Grey Dawn

by Clea Simon

  THREE

  She couldn’t help it. She couldn’t stop staring at him. As Martin Thorpe called the departmental meeting to order, Dulcie found herself gaping at the balding scholar. At his pale face and his deeply shadowed eyes, still rimmed in red like the hellhounds in her story. At his teeth.

  Partly, it was lack of sleep. Not only had she retired late, but despite the comforting presence of a cat on the bed, she’d slept badly, her night broken up by strange and disturbing dreams. At one point, she’d woken to the howls again, and she’d thought about getting up, about checking the doors and windows, only to be dragged back down by fatigue. At another, she was sure that an intruder had come in and turned on the lights, the moon was shining so brightly.

  When she finally did slip into unconsciousness, it was with a sense of eyes watching her. Yellow, feral eyes that radiated menace. She had tossed and turned then, almost waking, when they had changed. It wasn’t that they had dimmed, exactly, though they had softened from that poison yellow to green. It was more that their intent seemed to shift. When, near dawn, Dulcie finally fell into a deeper sleep, she had the sense of someone watching over her. The stranger,she remembered thinking, briefly, in a half-awake moment. The man in grey.

  She had woken late to find Esmé gone and Chris beside her, snoring gently. His clothes had been left in a pile by the bed, and Dulcie could only imagine how tired he must have been when he’d come in. Maybe, she told herself, she had been subconsciously waiting for him and that was why she had had such troubling dreams. Maybe he had been the comforting stranger, the new presence who had allowed her to slip into a calmer sleep. Except that Chris’s eyes were brown.

  Whatever. By the time Dulcie finished her shower, she was already late. Nancy always had a fresh pot on for the departmental meeting, so grabbing her empty travel mug, Dulcie ran out the door. It was funny, she thought as she trotted up the familiar brick sidewalks. By daylight, her city looked innocuous. More like a big town than some urban wilderness. It must have been the moonlight – the cool, blue light – interacting with the vivid scene she had read before heading out. Well, that and that poor dog. If she heard it again, she would call animal control. That howl had sounded like an animal in pain.

  As luck would have it, she wasn’t the last one into the meeting. Thorpe himself was late, which meant that Dulcie had a chance to file the student papers, slurp down half her mug, and refill it before tromping back to the meeting room. There, she found a seat between Lloyd, her office mate, and Trista. Although she’d successfully defended her thesis the spring before, Trista had swung a one-year post-doc at the university that let her add to her credits before leaving the nest to seek a tenure-track teaching position. It also let her stay around her boyfriend, Jerry, who, like Chris, was still a grad student in the applied math department.

  ‘Hey.’ Trista leaned forward as Dulcie sat down. But whatever she was about to confide was interrupted as the door opened once more behind Dulcie and Trista slid back into her seat. Martin Thorpe had entered the room.

  ‘Good morning, good morning.’ The acting head seemed more distracted than usual, and Dulcie and Trista exchanged glances. Only when Lloyd, seated to her left, nudged her, however, did Dulcie realize just how much of a mess their departmental boss was. Not only was his remaining hair standing up, but the shoulder bag he had dumped on the conference table in front of him was spilling forth folders. For the usually tightly wound acting head, it was an unimaginable display of disarray, and Dulcie couldn’t stop staring.

  ‘Obviously, we’re running a bit late here. Mr Derwin, would you tell us the progress with the new grading procedures?’ Whatever had happened, Thorpe wasn’t going to explain it. If anything, he sounded more businesslike than ever, moving over the meeting agenda like clockwork, until he got up to Dulcie.

  ‘Ms Schwartz, I’m glad to see you made the midterm grading deadline.’ Dulcie looked down, blushing. She had – barely. ‘Even if you had to resort to a midnight visit to our offices to do so.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She looked up, taken aback. ‘Did I do something wrong?’ The alarm – no, she was sure she had set it.

  ‘Nothing wrong, Ms Schwartz.’ He was staring at her now, and she saw how tired he looked. How pale. As if aware of the scrutiny, he ran a thin hand over the remnants of his wiry black hair. ‘Only if you are going to set the alarm for a building as you leave, you might have the courtesy to make sure nobody else is still within that building.’

  A general chuckle broke out around the table, and Dulcie felt herself blushing. So that was why she had felt another presence in the little clapboard. Because there had been someone there – Martin Thorpe, presumably.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir.’ She shook her head. ‘At that hour, I just didn’t think.’ She paused. ‘But, sir, when I came in, the alarm had been on. I had to turn it off.’

  ‘Did you?’ The dark eyes that held her were frankly skeptical.

  ‘I thought I did.’ Dulcie ran her hand over her own unruly curls. Had she? She’d kept going over the numbers in her head on her way there, wanting to be certain she had the correct sequence, so afraid of setting the alarm off. ‘I was sure I did.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure …’ Another giggle leaked out of the crowd, and Dulcie felt her cheeks growing redder.

  ‘I’m sorry. I must have been mistaken.’ She shook her head. Part of her embarrassment was her unconsidered use of the word ‘sure.’ Wasn’t it only the week before that the department had hosted a debate on the role of context in determining supposed absolutes, like certainty? It had been the latest in a series on dueling literary theories, pitting a more traditional style of study against a kind of post-structuralism that questioned everything. Very hip, but also increasingly abstract. The whole series was Thorpe’s baby, and so Dulcie couldn’t complain – even though she had begun to feel like in all the discussion of what was real and what was merely ‘real’ for some literary purpose, the actual reading of books was getting lost. For now, however, she tried to turn it into a joke. ‘Clearly, I misinterpreted the context of the setting,’ she said.

  Another chuckle rippled through the room, and Dulcie realized that maybe, in this case, ‘context’ did have genuine meaning. After all, Thorpe was clearly upset because he’d been the one locked in. That also would explain why he had looked so distraught when she had seen him on the street. ‘When I saw you on the corner after I left,’ she added, ‘I didn’t think that you’d been behind me.’

  ‘The corner?’ Thorpe was shaking his head as he looked at her. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Ms Schwartz. The moonlight must have been playing tricks on you. A question of context confusing content.’

  Dulcie smiled, accepting the gentle ribbing. Thorpe was showing off, but if she had locked him in, she could understand why. The rest of the meeting went by in a blur. Partly, that was because Thorpe seemed so intent on rushing through the usual agenda items, as if his theoretical points made the day-to-day basics of the department – teaching assignments, deadlines, and whatnot – passé. Partly, it was Dulcie’s confusion. Context or no context, some things were simply facts. She hadturned off the alarm when she’d entered the building; she was sure – or was it certain? – of it. And she had seen her adviser on the sidewalk about a block away. If she’d locked him in and his exit had unwittingly sounded the alarm, wouldn’t she have heard it? Or wouldn’t he have said something? Unless he hadn’t left till after she was gone – and that had been some other thin, balding man in the moonlight. Perhaps that was why the man she had seen had looked so strange to her – because he was.

  ‘Wow, you really did that?’ After Thorpe dismissed them, the assembled scholars filed back downstairs for more coffee and to catch up on gossip. Lloyd, always skilled at getting to the coffee-maker when a fresh pot had finished brewing, topped off her mug. ‘Locked Thorpe in the office?’

  ‘I guess.’ Dulcie shook her head. ‘I had a sense someone was here, but I swear, Lloyd, the alarm
was on when I came in.’

  ‘I believe you.’ Lloyd refilled his own mug before passing the carafe along to a colleague. ‘I bet he turned it on himself out of habit. Maybe he fell asleep in his office, then was too out of it to realize what he’d done until he opened the door. I wouldn’t be surprised, the amount of time he spends here.’

  Dulcie nodded. Everybody knew that Thorpe was working overtime, hoping that the new dean would name him as permanent head of the department. His current emphasis on literary theory was only part of what was becoming an extended campaign. If Thorpe had been dozing and been caught unawares by the alarm, that would also explain why he had looked so disordered when Dulcie had seen him on the street – if, in fact, that had been him. And why he hadn’t – or hadn’t wanted to – remember it.

  ‘Still, for him to call you out like that.’ Lloyd shook his head, sadly. ‘It’s just not fair.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Dulcie kept her voice low. ‘But we know why.’

  ‘Both reasons,’ her friend agreed, just as softly. ‘Though which one is the ‘signified’ and which the ‘signifier’ is beyond me.’

  Dulcie smiled at that. Although she was on the brink of an academic breakthrough, she was, she knew, out of favor with her adviser. Some of it was her adherence to a decidedly unhip approach: she read the writing; she found out what she could about the author. That was all. Beyond that, though, she deeply suspected that Thorpe still resented her part in an academic scandal that had rocked the university earlier that fall. Only a very few people knew the whole truth – that Dulcie had helped uncover the corruption that had led to the murder of a visiting scholar and a dean’s abrupt resignation. Thorpe, as well as Dulcie’s close friends, was among them. But since that dean had seemed to favor Thorpe’s candidacy for the position of department head, and his departure had thrown Thorpe’s future into doubt, Thorpe had persisted in viewing Dulcie as a troublemaker. ‘If he gets the gig, my future here is doomed,’ she summed it up.

  ‘Well, it might not be that bad.’ Lloyd began to protest as Trista came over.

  ‘Dulcie, you were here last night?’ She leaned in, her voice a stage whisper.

  ‘Yeah, but I swear—’ Dulcie began to repeat her protest, but Trista cut her off.

  ‘Girl, you are one lucky fifth-year.’

  Dulcie shook her head. ‘What are you talking about? Thorpe obviously thinks—’

  ‘You don’t know?’ Trista’s voice rose in pitch. Then, as she took in the confusion on both Dulcie’s and Lloyd’s faces, she dropped it again. ‘Really? You didn’t hear?’

  ‘Trista, I’m not in the mood …’ Literary theory was bad enough. Dulcie had no stomach for the usual romantic gossip.

  ‘Dulcie, this is serious. And, well, real.’ Dulcie shut up and looked at her friend. ‘A woman was attacked last night, like, two blocks from here. Her throat was torn out. They’re saying it looked like she’d been ravaged by a wild animal.’

  FOUR

  Trista didn’t have any more information than that, but what she’d said was enough. The Memorial Church bell tolled the hour soon after, sending them all off to their eleven o’clock sections, Dulcie among them. But Trista’s bombshell echoed through her head for the next hour.

  ‘Ms Schwartz?’ She looked out over the class. A bespectacled freshman was tentatively raising his hand.

  ‘Sorry,’ she smiled her apology. ‘Scott?’

  ‘Are we supposed to feel sorry for Lily Bart because she’s beautiful? And, like, what does that mean, anyway?’

  ‘No, Scott.’ Dulcie shook her head, sadly. She really must have been ignoring the turn of the discussion. ‘First of all, you’re not “supposed” to feel anything. But you should try to be aware of context, to be aware of the perspective of the world Wharton was writing about …’

  She rattled on, and even found herself repeating some of the debate of the previous week. It wouldn’t hurt them, she figured, to get an introduction to what was increasingly the vocabulary of literature. What did beauty mean, anyway? But her heart wasn’t in it. How could she concentrate on a lesson plan when she might have information about a murder? No, she corrected herself as another of her students joined in the discussion. She could think about a book – just not thisbook. The text she’d been reading last night – now that seemed eerily relevant. One passage in particular kept coming into her mind.

  Fierce as the wind were the cries that rent the night.That was how it had started, as those wolves – or whatever they were – had chased the carriage, driving the horses nearly mad with terror. There was nothing theoretical about that scene, nor the earlier bit, in which the heroine had been fleeing her pursuer and had run outdoors, into the storm.

  On her first reading of that passage, Dulcie had been taken by a reference to the heroine’s hair. Specifically to her raven locks, ripp’d lose, tangled in the gale that swept the mountainous terrain.The word ‘raven’ had been crossed out, and the scribble above it had not been improved by age or wear. Dulcie was pretty sure that the author had written ‘flame-haired,’ as if she were going to make the heroine a redhead as opposed to a brunette. To Thorpe, she knew, that would be a sign of something – the most basic kind of symbolism, with red hair as a mark of temper or some kind of witchery.

  Dulcie knew that authors made such choices, using standard devices like shorthand to clue the readers in. She wasn’t totally naive. But in truth it had interested her, at least in part, because of her own red – well, reddish – hair. Now that autumn was here, she was losing her copper highlights, but she’d grown up with her mother’s stories of all the redheads in the family, and she liked to think of herself as simply a more subtle auburn. Of course, the indecision about hair color continued later in the book, too. In the first excerpt that Dulcie had found, a young man had been found murdered. His hair, too, seemed to change from red to black in subsequent versions. Maybe it was a signifier, as Thorpe would say. Or maybe the author was simply trying out different images, looking for the most dramatic. Or maybe, Dulcie couldn’t help but wonder, something else was involved: a more personal choice, based on the real models for the fictional creation.

  It wasn’t a theory Dulcie could bring up with her adviser. Thorpe would tell her she was being unsophisticated. He’d already warned her against ‘falling into the common hermeneutic trap of the implied author,’ that is, confusing the writer with her fictional creation, and he’d dismissed Dulcie’s uncanny sense that in this case the anonymous author really was writing about an aspect of her life.

  This morning, the question of how close the author and her mysterious heroine were was moot. All that Dulcie could think about, to the detriment of her teaching, was what had happened next. The heroine, whatever her hair color or ‘symbolic presence,’ had been standing out in the rain, on a windswept mountain road. The wolves, or whatever they were, had been getting closer. And then a carriage had driven up and a stranger – or was it a Frenchman? – had opened the door and beckoned her in. The man in grey. If he hadn’t, well … Trista’s bombshell seemed a bit too real.

  ‘Ms Schwartz?’

  Dulcie blinked.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ She shook her head to clear it, and saw that her students were standing. ‘Um, see you next week.’

  She saw a few of them exchange looks, but that was the least of her problems. The text – well, that was odd, and she was dying to get back to it. No matter what her quibbles with her adviser or her discipline were, however, she was first and foremost a member of the university community. And that meant telling the authorities what she knew. What she had seen and heard the night before.

  Luckily, her noon section had been cancelled; the head tutor for English 241 had decided to give the students an extra week to work on their papers. Strictly speaking, she should have gone to the section room anyway; students always had questions. But she had posted office hours, and, really, murder took precedence over the Romantic poets. And so, with a determined
toss of her almost-red curls, Dulcie set out for the university police headquarters.

  She was in luck. As she entered the modern brick building off Garden Street, she recognized a particularly bulky detective.

  ‘Detective Rogovoy!’ She waved across the open lobby. ‘It’s Dulcie. Dulcie Schwartz!’

  She tried not to read anything into the look he gave his colleague. He was probably finishing up something; that was all. And he did take a few steps in her direction before beckoning her over with a big, paw-like hand.

  ‘Ms Schwartz.’ His voice, always low, sounded particularly grumbly today. ‘Like I wouldn’t remember you. To what do I owe this pleasure?’

  ‘I may have information.’ She looked around the room. Cops in uniform were bustling about, and a few students seemed to be waiting at the front desk. ‘About the murder. May we speak in private?’

  The look on the big detective’s face was answer enough, and Dulcie let herself be guided past the desk into a small, windowless room.

  ‘You have news about a murder?’ Rogovoy faced her, his hands on the table between them.

  ‘Yes, about the woman who was killed last night.’ She waited; he didn’t move. ‘Don’t you want to take some notes?’

  ‘First of all, I’d like to hear what you heard.’ The detective leaned forward, and Dulcie had to remind herself that despite his size and ogre-like appearance, Rogovoy was one of the good guys.

  ‘People were talking about it at our departmental meeting this morning.’ She was proud of herself for not bringing Trista into it. ‘That a woman was killed. Her throat torn open.’ She swallowed. This was harder than she’d anticipated. ‘I heard it looked like an animal attack.’

  Rogovoy sighed and put one of those big hands up to his face. It must be hard for him, too.