by Clea Simon
Besides, she thought as she balled up some aluminum foil, Rogovoy had asked her to leave it alone. Commanded her, actually. She’d been sitting in the cruiser, and he’d come over one final time, leaning over as if to give her his benediction.
‘This is a police matter, Ms Schwartz,’ he’d said instead, his deep voice gravelly and tired. ‘The theft. The murder. This is what we do. Our job. We have resources that you do not. Please, do not complicate our job further by getting involved.’ He’d paused, staring down at her. ‘More involved, that is. Just – just go finish your thesis, OK?’ He’d closed the door then and watched them drive off. Dulcie had seen him standing there until traffic had surrounded them.
‘Are you trying to tell me the same thing?’ Dulcie tossed the ball and watched as the white paws grabbed it out of the air. ‘That I should simply mind my own business?’ The black tail lashed as Dulcie feinted then tossed the foil again, and Esmé got down to the serious business of the hunt.
She was so busy with the kitten, Dulcie didn’t hear the next ping from her laptop. And by the time Esmé had lost interest, stopping mid-volley for an impromptu bath, the computer had faded into sleep mode, the Mr Grey screen saver obscuring the message marked: ‘Urgent. Please Read.’
She wasn’t thinking of her email at that point. It was almost nine. Chris, Rogovoy, even Thorpe had been telling her the same thing, more or less, and her dream had confirmed it. Shoving her laptop, some pencils, and a yellow legal pad into her bag, she headed toward the door. Esmé looked up, and she paused to pet the silky fur. But even as the young cat reached up with her white mitts to grab her hand, Dulcie detached herself. Horrible things might be happening outside. But Dulcie Schwartz had to get to work.
FIFTY-ONE
Despite Thorpe’s assurances, Dulcie felt a shiver of anxiety. They wouldn’t let her in. She’d gotten to the Mildon just at its Saturday opening time, and the mouse-like clerk had peered at her ID for what seemed like hours. Then he had turned his gaze on her, his eyes exaggerated and large behind the huge glasses. He must have heard that she was a suspect, Dulcie decided, and she kept her mouth shut. Finally, with a small huff, he checked her in, filling out the blue ticket and handing it to her.
‘I’ll need to take that.’ He stared pointedly at Dulcie’s bag. She hesitated. This, after all, was where the trouble had started.
He noticed. ‘We – ah – have instituted new security proceedings.’ It was the closest thing she would get to an apology, she suspected. Removing the pad, she handed the bag over. He placed it in a closet next to the entrance and then used a key from his key chain to lock the door, she noticed with gratitude. That done, he pressed the button that released the front counter and beckoned Dulcie to come in.
As she stepped inside, she looked around the small entrance-way. Set against the ceiling she could see the security gate, ready to come down in case of an emergency. Supposedly, there would be a barrier like this at every entrance – even at the chain-link wall to the far right, which separated the rarities from the more common confines of the Widener stacks.
Theoretically, these gates presented an extra layer of protection – an internal system above and beyond the guards at every entrance to the larger library. Their presence, though, only raised more questions. Why hadn’t they been activated when the Dunster Codex had been stolen? Were they just as much for show as the charade of the ‘blue tickets’? As secure as when visitors’ bags were simply thrown underneath the front counter?
‘Follow me, please.’ Without looking back, he led her down to the left, to a small sitting area outfitted with a table, several chairs, and a cup of sharpened pencils. She knew the routine and pulled a pair of gloves from the box in the middle of the table, then sat and waited.
‘The Wetherly Ghost.’ He placed a large box in front of her and opened the hinged lid, using both gloved hands to carefully lift out a fraying, leather-bound book. ‘And related correspondence.’ The book was followed by an acid-free binder, which the clerk also placed on the table. ‘Call me when you’re done, please.’ The courtesy was automatic, Dulcie decided as the mouse-like man marched off without waiting for a response.
Once he had retreated, she opened the book. It had been a while since she had looked at the Wetherly. At least a few months since she’d been in the Mildon at all, she thought with a twinge of bitterness. At least her name seemed to have been cleared; she owed Thorpe her thanks for that.
‘The howling Harpie, epitome of the friendless Female, grabbed at the poor Virgin’s lustrous hair, jealous of the resplendent beauty having spoil’d her own good name in life and her chance of Heaven e’en in death.’
Feh. Dulcie skipped the rest of the passage, a thinly veiled diatribe against women disguised as a horror story. The next chapter started no better.
‘The heathen Moor joined then with the Catholic Priest for an unholy Mass, unsanctified by blood or prayer . . .’
She hadn’t missed anything. As she leafed through the pages, she found more of the same. Sexism and racism, larded up with the clichés of horror and the supernatural that had given the genre such a bad name.
Thomas Paine, the author of Common Sense, had read this? He must have been desperate. She closed the book. This had been a complete waste of time, and she half stood, about to call for the clerk, when she remembered the letters. Rollie had said he’d worked on one of them and thought of her. Thought it would interest her. Then again, Rollie had said a lot of things, none of which he was around to defend. Still, she was here. She might as well check it out. With a sense of resignation, she pulled the folder toward her and opened it.
The letter must have been in lousy shape, she mused, removing the first page. Encased in some kind of clear protective covering, it looked as fragile as birch bark, its edges browned and ragged where they hadn’t already crumbled into dust, and she laid it flat on the table before her, afraid to risk even moving it much.
‘Dear Friend,’ it began. ‘Many thanks and my heartfelt Gratitude for this Diversion, which has helped to pass the Hours.’ Despite herself, Dulcie felt a slight tremor of excitement. Thomas Paine had written this, a thank-you note for the gift of a book. She wondered if he would comment on its quality, and read on.
‘Its Fantasies of Horrors and Ghouls, completed by the most Monstrous of Devils, a corrupt Religious, have served to divert me most ingeniously . . .’
She read on as the Revolutionary thinker continued to praise the book, citing some of the passages that he seemed to have interpreted as political allegory. Well, that was his world; he essentially wrote propaganda. Reading on, she tried to figure out if he had actually enjoyed it, but the frayed page ended in the middle of a sentence, before she could really tell.
Carefully removing the next page from the file, she saw that she’d missed something. ‘ . . . peopled with Characters of such Life and Sense, ’twere as if they breath’d upon the page,’ she read. ‘Expressing such Philosophy as any Man of Sense could champion, such a Woman serves as Beacon to her Gender and indeed to all our Race.’
Dulcie stopped. Woman? The Wetherly Ghost had not been written by a woman. She went back to the book and checked. Yes, just like every attribution she had ever seen, this copy credited with Geoffrey Thomas, Lord Richmond, as the author. And Thomas had been a known public figure, a man about town – which probably had accounted for the book’s success.
Paine must have been talking about a different book. A properly revolutionary work, written by a woman. Could it be?
Trying desperately to contain her excitement, Dulcie read on. ‘Such works of Imagination spawn’d the Rancor of Philistines, no doubt accounting for the Esteemed One’s Exodus from confining Shores . . .’ The page ended, and with trembling hands, Dulcie reached for the next.
Again, she picked up in mid-sentence, some crucial lines lost forever to decay. ‘ . . . lacking the support of a Radcliffe or her sister She-Authors whose Conventions may amuse, this esteemed Author lies vulnerable to
malicious Minds that have sought to counter that special Genius, turning her own Words against . . .’ A stain – mold or ink, ages old – obscured much of the page. At the bottom, Dulcie could just make out a few more words. ‘ . . . a new Work eagerly await’d.’ And that was all.
It was slight. Fragments without a name. But for Dulcie, it was enough. Her heart racing, she sat back, willing herself to be reasonable. Everything she had read fit with what she knew of The Ravages of Umbria and its author. The forward-looking philosophy. The originality. Even the persecution that had caused her author to flee.
‘Malicious minds? Her own words?’ This was more than criticism. More, even, than the threats that might have caused the author to emigrate. Paine was in the United States when he wrote that letter. Was it possible that the ageing diplomat had known something of the contemporary backlash? Perhaps he was writing his friend about an attempt to sabotage an author’s reputation?
Dulcie had known something was wrong with that essay. Her author’s exact phrases had been lifted and twisted into something very different. Something that would indeed ‘defame that special genius’.
She needed to be careful, though. Even if her instincts – and Rollie’s – were correct, this was only a first step. One letter was not enough to go by – not when neither her author nor The Ravages were named. Paine could have been talking about any one of a dozen authors. Perhaps there were other letters, not yet restored.
Dulcie stood and peeked down the hall. The mousy clerk might have some ideas. He was not at the front desk, though, and the place was so quiet that she wondered if he’d gone on a break. It seemed unlikely for such a conscientious little man, and she was about to turn, to try the other offices, when a noise disturbed her. At the hall’s end, a large door opened. Through it stepped two figures she recognized all too well. Harris and Read, the thugs who had come to her office. The men she had seen in the park.
Dulcie stepped back, flattening herself against the wall. What were those brutes doing here? How had they gotten in? With slow, careful steps, she began to creep back down toward the reading room. She didn’t think they had seen her. She could still escape.
She looked up as another door opened and the clerk stepped out. Raising her finger to her lips, she motioned him to be silent, but those oversized glasses never turned her way as he walked down the hall – toward the intruders. Peeking around the corner, she saw them look up in surprise and start to back away.
‘Excuse me, excuse me,’ the little man called down the hall after them. ‘You can’t be back there.’
Dulcie held her breath, afraid to intervene. For a moment, her spirits rose. They were retreating, rousted by the determined clerk. And sank again as the bespectacled librarian went after them. The smaller of the two – Read – had turned. He seemed to be talking to the clerk, and Dulcie hoped he had a good story. Maybe nobody would get hurt. Then she saw it. The knife. The little clerk stumbled backward, into the arms of the bigger suit – Harris. Ducking down, Dulcie watched as they dragged the little clerk into one of the side rooms.
That was it. Dulcie could no longer hide, could no longer hope the danger would pass by. She needed to get help. Leaving the relative safety of her hiding place, she tiptoed over to the front desk. With Rogovoy’s number already programmed into her phone, she could summon him quickly. Maybe quickly enough. She pulled gently on the door of the closet, hoping for quiet, praying for speed. It didn’t give. She pulled again, rattling it back and forth to no avail, and she remembered the new security procedures that had prompted the clerk to lock the door. Cursing the moments lost, she looked around for a landline. Precious seconds were ticking by. There had to be a phone. She would dial the emergency number and hope for a speedy response.
Then she saw it: a little red box with a handle. The fire alarm. Pulling it would sound an immediate alarm, as well as bring the authorities. It would also, she read, activate a ‘non-water fire suppression system’. The phrase sparked a memory; the student handbook had had a section explaining it, detailing how the area would be sealed as inert gases – a mix of nitrogen and oxygen – were pumped in, replacing the air she was breathing now. The mix was supposed to act quickly, squelching any fire by starving it of oxygen. The question was: would it squelch Dulcie, the mousy clerk, and the two thugs, as well?
Her mind racing, Dulcie tried to think. What did she really know about the system? The handbook had called it ‘safe’, pointing out that the nitrogen was actually less dangerous than many elements of a fire. Student rumor, however, had called it ‘the suffocation machine’, pointing to the apparent speed with which it switched out atmospheres.
‘Why do you think it works so well?’ She couldn’t remember who had asked, just the voice talking. ‘What makes fires burn? Oxygen. What do we breathe?’
The gathered students had all answered as one: ‘Oxygen.’
She glanced down the hall. The door remained closed. Then she heard it, a small cry – like an animal in pain. The clerk. She pulled the lever.
FIFTY-TWO
WAH! WAH! WAH! The bleating of the siren made Dulcie jump.
‘PROCEED TO EVACUATE! PROCEED TO EVACUATE!’ the loud recorded voice commanded, before urging her to: ‘STAY CALM.’ Somewhere above her head, a swirling light threw whirling shadows over the hallway, while the red emergency exit signs glowed. And the metal gates began – slowly – to descend.
‘PROCEED TO EVACUATE!’
Dulcie looked around furiously. Should she run? What about the clerk? Before she could decide, the hall door flew open. Read, still holding his knife, looked around. Saw her. Stared.
‘You.’ He pointed the knife and slowly smiled, revealing those animal teeth. ‘Well, well.’
Even over the siren, Dulcie heard herself gasp. Unable to move, she stood there, mesmerized as the alarm light flashed and flickered over the open blade.
‘Come on.’ Harris, the larger suit, was pushing by his partner. ‘We gotta go,’ he said and turned toward the back hall.
Read didn’t follow. He stepped instead toward Dulcie, who stood transfixed. The lights, the siren. The blade.
‘Come on!’ Harris yelled again, heading down the hall. ‘The damned door is closing.’ Cursing, Read turned and ran.
Dulcie knew she should follow or – better yet – head for the front exit and safety. Knew she should save herself. She was small enough, she could duck through what space remained as the emergency gates descended on their tracks.
Instead, she ran to the room the two men had just vacated. Crumpled in the corner, she found the clerk.
‘Sir! Sir! Are you OK?’ Dulcie was yelling over the mechanized warning. She ran to him and took his arm. ‘Are you hurt?’
The little clerk looked up, his eyes curiously small without his glasses, and opened his mouth, his words drowned out by the bleating wail.
‘Can you get up?’ she yelled in his ears. In the flashing light, it was hard to tell, but she didn’t think she saw any blood. ‘Sir?’
‘My glasses.’ His voice came through in the pause between the alarms. He reached around her on the floor.
‘Here.’ She found the big brown horn-rims and watched as he fitted them to his nose. ‘We have to go.’ She looked back out the door. ‘If we can.’
The clerk was kneeling now, giving Dulcie a clear view of his thinning, grey hair as he adjusted his glasses further. Then he stood and brushed off the front of his brown corduroy trousers.
‘Sir?’ The gases must have started. She waited to feel a constriction in her chest. To black out. Perhaps it was better to be fatalistic, like this little man, but she couldn’t stop trying. ‘May we—’
‘Don’t get your panties in a bunch, young lady.’ The clerk brushed off his shirtsleeves next, and then led her to the front hall. Taking a key chain out of his pocket, he unlocked a small cabinet, inserted another key, and turned it.
Suddenly, all was silent.
‘You can do that?’ Dulcie’s ears were rin
ging, and she was yelling.
The clerk blinked up at her. ‘Of course I can. I’m Thomas Griddlehaus, senior librarian staff clerk for the Mildon Rare Books Collection. And I believe you owe me an explanation.’
‘I–I–I thought I was saving your life.’ Instead of a library, Dulcie thought, she’d slipped down a rabbit hole to some alternative world. ‘Those men. They were going to kill you.’
‘Those men? They were common thieves. They seemed under the impression that we kept riches here. Common misperception, really, among the uneducated. I used to tell Gustav that the word “rare” was misleading.’
‘Gustav?’ Dulcie was still in shock. ‘Professor Coffin?’
‘Of course.’ The clerk – Thomas – looked away, and Dulcie had the fleeting impression that the little man was slightly embarrassed. ‘Not to say that he listened to me. I am, of course, merely a functionary, whereas he is – he was a great man. You know he made this possible.’
‘The Mildon?’ Dulcie’s head was swimming. ‘But doesn’t it predate him?’
‘Technically, of course.’ He had unlocked another drawer and removed a phone. ‘Excuse me, please.’
Dulcie didn’t know what to think, and she stood there, watching and listening as he reported in to some authority that, yes, yes, the fire-suppression system had been activated, but no, there was no need to evacuate the entire building. When he hung up and proceeded down the hall, picking up a chair Dulcie had knocked over in her haste, Dulcie followed.
‘Mr Griddlehaus?’
He turned back, as if surprised that she remained.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Professor Coffin was a masterful diplomat of the mind, young lady. He was able to convince donors of the vital nature of such resources—’
‘Yes, he raised money. I know.’ The shock was wearing off, and Dulcie felt something like a temper. ‘That’s not what I mean. Those men. They had a knife. They grabbed you. That’s why I set off the alarm. I thought they were going to kill you. And you seem – you seem—’
