Grey Dawn

by Clea Simon

  ‘Dulcie, I don’t think this is a good idea.’ Josh put the box down and knelt beside her. ‘Please, let me call an ambulance.’ She shook her head. There was too much she needed to sort through. ‘Is there anyone I can call for you then?’

  Chris. She started to explain, when it hit her. ‘You said you and Mina were going to move in together, right?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He nodded. ‘Still are, I hope. I wanted to start looking at apartments, you know, for the spring. But she said she had to clear something up first.’

  ‘I bet.’ Dulcie felt the pieces falling into place. ‘So, Mina hadn’t found out that you were related, like distant cousins or something?’

  ‘What? No.’ He was definite about the negative now. ‘That’s crazy. I don’t even know much of my family history.’

  ‘You’re not from some old Colonial family? Blakely?’

  He was shaking his head again. ‘No, all my grandparents came over from Poland. On my dad’s side, they changed it from Plakowicz. Thought it sounded more, I don’t know. More American.’

  ‘Which Mina would know, if she were into genealogy and all.’ Dulcie struggled to get to her feet.

  ‘I told you.’ Josh stood and gave her his hand. ‘That was Emily’s thing. Not Mina’s. I mean, Emily was trying to help Mina out – she might even have found some evidence that Mina is related to

  the woman she’s studying. But Mina doesn’t care about that stuff. Emily’s the one who’s descended from some big-deal British family. Coat of arms and everything.’

  ‘Coat of arms, huh?’ Dulcie felt more like herself now, if not necessarily better, and when Josh lifted Tigger’s box, she reached for it. Somehow hugging the kitten’s carrier to her chest steadied her. She looked down through the ventilation holes. Two blue eyes stared back. ‘I must have been distracted.’

  It wasn’t until they were in the lobby of the police headquarters once again that Dulcie realized how she must look. The young man behind the counter did a double take and ran out to greet her.

  ‘Miss, please, sit down.’ He tried to take the box from her, as he ushered her into a chair, but she held on. ‘I’m calling an ambulance.’

  ‘No, not yet,’ said Dulcie. She’d made it this far. ‘But Detective Rogovoy – is he busy?’

  ‘Hang on.’ The receptionist and Josh exchanged a glance, and then he ran back around his desk to his phone. ‘He’ll be right out.’

  ‘I guess his interview never showed,’ Dulcie said. Josh looked confused, and she realized she hadn’t explained. Well, she was tired. Her head hurt. They could all hear it together.

  Dulcie didn’t know what the receptionist had said on the phone, but the way Rogovoy came lumbering out of the back offices made her worry for his heart.

  ‘I’m fine. Really,’ she said. ‘I mean, I’ll go get checked out after.’

  ‘After?’ He was leaning over her, close enough that her eyes were starting to cross.

  ‘I figured it out,’ she said. Inside his box, the kitten was pacing. Dulcie could feel his weight shift as he moved. ‘It was Emily. Emily Trainor all along.’

  Rogovoy looked from her to Josh, who shrugged. Then they both turned back to her.

  ‘It was all in her approach. I tried to explain, Detective. I did. The clues were all there. You see, Emily kept trying to cast Mina as this strict post-structuralist, viewing everything in absolutes. But Mina had moved beyond that. I mean, she took all these political classes. Gone into history and lit. She was seeing everything in context. Almost new-historical, really. Emily thought she was losing her. I mean, she wasn’t – not really.’

  Dulcie paused, thinking of herself and Suze, friends forever. Her head was throbbing, though, and she needed to get this out. ‘Emily tried to win her back,’ she said. ‘She was into genealogy and she’d dug up some wild history, tracking down one of Mina’s ancestors and tying her into this woman Mina was studying. What she didn’t expect to uncover was that her own family had crossed paths with Mina’s a few hundred years ago, with unpleasant consequences. Mina didn’t care – but Emily did.

  ‘What happened next was probably just really bad timing. Mina and Josh were planning on moving in together. Mina knew that Emily was fragile. She told Josh she had to clear something up before they started looking for a place. That ‘something’ was breaking the news to Emily.

  ‘I think she told Emily, and Emily freaked. I think she attacked her. Wildly – like an animal. Like her great-great-great-whatever had done. And from that point on, Emily started to spiral out of control. She blamed Josh, of course. Tried to make out that he was the bad apple from a bad tree, and that she was the victim. That she was the one who had been attacked. That she was the one with the limp, even.’ Dulcie shook her head. The dizziness was back, and she fought it off. She had more to say.

  ‘I don’t understand it all, but I think it’s got to do with guilt. Friendships can be difficult, and Emily – Emily was an absolutist. But there’s a conflict – a conflict between the experience and the abstract. It’s all in the theory, if you just look at it.’ She closed her eyes, felt the kitten moving. There was more she had to say. ‘Oh, and Thorpe isn’t a werewolf. At least, I don’t think he is.’

  ‘We’re taking you to the hospital,’ said Rogovoy. It was the last thing she heard.

  FIFTY

  White. The world was white, and too bright to bear. Dulcie flinched away from the painful light of the moon.

  ‘She’s awake.’ It was Chris, and she blinked open her eyes to see his sweet face, pale and worried, hovering above her. ‘Dulcie, you’re awake.’

  ‘Of course I am.’ Her head hurt and she was annoyed. And then, suddenly, concerned. ‘Where’s the kitten?’

  ‘In the nurse’s lounge.’ A stranger appeared, with a small flashlight. ‘With some water and the insides of a tuna sandwich.’ The light was small, but very bright. ‘Follow the light with your eyes, please.’

  ‘Do you have to shine it right in my eyes?’ Dulcie protested, but let her eyes move back and forth anyway. The doctor clucked with what sounded like approval and withdrew. ‘Is Detective Rogovoy here?’

  ‘Of course.’ The gruff voice announced the detective’s presence, just outside her line of sight. ‘You weren’t out long.’

  ‘I was out?’ Dulcie tried to shake her head, but Chris’s hand came up to her cheek. That was nicer.

  ‘You gave us all a scare.’ He was smiling now. ‘I gather you kept refusing to go to health services.’

  ‘I had to talk to Rogovoy. I had to tell him about Emily.’

  ‘And give me a lecture on literary theory along the way.’ The big face appeared over Chris’s shoulder. ‘Don’t worry. We sent a car for her. Didn’t want you to be angry with me.’

  ‘I was. But not because …’ It was all too confusing.

  ‘We had our suspicions,’ he kept talking. ‘I was going to ask her about some coincidences. There were some reports that should have been red flags. A women’s group had had its bulletin board vandalized. The other room-mate – the one who had been assigned to live with Mina and Emily freshman year? She had reported some threats. It was all coming together.’

  Dulcie nodded, gingerly. ‘She faked her own attack, didn’t she?’ It was a pity. That first sound she’d heard, almost like a roar. Dulcie had wanted to believe that the kitten hadn’t been abandoned in that alley, but had gone there to apprehend, to warn … No, it didn’t bear thinking about.

  ‘We think so,’ Rogovoy said. ‘The bruises on her neck could have been self-inflicted. Probably were, from what one of the shrinks here has been telling me. Also, that area was fairly heavily trafficked that night, and nobody saw anything. Maybe more to the point, nobody heard anything until after you’d found the kitten.’

  ‘So she wasn’t hurt, she was hiding.’ Dulcie paused. ‘Or waiting for someone.’ If it weren’t for the kitten … Maybe he had played a more benign role, keeping watch on Emily – and on Dulcie.

  ‘But
why Professor Showalter? Or was that a random mugging.’

  Rogovoy shook his head. ‘We’ve interviewed her. She described meeting a student who was a little too interested in some biographical papers she’d written about in some journal. That’s what was in her bag when she was attacked. Copies of some old letters. Papers that I gather she was going to pass along to you.’

  Of course. Dulcie had been telling the semi-conscious Mina about them. Emily had just been there. Dulcie thought of the dark curtains. Emily must have been lurking – and listening. Emily had thought Dulcie had the documents already. That was why she’d attacked her. Because even though Dulcie hadn’t responded, Emily must have thought the professor had left a package for her at the hotel. And if Dulcie shared an interest with the professor – and with Mina – then she was another threat. Another interloper planning on coming between the two room-mates.

  ‘Mina knew.’ Dulcie murmured. She was suddenly very sleepy. ‘She tried to say something when I said Emily’s name. She tried to warn me.’

  ‘We know.’ It was Josh again, leaning over her, a big grin splitting his wide, innocent face. ‘She’s woken up, Dulcie. She’s still groggy, but she’s awake. She’s going to be fine.’

  ‘It’ll be a while before we piece it all together,’ Rogovoy cut in. ‘There are still a lot of questions.’

  ‘Which can all wait till morning.’ The doctor, again. ‘You’ve seen her, and now she needs her rest.’ Chris started to protest, but the doctor cut in. ‘Head injuries are tricky, so we’re going to keep her under observation for twenty-four hours. If all goes well, she can go home in the morning.’

  ‘Tell Esmé I’m okay.’ Dulcie looked up at her boyfriend as he bent to kiss her. ‘She’s been … I understand now.’

  ‘I’ll do better than that, Dulcie.’ His hand cupped her cheek and he blinked back tears. ‘Now you go to sleep.’

  ‘The kitten …’ She was slipping under, she could feel it.

  ‘I’ll take him home,’ Chris was saying, as he leaned forward to kiss the unbandaged part of her forehead. ‘I’m sure he and Esmé will have a lot to catch up on.’

  FIFTY-ONE

  ‘’Twas not love, but Madness. A bewitching of the Senses, much as the moonlight o’er those mountains do bedevil those poor foul Beasts, driving them to such a State.’ She spoke these words unwilling, her face turned still to the coach’s leathern side. Before her, still, the Stranger sat, the warmth of those strange green eyes holding her, though she would not meet their gaze. ‘’Twas madness that lured me in, beyond the point of Reason or recompense. Beyond – nay, I will not name Remorse – for am I not so bless’d now that I would suffer all again. Suffer gladly, if only …’

  Her voice declined, carried off by the wind that howl’d still through the barred door. Still, the Stranger watched, waiting for a moment or a Sign. His emerald eyes, glowing, beheld the young woman, her raven hair loose. His eyes lit upon her gloved hands, cradling her belly as if to protect that of which she dare not speak.

  Dulcie woke with a gasp. Pregnant! The heroine of the unnamed manuscript was pregnant? Could that mean …?

  She reached for the glass of water on the nightstand, taking a moment to acclimate herself. Yes, she was in the infirmary. Yes, she had been hit on the head, which doubtless contributed to the odd three-dimensional quality of her dream. Still, despite its extraordinary vividness – Dulcie had seen the characters and heard their voices, speaking the lines of what sounded like the book. And the dream was in character with so many she had had before that she trusted it. She had to: it explained so many things.

  She tried to sit up and, with a groan, sank back into her pillow. The sudden movement had started her head throbbing. It had also woken her critical instincts. What was she thinking? Just because the storyline suggested something … Just because an undergrad’s research was following a certain woman who was best described as a survivor, a woman who had been brutalized and fled, along with her child. That didn’t mean this woman was a certain author, an English émigré in Philadelphia who may have born a child as a result of rape …

  The biggest fallacy in literary theory was mistaking your author for her characters. Dulcie had had this argument with Thorpe many times. And while he was enough of a postmodernist to let her get away with her particular mix of content and context, this would be taking it too far.

  If her dream was accurate, and the heroine of the fragmentary manuscript was dealing with an unintended and possibly unwanted pregnancy, that was interesting in and of itself. Her author, as Dulcie well knew, had basically been an early feminist. What better way to discuss the standards of her time than to take on the saga of a single mother who seemed to be fleeing the father of her child. That did not mean that such a pregnancy, such a relationship were behind the author’s own flight from London to Philadelphia. It did not account for those years of silence, for the hint that she’d hidden her name and written under a pseudonym.

  Or did it? Dulcie closed her eyes. So many years as a scholar, so much literary theory, and it came down to this. She had to admit the truth. She, Dulcie Schwartz, identified so strongly with this writer’s characters – with Hermetria in The Ravages of Umbria, with this unnamed woman – that she believed she was reading about the author.

  It didn’t have to be. The book was still compelling as a narrative, its language and imagery striking. Plus, it worked so well as metaphor: the woman in the coach was every woman, for wasn’t every woman – possibly every person – ultimately alone in the world, fleeing the past for a future that was dark and unknown. And the wolves? Well, they could easily be the author’s way of dramatizing the societal forces that would come howling after such a woman. And the green-eyed stranger could be the inner voice that calmed one, kind of like …

  ‘There we go.’ The curtain around her bed slid back, revealing a smiling aide with a breakfast tray. ‘Would you like to sit up?’

  She managed it this time, slowly and with a little help, and found that her appetite had returned with a vengeance, even for what appeared to be powdered scrambled eggs and toast that had gone cold. The food left her feeling stronger and more clear-headed.

  ‘Excuse me, do you think I’ll be able to leave soon?’ The aide was opening the blinds, his back toward her, which was good. The bright sun streaming in had made Dulcie wince, waking a new and piercing pain behind her eyes. She looked away and was managing a smile by the time he turned around.

  ‘I would imagine the doctor wants to see you first,’ he said. ‘But it looks like you’re doing well to me.’

  With that, he was off, leaving Dulcie to scrape up the last of those soggy eggs. If she could get out today, she’d head straight for the Mildon. Surely, after all that had happened, she could take another day or two to seek out more of that manuscript. It might even be called therapeutic. If she could find some pages …

  Gingerly, aware that any motion seemed to make that headache worse, she swung her legs over the side of the bed. A cabinet, off to the side, would at least have her phone. She could call Chris or – she checked the clock – email him. She was in luck: her bag had been tucked in, behind her sneakers. In a minute, she had the breakfast tray on the windowsill and was back in bed, the laptop purring and assembling itself on the tray in front of her.

  Good morning, sweetie!She fired off an email to Chris. I’m awake and feeling great. Hope to be home soon.

  As soon as that was sent off, she flipped over to her own new mail. There was a flood of messages. Of course, she figured, Chris had probably told all their friends what had happened. There was even something from Rogovoy, she saw. Well, he probably had loose ends to tie up – or maybe he wanted to thank her. She’d deal with that in a minute. What caught her eye was another address: RSHOWALTER.

  Greetings,the short note began. I’ve been thinking about our brief talk and have decided to scan one of the pages I had mentioned. As you are no doubt aware, it is difficult to copy such delicate documents but I want
ed to give you an idea of what I had. These were found in a private collection in Philadelphia, but they seem to belong to the author we were discussing. This is not the biographical material I had mentioned, but a text that may be more directly related to the material previously gifted to the Mildon. I’ve received some queries about these papers from an undergrad at your college who is not, I believe, aware of their full literary implications. You may want to contact her at some point, but we should speak first. The curator who came across this mentioned a package of letters that may contain additional corroborative biographical material. Maybe you can locate? Hope to be back in Cambridge next month, but am accessible online. – Renée.

  Another student? An undergrad? A stab of jealousy aggravated Dulcie’s headache, and she fought the urge to shake it off. She had already told Mina about her discovery. Clearly, Professor Showalter had decided Dulcie was the more deserving candidate, but she could share – she wouldshare. First, however, she had to see what there was. She clicked on the attachment. The professor had not only copied what looked like a scrap of paper, she had provided her own translation of the elegant, but faded writing below. After a quick scan of the familiar writing, Dulcie skimmed down to the professor’s translation and started to read:

  ‘There may be solace found,’ said the Stranger, his green eyes warm as coals. It was the same book. ‘Though the hazard be great, Love is worth such risk, and in generation, we find our fortunes …’

  ‘Well, I don’t know if you should be working on a laptop just yet.’ Dulcie looked up to see grey hair and a white coat. ‘Why don’t I put that aside while we check you out?’

  ‘Hang on.’ Dulcie made sure she’d saved the file before letting the doctor take her computer away. Then she submitted to a series of questions, and that probing light, all the while trying to downplay the throbbing behind her eyes.

  ‘I don’t know …’ The doctor seemed to be considering, wrinkles of concern framing her own grey-green eyes.