Grey Matters Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  A Selection of Recent Titles by Clea Simon

  Title Page

  Copyright

  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

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  A Selection of Recent Titles by Clea Simon

  CATTERY ROW

  CRIES AND WHISKERS

  MEW IS FOR MURDER

  SHADES OF GREY *

  GREY MATTERS *

  *available from Severn House

  GREY MATTERS

  Clea Simon

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First world edition published 2009

  in Great Britain and 2010 in the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

  Copyright © 2009 by Clea Simon.

  All rights reserved.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Simon, Clea.

  Grey Matters. – (Dulcie Schwartz Feline Mystery)

  1. Women graduate students–Fiction. 2. Animal ghosts–

  Fiction. 3. Murder–Fiction. 4. Detective and mystery

  stories.

  I. Title II. Series

  813.6-dc22

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-244-3 (ePub)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-6840-4 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-208-6 (trade paper)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  For Jon

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Writing is essentially solitary. Creating a book, however, is not. Friends, family, and colleagues come together with support, encouragement, and advice, and I would be remiss if I didn’t thank everyone who has put up with me during this process. First and foremost, my deepest thanks go to my fast and careful readers: Naomi Yang, Brett Milano, and, of course, Jon S. Garelick. My agent Colleen Mohyde, and the wonderful folks at Severn House, including editors Amanda Stewart, Rachel Simpson Hutchens, and Claire Ritchie all helped bring Dulcie to life. And sister writers and artists, friends, and family – including Lisa Susser, Caroline Leavitt, Vicki Constantine Croke, Karen Schlosberg, Fran Middendorf, Chris Mesarch, Iris Simon, Sophie Garelick, Frank Garelick, Lisa Jones, and Ann Porter – all lent their good spirits. Thanks as well to Jon for putting up with the charred artichokes and countering with stories of Cheever and Naipaul. You make everything seem possible.

  ONE

  The apparition remained silent, but its speaking eyes saw far. Green eyes, cool as emeralds, stared into her own, summoning images of the sea beyond the borders. Of the forest, far away. Of a key to secrets lost. Of another, gone before . . .

  ‘Why don’t you just say something?’ Dulcie Schwartz sighed and slumped back against the wall. ‘Anything?’

  It was no use. The plump black and white kitten sitting opposite her looked up with wide green eyes. ‘Kitten?’ The green eyes blinked, and that was it.

  With another, larger sigh, Dulcie pulled herself to her feet. Just this morning, she had been sure something was going to happen. A third-year grad student, she’d had sections to teach and hadn’t been able to stick around. But all day, through Dickens and Poe, she’d been thinking. Waiting for the moment she could run home. And an hour ago, she’d broken away, postponed a tutorial with three students who didn’t seem to care much anyway, and thrown herself on to the floor to be at eye level with the tiny tuxedoed beast. The kitten had stared at her with such concentration, she’d felt certain they were going to have a breakthrough. Then, nothing.

  ‘That’s fine, then. Play dumb.’ Sliding a full book bag on to her shoulder she gave the small feline a parting look. ‘But don’t think this is the last of it.’

  Buttoning the heavy wool duffle coat she’d dug out of storage only two weeks before, Dulcie clumped down the stairs to the apartment’s front door. If she’d looked up as she fished her keys from her pocket, she might have seen the kitten tilt its head as if listening to something in the silent flat. She might have seen the tiny cat jump up and hurry to the head of the stairs, the better to view Dulcie’s red-brown curls disappearing through the door’s small window. If Dulcie had glanced back just then, she might have seen the kitten’s small pink mouth open in a soft ‘mew.’

  But Dulcie Schwartz had other things on her mind. At ten of four on a Monday afternoon, the Cambridge dusk was already settling in, and she was late meeting her adviser. Only the day before, he’d left a message that he was filing an end-of-semester performance review – and that he expected her to be able to show ‘significant progress,’ although he’d neglected to elaborate on what exactly that meant. He’d also moved their meeting again, away from his convenient and perfectly lovely office in Widener to his Tory Row house, another ten minutes away. As the Cyrus Professor of the Eighteenth Century Novel, William A. Bullock had one of the choicer library offices, high enough in Widener’s subterranean warren to have an actual wi
ndow. But no, Dulcie muttered as she raced toward Harvard Square, that wasn’t good enough. What had he said?

  ‘I want us to be able to speak in private, Ms Schwartz.’

  She knew the real story. A complete nicotine fiend, the professor wanted to be able to smoke without setting off any of the library’s super-sensitive alarms. And so she trudged across the muddy Common and up Brattle, lugging a bag full of books and fully aware that yet another sweater would be saturated with smoke, her nose stuffed, and her throat hoarse before she got home that night.

  Pushing open the small wooden gate, Dulcie hurried up the garden path. Garden! A bunch of cracked flagstones led the way past an overgrown holly that, by virtue of its evergreen foliage, managed to snag her year-round. Whenever she read of a haunted castle or some mountainous keep, Dulcie pictured Professor Bullock’s townhouse, the end of a long row of darkened brick that bordered on a shadowy alley. The urban address – not to mention the proximity of neighbors – didn’t quite mesh with her Gothic fancy, but the gloomy aspect of the building fit the bill. Victorian brickwork, ornate but soiled, it positively glowered, overshadowing that poor front yard and the tiny, barren space out back. In any other century, it would have been haunted, Dulcie thought with a flash of interest. And if any of her favorite authors had written about this house, the holly would be reaching out to grab her – and closing up behind. But this old house just wasn’t that interesting, and Dulcie snuck by without any pulls or runs, climbed the slate stairs, and rang the bell, only ten minutes late.

  ‘Dulcie!’ The professor’s eyes lit up as he opened the door, letting her into the front hallway. ‘What a surprise!’

  ‘We had an appointment,’ said Dulcie, before catching her own tone – and his sarcasm. ‘I’m sorry I’m late.’

  ‘Of course, of course.’ The professor headed back down the long, dark hall, leaving Dulcie to hang her own coat on the decrepit coat tree by the door. One of these days, its curved wood branches would collapse, dropping the odd assortment of sweaters and windbreakers that always seemed to be there on to the threadbare Oriental runner. For now, it only sagged a bit more, and Dulcie turned to follow her mentor into the back room that acted as his combination home office and library. Polly, the one-time grad student who now served as his part-time housekeeper, seemed to have contained the worst of the professor’s habits to this office-slash-den.

  Professor Bullock’s office was an academic’s hideaway, a throwback to an earlier era. Bookshelves ran up every wall, which between the dim lighting and the constant fog of tobacco seemed to be even taller than they probably were, reaching to an unseen – and doubtless smoke-stained – ceiling. A series of lamps, some precariously perched on piles of books, shed strategic shafts of light on the professor’s stained blotter and one shabby reading chair, its armrests pockmarked with small burns. No computers had infiltrated this bookish retreat, nor any other sign of the last century, really. This was Bullock’s refuge, his escape from modern times. Even the one window, which looked out on to the tiny, shadowy back garden, was dimmed with nicotine residue, the ivy that climbed up its protective grill further obscuring the outside world. And not even the prolific ashtrays – Dulcie counted six – seemed adequate to catch the stray leavings from decades of smoking. If the professor were truly some kind of hoary beast in disguise – and Dulcie, looking at his bushy white eyebrows and thick beard, secretly thought it likely – this was his lair, which, she admitted, was probably why she felt a frisson of fear at bearding him here.

  ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ he’d said, pulling out his pipe before she could answer. Not that she would have. Her roommate Suze might roll her eyes, but Dulcie knew how much of her fate depended on this man. Besides, the pipe was a good-faith gesture. Professor Bullock had been trying to quit cigarettes for as long as she’d been at the university. Smiling her assent, Dulcie lifted an opened journal from the wooden chair facing the desk and took a seat, waiting as her mentor got the tobacco started. He seemed to be savoring it, and she sat as patiently as she could while he smoked and stared at the grimy window.

  ‘I was wondering if we could talk about my latest research?’ Clearing her throat, Dulcie found the courage to speak up. For several months now, she’d been honing an idea – a new reading of a lesser known Gothic novel. The Ravages of Umbria only survived in two fragments, and most scholars dismissed its beleaguered heroine and lurking ghosts as so much two-hundred-year-old trash. But Dulcie had fallen for the spunky Hermetria and, more importantly, had a theory about the resolution of the heroine’s dilemma that no other scholar had yet suggested. According to Dulcie, the orphaned heroine hadn’t been undone by a nasty ghoul or some fortune-hunting suitor, as would have been common for a book of its time. Instead, Dulcie believed, the heroine’s supposedly faithful attendant Demetria had betrayed her – and the author had hidden the clues to this surprise resolution in the attendant’s overwrought speeches. The interpretation was totally Dulcie’s – and something of a breakthrough – and she had spent the last few months compiling evidence from the text to support her idea. At one point, only a few months ago, Professor Bullock had been encouraging. Had even thought her thesis would be publishable. Recently, however, he had seemed to lose interest. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘I’ve made a bunch of notes.’

  Angling one of two desk lamps to see better, she pulled a bunch of papers out of her bag, determined to take the lead. To actually get some substantial feedback from the tenured scholar after weeks of dithering. Dulcie knew that her thesis was undoubtedly secondary in the professor’s life to his own great work, but, well . . . ‘Faint heart never fair doctorate won,’ she murmured to herself, as she placed a heavy book next to the papers. ‘There’s a phrase here that I’m curious about,’ she added in a more audible voice. ‘I seem to recall reading it elsewhere, and it’s kind of unusual.’ She thumbed through the book. ‘Here it is, “Cool as emeralds.” It’s really quite a striking image. Original, I think, but it made me wonder about precedent, and I was considering if I should do some biographical research. There’s an interesting essay here, in the Gunning text—’

  ‘Gunning? Bah. A hack. He’s just a condenser, a collector, a . . . oh hell, what do you call it?’

  ‘An aggregator? A collator?’ Dulcie jumped in before the professor could get more upset. ‘Well, yes, he does collect previously published material, but—’

  ‘Compiler. A damned anthologizer. Bah!’ Bullock broke in before she could finish and began shuffling the papers on his desk. Dulcie fished her own pages out and placed them on top. They were virtually the same notes she’d dropped off the week before; she’d never heard back from him about them. But if he really wanted to see what progress she was making, she’d load him up with copies till his desk collapsed. ‘Where’s my damned pen?’

  ‘Here, sir.’ Dulcie automatically handed him her own: a refillable fountain pen. Her favorite.

  Bullock grabbed it, gave it a cursory glance and tossed it down. ‘That’s not a real pen, and it certainly isn’t mine. And why are you bothering with biography, anyway?’

  It wasn’t really a question, but she wanted to make her case. ‘Well, so little is known about the author of The Ravages of Umbria,’ she began, retrieving her pen. It was tricky, sometimes, filling in her adviser while they both pretended he had read her work, and his little fit of pique hadn’t made her any more relaxed. ‘After all, only some of the text remains, and we don’t know if the author wrote anything else.’ Dulcie’s area of expertise, the Gothic novels of the eighteenth century, was peopled by an odd set of characters – impoverished noblewomen, mad monks, the occasional ghost – but none of the heroines she read about ever had to deal with the self-satisfied academic. ‘And there’s one theory, put forth in Chapter Five here—’

  No use. Bullock was waving his pipe and had scooped up her papers with a loud grumble. ‘Nonsense! Context is simply an excuse. Coward’s way out.’ He rumpled up the papers and leaned back in his chair, before t
ossing them back down again. ‘It’s all in the text – or it’s nowhere.’

  Dulcie sighed and sat back in her own chair. Bullock was on a roll. Famous for the book he’d written more than twenty years before, the white-haired professor started on about syntax and rhythm. Which was all well and good, but Dulcie had heard him give this lecture before. At least three times in this office, as well as once a semester when he kicked off ‘The Great Novel,’ the survey course almost every undergrad ended up taking. Plus, she knew that if she opened up the copy of his masterwork, Unlocking the Great Books, that sat prominently displayed, cover out, on the shelf behind his desk, she could read the same speech, word for word.

  She knew she shouldn’t complain. The course based on ‘Great Books’ – ‘Doorstoppers,’ as some university wag had dubbed it – had largely paid for her graduate education; the class always needed section leaders. But she was working on her doctoral thesis now. She’d been hoping for something a little more in-depth.

  ‘And so, young lady, the best advice I can give you is to scrap your research.’ Bullock tapped his pipe to empty it, getting as much ash on the desk – and Dulcie’s notes – as in the ashtray. ‘And that hack Gunning. Forget the facts . . .’ Dulcie could have finished the sentence with him: ‘and open your ears.’

  Did he even realize how repetitive he had become? As Dulcie took the proffered pages – unread, but well wrinkled – she examined the equally creased face of her mentor. He’d been brilliant once. She’d read his book as an undergrad. They all had. And when he’d singled her out for attention as a grad student, she’d been flattered beyond belief. He certainly looked the part, with the beard and the tweed, his hair just long enough to evoke his early days as a sexy semiotics crossover, back when the boundaries between linguistics and literature were still fluid. Rumor was that the aging institution was working on a great new idea. A new book that would break the field wide open again. Dulcie was no longer sure she believed in it – or in him. Just looking around his cluttered office provided ample evidence. The man was comfortable. Dug in. He had no reason to start anything new.