Grey Expectations

 

A Selection of Recent Titles by Clea Simon

CATTERY ROW

CRIES AND WHISKERS

MEW IS FOR MURDER

SHADES OF GREY *

GREY MATTERS *

GREY ZONE *

GREY EXPECTATIONS *

*available from Severn House

A Dulcie Schwartz feline mystery

First world edition published 2012

in Great Britain and in the USA by

SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

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

Copyright © 2012 by Clea Simon.

All rights reserved.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Simon, Clea.

Grey expectations. – (Dulcie Schwartz feline mystery)

1. Schwartz, Dulcie (Fictitious character)–Fiction.

2. Detective and mystery stories.

I. Title II. Series

813.6-dc23

ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-216-0 (ePub)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8134-2 (cased)

ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-412-7 (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

Acknowledgements

Heartfelt gratitude to my readers – Lisa Susser, Chris Mesarch, Brett Milano, and Jon Garelick – for all your catches and comments. Thanks as well to Caroline Leavitt, Vicki Croke, and Naomi Yang for encouragement (and basil), and to my agent Colleen Mohyde, editor Rachel Simpson Hutchens, and the wonderfully supportive Lisa Jones, Frank Garelick, and Sophie Garelick. Purrs to you all, folks, and may the spirit of love watch over you.

ONE

T
he horses thundered on, as if drawn by traces unseen to their destination. Miles beyond the cresting ridge they had carried her without pause, but her thoughts lay elsewhere, lost in the inky night. Writing, she should be writing, and yet she journey'd on this dark path. Propelled to continue on, not by fear or base desire, but from a strange and wond'rous destiny, a dream that so moved her, she traveled. Exhausted, spent in both body and soul far beyond what mortal woman should endure, she clung to the carriage bench, its worn leather no longer soft beneath her hands as the seemingly everlasting night faded into dawn. An hour more, perhaps two, before the horses would be changed. An hour or two before she could—

‘Stop!' Dulcie woke with a start. ‘Bad Esmé. That hurt!'

If anything could bring Dulcie back to the light of day, it was her kitten. Specifically, her kitten's teeth. Dulcie had been dozing, lost in a dream. Oblivious to the book on her lap, she must have let her hand slide off the page to dangle by her side. Maybe she'd even twitched. At any rate, she liked to think there had been a provocation. Dulcie didn't want to believe the little tuxedo cat would just bite her for no reason.

‘No!' She tried to sound firm, shaking her finger in what she intended as a stern gesture. ‘No biting. No. Bad kit—' Dulcie stopped herself. The last thing she wanted was for the young animal to develop self-esteem issues. Unlikely, true, but when acting
in loco parentis
one couldn't be too careful. ‘Bad
behavior
,' she corrected herself, as well as the young feline. ‘Biting is a bad thing to do.'

But the extended digit offered too much temptation, and the kitten grabbed it. And while the claws in her neat white paws were sheathed, her teeth sunk into soft flesh.

‘Ow!' Dulcie tried to extricate her hand, all thoughts of socially correct pet parenting momentarily shelved. ‘Esmé!' Every move, though, only served to egg on the overexcited kitten, who now had her front legs wrapped around the offending hand. ‘Let go!'

The little cat only held on tighter and started to kick with her white hind booties. In desperation, Dulcie pulled back – and knocked the heavy book on her lap to the floor. The ensuing ‘thump' finally served to interrupt the kitten's frenzy, distracting her enough to allow Dulcie to free herself.

Deprived of prey, the cat sat back and eyed her person. Like the kitten, Dulcie was on the small side, with a tendency toward plumpness. Unlike the kitten, Dulcie's hair was brown, with a reddish cast and a pronounced tendency to curl, especially as late May brought the first wave of humidity to the city. For a moment, though, the two resembled each other. Esmé hesitating, as if wondering where to pounce next. Dulcie considering her small but rambunctious pet. And then, as if heeding some inner summons, the kitten turned and bounded out of the room, allowing Dulcie to turn her attention back to work.

Instead, with a smile, Dulcie watched the kitten bounce off. Rubbing the red marks those tiny teeth had left, she realized no real harm had been done. It wasn't as if the kitten's antics had interrupted anything productive. The afternoon thus far had been a waste, and the kitten might have even done her a service, waking her from her nap. The warm breeze coming in the living room window only hinted at more dreams to come, and the book at her feet suddenly looked too heavy to lift.

She should get back to work – specifically to the large and unpromising book on the floor beside her. Dulcie knew that. If only the reading waiting for her between those dull brown covers was just a little more exciting. If only, she admitted with a sigh, she could simply dive back into her long-time favorite adventure,
The Ravages of Umbria.
That book might have just as colorless a cover – Dulcie looked over at the well-worn edition that always graced her desk – but its insides were anything but.

Set in a haunted version of Italy that existed in fantasy only,
The Ravages
featured a beleaguered noblewoman who had to save herself from a panoply of dangers, including not only the usual ghosts and monks, but also the sneaky betrayal of an unfaithful friend. And the only tools she had at her disposal were her own wits. Unusual for her era, Hermetria – the heroine of
The Ravages
– was the kind of character Dulcie could really believe in. Only two segments of the book survived, which put off more casual readers, but for Dulcie, the lack of a definitive ending made the novel more compelling. Even more fascinating, the author, who had managed to remain anonymous for two centuries, just might have lived a life that was almost as tumultuous as her heroine's – although probably with fewer ghosts.

And that's where both the excitement and the trouble lay. A graduate student doing her dissertation on the Gothic fiction of the late eighteenth century, Dulcie was not only a fan of the headstrong heroine, she was also hot in pursuit of the author. Recently, she sometimes almost felt like she'd pinned the nameless writer down, that she was on the brink of solving a two-hundred-year-old literary mystery. She'd even begun dreaming about her, although in truth she couldn't be sure if her dreams were about the author, her heroine – or some fevered version of herself as she struggled with her doctoral thesis. Some people – her boyfriend was one – thought she'd gotten a bit too close to the book to retain any kind of academic objectivity about its nameless author. But why spend five, six, even seven years of your life studying something if you didn't love it? Why tackle a mystery if you didn't feel you had some insight into how it could be solved?

These weren't questions Chris, her sweetie, had answers for – but his gentle criticism still had some validity. Which was why she had put today aside for the dull necessity of non-fiction research. Specifically, in this case, textual analysis of decidedly un-fun writing. Over the course of the last year, Dulcie had found some real clues as to who her mysterious author might be – but only clues. So, in an effort to bolster her theories, Dulcie was looking for traces of the author in political writings of the day, in particular some radical pamphlets to which her author might have contributed. Or might not have, which would probably prove something, too, although Dulcie didn't even want to think about that possibility just yet.

Before her unscheduled nap – and Esmé's interruption – Dulcie had already spent the greater part of the day with the book in front of her – a collection of two-hundred-year-old essays from the fledgling United States. To say they weren't the most thrilling reading would be akin to saying Esmé wasn't the tamest of pets, but  . . .

Writing a thesis wasn't supposed to be all fun and games. Or even ghosts and goblins, she reminded herself. In fact, it was the discipline of academic life – the rigor – that had first attracted Dulcie. Well, that and the realization that she might be able to make a living with the novels she loved.

Only the week before, Dulcie had finally screwed herself up to begin the actual writing of what was essentially the most important paper of her academic career. She'd begun with discipline on the Monday morning, planting herself and her laptop on the kitchen table. It had started slowly, and she'd spent so much time staring into space that even the cat had seemed bored by her. But the effort had paid off: by Friday, she was blissfully typing away on an early chapter about the novel itself. She'd been so caught up in her work that she still had her breakfast coffee mug by her side when she'd looked up to find her boyfriend watching her sometime after eight that night – but she also had a decent draft of the chapter, the first of a projected twenty.