The Northbury Papers

by Joanne Dobson

  LAVISH PRAISE FOR

  The Northbury Papers

  FEATURING PROFESSOR KAREN PELLETIER

  “Dobson moves easily between impassioned evocations of forgotten women writers and catty contemporary shafts at familiar ivory-tower targets.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Few are better than Dobson at recording the minutiae of academic committee-speak, power plays in body language and jargon, and what ignites a classroom.”

  —Booklist

  “An intriguing mystery with excellent secondary characters.”

  —Rendezvous

  AND JOANNE DOBSON’S AGATHA AWARD-NOMINATED DEBUT MYSTERY

  Quieter Than Sleep

  “A white-knuckle ride through the hallowed halls of higher learning and through the dangerous rapids of personal conflicts with a delightfully funny heroine who gives as good as she gets.”

  —Rendezvous

  “A genuinely good read.”

  —Time Out New York

  “A literate and absorbing novel with an ingratiating main character and intriguing setting … a smashing debut. Don’t miss this one.”

  —I Love a Mystery

  “A superior academic mystery that reminds me of early Amanda Cross.”

  —Booknews from The Poisoned Pen

  “Deftly balancing its literary and mystery elements, Dobson’s debut sparkles with wit and insight into college politics. Readers academic and otherwise will look forward to the next adventure of the smart and scrappy Karen Pelletier.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A truly stunning academic mystery … You’ll be all the richer for this nineteenth-century view of a very modern murder. A literary and intricate mystery with connotative power. Watch this one.”

  —Mystery Lovers Bookshop News

  “Emily Dickinson scholar Dobson’s first novel has an appealing heroine, a nifty payoff, and a beguiling way with the extracurricular entanglements of her teaching stiffs.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Anyone who thinks the word ‘academic’ is synonymous with ‘detached’ needs to read Professor

  Dobson’s tale of seething passions and deadly animosities within the English department of Enfield College. It’s a cutthroat world, academia, polished and elegant though the blades may be, and the author captures all the nuances of jealousy and fear that lie beneath the foundations of the ivory tower. Emily Dickinson, shall we say, with a stiletto in her hand.”

  —Edgar Award winner Laurie R. King

  “A witty and fast-paced academic mystery. Joanne Dobson has a light touch.”

  —Joan Hedrick, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life

  “An intriguing plot with a motive for murder that’s as old as human nature. Good characterizations and fast-paced action make Quieter Than Sleep an entertaining novel.”

  —The Chattanooga Times

  “An engaging story … a tense confrontation … will have readers rapidly skimming pages to see how it ends. An entertaining read.”

  —Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph

  ALSO BY JOANNE DOBSON

  Quieter Than Sleep

  The Raven and the Nightingale

  Dickinson and the Strategies of Reticence:

  The Woman Writer in Nineteenth-Century America

  Table of Contents

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  About the Author

  Copyright

  For Dave

  Acknowledgments

  This novel has been inspired by the many talented and courageous women writers of the American nineteenth century. Assigned to oblivion by modern literary critics, the female authors for whom Mrs. Serena Northbury serves as a fictional counterpart are finally benefiting from the scholarly attention that will assure them a foothold in American literary history. Also deserving of mention are the scholars and editors who have devoted themselves to the recovery of these “lost” writers, particularly Elizabeth Ammons, Nina Baym, Paula Bennett, Judith Fetterley, Frances Smith Foster, Mary Kelley, Susan K. Harris, Leslie Mitchner, Jane Tompkins, Jean Yellin, and Sandra A. Zagarell.

  I wish to thank Fordham University for leave time, Eve Keller for insight into curriculum revision matters, Arthur Kinney for a visit to the newly opened Renaissance Center in Amherst, Massachusetts, Jeanne Christman for medical advice, Deborah Schneider for her savvy and support, and Kate Miciak and Amanda Powers for their kindness to a new author.

  Sandy Zagarell, Phyllis Spiegel, and other friends have proven steadfast throughout the writing of The Northbury Papers, and I have benefited from the knowledgeable advice of members of my crime writers workshop, Gordon Cotler, Eleanor Hyde, Diane Ouding, Jonathan Harrington, Leah Ruth Robinson, and Bernice Seldon.

  Lisa Dobson Kohomban, David McKinley Dobson, and Rebecca Dobson are the best children in the world, providing support, understanding, good ideas, cookies, and grandchildren. Myriam Denoncourt Dobson’s enthusiasm and flowers are much appreciated, as is Jeremy Kohomban’s generosity with his computer expertise. Dave Dobson has lent me his imagination, enhancing the world of Enfield College—and my life—with character, color, and incident. Thank you all.

  “She makes a good living out of such stories, they say;” and he pointed to the name of Mrs. S.L.A.N.G. Northbury under the title of the tale.

  “Do you know her?” asked Jo, with sudden interest.

  —From Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

  One

  The bookplate was ornate in the nineteenth-century manner, a rich cream-colored rectangle with a wide border of morning glories and tangled vines. In Gothic lettering it read Ex Libris Mrs. Serena Northbury. I closed the book and turned it over to look at the title. Mrs. Northbury’s bookplate was affixed to the inside front cover of a well-preserved, half-morocco-bound copy of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.

  “Wow,” I said to Jill, “where’d you get this?”

  Jill Greenberg slid her tray across the Faculty Dining Commons table, pushed the unruly red hair back from her forehead, and sat down next to me. “You know that antiquarian bookstore in Pittsfield, the one on North Street?”

  I nodded, fanning lightly through the pages in search of any possible Northbury artifacts; you never know what you’ll find preserved between the pages of an old book.

  “Well, I was browsing there with … well, I was browsing, and the cover caught my eye. Then I saw Serena Northbury’s bookplate and knew you’d be interested. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, they really knew how to make books in those days.” The title was stamped in gold on the leather-bound spine of this one, and the dark blue covers were spackled in green. “A lot of the tim
e it didn’t much matter what was inside, but the book itself had to be a work of art.” Finding no treasures between the ragged-edged pages, I handed the volume to Jill.

  She pushed it back toward me with both hands. “Keep it, Karen.” She picked up her ham and Swiss on rye and nibbled. “You’re probably the only person left in the entire universe who cares about Northbury.”

  “Jill, I can’t take this.” I wanted the book. It had been owned—been touched, been read—by a nineteenth-century American novelist with whom I was becoming increasingly fascinated. But I couldn’t afford to indulge myself in luxuries. On the scale of professional salaries, English professors rank just slightly above church mice, and the average church mouse isn’t paying tuition for a daughter studying premed at Georgetown. “This must have cost a fortune.”

  “Nah.” Money was never an object with Jill. It had never had to be; she was the daughter of a Park Avenue psychiatrist. A psychopharmacologist, yet. The streets of the Upper East Side are paved almost entirely in Prozac, and Papa had a great deal of money in his pocket. At the age of twenty-five, Jill had no education debts, and no one but herself to lavish her salary on. “It wasn’t that much. The book dealer said the book wasn’t a first edition or a particularly valuable one, so basically he was just charging for the binding.”

  “Well,” I said. “If you’re sure …” I turned the handsome volume around and ran my forefinger over the gilt lettering of the title. “I’m a little surprised to find that Northbury read Jane Eyre. Her own novels are nothing like it. They’re really quite—well—sentimental. But they’re so interesting…”

  “‘Interesting,’ my foot. Why don’t you just admit you like trash?”

  “It’s not trash.” I felt defensive; the grip Serena Northbury had on my imagination wasn’t easily explained by any of the usual literary or feminist rationales. Northbury wasn’t a great prose stylist, and she certainly wasn’t a flamboyant feminist rebel. Her forty best-selling novels were conventional tales of young girls who face hardship and moral danger, but through unassailable virtue and mind-boggling diligence win out in the end.

  I could relate to that; it sounded like my own life. Well … maybe not unassailable virtue.

  “I know she’s no Brontë,” I admitted, “but there’s something quirky in her stories. I don’t know how to describe it, but I think I’m addicted.”

  Jill laughed and took a second bite of her sandwich. “A Ph.D. in lit, huh? A professor at Enfield, one of New England’s most respected colleges? Karen Pelletier, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!”

  “Come on, Jill. You of all people should know popular literature is a perfectly legitimate field of study.” Jill is a sociologist, and literary studies are becoming more like a branch of the social sciences every day. “I’m simply reconstructing cultural conditions of literary reception.” Yeah. Right. I had read every one of Serena Northbury’s books I could get my hands on. Her popular novels enthralled me in the same way they must have captivated her multitudes of nineteenth-century readers.

  “Lighten up, Karen. Face it; you’re reading garbage!” Jill was joking; with a tattoo just above her left ankle and a gold ring where she didn’t talk about it, Jill was a pop culture nut.

  I lightened up. “Yeah, Jill, you’re right. I’m a lowbrow.” I stroked the copy of Jane Eyre as if it were still warm from Mrs. Northbury’s hand, and set it down next to my plate. “Thanks for this. I owe you.”

  Jill made a dismissive motion with a hand that wore a half dozen silver rings and took another nibble of the sandwich. I picked up my mug of black coffee—I needed a jump start before I went into the classroom—and glanced at Jill over the rim.

  My young colleague wasn’t looking her best. I was used to the untamable red hair and the funky clothes—today a short, sleeveless cotton shift in a turquoise-and-lime flying-toasters print worn with black Converse basketball sneakers and one dangling garnet earring—but the mouselike appetite and the listless expression were something new. Jill Greenberg usually had the appetite—and the brute energy—of an adolescent hockey player.

  “You okay, Jill?” I buttered my crusty whole-wheat roll and took a bite.

  “I’m fine.” Her tone was abrupt. “I’m just a little tired is all.” She put the nibbled half sandwich back on her plate, aligned it with its untouched mate, and pushed the plate away. “And the food here gets worse every day.”

  The food in the Enfield College faculty dining room is okay. It’s more than okay. It’s downright good. And most days Jill proved that by putting away a full dinner entree at noon and then topping it off with a sundae from the self-service ice-cream bar. For a college professor—even for the child prodigy she was—Jill usually ate, well, prodigiously. I narrowed my eyes at her. Something was definitely wrong. Could Jill be having boyfriend trouble? As far as I knew, she hadn’t been seeing anyone lately. Come to think of it, though, with Jill, that in itself was worth notice.

  “Jill?” I ventured.

  But she was gazing past me. “Karen, don’t look now, but something weird is going on over at the Round Table.”

  I immediately swiveled around and stared.

  The large round table in the far corner of the Faculty Commons is reserved for group luncheon meetings. On Thursdays, for instance, it’s the women’s studies table; once or twice a month, black studies has dibs on it. Today it was crowded with college administrators and department heads. From where I sat I couldn’t see everyone, but it would have been impossible to miss Miles Jewell, English Department chair. Miles was holding forth in a voice that had begun to rise beyond a decorous decibel level. He was ignoring President Avery Mitchell’s attempts to quiet him. His round face was even more flushed than usual, and a cowlick of thick white hair had flopped down boyishly over the ragged white eyebrows. Halfway across the large dining room I could hear the outraged tones of Miles’s protest—something about insupportable assault on traditional standards.

  “Karen, don’t gape.”

  Jill was right; I was gawking with prurient curiosity as my department head made a public spectacle of himself. I turned back to my tablemate. “That’s a pretty high-powered bunch there, and they don’t look like happy campers.”

  “Sure don’t. I wonder what’s going on. Look—I mean, don’t you look, for God’s sake; you’re too obvious. I’ll tell you what’s happening. Now Avery’s got the floor. The voice of sweet reason, as usual. God, he’s a beautiful man. Those hands—like a concert pianist. Oh, baby—he can play me anytime. Now Miles is sulking. You know how pink his face is? Well, now it looks like a humongous strawberry. Jeez, I hope he doesn’t have a coronary. Sally Chenille is jabbering on now, probably ‘interrogating the erotic subtext’ of something or other.” Jill laughed. “You should see Sally’s hair—no, Karen, don’t turn around. I’ll tell you. Today, Professor Chenille’s hair is a lovely Day-Glo orange, a very, very nice visual contrast to Miles’s strawberry—no—raspberry complexion. Okay, now your pal Greg Samoorian is talking—why do only bearded men seem to have that deep authoritative voice? I can’t hear exactly what he’s saying, but it looks like he’s on Avery’s side. At least Avery’s nodding, and—”

  “Okay, okay, I don’t need a blow by blow. If Greg’s involved, I know what it’s about. He told me Avery was getting together an exploratory committee to investigate collegewide curriculum reform. As the new chair of Anthropology, Greg’s part of that. This is probably the planning group.”

  Jill whistled softly between her teeth. “Whew, no wonder Miles is so upset. The college might actually stop requiring his course in the Literature of the Dark Ages.”

  “Yeah.” I laughed, but it wasn’t funny. In the current culture wars, the English Department faculty was factionalized between the old-guard professors who taught Literature (with a capital L) as high art, and the avant-garde who taught almost anything that had ever appeared in print—and had completely discredited the very idea of art. And now it looked as if the contest for th
e hearts and minds of Enfield students was about to draw blood. Miles Jewell was representative of the older contingent, utterly conventional in his approach to literature: Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton were his gods. Henry James deserved serious consideration—maybe. Jane Austen—well, okay, she wrote nice little stories. But beyond that, no woman had produced anything worth consideration. And minority literature? A contradiction in terms.

  Since I’m in the opposing camp—I’d been hired to teach American women’s literature—I was at frequent odds with my department chair. As an untenured professor, I could be made pretty uncomfortable at times. Miles, and the other old boys, seemed to think that the department got more than it bargained for when they hired me. My work on Emily Dickinson was acceptable, of course; after all, the woman had somehow wormed her way into the canon of American literature, that body of texts professors had taught since time immemorial. But now, two years into my position at Enfield College, I—young upstart that I was—was exposing my students to all sorts of noncanonical stuff: slave narratives, sentimental novels, working-class literature—the books people actually read in the nineteenth century. Garbage. And now, God help me, I was also thinking about writing the biography of an obscure woman novelist named Serena Northbury. I hadn’t told the department yet, but Miles would freak out when—and if—I mentioned it in my annual faculty activity report.

  I sighed and nudged my empty plate away. Time to get back to work. There were papers to grade, classes to teach. And I needed to make time to write a good long letter to my daughter. Even though Amanda had been away at college for two years, I missed her. We talked on the phone all the time, but letters were better: You got to slit the envelope, pull the missive out, smooth it open—and read it over and over again.