by Clea Simon
But Dulcie had work to do. She had settled on her thesis topic only that summer after uncovering what she believed was the hidden subtext in its flowery prose, and she was desperate to get her ideas on paper. Even without Bullock’s ‘status report’ deadline, she wanted to get started before another scholar stumbled over what she considered her breakthrough.
But before she could air her own theories, Dulcie had to be able to base her thesis in good, solid scholarship. She’d been making notes for months now, jotting down the linguistic discrepancies between the heroine and her sidekick. She’d even gone back to a bunch of the book’s contemporaries, trying to find out what the author might have been reading and what might have influenced her. This was important, even if it wasn’t progress of the sort that Professor Bullock wanted. No matter what her mentor said, she needed to find out more about the author of The Ravages if she was going to write her own work with any kind of authority.
Maybe the key was, like those other clues, in the text? That emerald reference seemed to echo in her mind. Perhaps there were other phrases like that one, other images that would lead a careful reader back to the truth. She’d been so focused on the new kitten lately; maybe she’d missed something. And so, without waiting for the professor or his aging waif of an assistant to show her out, she shoved her papers back into the bag, along with the three books she’d been hoping to discuss and the laptop with all her notes. Hefting it all on to her shoulder, she let herself out the heavy front door. Had Hermetria felt like this, when she left the castle keep up on that Umbrian mountain? Had she breathed the free air with relief, before descending the romantically rocky equivalent of the professor’s slate stoop?
She must have, Dulcie thought. Because Hermetria was really just like her. A woman against the odds, destined to triumph. And with that happy thought, she nearly skipped down the tall, dirty stairs, and right into the corpse that lay across the path.
TWO
The deceased was Cameron Dessay, one-time Anglo-French wunderkind of Comparative Lit and relative newcomer to the English Department. Known simply as ‘De-sigh’ among a sizable proportion of the female student body, Cameron had been not only a brilliant researcher, but charming – in multiple languages. However, the pale, fine-featured face that had inspired so many hopeless aspirations now lay unnaturally still, the glossy black locks matted with blood that had flowed from a small but distinct wound in the bare, white throat.
Unable to speak as she was ushered back into the house, Dulcie slipped from shock into a dank, wet pool of guilt. She had not been one of Cameron’s admirers. Besides her basic distrust of Cameron’s playboy reputation, there was the class issue. Cameron had come into the department last year, but everyone knew his heart was in English-French comparative literature, just as everyone knew that Comp Lit looked down on the English Department as simplistic. Archaic. And possibly stupid. The straight English Lit types had rallied back, pooh-poohing the Comp Lit types as dilettantes, with Cameron as their poster boy. A lightweight who drove around in a fancy car and dressed better than any grad student had a right to. A hedonist. A cold, dead . . . No, no matter what she had thought of her dashing colleague, this was not how she wanted to remember him. But when she closed her eyes to block out the image, it only grew stronger in her mind. The cut looked so small and strange, so wrong in that smooth white skin. His green eyes frozen, like glass.
‘Miss? Are you okay?’ The uniform who had walked her back into Professor Bullock’s house looked worried. Dulcie nodded and tried to smile. ‘It’s only that you’re awfully pale.’
‘I always am.’ Dulcie tried to reassure the young cop. Still, she took his advice and put her head down between her knees. Spots appeared – the same shape as that wound – and she blinked them away, staring at the book bag that she’d dropped as he led her to a seat. Was that . . .? Yes, she reached beneath the bag’s closing flap and pulled out a single white whisker. The kitten must have gotten into the bag overnight. Dulcie twirled the stiff strand as her breathing became easier. During their few months together, that kitten had already managed to get into everything, she thought, smiling to herself. The whisker – or thoughts of the inquisitive young cat – had banished the spots, but Dulcie kept playing with the long white hair, her head down over the bag. That young cop had his pad out. He was going to start asking questions, and right now she was happy just to breathe.
‘Excuse me.’ She heard the uniform stand up and step away. Good. There wasn’t much she could tell him, anyway. Cameron had just been . . . there. She closed her eyes. ‘Ma’am?’
Dulcie looked up, but the cop wasn’t talking to her. Out in the hallway, some murmuring was met by a shriek and a thud. Conquering her own queasiness, Dulcie ran to look.
‘No! Professor!’ Three uniformed cops gathered around a slumped form, surrounded by books. Of course Polly Heinhold, perpetual grad student and Bullock’s part-time housekeeper, would be a fainter. Skin so pale she was almost translucent, colorless eyes always rimmed in red, Polly looked like one of the ghostly spirits from Dulcie’s novels. Dulcie might be fair-skinned, more prone to freckle than to tan, but Polly was spectral, with white-blonde hair that hung as lank as seaweed. The older woman served as a cautionary tale, too. Rumor had it that Polly had been in the graduate program for at least seven years, which meant that any academic status she’d once had was now iffy, if it existed at all. Instead, somewhere along the line, all those endless meetings had morphed into her doing errands – and then laundry. Departmental rumor had it that she rented a tiny garret over in Davis Square, one of the few neighborhoods grad students could still afford alone. But for all intents and purposes, her life was here, in Professor Bullock’s house, and had been for the greater part of a decade. And while nobody dared to ask, there had been no hint of a thesis in that life – or in the works – for many of those years. There but for the grace of God go I, thought Dulcie, and went to help the poor woman.
‘Polly? Are you okay?’ Pushing her way between the uniforms, Dulcie reached the seated woman and helped her up. ‘Let’s go sit someplace more comfortable, shall we?’ Although the older student – if student she still was – stood a good three inches taller than Dulcie, she felt light as a feather. Or maybe, Dulcie thought, feeling the pale woman’s arm, a bat’s wing. ‘When did you last eat, Polly?’
‘The book . . .’ A limp hand reached out for a volume that lay face up, its pages slowly turning.
‘We can pick those up later.’ Dulcie closed the offending volume and helped the other woman over to the sitting room.
‘The professor! The professor!’ Sinking down into a moth-eaten settee, Polly looked around frantically.
‘He’s fine, Polly. He’s in the back.’ Actually, Dulcie didn’t know where the police had taken the professor. He’d shown up not when she first screamed, but after she had scrambled back up the steps, ringing the bell and pounding on the tall wooden doors furiously; then he’d gone to call 911. Still, since the cop had seated her in the front room, his office seemed like a good bet.
‘Miss, do you mind?’ Dulcie looked down to a hand on her upper arm. Her cop – the young one – was pulling at her gently. ‘If you’re up for some questions?’ She looked back at Polly, who seemed able to sit and willing to stop shrieking. An older cop stood waiting for her.
‘Sure.’ Dulcie let herself be led into the kitchen, which someone – undoubtedly Polly – had kept reasonably clean. ‘May I have some water?’
The officer jumped to fill a glass for her, and then refill it. Dulcie hadn’t realized how thirsty she was. But the drink, and the distraction of Polly, had her feeling a bit more like herself. It didn’t help the young cop, though.
‘All I can tell you is it – he – wasn’t there when I came in.’ She’d said this a dozen times already. ‘And the professor was alone, I think. I mean, he let me in and I didn’t hear anyone else in the house. Yes, we were in his office.’ She paused for a moment to consider the impact of her words.
‘The office is in the back, under the stairs. So I guess I would have heard if someone had come down them. We talked for about an hour, and then, well, then I found him.’
The memory took away her newfound calm. Cameron hadn’t been her favorite person by far. But to see him so still, so cold . . . Dulcie bent forward again.
‘Miss, are you all right?’
The world was getting smaller and Dulcie closed her eyes. It didn’t help, and the dizziness made her gasp. But just then she felt a brush against her ankles. A soft and comforting touch, like a cat leaning in to be stroked. Automatically, Dulcie opened her eyes, but saw only her own feet and the big black shoes of the cop. She sat up.
‘Did you see a cat in here?’
He looked at her with suspicion. ‘Miss?’
‘I could’ve sworn I felt a cat go by. You didn’t see anything?’
He shook his head, and called out, keeping his eyes on her all the while. ‘Sylvio? Sylvio? Can you come here a minute? I think this young lady needs a ride home.’
It wasn’t until he had walked her up to her door, rang the bell, and handed her over to Suze’s care that Dulcie realized she didn’t have her own key. She’d left her bag at the professor’s house.
THREE
‘And Professor Bullock doesn’t have a cat, right?’
Dulcie was lying on the sofa, the kitten on her stomach, as Suze grilled her. Dulcie would have objected, except that Suze had fussed so when Dulcie came in, escorted by a cop who double-parked his cruiser in front of their apartment. Not usually the maternal type, Suze had insisted that Dulcie lie down and now the two of them were eating ice cream out of soup bowls; Dulcie to get her blood sugar back up, Suze in solidarity. So even though her roommate was acting more like the third-year law student she was this fall, rather than the friend she’d been for years longer, Dulcie took it. With a large spoonful of rocky road.
‘I’m sure, Suze,’ Dulcie said, once she had swallowed. Scooping up a little bit of the melting ice cream, she held out her spoon. The kitten licked at it and took off, as if spooked by the cold sweetness. Dulcie watched the little cat leap for the coffee table and not quite make it, hanging on for a moment of startled silence before falling and bounding back out of the room. Usually, the kitten’s antics amused her, but today the kitten’s clumsiness only served to accentuate the difference between its youth and an adult cat’s dignity. When she looked up, she saw how Suze was watching her, not the kitten. Her normally fastidious roommate didn’t even comment when Dulcie then used the utensil to dip into her friend’s favorite, mint chocolate chip. Swallowing a lump in her throat that the ice cream couldn’t explain, Dulcie ventured a question: ‘Do you think it could’ve been Mr Grey?’
Suze took a conveniently large mouthful of the ice cream and used the opportunity to look over at her friend. Mr Grey had been Dulcie’s beloved pet, an intelligent long-haired stray who had adopted her as an undergrad, and who had come to live with the two friends until his death the previous spring. Although Suze had been fond of the handsome feline, Dulcie had been his person – and it was Dulcie who believed that the spirit of the great grey cat still talked to her, showing up at moments of crisis to give comfort and suitably feline cryptic advice.
Dulcie thought back on that moment, the passing brush of fur that had calmed her when panic had started to overwhelm. The whisker she had found had a logical explanation, but that moment of contact had been just as real. She looked up at her roommate. ‘I know you’re skeptical, but don’t you think it makes sense? I was in trouble, so maybe he appeared again.’ She pictured Mr Grey, the slanted black-lined eyes and pointy face, more Siamese than Persian. How easily she could imagine him looking at her, elegant white whiskers perked up in a feline smile. ‘He knew I needed him. And you’re going to get a cold headache if you keep taking spoonfuls that big.’
‘I think you had an awful day.’ As a law student, prevaricating came naturally to Suze. ‘You found one of your colleagues dead – murdered – and then you had to be grilled by the police, with nobody there to support you but your thesis adviser. Who is, if you don’t mind me saying so, practically useless.’ Dulcie nodded, but didn’t interrupt. Suze continued. ‘All of that has to have been a horrible shock, so I believe that you think you felt a cat.’
‘But you don’t believe it was Mr Grey.’ Dulcie looked down. The tiny kitten had reappeared and was trying to climb up her legs, using her claws to rappel up Dulcie’s jeans. She reached down to hoist the kitten to her lap. The little animal seemed to be trying to entertain, but as adorable as the black and white creature was, it – she, Dulcie corrected herself – still couldn’t replace Mr Grey. That dignified feline had been more than a pet. He’d been her constant companion, able to read her mood if not her mind, through years of academic and personal struggle. In some ways, his absence had only made him a more tangible presence in Dulcie’s life. No matter what Suze believed, Dulcie was convinced he came to her, sometimes as a presence, sometimes just as a voice, when she needed his wise feline company. Sometimes, Dulcie suspected, the kitten could talk, too. If only she wanted to . . .
Not that Suze was having any of it. ‘I know you loved Mr Grey, Dulce. He was a great cat.’ She paused, and Dulcie waited for the inevitable. When it came, her roommate at least had the grace to soften her voice. ‘You know, Dulcie, if you could let go of him, just a little, you might find yourself falling for that little girl on your lap.’ She took another bite of ice cream, smaller this time. ‘You might even give her a name.’
FOUR
As much as she wanted to stay in bed the next morning, Dulcie dragged herself out. She’d slept badly, her dreams bringing her close enough to see glowing cat’s eyes – Mr Grey’s eyes – and to hear two words – the key – but nothing more. She’d woken herself up trying to talk, to ask what that meant. Desperate to reach out to her one-time pet. But she’d been as mute as the kitten who had taken Mr Grey’s place, and he’d disappeared, those glowing gold-green eyes fading into the dark. She longed to recapture the dream, although she suspected that its message had more to do with her research frustrations than anything personal. But the departmental secretary had stressed that attendance at the emergency meeting was mandatory, using an excessive number of exclamation points for emphasis. Besides, Dulcie needed to get her bag back.
‘Better to be there than be talked about. Right, kitten?’ The kitten, who was taking an early morning bath, did not look up.
As she made her way into the Square, Dulcie juggled her travel mug and dug her cell out of her pocket. At least that hadn’t been left behind! But the one voicemail waiting was from Chris, not Professor Bullock. Her boyfriend had called pre-dawn, probably as soon as he’d gotten her message. She’d have preferred to have him run to her rescue. But like most of his colleagues in applied mathematics, her studious beau had a tendency toward the nocturnal, an inclination that the department preyed on. For the past few weeks – since midterms, really – he’d been up most nights in the computer lab. Like her, he was just scraping by and serving as the on-duty expert during those overnights paid pretty well. Besides, he’d explained only a week before as he left after another late dinner, this was the lab’s down time, when he could get his own work done fastest. But Dulcie suspected that her lanky sweetheart was also just a softie for the undergrads who gathered there, bleary-eyed and frantic, desperate for his help.
‘Dulcie! How are you?’ The concern in his voice warmed her almost as much as the dark roast. ‘I just got your message and it’s . . . damn, it’s nearly five. I’m so sorry.’ Another voice interrupted and she heard Chris’s muttered response. ‘Look, I’ll try you again at a better hour. Or call me!’
‘Hey, Chris,’ she said as her own call went straight to voicemail. ‘Thanks for your call. I’m off to the big departmental meeting. I swear, if they say anything about grief counseling, I’ll throw something.’
Dulcie hung up. That bit of bravado helped and she turned down Dana Street with
a little more lift in her step. Despite the economy, this academic neighborhood, right outside the Square, had been spruced up in the past year, its old clapboards boasting new paint and fancy trim. Well, if the neighborhood could put on its bravest face, so could she, Dulcie told herself. Still, having an actual boyfriend – someone who was physically present – would have been better. Some days, she felt like the heroine in The Ravages of Umbria. Hermetria had been haunted by a friendly ghost. Did that keep her warm at night? As Dulcie climbed the stairs to the refurbished colonial that served as the English Department’s headquarters, the lack of sleep and accompanying self-pity led her to one strong answer: No.
The ancient but quite reliable departmental coffee maker was hard at work as Dulcie entered, and she refilled her mug before joining her peers in the back conference room. A dozen students, all in varying states of wakefulness, sat around a long, oval table. No Professor Bullock. On the near side, a bleached blonde with two nose piercings looked up and waved.
‘Hey, Trista.’ Dulcie sidled over to the chair her friend had held for her. ‘Bother, I was hoping Bullock would be here.’
‘Really?’ Trista asked with surprise, but then leaned toward her friend. ‘How are you?’ Dulcie was about to respond when she realized that all eyes were on her. Before Trista could press her, though, Martin Thorpe, the acting chair, came in. More stooped than usual, Thorpe cleared his throat, then looked down at the bundle of papers in his hands as if they had shown up of their own free will. Dulcie had never studied with the balding scholar – his specialty, Renaissance English poetry, made her grind her teeth – but today she felt sorry for him. Tenure and staffing were hard enough without throwing murder into the mix.