Into the Grey

by Clea Simon

  ‘I am, thank you!’ Her cousin sounded surprisingly normal. ‘For a change, I’ve got the best news.’

  ‘We have to talk,’ said Dulcie, anxious to break through. ‘I’ve overheard something.’ A twinge of belated compunction made her pause. ‘Two of my students were – well, they were talking about you.’

  ‘Alyson Beaumont?’ Mina asked, as if it were the most natural thing in the world ‘I’m so glad.’

  ‘Wait – what do you know?’ Dulcie was confused. ‘Is this your news?’

  ‘It is,’ her cousin sounded positively joyful. ‘I knew I should pressure the dean. That I could get the judgment thrown out. I mean, the man was a creep, but he’s dead, right?’

  ‘Yes?’ Dulcie’s head was spinning.

  ‘I guess that made all the difference,’ Mina said. ‘There’s another woman, one who never filed. She – well, I gather Fenderby pushed her further than he did me, and she was afraid of how it would come out. But she’s going to make a statement. It’s all confidential, but I know Alyson was taking a class with him. I’d seen her name on his schedule.’

  ‘And do you really think it’s Alyson?’ Dulcie paused to consider. The facts just might fit. ‘But why now?’

  ‘Maybe she was ashamed.’ Dulcie could hear the shrug in Mina’s voice. ‘Maybe she knew what would happen. I mean, look what they did to me. And in a way it doesn’t matter as much now, since he can’t be censured or fired any longer. But it will go a long way toward clearing my name, and really that’s all I want now. But, hey, you texted me? You said there was something important?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Dulcie thought back. Could she have misinterpreted what she heard? ‘But first, Mina, how did you find this out? I mean, about the other woman going to testify?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Dulcie.’ In the background, Dulcie could hear other voices. Someone called Mina’s name. ‘This is all confidential. And I’m about to go into Sever Hall – not that I’m in the mood for late lyric poetry right now. Was there something you had to tell me?’

  ‘I don’t know any more.’ If Mina’s conjecture was correct, it would change everything. ‘I’m sorry. I should let you go.’

  ‘No problem.’ Her cousin sounded happy, her voice more buoyant than it had been all week. ‘Call or text if you remember!’

  Dulcie knew she should be happy. Still, something about the exchange she had witnessed didn’t sit right, and she decided to follow Tom to the library. Odds were, nothing had happened.

  ‘Ms Schwartz.’ Once again, the guard on duty waved her in, past the line of undergrads waiting to swipe their cards. With everything going on, she’d forgotten her earlier anxiety until she’d joined the queue, and she accepted the courtesy with relief.

  ‘Thanks,’ she called over her shoulder as she passed the courtly guard. At times, it was nice to be part of a community, she mused as she descended to Level Two. In fact, the idea of anyone in this community turning on anyone else … she stopped herself. She was being naïve. Fenderby had been a member of this community, too. And not only had he been unpleasant to her, he had assaulted her cousin, as well as some other member of the university. Even if, as she liked to think, his death had come about through some random accident, she couldn’t change that one undeniable fact. Not unless she doubted Mina – but before she could even go down that rabbit hole, the elevator doors swung open, and she found herself face to face with Polly Fenderby.

  ‘Hello.’ She straightened, momentarily taken aback by the widow’s unexpected appearance.

  The woman before her was holding a large, open cardboard box. A pair of bookends – lions couchant – were piled on top, next to what looked like a bud vase and a stained coffee mug with the logo Wordsmiths Do It Write. The box only seemed about half full, but the widow held it awkwardly, balancing its weight on one hip.

  ‘Here, let me.’ Dulcie reached for it. The widow jerked it back.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Dulcie apologized. ‘I thought maybe you needed help.’

  ‘You’ve already done enough,’ the woman growled.

  ‘Excuse me?’ Dulcie knew that grief affected everyone differently. However, she hadn’t heard of anyone becoming delusional. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Fenderby.’

  ‘You should be.’ The woman pushed past her, the corner of the box pressing Dulcie out of the way as she stepped into the elevator. ‘It’s all your fault. If you hadn’t gotten involved, Roland would still be alive.’

  Dulcie had no comeback to that, and watched the elevator doors close in silence.

  ‘Dulcie?’ At the sound of her name, Dulcie jumped. Seeing Tom, she stepped back. Too late, the elevator was gone. ‘I’m s-sorry,’ he said. ‘Did I startle you?’

  She exhaled, shaking her head. ‘It’s not you. It’s Mrs Fenderby. I seem to have irritated her. Not that she doesn’t have enough reason to be upset,’ she added quickly.

  ‘I know.’ He nodded, and Dulcie wondered if it was simply his speech impediment that sealed his lips now.

  ‘She’s packing up his office?’ Dulcie asked. It seemed a good neutral way to work up to the subject at hand.

  ‘The c-college is going to,’ he said. ‘She wanted some things,’ he managed to get out.

  Dulcie nodded and followed him as he turned and walked back into the stacks.

  ‘Personal items,’ he said, as he retrieved a cart and began to file books. Grief, she thought again. It was strange. While she didn’t quite see the value in a stained mug, but then again, if she’d lost Chris maybe such things would take on meaning. It wasn’t like the old mug or the bookends had been involved in the crime that had taken his life.

  She waited until he turned her way, to make the question seem more casual. ‘So the police gave their permission?’

  Tom shrugged. ‘I guess so,’ he said. ‘She’s been in and out.’

  Dulcie nodded, distracted. ‘Hey, Tom, I never got to apologize. I didn’t mean to scare you the other day – with the book and all.’

  He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, too,’ he said. ‘I guess I …’ His voice trailed off, but whether his stutter or something else held him back, Dulcie couldn’t tell. ‘It was a shock to see,’ he said, after a long pause.

  ‘Tom.’ It was now or never. ‘I know you care about Alyson. She’s a lovely person. But – is there anything you’d want to tell me about her?’

  He blinked, his face twisting in misery. ‘No,’ he managed to choke out. Dulcie thought he was holding back tears. ‘No,’ he repeated.

  ‘Nothing?’ Dulcie felt for him, but right was right.

  ‘Only that she’s a good person. No matter what—’ He stopped to run his sleeve over his eyes. ‘Wait.’

  He paused and seemed to look beyond her.

  ‘May I help you?’ he said. Dulcie turned to see a familiar silhouette in the shadows beyond the stack’s overhead lighting. She gasped – something about that shape, tall, looming. But then the figure stepped into the light, and she recognized Renée Showalter walking toward her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said the professor, stepping forward. She had a trench coat draped over her shoulders and the slight dishevelment of someone who has been traveling. ‘I didn’t mean to interrupt.’ She turned to Dulcie. ‘Dulcie, may I speak with you?’

  ‘Uh, sure,’ Dulcie turned back toward Tom, hoping to secure a promise to speak later. But he was already back at work, pushing his cart of books down the aisle between the stacks. And as tempted as she was to go after him, Dulcie couldn’t help being excited at the unexpected appearance of her mentor. ‘I didn’t know you were coming so soon,’ she said, turning back to the red-haired professor.

  ‘I just got in,’ she said, shedding the coat and folding it over one arm. ‘I came straight here. I thought I’d go down to the Mildon to see if I could straighten things out with Thomas, but then I ran into Penelope and thought I should stop by here first.’

  Elation turned to confusion. Dulcie would have loved to escort Showalter down to the Mildon. In fact, she co
uldn’t think of a better way to get on with her day. Something was clearly troubling her mentor, however, and Dulcie looked up at her quizzically, not sure what she had missed. ‘Penelope?’

  Showalter waved her free hand dismissively. ‘Or Polly or Poppy or whatever she calls herself these days,’ she said. ‘Roland’s wife – widow, I guess I should say: Penelope Fenderby née Wrigley.’

  ‘You know her?’ Somehow, Dulcie couldn’t see her self-assured mentor socializing with the woman she had just encountered.

  But Showalter was already nodding. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Or I did. Roland and I did our post-docs together. Penelope was one of his students. He always did go for the pretty ones.’

  Dulcie shook her head. While she couldn’t see the washed-up, angry woman she’d just passed as pretty, she’d already figured out that Fenderby had married a former student. ‘I guess some people don’t change. What a wolf.’

  ‘Please.’ Showalter drew back, offended, and Dulcie bit her lip. Not that long ago, she’d had her suspicions about the red-haired professor. Her appearance on campus right about the time that a large canine had been spotted had made her wonder if, perhaps, there was something supernatural about her. That and Showalter’s uncanny knack for sniffing out the truth.

  Dulcie had dismissed those thoughts long ago as simply fancy. Still, there was something about Showalter. Maybe it was her unusual golden eyes. She paused, realizing that the professor was regarding her with those eyes, only now her face looked drawn. And not, Dulcie thought, because of her own derogatory use of ‘wolf’.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Dulcie. ‘Did I say something?’

  ‘No, not you,’ said her professor. ‘It was the strangest thing. Polly told me you were down here nosing around her late husband’s office. Said she wasn’t surprised at all. Dulcie, she basically accused you of having an affair with her husband.’

  THIRTY-FIVE

  ‘Dulcie, I’m sorry.’ The professor winced, her brow bunching up as if she shared her student’s discomfort. ‘You look unwell. I shouldn’t have— You weren’t having an affair with the late professor, were you? I would never forgive myself.’

  No!’ Dulcie shook off the idea. The implications were horrible. ‘I wouldn’t—’

  The very concept was appalling – but even as she played it over in her mind, Dulcie had an inkling of what might have spawned it. ‘You must have misheard.’ Dulcie was vehement. ‘I know she’s angry at me, but not – what you said. I think she blames me somehow for what happened. Blames my involvement – which was purely academic. And not something I ever wanted.’ She looked up at Showalter, suddenly aware of their surroundings. In the library. Near Fenderby’s office. ‘I couldn’t stand the man,’ she said, softly but quite clearly. ‘And I suspect the feeling was mutual. I know he arranged to be on my committee, but I have no idea why. He only critiqued one chapter of my dissertation,’ Dulcie explained. ‘And he really hated it.’

  Now it was Showalter’s turn to look perplexed.

  ‘How odd,’ she said. ‘You see, he called me – oh, it must have been two months ago – to ask me about the Philadelphia bequest. I hadn’t heard from him for years, and I’ll confess I was a bit shocked. Not only that he remembered me or my area of expertise, but that he sounded so excited about it. He said he had an extremely promising student whom he wanted to mentor and whose studies in the bequest he wanted to direct. I thought he was talking about you, of course.’ She looked a bit hangdog about that last admission.

  ‘So, did you suggest he serve on my committee?’ Dulcie had to ask.

  But her mentor only frowned. ‘No,’ she said. ‘He’s not – he wouldn’t have been my choice. You’re sure he wasn’t interested in your work?’ Showalter regarded her. ‘That there wasn’t some kind of falling out?’

  Dulcie shook her head, aware of the other woman’s intense gaze.

  ‘Never mind that. You really don’t look well.’ The professor appraised her. ‘Do you feel all right?’

  ‘It was something I ate.’ It was easier not to have to explain. The sneaky edge of a suspicious thought creeping into her consciousness wasn’t helping either. ‘So he didn’t say who his “promising student” was, did he?’

  ‘No, I’m sorry. I should have asked.’ Showalter had the grace to look chagrined. ‘Though clearly there was some confusion about the materials and access, and now the police are involved. Which is why I was heading to the Mildon. I assume I can sit down with Thomas Griddlehaus and clear things up.’ She paused, those golden eyes taking in Dulcie. ‘Would you care to join me?’

  Dulcie hesitated only a moment. Tom was nowhere to be seen, and so she turned to her mentor. She’d been so distracted recently, and this was what she had long hoped for. What everyone told her she should be doing. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’

  Thomas Griddlehaus’s eyes grew almost as wide as his glasses when he saw the two approach.

  ‘Professor!’ The little clerk actually came out from behind the counter to greet them, reaching to take Showalter’s coat. ‘Welcome.’

  ‘Thank you, Thomas,’ Showalter responded, leaving Dulcie nearly speechless.

  ‘I didn’t know you two …’ She managed to form the words, looking from one to the other as Griddlehaus led them into his domain.

  ‘We go back forever,’ said Griddlehaus, hanging her coat in a closet Dulcie had never noticed before.

  ‘Thomas was a major force in the accession of the Philadelphia bequest,’ Showalter added. ‘Of course, we both wanted you to have access, but most important was that the material go to a library where it could be properly cared for and catalogued.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Dulcie, still taking it all in. What had Mr Grey said about relationships? This one certainly seemed to be a positive force. Out of habit, she wandered past the two, to take a seat at the reading table. Neither, she noticed after a moment, followed her.

  She turned to see the tall professor bending over, in quiet conversation with the bespectacled clerk. ‘My, my,’ Griddlehaus was saying, as Showalter turned toward Dulcie.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t stay for long,’ she said, taking in the table and the white gloves. ‘I’m supposed to meet with Thorpe soon. But I did want to clear up this Fenderby matter.’

  She turned back toward Griddlehaus, who typed away at a computer keyboard he’d slid out from under the console cabinet.

  ‘Well, that is odd,’ he said. ‘So, perhaps it was all an error. We might never know.’

  ‘May I ask?’ Dulcie got up and went to join them.

  ‘The late professor’s injunction,’ Griddlehaus said. ‘I knew he had pulled those materials for an undergrad, but it appears that the student in question never read them. Never, as far as I can see, requested them.’

  He turned to Dulcie, his eyes wide behind those glasses. ‘Maybe it was all a mistake, Ms Schwartz. Maybe he did intend for them to go to you.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Dulcie said softly. The man might be dead, but she felt no compunction about speaking the truth.

  ‘Never?’ Showalter had begun leafing through the ledger but she looked up at that.

  ‘Not that I can see.’ A few more taps on the keyboard.

  ‘No, there’s no record of an Alyson Beaumont ever checking in here.’

  ‘Alyson?’ Dulcie did a double take, and Showalter slid the ledger over. Together they looked through the pages. Most of the signatures were nearly illegible, but Dulcie skimmed, looking for the big ‘A,’ like that brass key ring. Flipping through pages, she saw her own looping scrawl and a few others. Very few others. But it wasn’t that. There was something else. Something she felt she was supposed to remember. ‘She’s my student,’ she said, distracted. ‘I don’t know …’

  ‘Were you aware of her interest in the bequest?’ Showalter turned her strange golden eyes on Dulcie.

  ‘Well, I knew of her interest.’ Dulcie paused to consider. ‘In fact, I’d been steering her toward The Ravages, or at least towa
rd one of the lesser-known Gothics, as a topic for her thesis. She’s a junior, and I was hoping to get her started early. But, to be honest, she’s always seemed a little distracted to me, if not, well, maybe not that interested.’

  ‘Maybe Fenderby was hoping to pique her interest,’ Showalter posited, turning back to the ledger. ‘After all, when we spoke, he did say that he’d found something quite intriguing.’

  ‘What was it?’ Dulcie thought of her own discovery – of the corrected page, the altered phrasing. To her that had been tremendously exciting. Would it have been so to Fenderby, a man who claimed not to care for the fiction of the era? As she waited for a response, she felt a frisson of anticipation – for all of her issues with Fenderby, he had been a tenured professor. If he had thought that page important …

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Showalter. ‘He was quite secretive about it.’

  ‘Oh.’ Dulcie couldn’t help feeling let down. ‘I guess I’m the only one interested in those pages.’

  ‘Well, the only reader of any consistency,’ said Griddlehaus. ‘There was a request late last semester. Though, that was before the items were put on hold.’

  ‘Who was it?’ Showalter voiced the question in Dulcie’s mind.

  ‘One moment, please.’ Griddlehaus typed a few more keys and then turned to them. ‘Box 978 was requested on December third from a different junior. Mina Love.’

  ‘My cousin?’ Dulcie shook her head. ‘That doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘That she wouldn’t share your interest?’ Showalter sounded amused.

  ‘No, that she wouldn’t have told me.’ Dulcie paused, a memory tickling the back of her mind. ‘Unless …’

  ‘Well, this is odd.’ Griddlehaus had gone back to his computer, and his comment interrupted her train of thought. ‘Very odd.’

  They waited.

  ‘Fenderby put in the request for the papers to be held two days later.’ He turned to the ledger and flipped open the pages. ‘Yes, two days.’