True Grey (26 page)

T
here had to be an explanation, a rational one, for Chris being in University Hall. Maybe there had been some mix-up with his registration, or with one of the students he shepherded through the computer labs. Maybe he had an appointment with another dean in the building. Maybe . . .

It was no use. Dulcie stood, rooted to the spot, and watched these excuses vanish like her departed beau. She and Chris had been registered for weeks, as had their students. Any problems that came up now, in mid-September, would have to do with grading or transcripts, and those offices were in the old Byerly Hall. As for other errandsn – Dulcie visualized the long hallway and the placards outside each office or suite: alumni affairs, varsity promotions. Something with environmental compliance happened down at the end; she remembered seeing some kind of celebration when the rehab of the Science Center had been completed. None of these were likely to have called her boyfriend in, and certainly any of them would have been worth mentioning.

No, there was no way around it. Either Chris had been called in to give evidence against her, or he was – the idea sprang into her mind – volunteering some kind of information. After all, he had access to all of her computer files, even the ones that were supposedly encrypted.

No, she wouldn't believe it. Lloyd she would keep her distance from – more because of his friendship with Rafe than anything else. Thorpe she already knew wouldn't lift a finger to help her. But Chris? There had to be an explanation.

‘
We'll talk.
' His words echoed in her memory. She would just have to wait.

In the meantime, she could still salvage something of the day. With a lump in her throat she turned and started once again toward Widener and the Mildon Collection.

It was no use. Instead of bounding up the wide granite stairs, Dulcie felt each leaden step. The security guard took forever to examine her ID, and the elevator was slow. By the time she got down to the collection's special entrance, it was ten to five. Officially, the collection was still open, but, as she knew from long experience, too late for anything to be taken out of the archives.

When Dulcie saw the security gate – half down in preparation for closing – she was tempted to just collapse in the hallway and cry. She was, in fact, slumped against the wall when Thomas Griddlehaus saw her.

‘Ms Schwartz!' He abandoned the cart he'd been pushing and ran out to greet her. ‘Are you all right? Have you been hurt?'

‘No, I'm fine.' Forcing a smile on to her face, she struggled to her feet. ‘It's just been an exhausting day and I ran.' She gestured to the gate. ‘Then, when it looked like I was too late, I guess I indulged in a bit of drama.'

‘Perfectly understandable.' The little man gestured toward the opening. ‘And in truth, I shouldn't be letting anyone in at this hour. But for you, Ms Schwartz . . .'

‘Thanks.' The smile became genuine as she followed him into the collection's sterile, white anteroom. ‘After your call, I confess, I've been looking forward to this all day.'

‘Oh.' Griddlehaus began rubbing his hands together. Something was wrong. ‘About that.'

‘You . . .
didn't
find something?' Dulcie braced herself. This day could get worse.

‘No, no, I did, I did. Only . . .' The little man paused to glance in one direction, then another. Since the library around them was silent, the effect was comical. In any other circumstance, Dulcie would have been tempted to laugh. ‘I can't show it to you,' he concluded, his voice sinking to a loud whisper. ‘It's been sequestered. Again.'

‘What?' Her own voice sounded loud to her and clearly alarmed the clerk. ‘But, why?'

‘Well, you know, originally, I had pulled the material for Ms Sloane Harquist,' he said, leaning in. ‘So I thought that, considering what had happened, it would be fine to re-file it. I had several documents and, of course, those boxes of unidentified writings, as you'll recall.'

Dulcie nodded. Melinda's request had covered everything, ranging from the Paine letters to the boxes Dulcie herself had only begun to sort through.

‘I was in the process of replacing them, when I realized what had happened, and I became so excited that I called you right away. But then I was informed that I was to surrender everything that might pertain to Ms Sloane Harquist's thesis. The young man who had been sent insisted on taking the material with him.'

The little man looked around again before continuing, his voice heating up with outrage. ‘I understand the need to investigate her unfortunate accident, Ms Schwartz. I do. Though how her thesis might be involved, I don't understand. And I certainly do
not
see the need to remove valuable, and fragile, documents from the one place where we can guarantee that they are properly maintained.'

They both fell silent at the dean's extreme breach of etiquette, and, for a moment, Dulcie felt a wave of relief. He hadn't mentioned the case against her. It was embarrassing to have her ethics questioned, and she wouldn't want Griddlehaus to doubt her. Still, she suspected that her case – rather than the murder investigation – had caused the dean to nab the documents. ‘When did this all happen?'

‘Less than an hour ago,' he said. ‘I meant to call you after closing.'

The timing could have been coincidental, but Dulcie doubted it. She didn't think that Chris would be doing the dean's dirty work for him. Still, the timing was suggestive.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the little clerk leaning in closer.

‘That isn't all,' he said, his voice so soft she barely heard him. ‘I made a copy.'

‘A copy?' Now it was Dulcie's turn to look around, though for a different reason. ‘But . . . how?' The Mildon, she knew well, had nothing so mundane as a Xerox machine. The light, it had been explained to her, would have been too harsh for most of the papers in the collection.

‘By hand.' Griddlehaus blinked up at her. ‘I told him I needed to check out everything he was taking, so while I was copying his information down, I also quickly jotted down a few relevant lines.'

‘Mr Griddlehaus, I love you!' Dulcie cried out. ‘I mean, thank you,' she added at a lower volume.

The clerk turned away, blushing. He was flustered, Dulcie realized, and when he opened a drawer and started fussing, she waited for him to recover his equilibrium. But he was not simply covering his embarrassment, she saw, when moments later he pulled out the famous log book. Inside its leather binding, sheets of yellow tickets – and their carbon copies – made for a simple and yet very workable system. Anything that could be checked out – and not much could from the collection's rarities – would be noted here, with the borrower's name confirmed and countersigned by the clerk on duty. Ever since the problems of the previous semester, the library had been planning to update the system, and there was talk about palm-print technology or, at the very least, a swipe-card database. Ultimately, however, this anachronistic and low-cost system seemed to work best, provided that the clerk on duty was reasonably awake and honest.

Griddlehaus was both, and he had cleaned the house of any suspect characters on his staff over the summer. But Dulcie ignored the neatly printed names and instead looked where the clerk now pointed: at five lines of tiny, almost calligraphic script. She squinted and leaned in, and Griddlehaus rooted through the drawer to come up with an oversized magnifying glass.

Placing it on the page, she could now read:
Those red-gold locks, besmirch'd by life's gore, she now addressed. “The Sire of my troubles, and also of my deepest joy,”
proclaim'd she, though he would ne'er again respond.
'

It was the rest of the passage – the one Dulcie had started to decipher. Eagerly, she read on: ‘
Would have been better for this woman to stand alone, for to be friendless is to know that which is true for our Sex. 'Tis better far.
'

‘The false hope of love!' Dulcie gasped. That last line, it was taken nearly verbatim from the essay she had been reading so recently. And the first bit, with the bloody head? ‘Oh, Mr Griddlehaus,' she worked to keep her voice low. ‘I think you're right. This
is
the missing link. If we accept that the “False Hope of Love” essay was written by the author of
The Ravages
, and I think I've made that case, then this links the book fragment to her, too. That means—'

He was nodding. ‘You have it, Ms Schwartz. You have proof that your subject wrote another novel, perhaps the great work discussed in Mr Paine's letters. An Anglo-American Gothic.'

‘A horror novel.' Dulcie's mind raced. ‘But I have to find more. There has to be more. Mr Griddlehaus—'

‘There is, Ms Schwartz.' The little man sounded ever so slightly smug. ‘In fact, this is not even what I had called you about. There is more.'

‘More?' She couldn't stop staring at the tiny translation. ‘May I take this, Mr Griddlehaus? This is so exciting.'

‘You don't have to.' He lowered his voice. ‘I am afraid I took a rather large liberty.'

She tore her eyes from the scrap of paper to look at him, waiting.

‘I'm afraid I did something of which you might not approve.'

Dulcie nodded, expecting another small breach. Perhaps he had been so bold as to copy some text out in pen.

‘I snuck something into your folder,' he said finally, his voice barely audible. ‘A page of the manuscript.' He stopped, and Dulcie stared. ‘It wasn't like
she
was going to need it any more,' he concluded weakly.

‘Wait, that was you?' The manuscript, Melinda – none of this was making sense. ‘Those pages? Don't you realize they make me look guilty? Like I stole her work? Like maybe I killed her? What were you thinking?'

He blinked up at her, mouth open, and she realized she had it wrong. ‘I'm sorry,' she said, as she saw his eyes fill with tears. ‘You didn't mean
that
manuscript. You meant . . . I'm sorry, Mr Griddlehaus.'

It was too late; he had turned away and was already tucking the ledger into the drawer. ‘I should have known better,' he said, locking the drawer. ‘We have rules for a reason. Only, I thought in this case . . .' A large sniff, and he pocketed the key.

‘No, it's me. There's . . .' She fumbled, at a loss to explain everything. ‘There's something else going on. Melinda Sloane Harquist's dissertation has gone missing, and I've found what may be parts of it.'

It was no use. She was confusing him more.

‘I'm sorry,' she said finally. ‘You've done nothing but try to help me, and I made an assumption and yelled at you.'

‘No, you were right.' He opened a door to remove a tweed jacket, and reached for the lights. ‘Protocols exist for a reason.'

‘Mr Griddlehaus, please,' she was practically begging. ‘I am sorry, really, and I deeply appreciate what you've done for me.' She followed him as he turned off another set of lights, leaving the back rooms in darkness. ‘May I see the page, the one you put in my folder? Please?'

‘Well, perhaps when we reopen.' He punched in a code. ‘Tomorrow.' And with that he ushered her out to the hallway, pulling the security gate down shut behind him. The exercise of routine seemed to have helped him regain his equilibrium, but it was definitely a stiffer, more formal Griddlehaus who pulled a cloth cap from his pocket and adjusted it on his head with a nod. ‘Goodnight, Ms Schwartz.'

She watched him make his way down the main library corridor with a heavy heart. Griddlehaus had done nothing but try to assist her. He'd already given her a leg up with the fragment she'd started to read, and it appeared he'd identified an additional page of that handwritten manuscript, too.

In fact, she realized as she watched the elevator doors close on the small but devoted clerk, there might be even more he could have helped her with. Griddlehaus had signed out those pages to someone. If she hadn't flared up at him – if she hadn't spoken out of turn, he would have let her look at the yellow ticket. She could have found out exactly who had taken the documents. Who was looking through them for clues – and perhaps trying to frame her.

S
ome days were so long, they became a burden, Dulcie decided. When she'd left the library, she'd been surprised to see the sky still bright, the early autumn twilight just beginning to soften the shadows in the Yard. No matter what those trees said, however, it was time for her to head home. She was dreading whatever Chris might have to say, but she might as well get it over with. Besides, she could really use the comfort of a cat right about now, and if Mr Grey wasn't going to visit her, then Esmé would be called into duty.

The thought of the bouncy young feline cheered Dulcie, and she imagined how she'd love the Yard like this, the squirrels racing around among the shadows. The mockingbirds calling out their evening song somewhere high in the trees. Then again, if she did take Esmé out, she'd have to be careful, she realized. ‘I wonder if she'd consider walking on a leash?'

The thought made her laugh, and her steps became lighter. Even the breeze seemed more optimistic, cool for a change but not chilly. She could almost imagine the soft rumble of a purr, somewhere around the vicinity of her hip. It took a moment before Dulcie noticed that something was buzzing by her side. She'd turned her phone on, automatically, as she exited the library, but she'd turned it to vibrate by mistake.

‘Hello?' She was too late; whoever it was had hung up. With a mild sense of annoyance, she flipped over to voicemail and was shocked to see she'd missed four calls, the most recent from Trista. She hadn't talked to her friend since the cookie powwow, she realized with growing excitement. Maybe Trista had found something. Maybe she'd have the answer to all of this craziness. Dulcie longed to call her back, but the other three were from Lloyd and she paused. If he'd been trying that hard to reach her, she owed him the courtesy of calling him first.