrible. No, that wouldn’t do. If Suze hadn’t heard about that poor woman, she would think Dulcie was sharing her opinion of the play. If she had, well, she might still think Dulcie had turned particularly callous critic. She backed up over the last word.

  There was a terrible … She paused … incident. That was the best word. I saw her. That didn’t capture all of it, not by half, and she put the phone back on the table while she thought about what to say next.

  This was the problem with all modern communication. People complained about the Gothics – about all pre-modern novelists, if truth be told. Said they were wordy, that they overwrote. But really, how could you explain the subtleties of a situation without giving the entire picture? Sometimes you needed to show the wind-tossed trees. Needed to feel the freezing night air and the way the dark night sky pressed in around one ill-lit area. Sometimes that was the only way to give an accurate picture, to show it all.

  This wasn’t writing. It wasn’t telling, even. It was typing. With a sigh, Dulcie picked up her phone again, waking it to her unfinished text.

  There was a cat, she typed, and hit send.

  SEVENTEEN

  The next morning, everybody was talking about the murder.

  ‘That poor girl.’ Nancy was shaking her head as she poured Dulcie’s coffee. ‘I can’t imagine what her parents are going through.’

  Dulcie had ducked into the secretary’s office hoping for a respite. Trista had been holding court in the student lounge, regaling their fellows with her first-hand account, and seemed to be relishing the attention. That, as well as the needless – to Dulcie’s mind – detail she was providing had driven Dulcie into the smaller room. The coffee was simply an excuse.

  ‘I know.’ It felt like poor form not to respond. Besides, the coffee was good and strong. ‘Thanks.’

  Dulcie took a sip and began reading the notices up on the board. Although she had managed to go back to sleep eventually, she hadn’t slept well. The same dream, in various versions, kept recurring. Now as she tried to block out the sound of Trista’s voice from the next room, she almost felt it had been prophetic. If only Trista would quit going on about the blood.

  ‘And a student, too,’ Nancy was saying. ‘Just like you.’

  Dulcie turned, about to disagree. Trista was, technically, no longer a student. As a postgraduate, she was a fellow of the college.

  ‘And now she’s gone.’

  Nancy was still holding the pot. Dulcie rose to take it from her and replace it on the warming plate, when she caught herself. Nancy had not been reading her thoughts. Nor had she been talking about Trista.

  ‘Wait, the woman who … last night?’ Dulcie wasn’t sure how to ask. ‘But she was an actress. A waitress and an actress.’

  Nancy nodded, and Dulcie wondered if the older woman had heard her. Then with a sigh, the plump secretary leaned back against her desk and explained. ‘I gather the acting was new for her. Or, well, doing it professionally was. That very nice commentator who handles the local news on NPR said this morning that she’d been working with the Tech drama department for years.’

  ‘Wait, Tech?’ Now it was Dulcie’s turn to question whether she’d heard correctly. ‘You mean the blonde actress – the one they found in the alley?’

  Another nod. ‘Yes, Amy Ralkov, that poor girl. She was a computer science major, but she was also quite taken by dramatics.’

  Tech – of course. That was how Jerry knew the dead girl. The applied math concentrators here might joke about ‘the vocational school down the road’, but there was a ton of interaction between students, especially at the higher levels. The way Nancy said it, however, that poor girl had strayed too far from her chosen discipline.

  ‘You make it sound like the theater is what killed her.’ Blame the lack of sleep or the fact that she hadn’t finished her coffee yet, but the words were out of Dulcie’s mouth before she could think. As soon as she heard them, though, she stopped herself. ‘Maybe it did.’

  ‘Dulcie, what are you talking about?’ She had Nancy’s attention now, and Dulcie found herself scrambling to explain.

  ‘I – we were there last night.’ She’d been happy enough to be downplayed in Trista’s account. Now it seemed important to explain. ‘Chris and I, with Trista and Jerry and Lloyd and Raleigh. The blonde – Amy – she was our waitress, as well as an actor, a dancer, really, in the play.’ With a twinge of guilt, Dulcie remembered her initial dislike of the girl – a resentment aggravated when it had become apparent that she had picked Chris’s pocket. Skimming over that, she told Nancy about the seeming attraction between the pretty blonde and the lead actor.

  ‘I think there was something going on between her and Heath Barstow,’ she concluded. ‘I wonder if he, well, you know …’

  Nancy nodded. ‘NPR also had a story on domestic abuse, though I don’t think they were connected. They do say that when a woman is murdered, it makes sense to look at the boyfriend.’

  Dulcie didn’t know what to say to that and instead gulped down some coffee. It was still hot, and she sputtered.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Nancy ran over with a napkin. ‘I’ve been watching too many crime dramas, I guess. I’m sure Mr Barstow had nothing to do with it. It must have been random. A street crime …’

  ‘The show was over.’ Dulcie thought it through. ‘And she was still in her costume – all black. But maybe she wore that outfit home?’ An idea surfaced. ‘I’m going to call Detective Rogovoy.’

  ‘I’m glad you have time on your hands for snooping.’ A male voice broke in on them: Martin Thorpe was standing in the doorway. ‘I assume that means that you’ve finished those pages for me?’

  Only then did Dulcie realize that the small crowd in the outer room had dispersed. Trista, standing behind Thorpe, shrugged in apology, and Dulcie knew she had no choice left but to get to work.

  EIGHTEEN

  ‘No.’ Detective Rogovoy tended to be terse. This morning, he was being positively monosyllabic, despite Dulcie’s repeated questions. ‘No and no.’

  ‘But, Detective …’ It was nearly noon before Dulcie could get to the campus police headquarters. She’d rushed through her session with Mr Thorpe, in part by telling him that she had a lead on some new research. It wasn’t exactly a lie. She did have some ideas – just not about her thesis.

  When she’d found the portly detective at his desk, she’d been overjoyed. He, however, did not seem to reciprocate the feeling.

  ‘But don’t you think it’s important?’ Dulcie asked for the umpteenth time. ‘I mean, Heath Barstow was clearly flirting with her, and she seemed to be rejecting him. I believe they were an item.’

  ‘What part of “you’re not involved in this” don’t you understand, Ms Schwartz?’ His voice betrayed his frustration. ‘To be honest, neither are we.’

  ‘But how can that be?’ Dulcie stared at the craggy cop, trying to understand. ‘You’re the police.’

  ‘University police.’ He reached for a pile of papers stacked on the corner of his desk. ‘Now, if you don’t mind …’

  ‘But the girl … it happened at the University Rep.’ As she watched, he picked up a ballpoint. It looked like a matchstick in his grip.

  ‘Technically, it happened in the alley behind the theater.’ He clicked the pen. Dulcie half expected it to buckle. ‘City property – and out of our jurisdiction.’

  ‘Oh.’ Dulcie paused, mulling over the complex relationship between town and gown. ‘And it doesn’t matter that the victim went to Tech?’

  The slight rise of one eyebrow was encouraging. She knew something Rogovoy didn’t. ‘Amy Ralkov was a computer science concentrator – or major. Whatever they call them at Tech. Our friend Jerry knew her, kind of.’ She paused. ‘He got some friends tickets through her.’

  ‘And did you or your friend Chri
s know her?’ The question came out like a growl.

  ‘No. That is, I don’t think so.’ She stopped again, considering this. Chris would have told her. Wouldn’t he? The pretty actress had been awfully familiar with him. ‘I don’t know. I guess I should ask him.’

  ‘I think you should go home.’ He tapped the pen on those papers. It was going to break, Dulcie knew it would. ‘This is a serious crime, Ms Schwartz. A woman was stabbed, her throat cut. We’re not talking some scholarly wrangling here.’

  He paused. That detail had done the trick – Dulcie had gone white. She leaned back in the visitor’s chair and waited for the accompanying dizziness to pass.

  ‘Look, Ms Schwartz.’ He leaned forward, his bulk dwarfing the desk. ‘I appreciate you wanting to help and that you know to come to me. But the city department is a good one, and if they need extra help, they’ll call in the Staties. The Massachusetts forensics lab is one of the best in the country. I have no doubt they’ll have taken statements from all of the principals at the scene, and that they’ll be going over that alley and probably the entire theater with a fine-toothed comb. I do not think they will need anything from you, or they would have asked you to stay and give a statement. I think you should go back to the library or your office, or wherever it is you do your work. I think you should count your blessings that you’re not involved, Ms Schwartz. For a change.’

  He meant well. Still, she couldn’t stop herself. ‘But I am involved, Detective.’ As he’d been talking, she’d recovered her equilibrium – as well as her memory of what she had seen and what she’d wanted to tell him. ‘It wasn’t just Heath or that other woman, Roni. There was …’ Now that it came down to it, she felt a little embarrassed. ‘There was a cat. A theater cat. Gus. And he, well, he got out.’

  Dulcie paused. Most people, she knew, would think her a little odd. Detective Rogovoy wasn’t most people, but still, she didn’t think she could tell him what she suspected: that the silver-grey cat had been trying to tell her something. Instead, she fell back on her other concern. ‘He got out of the theater, Detective. There was a crowd and sirens, and with one thing and another, I’m afraid he might have panicked. It’s cold out there.’ She looked up at the craggy face. ‘I’m worried about him.’