True Grey (32 page)

The question was what to do about it. Maybe it was the threatening sky, but the idea of running off to confront anyone was suddenly more imposing, and Dulcie wondered if breaking for lunch would make it easier. Lala's, after all, was barely a block away, and if there was going to be a storm, she could wait it out there. Besides, most demons were better faced over a three-bean burger with special sauce. She took out her phone. Maybe she could even get some company, somebody she could bounce her ideas off of.

For a moment, she almost turned it off again. Who would that be? She and Chris already had a date ‘to talk' later. Since she couldn't see any good coming out of that, she most definitely didn't want to move that conversation up. Lloyd was, well, Lloyd was in too deep – one way or another. Until she could find out how those pages had gotten into her desk, she knew she should stay clear of Lloyd. She'd just spoken to Trista, and Suze had already given her enough of her time.

As she stood there, Dulcie realized she had a voicemail. With some trepidation, she clicked on to it and held the phone up to her ear.

‘. . . that same vision again.' It was Lucy. Dulcie's mother never could get the hang of waiting till the beep. ‘Your grandmother. You don't remember, but she had that lovely red-gold hair.' Dulcie sighed. She'd never met any of her grandparents, thanks in part to Lucy and her father's travels. ‘She's saying something about blood, or maybe it's the blood. Be careful, Dulcie. Especially around knives – Mars is in your house, you know, and you know what that means.'

With a sigh, Dulcie turned the phone off. As Lucy's daughter, she should know what that meant, she was sure. She had no doubt she could call her mother back and ask her, and be told that Mars controlled the warlike aspects of her nature and after another twenty minutes of mumbo jumbo, she'd be told to look both ways before crossing the street. If history had taught her anything, Mars wouldn't even have been warning her to take an umbrella.

Lucy meant well, Dulcie knew that, and she loved her only child. But Lucy lived in a world of signs and portents, the kind of world where weather – Dulcie cocked an eye to the clouds – was more than meteorology. Dulcie, on the other hand, had made the conscious choice to live in the world of facts. If anything, she thought with a smile, Lucy's call had been a warning. It meant she'd been silly. Rather than try to piece together some strange conspiracy out of some story fragments and an odd dream – or worry overmuch about rain – she should focus on what she knew how to do: research.

Martin Thorpe might not be a white knight, but he would be interested in her latest discovery. What she'd found was new, and that would reflect well on both of them. The only question was, before or after lunch?

She walked to the gate and looked across the street. The window of Lala's was full of diners, the counter seats apparently full. That didn't mean anything, of course. She could wait, or hope for a table inside the small café. Or, she realized, she could simply get the inevitable over with. With that in mind, she dialed her thesis adviser.

‘Mr Thorpe? This is Dulcie Schwartz.' She had turned away from the street, sheltering in the relative quiet by the wall. The call had gone to her adviser's voicemail, and for a moment she pondered what to say. ‘I think I've found something that may be useful. New material.' That sounded too vague. ‘A handwritten first draft, Mr Thorpe. In the Mildon.'

As soon as she hung up, she kicked herself. Griddlehaus had told her more than he should have, and now she was going to let people know. Maybe she should warn him?

Dulcie half heard a low rumble, and for a moment she thought Mr Grey was once again with her. But when she neither heard or felt any kind of follow up, she decided her stomach, excited by thoughts of Lala's, had growled. Well, first things first. She'd set things right with Griddlehaus – and then get some lunch. Dulcie turned back into the Yard. She'd run out so precipitously, she knew he'd raise an eyebrow at her return. Still, that was better than risking him being taken by surprise the next time the police came by.

The police. She stopped in her tracks. That had been what had set her off before. No, she shook her head. She wasn't Lucy. She would go by the facts, by the evidence. By—

‘Dulcie!'

At the sound of the voice, she turned. Rafe Hutchins was walking quickly up the path. ‘I'm glad I caught you.'

She waited. He was smiling, apparently unaware of her suspicions.

‘You see, I just ran into Andrew Geisner, and I wanted to explain.'

‘Oh?' Dulcie tried to make her voice as frosty as possible. The result just sounded like she had a frog in her throat. ‘Do tell.'

He looked at her, puzzled, and for a moment she was afraid he was going to ask after her health. Instead, he opted to continue. ‘He says you didn't understand. That he was working for the dean.'

‘He told me.' Her voice was back to normal, but she wasn't buying it.

‘No, but he really was.' The senior tutor looked amused. ‘He wasn't supposed to tell anyone, but I don't see the harm in it, now. Melinda – Ms Sloane Harquist – was a special project of Dean Haitner's. He green-lighted all sorts of access for her. I mean, more than you're aware of. More, to be honest, than I was comfortable with. That's what Darlene and I were – ah – discussing on Saturday, outside Dardley. I'd thought Darlene was jealous and was doing it on her own, but she wasn't. Andrew explained it all. They really were on assignment for the dean. He said he had to be sure of her.'

‘Sure about what?' Dulcie could feel the hairs on her forearms stand up. ‘What do you mean by that, Rafe?'

‘Background. Education. You know, her whole pedigree.' He seemed unaware of the effect his words were having on her. ‘That's why he needed to examine all the other work on the subject, I guess. He's a big one for protecting his legacy.'

‘Rafe, you're a genius.' A flash, like lightning, seemed to go off. ‘I think you just saved my life.'

L
eaving the stunned senior tutor on the path, Dulcie started running. Her thoughts raced alongside, piecing together everything she'd heard. A lot of it didn't make sense, but of one thing she was sure: she needed to talk with Dean Haitner, the one person who might have the answers.

She was breathless by the time she mounted the stairs to University Hall. Panting when she knocked on the dean's door, the heavy, humid air only making her sweat more. It was probably her red face, she realized, that caused Dean Haitner to look at her with such alarm when she pushed the door open to find him at his desk.

‘Ms Schwartz.' His eyebrows almost made it up to his unnaturally dark hairline. ‘What a surprise.'

‘I'm sorry to barge in without an appointment, Dean. But—' She didn't get a chance to finish. Outside, a peal of thunder cracked the air like gunfire, and an answering growl caused her to turn. Behind her, beside the opened door, stood Detective Rogovoy, clearing his throat. Next to him stood Trista, who stared at Dulcie with an intensity that made her wish she really did have the familial psychic ability. ‘Tris, what is it?'

Her friend opened her mouth, only to be cut off by another loud crack and bang. The room was growing dark, and the click of Dean Haitner turning on his desktop lamp brought all their attention back to the front of the room.

‘Thank you for dropping by, Ms Schwartz.' The lamp, with its low green shade, cast stark shadows on the dean's face. ‘I was just about to send Andrew out to look for you.' He gestured, and the tall student stepped out of the doorway beside the desk, accompanied by a uniformed Cambridge cop. ‘He had another errand to complete first.'

From the movement behind her, Dulcie guessed that neither Rogovoy nor Trista had known that the undergrad or the cop were there, just inside the open doorway. Another low rumble, and Dulcie found herself wondering just what sort of scene she had stepped into.

‘These two came to see me,' the dean continued, the lamplight playing up the crags and crannies in his no-longer-young face. ‘They had quite a story to tell.'

Dulcie turned back to her friend, but Trista was staring straight ahead – at Andrew. ‘Trista, it's not what you think,' she said. ‘It's not Andrew.'

‘And you would know, Ms Schwartz, because . . .?' The dean left the question open, turning to smile at the cop. Outside, the wind had picked up, whistling through some slight opening in the oversized windows.

It was the smile that did it. ‘For the same reason you would, Dean Haitner.' Dulcie swallowed the lump in her throat, determined to get this out. ‘I was doing research, and I found out something today.' She paused. No matter what, she couldn't get Thomas Griddlehaus in trouble.

‘Melinda Sloane Harquist's thesis was a sham.' There, she'd said it. ‘She had no original research, and was trying to piggyback on what I had already found. I'm not sure how she knew what I had uncovered. I've only published one paper thus far . . .' She paused, caught up suddenly in an image of her computer screen, awake and moving. Of Esmé, agitated, batting at the mouse pad.

‘Ms Schwartz?' Rogovoy had moved up to stand beside her. ‘Are you all right?'

‘Yes, I'm sorry. As I was saying, there are some things that I don't fully understand yet. But I do know that I was the one who had been doing the research. I was the one who had made the breakthroughs. But Melinda Sloane Harquist was being promoted as the next great scholar of the Gothic novel. She was getting extensive support, including unprecedented – and, may I say, unwarranted – access to the university resources, all the while I was being shut out and shunted into some kind of outsider status.'

‘And you have proof of this?' The dean's voice was quiet, barely audible above the wind.

‘No, not really.' She couldn't betray Griddlehaus. She didn't know if he still had his copy of the chapter. ‘But it fits with the pages . . . the pages . . .' Another loud crack, this time followed by a flash of lightning, saved her. ‘The page that was found in my desk.'

‘The page that you stole from her, without shame.' The dean stood, and a flash of lightning cast his shadow across the desk. ‘And that page is evidence, just as it may be evidence of your involvement in the more heinous crime, which was why I alerted the Cambridge Police to the evidence in the Mildon.'

‘No!' Dulcie was sick of being interrupted. Outside the rain had begun in earnest, pelting the window. She raised her voice to be heard. ‘That's not true! Melinda was stealing from
me
. She was copying
my
research.'

She turned toward her friends. In the darkened room she couldn't make out their faces. ‘That's why she needed special access. Somehow, she knew about everything I had found, and she wanted to be able to refer to the same primary sources. Only she hadn't had time to retype her manuscript and write them in. She quoted what I had before she ever had a chance to see the manuscript I got it from.'

‘That's some story, Ms Schwartz.' The dean's voice was still soft, yet somehow he could be heard over the storm. ‘If anyone believes it.'

‘They will when they see the original material,' Dulcie was shouting. ‘Melinda quoted only the one passage I had typed into my computer – and nothing from the rest of the very same page. You know the truth. You gave her access . . .' Esmé. The laptop. The missing excerpt, corrupted, somehow, within her computer. Another piece fell into place. ‘You gave her access. I don't know how exactly, but somehow you helped her to hack into my computer.'

‘I gave her access, of course. But to purely legal sources.' The dean turned to the uniformed cop. ‘She was brilliant, and she would have done us proud. If you –' he turned back to Dulcie – ‘hadn't killed her.'

‘Me? No—' But the cop was already moving toward her.

‘Ms Schwartz, I'm afraid you'll have to come with me.' She looked from him to Rogovoy, who stood still as stone.

‘You see, Ms Schwartz, you just confessed to knowledge of the missing manuscript.' The dean waited while the cop came up beside her. ‘And it's quite clear from what you've been saying, here in front of witnesses, that you believed yourself to be her rival, unfairly bested in some kind of paranoid fantasy. Which sadly explains your motivation—'

‘No!' Trista jumped forward, throwing her arms around her friend. ‘It's not her you want,' she yelled and pointed to the stunned undergrad who was still standing beside the desk. ‘It's Andrew! Andrew Geisner! He was stalking her.'

‘No,' said Dulcie, everything suddenly becoming clear. ‘It's the dean. He was helping her cheat, though maybe he didn't realize it at first. Though why he would want to kill her, to kill his own daughter, I'll never understand.'

A
ll hell broke loose. ‘She's a crazy woman!' The dean was on his feet yelling. ‘Take her out of here!'

‘What?' Even Trista looked confused. ‘Dulcie, what are you saying?'

The city cop, meanwhile, had his hand on Dulcie's shoulder and with steady pressure was moving her away, toward the door. Outside, through the rain-streaked windows, Dulcie saw the flashing light of a cruiser. She wouldn't have a chance to call Suze this time.

‘Wait just a minute here.' It was Detective Rogovoy who restored order, stepping in front of them both, crossing his arms over his not inconsiderable chest. ‘I want to hear what the girl has to say.'

‘We know she's your favorite,' the dean said, accenting that last word in a particularly distasteful way. ‘That doesn't mean she—'

‘Officer?' Ignoring the dean, Rogovoy turned to his colleague. ‘I think you'll agree we're in no great rush.' As if to underline his point, another wave of wind and rain rattled the windows. ‘Spare me a minute here.'