by Clea Simon
As she filled her travel mug, Dulcie considered the possibilities. She trusted Detective Rogovoy. Despite his inability to understand her concerns about Thorpe – he could be a bit concrete in his thinking – he was still a good cop. And even though Emily didn’t want to talk to the police, Dulcie still felt they – or Rogovoy, at any rate – should know about the attack. However, she had promised Chris she wouldn’t get involved – more involved, she corrected herself, and that pretty much precluded another visit to the university police. That didn’t mean she couldn’t drop in on Emily this morning. Maybe, now that the initial shock had passed, she could talk the young woman into going to the authorities. At the very least, Dulcie decided as she headed out the door, she might get some answers to her own questions.
‘Maybe Emily can take the kitten,’ Dulcie said to herself as she locked the apartment behind her. Heading down to the street, she couldn’t see her own cat. But Esmé had heard her last words, as did the larger, grey shadow she seemed to cast against the apartment wall. Both of them were staring, as if still listening, at the door their person had just exited. Both had their backs arched, their tails stretched straight, and every hair standing on end.
As it was, Dulcie felt almost jolly as she walked toward the Square. Maybe Chris was right, she mused: the two victims were so closely related that the attacks had to be personal. While that didn’t help them, it did mean that her concerns about her adviser – and the visiting scholar – were less credible. It also meant the student body at large was less at risk. And because the violence wasn’t random, she reasoned, it was more likely that the police would be able to find the perpetrator. If – Dulcie picked up her pace – she could convince Emily to come forward.
What if it was Josh? Dulcie didn’t know the red-faced young man and, unlike Lucy, she didn’t believe she had any special powers of discernment. But she had liked him. He’d seemed guileless in his big, goofy way, and she didn’t want to believe that his overlarge exterior hid some nasty violent side. Surely there was someone else in the girls’ life, someone less open and friendly. For a moment, Dulcie flashed on the stranger – a dark mystery who kept himself in shadow. No, that was a book, a book that had made its way into her dreams. What was happening here on campus was something human and all too real.
Later, she promised herself, she’d pursue that particular secret as well. With the help of Griddlehaus, the head of the Mildon special collection, she’d identified several more pages of promising material from a box of uncatalogued material. If any of them advanced the story, maybe even linked that first fragment – the bit about the body in the library – to these more recent pages, she’d be in luck. What she was finding was pure gold, academically speaking.
As she made her way to the Quad, she found herself summarizing what she knew: a woman, the heroine – whom Dulcie identified for better or worse with the author – is in the grasp of someone evil. It might be the nobleman we later find dead, but it might be someone else entirely. She manages to get away and flees into the night, a wild and stormy night, only to be picked up by a coach that just happens to be driving past on the lonely mountain road. The coach belongs to – or, at least, is occupied by – the shadowy stranger, who has green eyes and some kind of reviving drink.
No, she stopped herself, the drink was part of her dream, probably the result of last night’s sherry. Still, that dream had seemed so real, as if it were another part of the story. It didn’t advance it enough to bring Dulcie up to that first scene in the library, however. As she thought of the fragments she had read, Dulcie found herself wondering. She had assumed, for various reasons, that the man in the library had been murdered. She had also assumed that the heroine had killed him, perhaps in self-defense. Now, with the appearance of the stranger, another possibility presented itself. The stranger seemed to be an ally. Could he have done the killing? Was he, perhaps, the victim?
As an academic, Dulcie knew the dangers of jumping to conclusion. Even Thorpe, in one of his more lucid moments, had seen fit to warn her. Without proof, without direct ties, all she had was speculation. And speculation was fiction, not defensible fact. For all she knew, Thorpe had pointed out, she might be reading fragments of two different tales. From an academic viewpoint, that would have been wonderful: not just one, but a whole trove of previously undiscovered work! As a fan of the author, however, Dulcie found the idea disheartening. It was bad enough that her subject’s best-known work, The Ravages of Umbria, only survived in fragments and that she would probably never get to read all of it. To find another set of partial novels was just too frustrating. Almost as bad as if she found out that the stranger was, in fact, a villain. For some reason, Dulcie found that concept disturbing. It must, she realized, have something to do with those deep green eyes.
She would have to shelve that question for later. She’d reached Winthrop House, where Emily and Mina roomed, and turned her thoughts to the room-mates as she showed her university ID and climbed to the third-floor suite marked ‘Love/Trainor.’
‘Hello?’ She knocked. ‘Emily? It’s me, Dulcie Schwartz.’
Silence. For a moment, Dulcie worried. Perhaps the girl’s injuries had been more severe than anyone had known. Perhaps she had lapsed into unconsciousness. Perhaps … the sound of movement behind the door pushed that thought aside.
‘Emily?’ Dulcie still felt strangely worried. ‘Are you okay? May I come in?’ More shuffling and a strange thudding sound. ‘Emily.’
‘Coming!’ The sound of a voice should have reassured Dulcie, but she found she was holding her breath. Finally the lock turned and the door opened, revealing a rather bedraggled version of the student she had last seen only twelve hours before. The delay, Dulcie could see, was due to the cane on which Emily leaned.
‘Emily! You’re hurt.’ She looked at the cane, and saw how the girl grimaced as she took a step back into the room.
‘I’m a bit banged up,’ she said over her shoulder, advancing toward the sofa. ‘I have a bad knee. I guess I fell on it.’
‘Bastard,’ Dulcie muttered. Then it hit her that her early morning call hadn’t helped. ‘Did I wake you?’
‘Yeah, but it’s okay.’ The sophomore pushed her hair back, giving Dulcie a view of the darkening bruises on her thin, pale neck. ‘I didn’t sleep that well.’
‘I can imagine.’ Dulcie followed Emily’s slow progress back into the suite’s common room, noting how thin the girl’s shoulders looked under her worn T. Emily walked over to the window, dragging open the pink-patterned drapes that had kept the room in darkness, and Dulcie gasped. It wasn’t just her shoulders – by daylight, the junior looked more fragile than she had only the day before, as if the attack had stolen something vital from her.
‘You want some coffee?’ Emily asked, propping her cane against the sofa. ‘I could use a cup.’
‘I drank mine on the way in. You don’t have to.’ Dulcie raised her travel mug, then saw how her hostess shrugged off what could have been construed as pity. ‘But more’s always welcome. Thanks.’ Especially with Chris’s schedule so disrupted, Dulcie lived on caffeine. Besides, sharing a morning ritual might encourage the younger girl to open up. Pushing aside what looked like graphs, Dulcie sat on an old armchair and looked around. The room could have been almost any undergrad dorm common area Dulcie had ever seen, down to the ratty old sofa and its Indian print throw. A trunk served as a coffee table and undoubtedly as extra storage. On top of a miniature fridge, the room-mates had a coffee maker, while one wall held the usual band posters and a Monet reprint. On the other, more of the graph, which looked like a tree of some kind.
‘Do you have another room-mate?’ She got up to take a look and saw names, not numbers. It was a chart of some sort. ‘A mathematician?’
‘What? Oh, no.’ Emily came over and took Dulcie’s travel mug. ‘It’s just us. This is just something we did for fun – I took a tutorial in genealogy, and Mina got really into it with me. Actually, it’s one of the reasons Mina s
witched over from straight English to Hist and Lit.’
‘Huh, cool.’ From what Dulcie could see, the ‘tree’ had six levels. There had to be forty entries on its branches, most of them initials. ‘Is this your family?’
‘What? Oh, no.’ Emily returned with Dulcie’s mug and one of her own. ‘Mine’s boring. This is actually Mina’s. She’s from some old family that came over right after the Revolution. She knew – she knows a lot more of her family history than I do. I think that’s why she …’ Emily’s voice faltered.
Dulcie turned from the giant chart. ‘How is she, Emily?’
The student shrugged. ‘She’s still unconscious. The doctors say she could wake up at any time, but …’ She bit her lip.
Dulcie ushered her back to the sofa. ‘I’m so sorry. This must all be so awful.’ Another shrug. ‘Is that why you …’
The other girl looked at her, confused.
‘I mean, you must just want to get back to normal.’ Nothing. Dulcie kicked herself. ‘I’m sorry, Emily. I came over here thinking that I wanted to get you to go to the police, to tell them what happened last night. But you must just want to forget all about it.’
‘Yeah.’ Emily looked down at the mug she cradled in her hands. Even her hands, Dulcie could see, were bruised.
‘You fought,’ she said.
‘Huh? No.’ Emily shook her head. ‘We were friends.’
‘No, not you and Mina.’ Dulcie was just putting her foot in it every chance she had today. ‘I mean, last night. You fought your attacker. You told us that, but I didn’t know how hard until I saw your hands.’
Only then did the other girl seem to notice. Putting the mug down on the trunk, she raised her hands, palm upward. Sure enough, they were bruised, dark purple marks rising against her white skin.
‘Yeah, I guess I did.’ She turned her hands over as if seeing them for the first time.
‘And your neck.’ Emily raised one hand to her throat. She had the kind of fair skin that probably bruised easily. Still, the marks were disturbing. She covered them briefly with her hand, then quickly shoved it back down into her lap.
‘That must hurt.’ Dulcie interpreted the gesture. The other girl nodded. ‘I was worried, when you didn’t answer at first that you had been more badly hurt than you realized,’ Dulcie continued. ‘More than anyone had realized.’ Seeing the aftermath of the attack had made her more determined. ‘I know you didn’t want to go to the authorities.’ She intentionally avoided the word ‘police.’ ‘I get it, I do. But Emily, you have to.’
The face that looked up at hers was blank, the dark eyes large and scared in the pale face. ‘I can’t,’ she said, her voice barely a whisper, and looked away. ‘It’s my own …’
She stopped, and Dulcie waited. Victims often blamed themselves; she knew that. What she didn’t know was how to counter it. How to get the young woman to realize that the unknown perpetrator, not her own carelessness or lack of attention, was to blame.
But Emily only shook her head, her mouth closed tight. Leaving Dulcie with the distinct feeling that she was intruding, that this girl wanted to be left alone. Dulcie was torn: Emily had already been victimized. Dulcie should respect her wishes. She should leave. If only she could get Emily to come forward. After all, there was a violent criminal out there, and she herself might be victimized again.
To give her the illusion of privacy, Dulcie turned away and drank some of her coffee. It was weak and a little bitter. Maybe Emily liked it like this. Or maybe Mina had been the one who usually made a morning pot. Thinking about Mina, Dulcie realized she had another option. She wasn’t going to give up trying to convince Emily to come forward. In the meantime, however, she could do some sleuthing on her own.
‘How long have you and Mina roomed together?’ She got up to look at the chart. Up close, she could see that it was made up of several pages, taped together, and filled the space between the room’s two windows, both of which looked out onto the Quad.
Anyone else would have been admiring the view. Three stories up, she could see the famous oaks, the last of their foliage barely hanging in. For her, the appeal was the giant chart. Larger than she’d first noticed, it extended under the bright curtain that Emily had hastily pulled open, letting in the weak November sun.
‘Wow, this is huge.’ Dulcie moved the curtain and heard something roll on the floor. She bent to retrieve a pencil stub, its point rounded and dull. She picked it up absently and looked at the chart. Two more branches, jutting out from the lower end – the ‘trunk’ – of the tree. No, she saw: three. Only the third had been scribbled over. Wild black markings obscured several names with the silvery sheen of graphite, crossing through the connecting lines. ‘What’s this? Black sheep?’
‘Oh, that’s nothing.’ Emily came up beside her and took the pencil from her hand. ‘I’m kind of, well, that was a mistake.’ She pulled the curtain back into place, clearly embarrassed by the mess. ‘I found out that Mina’s not the only person in her family here at the university.’
‘Oh?’ It wasn’t surprising, really. Emily’s embarrassment about it, however … ‘And that’s bad?’
The girl shrugged. ‘Turns out, she and Josh are related, way, way back. I mean, so far back it doesn’t matter. But, it bothered him; I know that. I think maybe that’s why she got so into all the theoretical stuff. The post-structuralist stuff. It’s all so once removed, you know? Impersonal. Maybe it’s …’ She paused. ‘Maybe it’s safer.’
EIGHTEEN
‘Maybe it’s safer.’ The words rang in Dulcie’s mind. What exactly did that mean? Dulcie paused, as she tried to phrase the question for the young woman sitting beside her. Just how ‘bothered’ had Josh been? Was a vague fear of incest through some long-ago consanguinity enough to drive a man mad? To drive him to attack his girlfriend?
Emily was clearly fragile, and Dulcie didn’t want to upset her more. Besides, the girl might not have any idea about Josh’s mental state. Still, she had to ask. ‘Emily,’ she started to form the question. ‘You don’t think, maybe—’
But before she could go any further, the Memorial Church bell sounded, and Emily jumped up.
‘Oh my God. It’s so late! I’ve got to finish dressing. Get to class. I’m sorry.’ She practically shoved Dulcie out the door. ‘Thanks for coming by!’
‘But …’ Dulcie was backing into the hallway as she remembered her original purpose. ‘Won’t you consider going to the police? I’ll go with you!’
‘Maybe later!’ Emily didn’t even seem to really hear her, as she closed the door. ‘Bye!’
Dulcie found herself facing the closed door as the bell continued to chime, and only the rush of other students down the hall reminded her that she, too, had obligations.
Questions continued to surface, however, through back-to-back sections. Questions other than the role of narrative non-fiction in the development of Joseph Conrad’s fiction or the use of metaphor in Dickens. Would the discovery of a long-ago link upset Josh so much that he’d turn violent? Had it – or something else – spurred Mina to break off from her chubby boyfriend? Did Emily know more about what was going on between her room-mate and her boyfriend then she let on? Would she ever go to the police?
These questions were so much more immediate – and had so much more inherent drama in them – than the subjects she was supposed to be teaching. In fact, Dulcie suspected that she was sleepwalking through her classes all morning, a supposition supported by the amount of eye-rolling she witnessed when she could focus.
‘It’s the full moon,’ she actually heard one student say as he packed up his bag. ‘That’s why women can’t be serious academics.’
She was about to stop him – that was really going too far – when she caught herself. He was wrong, deadly wrong, about what was distracting her – and if she caught a whiff of such sexism in any of his papers, she’d make him pay for it. But he was right in that she was diverted, and, really, if she wasn’t giving her all, she had no ri
ght to criticize her students.
It was a little after midday when she emerged from Emerson, and moonrise was hours away yet. But her student’s comment had added another question to the list. Would the full moon tonight bring another attack?
Dulcie didn’t want to think so. Tonight was the second of the Newman lectures, with Renée Showalter of McGill speaking, and Dulcie actually liked what she’d read of this scholar’s work. Chris wouldn’t be happy about her going out again, Dulcie knew. But really, what were her options? Stay hidden away? Even her heroine had ventured forth from the castle, only to be picked up on the road by some mysterious stranger.
Or had that only been in her dream? Standing at the base of the stairs, Dulcie shook her head. Too much had been going on, and she suspected the after-effects of the sherry weren’t helping. She should, she knew, get some lunch. Food and more coffee would help clear up the confusion about the attacks and her students, the manuscript fragments, and her own dreams. But as she started to walk across the Yard, she realized that before she had lunch – and today she was going to have the three-bean burger with extra hot sauce – she needed to get some work done. Only down in the Mildon would she find answers to at least one of those questions.
‘Ms Schwartz.’ Thomas Griddlehaus, chief clerk of the rare book collection, looked up and nodded as Dulcie came in.
‘Mr Griddlehaus,’ she responded with her own nod and a smile. The two had worked together long enough that they could have dropped the formalities. They seemed right in this context, however. Despite the futuristic setting – climate controlled, clean, and white – the Mildon Rare Books Library was a time capsule. Buried deep beneath the rest of the library, it housed not only rare books and folios, but also – in a series of acid-free non-reactive folders stored in specially built boxes – the carefully preserved unidentified fragments that the university had collected over the years.
After handing the diminutive clerk her bag, Dulcie reached for the box of gloves and pulled out a pair. White and lightly powdered, they would reduce even further any chance that the oils of her skin could corrupt the aged and fragile pages she was about to read. Gloves on, Dulcie took her seat at the long white table. Although she could have found the box she wanted blindfolded, it was Griddlehaus’s prerogative to retrieve it and place it, opened, before her.
