Into the Grey

by Clea Simon

  ‘Professor?’ She put her hand on the door, resting it on the wood beside the glass. If it was, in fact, somehow secured, then no harm would be done. If not, she could peek inside and then pull it firmly shut. Unlike the absent-minded academic, she would make sure it was latched.

  ‘It’s me, Dulcie Schwartz.’ She made one last attempt at introducing herself, shaking off the image of her late, great cat, before giving the door a gentle shove.

  ‘Professor?’

  But Professor Fenderby did not answer her. Not even as Dulcie gasped and tumbled backward, knocking two oversize journals off that loaded book cart as she fell. For Professor Roland Fenderby was unaware of the graduate student who gasped for the breath to call out for help. Unaware of the struggling scholar whose work he had torpedoed and who now stared at his still form, lying on the floor of his office, among the scattered papers and clutter of the day. Unaware of the new form of horror his bloated body aroused, as he lay there, cold and still and apparently very dead.

  SIX

  Screaming would have been the appropriate response. When Dulcie opened her mouth, however, she found herself struck mute. Some of it was surprise – of the many options she had considered, finding Roland Fenderby prone on the floor was not one of them. Some of it was her ingrained training. No matter what the provocation, one simply did not scream in a library.

  Instead, Dulcie emitted a soft squeak, rather like what Esmé would produce. The sound, however, did suffice to break her out of her stupor.

  ‘Professor Fenderby?’ Once she found her voice, even in its current breathless form, Dulcie realized that she needed to act – and that her initial impression might have been incorrect. ‘Are you – all right?’

  It was a ludicrous question. What she really meant was, ‘Are you still alive?’ However, those words refused to form in her mouth, and so Dulcie followed up her own query by stepping into the cluttered office and gingerly reaching for the professor’s shoulder. ‘Professor?’

  With a sound like a sigh and yet somehow most disturbingly not, his head fell back, exposing the gaping wound at his temple. It was an odd sight – red and clotting – set off further by the white and crumpled papers that lay beneath. Most were printed: ‘ENG 101,’ she read. ‘METAPHOR AND THE USE,’ the rest of the title obscured by ‘CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT IN THE SUCCESSIVE WORKS OF,’ the sheet overlaying it. Another, a small handwritten scrap, lay on top that. ‘Your little blossom,’ Dulcie read in a daze, noting the graceful cursive as much as the blood spatter that marked it. There was something poignant about it: perhaps the personal touch, the old-fashioned script. Amid the surrounding clutter – more typed pages, an old plate, and a twist of ribbon as if from a long-ago birthday present – it seemed set apart from the damage. The awful, bloody damage. As Dulcie watched, the color seemed to spread, the slight movement perhaps shifting the balance of paper and fluids. Behind her, in the stacks, a timer clicked. A light switched off, leaving her in shadow. And that was when Dulcie jumped back and ran out the door.

  ‘Help. Help!’ She pushed the cart out of the way and stumbled, once more. If there were any students on the floor, she didn’t see them. Scrambling to her feet, she could barely breathe, let alone call, and so she made a beeline for the elevator. For the surface. Even once she reached the main entrance, Dulcie found it hard to get the words out. Found it hard to stay steady, even, as she grasped the edge of the guard’s desk and gasped for the breath to articulate the thoughts crowding her head. ‘Fenderby,’ she managed at last. ‘Level Two. Dead,’ she said at last. And then the great entrance hall started spinning and people were shouting, and then she was done with it all.

  ‘Ms Schwartz?’ A familiar voice was calling to her. A soft touch, like the pad of a cat’s paw, was patting her cheek, and Dulcie opened her eyes to see a pair of oversized glasses staring down at her.

  ‘Mr Griddlehaus!’ She started to sit up, but other hands held her shoulders. ‘What’s happening?’ She turned and realized she was lying on the floor. Behind her, a clerk whose name escaped her had his hands on her shoulders. Behind him, she could see her friend Ruby from circulation, her round face creased with concern.

  ‘You blacked out,’ the librarian said, his voice soft with concern. ‘Please, maybe you should lie still until the EMTs get here.’

  ‘EMTs!’ She struggled to sit up as memory returned, pulling free of the hands on her shoulders. ‘Professor Fenderby – he’s hurt. He’s …’

  She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. But there was no need to say more. The faces watching her were all nodding.

  ‘We know,’ said Griddlehaus, as Ruby reached forward to take her hand.

  ‘Oh!’ Ruby pulled back, and Dulcie looked down. Her hand was covered with rusty smears. Sticky, too. A wave of dizziness crept over her, and she turned away, licking dry lips. ‘My bag,’ she said, determined to focus elsewhere. ‘Where’s my bag?’

  ‘You’re …’ Griddlehaus turned around to look as Dulcie stood, careful to hold her bloodied hands away from her body.

  ‘I hope I didn’t leave it …’ The idea of going back down to Fenderby’s office made her sway.

  ‘Careful there, Miss.’ A young uniformed cop grabbed her upper arms, steadying her as she clambered to her feet. ‘Maybe you should sit back down.’

  ‘No.’ The panic was wearing off, leaving Dulcie irritable. ‘I need my bag. It has my computer and all my work.’

  ‘It’s safe,’ the officer said. ‘You dropped it.’

  ‘You have my bag?’ She turned to really look at him now. His age, she guessed – mid-twenties – but a good five inches taller and certainly a lot less soft around the middle; he didn’t look happy under her scrutiny. He didn’t look away, either.

  ‘Please, Miss.’ His voice was calm and deep. ‘I’ll have someone fetch it. But may we have a look through it? Why don’t you sit, Miss?’

  That last was to Ruby, who was pushing a rolling chair toward Dulcie.

  ‘Come on, Dulcie,’ she said. ‘We don’t want you to keel over again.’

  ‘OK,’ said Dulcie. She was talking to Ruby, but the young cop nodded and walked away.

  More to comply with her friend’s wishes than because she thought it necessary, Dulcie sat. Griddlehaus was still standing before her, wringing his hands. The motion made her suddenly very conscious of her own.

  ‘Ruby?’ She looked up at her friend. ‘Do you still have those wet wipes?’

  ‘Sure thing.’ Ruby turned toward her desk, only to be interrupted by the young cop.

  ‘Hang on, please.’ They stood, frozen, while he went off to speak with an older man in an ill-fitting suit jacket. When he turned back, he nodded. ‘You’re OK.’

  ‘Sheesh.’ Two minutes later, Dulcie was scrubbing at her cuticles. On the damp surface of the wipe, the sticky brown had turned an alarming red and so she focused instead on cleaning. ‘Now I know how Esmé feels,’ she said, and was rewarded by a smile.

  ‘Now you’re sounding like yourself again.’ Ruby had pulled a second chair up and sat, facing her friend. Griddlehaus still stood, his drawn face eloquent.

  ‘Please, Mr Griddlehaus.’ Dulcie looked up at him, concerned. ‘I’m fine. And Professor Fenderby, well … it has to have been an accident.’

  ‘I don’t know, Dulce.’ Ruby leaned in. ‘You haven’t seen all the cops coming in.’

  Dulcie looked up at the mousy librarian for confirmation – and was struck by a sudden hopeful thought. ‘Mr Griddlehaus,’ she asked, her voice tentative. ‘Do you think this means that I can see those pages now? I mean, I feel awful about Professor Fenderby, but surely his proscription can no longer be valid.’

  ‘I don’t know, Ms Schwartz.’ Surely, those weren’t tears making his eyes so large. ‘I’m afraid we may have to wait until all this—’ He gestured, making Dulcie aware of the hubbub around them. ‘Until this matter is cleared.’

  ‘Bother,’ Dulcie muttered. ‘And I guess they’ve got other things to worry abou
t than getting me my bag back.’ She caught herself as if hearing how she sounded for the first time. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I know the library gives me all sorts of leeway. But … maybe?’

  She looked up at Ruby. Her friend worked up here, in circulation, where everybody knew her. Plus, perhaps because of her position here or perhaps because of her size, she emanated a gentle authority. ‘Ruby, do you think that you could ask?’

  ‘I’ll try. You know I’d do anything for you, Dulcie.’ With a smile that looked a little forced to Dulcie, her friend stood and made her way over to the nearest grouping of police.

  ‘I can’t believe this is happening.’ She turned toward Griddlehaus, as he sat in the vacant seat. Before he could respond, Ruby was rushing back.

  ‘You’re not getting your bag back anytime soon.’ The smile was gone. ‘I gather you gave them permission to search it?’

  Dulcie shook her head, confused.

  ‘Well, they seem to think you did,’ Ruby said with a sniff. ‘They’ve handed it off to one of their so-called experts. They tried to shoo me away, but I heard them talking about a search. They’re saying that Fenderby’s – that it looked intentional, Dulcie. They’re looking for a weapon.’

  SEVEN

  ‘I can’t believe you said you wanted to kill him.’ Trista’s voice wasn’t helping Dulcie’s headache. ‘I mean, you specifically said you wanted to bludgeon him, right? Over his comments?’

  Dulcie didn’t nod. Instead, she grunted what she hoped sounded like assent and lay back on the sofa. Her friend had called her soon after she’d gotten home, having already heard the news. Now as she lay back on the sofa, a cold compress over her eyes, she began to wish she hadn’t picked up.

  ‘They can’t take that seriously as motive, though.’ Trista seemed quite happy to carry on the conversation by herself. ‘Not with everything that bastard has done.’

  ‘I don’t know, Tris,’ Dulcie managed to reply. She could hear Esmé bounding around the other room, apparently in hot pursuit of prey. A toy, she hoped, rather than anything living. ‘I mean, I’d have to have been pretty stupid …’

  She let the sentence trail off. The officer who had questioned her had gone over every second of her morning up until that fateful encounter. By the time he had spoken to her, he seemed to have already heard about her outburst in the department office. She’d told him the rest, about going to the Mildon and then to Fenderby’s apartment. No, she didn’t have a receipt from the coffee house, but surely if questioned the clerk would remember that someone had bought the last iced lemon scone shortly before noon. Maybe they could check her bags for crumbs, while they were at it.

  ‘Where was that detective you know?’ Trista’s voice broke into her recollection. ‘Big guy, looks like a pile of rocks?’

  ‘Rogovoy.’ Dulcie had wondered the same thing. It wasn’t that she expected special treatment. A criminal investigation wasn’t a library. But she had helped the university police before and the ogre-like detective did know her. ‘He’s on assignment, someone said. Some special task force.’

  ‘They should call him back!’ Trista’s affronted tone finally roused Dulcie to sit up.

  ‘I’m sure this will all blow over,’ she said, with more conviction than she felt. ‘It’s just really bad timing. And with those pages being sequestered and my bag … Oh, Trista, I was getting so close.’

  ‘I know, Dulce.’ Trista did. She’d nearly lost it finishing her own thesis, and even though she complained often and loudly about life as a post-doc fellow, Dulcie knew her friend would never minimize the last desperate struggle to finish a dissertation. ‘Believe me. And Fenderby, well, I can’t think of anyone who will miss him.’

  ‘Tris …’ Tempted as she was to agree with her friend, Dulcie had a flash of a rundown woman holding a trowel. ‘He was married.’

  ‘She’ll be better off.’

  That was harsh, even for Trista. ‘I think I’ve got to go,’ said Dulcie. ‘My head …’

  ‘Sure, hon.’ Her friend sounded distracted, or maybe that was regret speaking. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gone on. You wouldn’t want to go out tonight, would you?’

  ‘No, thanks.’ Dulcie almost smiled. Trista was only being loyal. ‘Chris will be home soon, and he’s getting takeout.’

  ‘You’re in good hands, then. Mary Chung’s, I hope.’ Trista might not ever be the homebody that Dulcie was, but she appreciated good dumplings.

  ‘Better be,’ Dulcie answered. For the first time since mid-morning, she began to feel hungry. As if she’d been eavesdropping, her cat came bouncing into the living room and jumped onto the sofa beside Dulcie. ‘Esmé’s here. I swear, she knows when I’m talking about food.’

  ‘You better take care of her, then,’ Trista said. ‘And I should get going.’

  ‘Have fun.’ Dulcie reached to pull the chubby black and white cat into her arms.

  ‘I will,’ said her friend. ‘And I’ll report back.’ Dulcie waited, stroking her pet’s sleek black back. Something in Trista’s voice told her that her friend had more on her mind.

  ‘Hasn’t it occurred to you that the police know an awful lot about how you spent your morning?’ Trista said after a moment’s pause. ‘Don’t you want to know who’s talking?’

  And with that, Dulcie wasn’t hungry any more.

  ‘Trista’s a troublemaker.’ Chris’s take was straightforward. ‘And she’s getting worse. I can’t believe she said that about that poor professor.’

  ‘She was only defending me, Chris. She knows how his criticism upset me.’ Dulcie felt honor bound to speak up for her buddy, even as she silently acknowledged the truth in Chris’s words.

  ‘She’s become really touchy about everything.’ Her boyfriend, unloading the paper bags he’d brought in, didn’t see the pained expression on Dulcie’s face. ‘Jerry’s not the kind to complain, but I’ve been with him when she calls.’

  ‘Good thing nobody’s eavesdropping on us.’ Dulcie kept her voice neutral at the mention of Trista’s longtime boyfriend, but mentally she tried to remember the last time she’d seen them together. Her own sweetheart’s arrival had started to dissolve the knot in the pit of her stomach. The fragrant containers spread around them had helped too. She really didn’t want to think about squabbling couples or romance gone sour. ‘You got moo shi, too?’

  ‘Yeah, I wasn’t sure what you’d be in the mood for.’ He grabbed a dumpling, depositing another on Dulcie’s plate. ‘So I got everything. But saying that his wife would be better off?’

  ‘Chris, please.’ Dulcie thought back to her odd encounter. ‘She’s a sad woman, and this is going to be awful for her.’

  He shut up then, and they ate in silence for a few minutes. Esmé, who’d had her own dinner, curled in Dulcie’s lap. It wasn’t until the dumplings were gone that Dulcie brought up the incident again.

  ‘Don’t you think it’s weird?’ She reached for the rice.

  ‘That Trista’s blaming the victim?’ He’d softened the edge in his voice, but Dulcie still heard it.

  ‘No,’ she answered, hoping she sounded definitive. ‘That they’re keeping my bag.’

  ‘I think it’s protocol,’ Chris said, as if it were the answer. Maybe, thought Dulcie, that was because he was an applied math scholar, so to him it was. ‘I mean, you were the one to report the crime—’

  ‘I found him, Chris.’ As much as she wanted comfort, she wasn’t going to let him soft-pedal the situation. ‘I pushed open the door and found him lying there.’

  ‘Yes, and you were heard making outlandish threats earlier in the day.’ He seemed to sense that arguing would do more harm than good. ‘And so I’m sure there’s a certain amount of data they have to gather.’

  ‘Data.’ She scooped more rice into her bowl. ‘There were only three people in the office that morning. Nancy, Alyson, and Tom—’

  ‘That you know of,’ Chris interrupted. ‘You were in that tiny side room, right? You don’t know if any
other students were coming in or out of the building. And, besides,’ he said, before she could break in. ‘That doesn’t mean anything. Nancy is a law-abiding type. She may have felt compelled to report what you said.’

  ‘I can’t believe that.’ Dulcie shook her head. ‘Why would she?’

  ‘Because the police asked?’ Chris sounded so reasonable, Dulcie found it hard to argue. At least for now she was home, safe and warm.

  EIGHT

  ’Twas all she could do to keep the Candle lit against the Night, and by its guttered Light she penned what well could be her final Resolve, her words the Chain that would bind forever as they reveal’d that which she kept hidden. Outside, the Thunder crack’d, the Fury of the Tempest too fierce for one lone traveler to bear. The Ship would founder, it would Fail, so too her Secret would be carried down beneath the Mountainous waves …

  Dulcie woke, breathless, her heart pounding. Whether because of that horror she’d witnessed the day before, or the spicy dumplings which had seemed like an appropriate comfort after, she had tossed and turned until even Esmé had given up, jumping to the floor with an annoyed grunt sometime before dawn.

  Dulcie had managed to get back to sleep, as the bedroom she shared with Chris began to lighten. But it hadn’t been an easy rest, and a few hours later, bleary-eyed, she had shuffled into the kitchen to find her boyfriend already gone. And although he’d left a cheery note by her mug, suggesting that perhaps she might want to take the morning easy, the idea of being alone – even alone with Esmé – didn’t particularly appeal.

  Instead, she shuffled off to campus, hoping for something akin to normalcy, or at least a mug of Nancy’s good coffee. Trista, who had beaten her to the departmental office, seemed to have had an equally bad night. In fact, from the way she bundled Dulcie off into a corner, Dulcie wondered if she’d been to sleep at all. There was a frantic edge to her friend, one that no amount of Nancy’s coffee could explain.