True Grey (20 page)

In a flash, Esmé had pounced, sending the errant page sliding under the table. Dulcie ducked to retrieve it, just in time to hear the front door open.

‘Hello?' It was Chris, and Dulcie rose to meet him.

‘Ow!' Too late, she'd forgotten exactly where she was. ‘Hey there,' she said as she stood up, rubbing her head.

‘You OK, sweetie?' Chris dropped his own bag and went to embrace her. He was, she could tell, exhausted. So she managed a smile and a shrug before hugging him back.

It had to be his fatigue, she knew, that kept him from following up. Disengaging, he threw his jacket over a kitchen chair and went directly to the refrigerator.

‘Tough shift?' Dulcie didn't want to burden him. Then again, she did want to talk.

‘Uh huh.' Chris emerged, holding bread, peanut butter, and strawberry jam. ‘Fall semester, nobody knows which end is up.'

‘I gather you didn't get any sleep.' Her hopes for a meaningful discussion fading, Dulcie settled for coffee.

‘Not even time for dinner.' Chris didn't even wait to sit, taking a bite of bread as he slathered peanut butter and jam on a second slice. ‘You feeling better?'

‘Well, not really.' She should let him sleep, she knew that. But it had been such a miserable day. ‘Chris, I've been accused of plagiarism.'

To do him credit, he listened, downing two more slices of peanut butter and jam as he did so. He declined coffee, when she offered him the rest of the pot, and so she drank the rest. After her troubled sleep, she'd need it to stay awake, she told herself. By the time she'd finished telling Chris about the dean's accusations, however, she could hear the edginess in her own voice.

‘Oh, Dulcie, what a hassle.' Chris leaned back against the counter, his eyes closing. ‘But it's so crazy. I'm sure it will all work out.'

‘Work out?' Dulcie, who'd been leaning against the other counter, stood up suddenly. ‘Work out?' She spat his words back at him. ‘What do you mean, Chris? I'm being
investigated
. I'm on disciplinary probation!' Underneath the table, Esmé looked up at them both, her green eyes growing round with dismay.

‘I know, I'm sorry.' Chris rubbed his face with his hand, getting strawberry jam on his cheek in the process. It stood out, red against his pale skin, and at any other time Dulcie would have found it endearing – and come forward to wipe it off, a move that would undoubtedly end in a kiss.

This morning, however, she was just a little too raw. ‘You have jelly on your face,' she said, her voice flat as she turned to the table, where the detritus of her bag lay spread out. ‘And I . . . I have this to deal with.' She grabbed the letter and shoved it toward him. He reached for it with a hand that, she saw, had more jam on it. Just in time, she jerked it away. ‘And your hands are dirty too.'

‘Sorry, Dulce.' He shuffled over to the sink. ‘I'm fried. Look, I'm not the best person to talk to about this right now. There has to be someone, though, right?'

She shook her head, the flare of anger fading. ‘Thorpe's thrown me to the wolves,' she said sadly. ‘He's more concerned with how this will reflect on him than on whether I'm guilty or not.'

‘Well, what about Rafe Hutchins? He's in your department, right? I can ask Darlene to ask him about, I don't know. Everything.' Chris was positively bleary eyed, wiping his hands on a dish towel. ‘She certainly owes me one.'

For a brief moment, Dulcie's spirits started to lift. Then memory dashed them back. ‘But she's working with the dean. You told me so yourself.'

A ghost of a smile showed on Chris's face. ‘Even better. Who knows what she has access to? Between her and Rafe . . . what?'

Dulcie's head was hanging down, the tears gathering in her eyes. ‘She won't help me, Chris. Not if what I think is true is true . . .' She looked up into his sad, sweet face. ‘Chris, I think Rafe might be behind what happened with Melinda. I think maybe he stole her manuscript. Maybe even killed her.'

‘Oh, that's ridiculous.' His voice was gentle, but the words were too much for Dulcie.

‘You don't know, Chris. There's a – there's a whole conspiracy. Last night, I wanted to talk to one of my students. He's working with the dean. And I saw him meeting with Rafe – and with Darlene, too.'

‘I told you she was on some special assignment.'

‘At the Dardley House tea? That's what kept her away from working her shift?' A horrible thought hit her. It wasn't true, she knew it. She even knew she shouldn't ask. But the last few days had been so awful, and she was tired. ‘You were covering for her last night, right?'

‘Dulcie, I can't deal with this right now.' Chris shoved his plate into the sink and headed toward the bedroom. ‘I need to get some sleep.'

‘And I need to get to class.' Chris, halfway down the hall, didn't respond. ‘Goodnight,' Dulcie called after him. The only one listening was the cat, who had emerged from under the table to rub against Dulcie's shins.

‘Oh, kitty.' Dulcie reached down to the cat. She hadn't been exaggerating. She was running late. But after the night she had just had – after what could only be described as another fight – she wanted the comfort of a cat in her arms.

Esmé, however, had other plans. Eluding Dulcie's hands, she ducked back under the kitchen table, and as Dulcie knelt down she reared up to bat at Dulcie with her paws.

‘I'm sorry, Esmé, I don't have time to play right now.' Another bat, this time with claws, and Dulcie sat back hard on the floor. ‘Hey, what was that about?'

The tuxedo cat scampered further under the table, skidding as she landed on a piece of paper that served as a sled. Once she hit the far wall, she turned to watch her human.

‘No, I'm not playing with you. Not when you're like this, and besides . . .' The cat, she realized, had skidded on a piece of paper. The same paper that been stuck to the dean's letter, inside her legal pad. On hands and knees, Dulcie crawled under the table, but paused as she drew near the cat. ‘Esmé, no claws, OK?'

The cat was silent, but Dulcie had the strange sense she understood and so she reached past her to retrieve the page. Just then, she heard the church chimes, three peals of the bell. Quarter to – there was no way she could be on time for her section now. Shoving the page back into her bag, she headed toward the door. For a moment she paused. Should she call to Chris? Say something affectionate about talking it over later? No, she decided. If he wasn't asleep already, he was well on his way. She'd already made a mess of things this morning. They'd talk later, when he was awake.

Halfway to Mass Ave, Dulcie realized that she had never checked that letter. For a moment, she wished for the worst. If she didn't have to teach, she could go back to the apartment and cuddle up in bed with Chris. Their fight would be forgotten in no time.

Then she realized – if she was banned from teaching, she was probably banned from all academic activities. That meant no income and no research, nothing until this case was resolved. Stopping short, she reached into her bag. That paper had to be here somewhere.

‘'Scuse me.' A travel mug brushed by, filling the air with the smell of coffee. Dulcie looked up in time to see its owner run to embrace a red-haired woman.

‘Darling!' The woman squealed with delight, and Dulcie bent back to her task. Right on top, she saw a page with type on it and pulled it out. But, no, this wasn't the letter. It was mostly blank, save for a few lines on top. The tail end of some essay or other.

Dulcie was about to shove it back in, when something caught her eye. ‘
Anonymous
,' she read. ‘
The anonymous heroine . . .
'

Oblivious to the busy Monday morning bustle around her, Dulcie stood and read. ‘
The anonymous heroine had clearly gone into hiding at this point, her flight from her no longer doting motherland of England seemingly not enough to protect this one wildly wayward daughter from the overblown
Ravages
of her own misspent life.
'

Dulcie reread the sentence as commuters jostled her. The church bell rang, and she ignored it. The reference in the text she was holding was, to her, unmistakable, and yet, to her, totally new. The tone was familiar though: arrogant to the point of pomposity. And filled with pretentious alliteration.

‘
And if, as seems likely, our mysterious Anonymous was involved in the scandal, then isn't it probable that in light of her willful ways she
caused
the scandal?
'

‘Wildly wayward'? ‘Willful ways'? That's when it hit her: this was a page from Melinda's missing manuscript. The unpublished book for which she had been killed.

H
er own misspent life? Clearly gone into hiding? Standing there, the sunny modern morning bustling about her, Dulcie found herself transported back two hundred years. Although Melinda's thesis seemed highly speculative – the phrase ‘speciously speculative' came to mind – Dulcie could not discount the possibility that her late rival had some new information. What kind of scandal had her author been involved in? And how did any of this relate to her dream? The dream – that phrase, ‘pollution in the body' – had clearly haunted the writer.

More to the point, Dulcie wondered as she looked up unseeing at the pedestrians around her, how had this page gotten into her bag?

‘There must be more.' Like a squirrel intent on last year's harvest, she dived back into her bag, pulling out the other pad, her wallet, and finally the only other sheet of white paper to be found: the letter from the dean's office. That – and the church bells – brought her back to the present day. Stepping, finally, out of the stream of traffic, she skimmed it quickly, translating from the official language as she read.

‘“Serious import . . .” Yes, yes, I know. “Future proceedings . . .” Sure.' In the last paragraph, she found what she was looking for.
Members of the academic community placed on disciplinary leave may have both their duties and privileges curtailed, as determined by the disciplinary board.
In other words, they could do what they want.

Since they hadn't, however, Dulcie shoved everything back into her bag and broke into a trot. She'd have time enough to figure out how that page had gotten into her bag. While she still had a teaching gig, she should do her best to keep it.

An hour later, she was wondering if the job was worth the effort. The Monday section was a mix of upperclassmen and freshmen, which would be bearable by semester's end, but in September brought out the worst of both. The two juniors in the class had rolled their eyes as she'd burst in, breathless and sweating. She'd heard at least one muttered comment about ‘lost weekends' and had been about to bark something back when the younger students started in.

‘Are we really expected to do all the reading?' They peppered her with questions. ‘What's going to be on the midterm?'

By the time she had calmed them down, another twenty minutes had passed, and she barely had time to bring up that week's assignment. Luckily, one of the juniors had actually read all three sermons and managed a reasonable contrast and compare. While the freshmen scribbled furiously in their notebooks, Dulcie looked around, hoping for one other alert face.

‘Anyone want to comment?' She looked around the table. One hand, raised by a spotty young man. ‘Dwayne?' She smiled to put him at ease.

‘Is it true that you found a dead body in Dardley House?' His voice, quiet but high, carried clearly. ‘And that you might be arrested for murder?'

By the time the section was over, Dulcie was exhausted. And by the time she'd cleared the room – yes, you do have to read it all, and, no, I fully expect to be here next week – it was time for her junior tutorial. Three students, all thesis-bound, who were looking to her to fulfill their requirement of a ‘pre-1850' course. None of whom seemed to actually care about the books she assigned.

‘I have an idea,' she said, as they took their seats. ‘Let's try something different today.' The tutorial took place in the departmental offices, a rather rundown clapboard house on a quiet side-street. This early in the season, the office windows were open for the breeze, and Dulcie was doing her best to ignore a robin as she talked.

Julie, her best student, perked up. The other two were staring out the window, and Dulcie had to fight the urge to close it.

‘To get more in the spirit of these books, let's try to imagine what life was like for an author in 1804. For one of the Gothic she-authors, for example. What would she be dealing with?'

‘Sexism,' Julie chimed in. ‘Family expectations. I mean, if she were married, she might have children.'

‘That's true today, too.' Sheila turned toward her colleague, and Dulcie smiled to see her become engaged. ‘Though at least we have birth control now.'

‘Well, how many women really wrote in those days, anyway?' As the only male in the class, Damien tended to take a contrary viewpoint. ‘And, really, what does gender have to do with what you write?'

This was fertile ground for Dulcie, and for the first time that morning she forgot her problems, talking about the rise of the women authors of popular fiction. ‘You could say they set the stage for much of what is happening in publishing today,' she concluded.

‘Depends how you look at it.' Damien didn't seem to think the subject was closed. ‘I mean, back then, maybe a woman writer was killed in childbirth. But, hey, look at what happened to the visiting scholar over at Dardley House. You were there, right?'

Clearly, it was going to be a long day. At last, however, she was alone, the upstairs conference room a peaceful refuge from everything but her thoughts. For a moment, she closed her eyes. That robin was still singing, and with the warm breeze, she could almost pretend it was still summer break. Still last week, even, before her world had fallen apart.