Code Grey

by Clea Simon

  ‘Ms Schwartz!’ The bespectacled librarian blinked up at her once she found him. ‘I see you’ve met our top conservator. Have you come to see our latest?’

  ‘Well, actually …’ Dulcie paused. She didn’t want to be rude. Plus, she was intrigued. ‘I would love to see what you’re working on.’

  ‘Please, come this way.’ The woman in the spotless lab coat gestured for her to join them by the light table where she sat on a high stool. Taking the magnifying lens that the conservator offered, Dulcie peered down. The gentle light illuminated what looked for all the world like a chewed-up piece of tree bark, roughly hewn and still attached to a chunk of wood.

  ‘This is our prize,’ said the conservator, her voice as soft as the pearl grey of her bun.

  ‘Ms Constantine is bringing it back,’ Griddlehaus added, his voice reverential.

  ‘Wonderful,’ Dulcie responded dutifully. Closer up, she could make out that the tree bark was most likely leather, the cover of what seemed to be a pile of pulp. ‘What is it?’

  Griddlehaus looked more startled than usual. ‘He Could Not Tell Her, of course,’ he said. ‘I assumed this was what you came for.’

  ‘No, I—’ She caught herself. ‘Wait, is this the volume that was found on Jeremy Mumbleigh?’ She looked down at the torn leather again, battered almost beyond recognition. If he had been responsible for this, he wasn’t the man she had thought he was. ‘I thought that was still in evidence?’

  ‘As far as I know, it is.’ Griddlehaus reached out as if to touch the cover, stopping himself before his bare skin made contact. ‘But, of course, it had to be stabilized first. Now, if we could only find the second volume. I don’t know why it wasn’t sent for re-binding when this volume was first worked on, or why a complete re-binding wasn’t done.’

  Dulcie’s face must have shown her confusion. The conservator took the magnifying glass back and began to explain.

  ‘I’m afraid we’ve been lax in our care,’ she said, as she pointed out where the binding had nearly rotted away. ‘As you can see, there’s significant worm damage to the upper edge here, and I’m afraid a little moisture was also introduced at some point.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Dulcie was. To see a book in this state, nearly unreadable, was horrible. ‘This weather can’t have been good for it, either.’

  ‘Ideally, this volume will never have to suffer the New England climate again.’ Griddlehaus chuckled. ‘It’s never going outside again. At least, not in our lifetime.’

  Dulcie looked up, confused. ‘But isn’t it going back to the library?’

  ‘We transport most materials through the tunnels,’ Margaret, the conservator, explained. ‘And this one may not go back to the library. At least, not immediately. The police are insisting that they want it once we’re done with it. I gather it has some forensic value to this Lieutenant Wardley? We are hoping to convince them otherwise, of course. We don’t know how they plan to store the piece, and we do want to minimize further damage.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Dulcie. She knew about the subterranean tunnels that connected most of the Yard. She simply hadn’t thought about their practical application. ‘Is the rest of the collection in similar shape?’

  ‘Some pieces are.’ Griddlehaus was shaking his head. ‘This is far from the worst, I’m afraid, though I fear its treatment may have been a sign of how little it was valued. Unforgivable, really.’

  ‘Mr Griddlehaus.’ She paused, wondering how to phrase her questions. ‘Whatever happened to the rest of the Stavendish bequest? You know, the books that the library wanted to deaccession?’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ He nodded, but his small, round face took on a thoughtful look. ‘You know, Dulcie, I’m not sure it was resolved. After all the brouhaha and the fighting, I think that everyone just wanted to forget about it for a while. Why?’

  ‘Well, I was wondering about where Jeremy was found,’ Dulcie explained. ‘If, perhaps, he stumbled upon something, with the repair work and all.’

  Griddlehaus shook his head, clearly not comprehending.

  ‘I just don’t think …’ Dulcie bit her lip. ‘He isn’t – he wasn’t the type to steal. Not a book,’ she said. ‘And so I was wondering if he found it, lost or mislaid, when he fell. Perhaps the excavation opened up some place that people had forgotten about. Do you know?’

  Her friend was still shaking his head, his pale face sad. ‘I’m sorry, Ms Schwartz. I know you want to think well of Mr Mumbleigh and, well, I know that we haven’t been the best caretakers – this poor sample makes that clear – but I’m afraid that’s not likely.’

  ‘But why?’ Dulcie waited.

  ‘When the officers asked me to identify the book, they had it still wrapped in Mr Mumbleigh’s overcoat, which was sopping wet and covered in mud. I was told he’d been pulled out of a part of a sub-basement storage room where the pipes had burst – and where they’d been leaking for months, perhaps years – part of that same leak that drove us out yesterday, I believe. The entire substructure had given way. The surrounding excavation could have fallen in, really. It was quite dangerous.’

  Dulcie waited. Clearly there was more.

  ‘But the damage to this volume is only to the binding, Ms Schwartz. The inside, as you can see, is in quite good shape. Very fine, I would say, if I were to put it on the market. Perhaps better. No worm damage. Very little foxing. It couldn’t have been kept in that storage space. I can’t begin to guess where this volume has spent the last twenty-five years, and I know it needs work – professional work. But the repair work Ms Constantine is doing now is relatively minor compared to that necessary to some of the works we see. I can tell you that whoever has had it all these years has kept it as befitting a true treasure.’

  THIRTEEN

  ‘How strange,’ Dulcie said to herself, not for the first time that day. ‘How utterly odd. And, really, how sad.’

  Her visit with Griddlehaus had been interesting, but ultimately she had left the conservation lab with more questions than answers. Jeremy Mumbleigh was as much of a mystery as the book he had shielded, and now, more than ever, she regretted not spending more time speaking to him. Even before that last interaction, in the library entranceway, there had been the afternoon she had run into him behind Canaday, the freshman dorm that was now being excavated. Or had it been Weld? She was walking by Canaday as she tried to remember. Both were red brick, which he did like to scratch at, engraving the soft surface with his meandering verse, and both had provided a chance for conversation as well, their walls offering a bit of shelter from the winter winds. Yes, she remembered chatting with the scruffy scholar over by that wall. Even then, she had noticed how thin his wrists were, how gaunt his face.

  All the missed opportunities – not only for conversation, but for simple kindness. If only she had reached out to him, even once …

  ‘’Scuse me,’ a gruff voice called. ‘Miss?’

  She looked up. A large man wearing a hard hat was waving. Unsure, she smiled and waved back.

  ‘Miss? You can’t be here.’ A look of alarm blanched his face. ‘Miss!’

  Dulcie stopped, wondering what could be wrong. He was pointing, and she looked – to see a large gaping hole about a foot ahead of her.

  ‘Oh!’ She stopped short, then looked up at the man on the other side of what was really quite a considerable pit. ‘Thank you.’

  He muttered something she couldn’t catch as she made her way around the hole. Whatever it was, she suspected it wasn’t complimentary, and emboldened by her regrets about Jeremy, she decided to speak out.

  ‘This is a hazard, you know.’ Circumnavigating the pit, she made her way up to the construction worker. ‘This should be roped off, or marked in some way.’

  ‘Yeah, we know.’ He was big – bigger than Detective Rogovoy – and Dulcie suspected that he had been surprised by her approach. His face, which was as white and full as the moon, was turned away.

  ‘Sir? Are you going to do anything about it?’ D
ulcie pressed her advantage. He might be large, but she was determined. ‘Are you?’

  ‘May I help you?’ She turned toward the new voice: a lanky man in a parka and khakis.

  ‘Yes, I wanted to know why this hasn’t been …’ Dulcie stopped as the pieces came together in her head. ‘You’re Stuart Truckworth, aren’t you? The head of facilities and maintenance?’

  He nodded. ‘Yes, and you are in a dangerous area. If you’ll please—’

  Dulcie didn’t let him finish. ‘This is where the accident happened, isn’t it? Where someone was arrested?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that, Miss.’ The face, pale and drawn, was difficult to read. ‘What I do know is that this area isn’t safe. It’s a hard hat area only.’

  ‘Then it should be marked.’ Dulcie was quite ready to act affronted, especially if it got her some answers. ‘And I can see that this excavation runs from the freshman dorm up toward the library.’

  ‘You can see that, but you can’t see the sign?’ There was no sign of any smile, so Dulcie had to assume he was serious.

  ‘What? No.’ He was pointing, and she turned around. Sure enough, about twenty feet behind her, a series of orange traffic cones crossed the main walkway, which was blocked by what was apparently the back of a large sign, attached to a sawhorse. ‘Oh, that. Well, shouldn’t you have tape up, or something?’

  ‘It was torn down, Miss. There was an incident.’ The moon-faced construction worker had stepped up. He put his arm out, as if to escort her – or to block her from walking farther. ‘We only just got the OK to go back to work, so if you please …’ He nodded to Truckworth. ‘Sorry, boss.’

  ‘So this is the place!’ Dulcie ducked around his arm. ‘I need to get a sense of it.’ Two steps, and she stopped. Now she could see why the big construction worker had had a look of panic on his face. She had been very close to the edge. And she could see why a fall would be a very bad thing.

  Where she was walking had been an old paved path, its asphalt cracked and crumbling after a winter of frost heaves and pot holes. Avoiding those, she had stepped off the path on to a dusty crust that looked more like coffee grounds than something where grass would ever grow, but as she looked over the edge of the hole once more, she could see the bare white roots of some shrub or distant tree, like the remnants of a torn cloth. And she was grateful for even that support. As she leaned forward, a few small clods broke from those reaching roots. Dulcie watched them fall – at least twenty feet, she guessed – to what appeared to be a concrete block below. As they did, something down there moved. A larger clod of earth, perhaps, or …

  ‘Please, Miss.’ A hand on her arm startled her. It was the round-faced construction worker, and he was holding her firmly. ‘Take a step back now, Miss.’

  ‘Wait.’ She put her hand on his, not that she could have pried his fingers loose. ‘What is that?’ From her vantage point, it looked like the top of a box. Or a crypt. ‘Was someone buried here?’

  ‘No, ma’am.’ He was pulling on her arm, urging her back. ‘Just part of the infrastructure.’

  ‘It doesn’t look like pipes.’ Dulcie wasn’t ordinarily afraid of heights, but this drop had startled her. Now that she was trying to figure it out, however, she found herself leaning over. What had been moving down there? Had it been an animal? Could it have been …

  ‘It’s the old tunnels, ma’am. The storage area is all connected to the tunnels.’ He was edging in front of her, moving her back. ‘You heard we had flooding. Well, this is how the water traveled.’

  ‘The tunnels?’ She looked up at him, curious. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said, as she turned to keep herself from stumbling. ‘I thought the tunnels were in good shape.’ That conservator – Margaret Constantine – had referred to them as a safer alternative to outdoor travel.

  ‘Who told you that?’ He shook his head. ‘These haven’t been used since they updated the HVAC systems, maybe thirty years ago.’

  Of course. Dulcie remembered. What she was looking down on weren’t the communication tunnels, used to cart books away from the weather, but the steam tunnels, the ancient and somewhat primitive heating system that had long ago been abandoned for more efficient means. What she hadn’t known was that those particular passages still existed, when clearly they were vulnerable to water and wear.

  Looking down into the excavation, Dulcie realized the scope of the problem. ‘The entire Yard must be riddled with tunnels,’ she said out loud. Really, it was a wonder that every building didn’t collapse. ‘How typical,’ she clucked to herself. ‘Rather than remove them, the university probably simply closed a door and forgot about them.’

  She walked away, the sound of a jackhammer roaring up behind her, and another question rose in her mind. If Jeremy hadn’t fallen, as she’d first thought, what had he been doing down there? No matter what Rogovoy might say, the threadbare scholar had had enough sense not to seek shelter in a flooded old tunnel.

  Blocked from her usual path, Dulcie found herself walking around the long way. At least it gave her time to think. Someone had to, she reasoned, because clearly the police had not.

  She could see why, at first, everyone had thought Jeremy had been the victim of a horrible accident. Like her, he might have strayed from the path, taking the familiar short cut around the big stone building. Unlike her, he had not been stopped. That alone could have explained the fall down to the concrete flooring below, and the injuries that had laid him low. But to think that he’d been attacked … been thrown down into …

  Into what? Dulcie couldn’t tell if the hole she had nearly stepped in had been part of the original repair plans, or if it was simply a sinkhole that had opened up as a result of the work and the vagaries of the weather. She did know that it didn’t offer what anyone would call shelter. Although she still couldn’t explain how he had come by that book, Dulcie knew one thing: Jeremy Mumbleigh hadn’t been injured fighting over this particular excavation.

  ‘Ms Schwartz?’ She was standing at the front desk of the library, her ID in her hand, when the question broke into her reverie. The lanky, red-haired guard looking at her had scrunched his pale eyebrows together in concern. ‘Are you all right, Ms Schwartz?’

  ‘Yes, thanks, Kyle. And, please, call me Dulcie.’ She looked up at the new guard, wishing she knew his last name. She’d been thinking of Jeremy – and of that hole – even as she had made her way into the library. ‘I was just thinking about all the work they’re doing.’

  ‘You and everybody else,’ he grumbled. ‘You don’t know what a pain it’s been.’

  ‘I believe it.’ She smiled in sympathy. ‘I gather the old steam tunnels are totally falling apart.’ She pocketed her ID. It was time to get to work, to really focus on what she came in for, but if the skinny guard had some insight …

  ‘It’s not just the steam tunnels,’ said Kyle, his voice growing tetchy. ‘The place is going to be a mess for months.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She sympathized, waiting to hear more.

  He seemed to want to talk. ‘They’re happy enough to keep the book tunnels open. To send me down there when someone needs something. But do they ever stop to think about what’s going on down there? Or how vulnerable they make everything?’ He seemed to be talking to himself as much as to her. ‘There was supposed to be a plan. Something about using the tunnels in case of an emergency – they had people down there, measuring and everything. I don’t know. If there’s a bomb, I wouldn’t want to be underneath a couple of tons of brick and stone, would you?’

  ‘There’d be all the books, too,’ said Dulcie. To her, the image was vaguely comforting. Kyle looked so discomfited by the idea, however, that she changed the subject. ‘Do you know when the Mildon is supposed to reopen?’

  He didn’t seem any happier as he shook his head. ‘Honestly? They don’t tell me anything. But from what I hear, every room in the substrata is being evaluated. And if it’s not water damage, then it’s rats.’

 
Now it was her turn to shudder. Rats. The idea of rodents – of unauthorized visitors of any kind – in Griddlehaus’s preserve was incomprehensible. The Mildon had a state-of-the-art air filtration system. A fire prevention plan that involved the replacement of the usual atmosphere with fire suppressants, and an impermeable gate that could stop a tank from getting in. Surely, such a pristine environment was not connected to those outdated tunnels.

  As she made her way down to her carrel, Dulcie couldn’t help but wonder. Most likely, she decided, Kyle was wrong about the library’s vulnerability – the noise and the mess had been wearing on them all. He was, after all, only a guard and a disgruntled one at that, not one of the elite cadre of clerks and scholars who actually ran the library. If anything, he might be misguided – the Mildon might be adjacent to some vents or plumbing fixtures, but it had its own security and ventilation systems. Its alarms hadn’t gone off when the water main had broken, and its lights had stayed on.

  The rats, however. They were a different problem, and Dulcie consoled herself with the thought of her spectral guardian. Mr Grey might no longer be a feline in the flesh, but he would protect her against rats, wouldn’t he? At the very least, he would warn her.

  With that, Dulcie put aside thoughts of vermin and opened her laptop. She wasn’t giving up on Jeremy – far from it. But until she came up with a new line of inquiry, she should get some of her own work done. With a twinge of guilt, she let herself click on to one of her favorite documents – a detailed analysis of a fragment that had never, as far as she knew, been studied before. This might not be life-saving work, but it was thrilling. Payback for the hours she had spent, identifying the torn fragments and painstakingly piecing them together, word by word, from burned and damaged papers.

  It helped that the scene she had re-created was exciting. In it, the heroine finds a body – the body of a man who may have been her lover or something less benign. He is lying, dead, in the library of a stately house, his head crushed by a piece of statuary. Brushing aside thoughts of Jeremy – his head had not been crushed, he was still alive, even if not yet conscious – she made herself focus. First, there was the ambivalent relationship of the heroine to the victim. Was he her hero? Her tormentor? Had she been the one to attack? Although Dulcie identified with the heroine of the novel – it seemed clear to her that the heroine was a stand-in for the anonymous author – she could not rule out the possibility that she had been the one to ‘cave in that fine physique … dashing out his Life with all the encumbent Fears and Glories.’ No more could she dismiss the idea that the author had been playing on the usage of ‘dashing,’ which had acquired its current usage around 1697.