Grey Expectations (12 page)

Dulcie had smiled and nodded. Clearly, Trista picked up more computer lingo from her boyfriend Jerry than Dulcie did from Chris. She'd been worried, briefly, that this meant she didn't listen to her boyfriend, and had brought it up to him that evening.

He'd only laughed. ‘Sweetie, if I wanted to talk code, I'd go hang out with Jerry.' He'd hugged her, then. ‘Really, Dulce. With you I can get away from all of that.'

She hadn't felt entirely easy at his explanation. After all, by now he was thoroughly versed in the uses of metaphor and simile in the late-eighteenth-century novel. Shouldn't she reciprocate? But the incident had stuck in her mind, and finding the bookshelf was easy.

‘Knock, knock!' Dulcie felt a twinge of guilt. A secret study place should not be disturbed. But when nobody answered, she peeked around the shelf to Trista's hideaway. Tucked between the shelves and what appeared to be a utility cabinet, the niche had a chair, a small table that would do for a desk, and enough natural light to make one forget one was indoors. What it did not have was Dulcie's blonde-haired friend.

‘Tris?' It was pointless. Dulcie could see that nobody was there. The desk held no books, and the chair was neatly tucked in. On a whim, Dulcie pulled it out. No, the seat felt as cool as the rest of the climate-controlled building. Trista had her phone turned off, but not because she was in the library.

Dulcie turned to leave, when a thought stopped her. Mr Grey. He'd prompted her when she'd hesitated. His voice had gotten her past the police station. Although her spectral pet could be enigmatic, he didn't do anything without a reason. Surely, he'd known that Trista hadn't been here. Maybe, Dulcie thought, she was on her way right now. Besides, the walk had been a little tiring, especially as she'd hurried those last few blocks. And the library was cool and quiet.

Dulcie pulled the chair out further and sat, facing the blank wall. This little niche certainly had no distractions. Then again, it just might be too out of the way. Dulcie ran her hand over the table; a thin layer of fine dust came up, white, on her fingers. Almost like talcum powder.

She rubbed her fingers together, the sight of it on her fingertips sparking a memory. Powder, on her hands  . . . fine, white powder. Dulcie found herself thinking about the Mildon, trying to recall the last time she had been in the rare book library – and why. It had to have been about
The Wetherly Ghost
, she decided, and it all came back.

She remembered donning the special cotton gloves the collection required. Coated with some kind of non-corrosive powder that made slipping them on and off easier, more sterile, they were supposedly expensive – and expensive to clean. That powder alone was rumored to cost as much as gold dust, and though Dulcie had serious doubts about that, she'd heard that they were the real reason scholars were required to leave their bags up front when they entered the collection. Whatever the powder was made of, she had noticed how it lingered as she'd left, wiping one hand on the other to cleanse her hands of the fine grains.

Could this be what Mr Grey had wanted to show her? It seemed awfully thin. More likely, the white powder was ordinary dust. Perhaps – she looked up at the utility closet – someone had been drilling. If the walls were plaster, this dust could come from them. But the wall in front of her looked pristine. Above her, the lighting fixture appeared untouched, its light clear and warm. Perfect for reading.

She couldn't resist, she really couldn't. She had done what she could to find Trista, and now she was here and, well, maybe this was what Mr Grey had in mind. Dulcie brushed the remaining white powder from her hand, reached into her bag, and pulled out the blue volume,
Early American Dissenters
. Somewhere, a machine started a low hum, and Dulcie was aware of the slightest shift in air currents. A bit of a chill in the air, perhaps. Well, that would keep her from dozing as she read through the rest of the essays.

It took a while, and Dulcie was grateful for Lucy's sweater by the time she found it. Since so many of the essays were not signed – or were signed by such obvious pen names as ‘A Gentleman of Sound Mind' or ‘A Partisan Party-Goer' – she had felt it necessary to at least skim each one. By the time she found the most promising – ‘On Reading' by ‘A Lady of Letters' – her fingers were getting cold.

But it wasn't the air-conditioning that sent goosebumps up her arms. It was the opening phrase: ‘
The education of young ladies, of virtue undimm'd, must be of concern to all  . . .
' That was it – the very phrase that she had found in an article from London, published in 1792. ‘
The bookish mind, far from challenging the finer qualities, shall enhance them  . . .
' That exact passage had been in
The Ravages
, one of the arguments that the heroine, Hermetria, had made to her much more traditionally feminine nemesis, Demetria. ‘
Learning shall be the setting for her jewel'd countenance  . . .
' The missing link! She'd found it.

She rummaged in her bag for her notebook, dropping her pen in the process. Pushing the chair back, she got down on her knees. From this vantage point, the housekeeping in the science library left something to be desired. One gum wrapper – Juicy Fruit – had been kicked over in the corner, its foil balled up against the wall. Dulcie had to smile. If Mr Grey had been here, that bit of junk would have metamorphosed into a toy, and instead of picking it up, she'd have batted it out to him, starting an impromptu soccer match. On a whim, she flicked the little ball and watched as it bounced unevenly on the carpet, stopping over by the wall.

And that's when she saw it, tucked into the edge of the carpet, up against the wall, where the neat installation had left only the slightest gully between the deep pile and the wall. A tiny slip, its faded hue almost camouflaged against the industrial weave. If it hadn't been for the white powder on the table top, she might not even have noticed. But that – and the thought of Mr Grey – had made her think about the special collections. About the missing Dunster Codex. What she saw, half hidden against the wall, was most definitely a blue ticket.

‘Oh, Trista.' She sat back, pausing a moment before reaching for it. In reality, it could be anyone's. Many scholars used this library, not all of them science majors. But, realistically, the odds were slim. How many scholars would have had reason to access both the Widener special collections and the science library? How many of them had made a habit of coming to just this secluded corner?

There would be an explanation. There had to be. And with that thought, Dulcie reached over to pluck the ticket from where it was lodged. ‘Trista, what are you involved in?' She turned it over, dreading the name she expected to see there. And sat up so fast, she smacked her head on the bottom of the table.

The blue ticket – the one that allowed access to the rare book collection – didn't bear the name of her friend. Instead, in block letters, it bore another's. Spelled out, clear despite the usual carbon fuzziness, was a different name. Her own.

FIFTEEN

H
er head no longer hurt where she'd smacked it against the table. In fact, she couldn't feel it at all. But somehow, her legs weren't functioning, and it took forever for Dulcie to scramble out from under the corner desktop, grab her bag, and head for the elevator. This must have been what Mr Grey had wanted her to see. The question was, what did it mean?

As she waited for the elevator to appear, Dulcie tried taking some deep breaths. There was no point in panicking. Only when spots began to appear before her eyes did she realize that hyperventilating was a possibility, too, and so she leaned back against the wall to wait – and to try to calm down.

That ticket: when was it from? Dulcie opened her clenched fist just as the sliding metal doors parted in front of her. The elevator was as deserted as the rest of the library, but she still did not dare to do more than peek at the blue paper as she descended toward the first floor. The line where the date should have been was, of course, smudged. If this were something from a novel, she might suspect foul play. In reality, she suspected the failings of outdated technology. Considering that this was a carbon copy, it was a wonder she could read the name on it.

Maybe  . . . She opened her fist for one more peek. No luck. That was, in fact, her name written on the dotted line.

The doors slid open as she was peering at the crumpled blue slip, and Dulcie jumped. Over at the checkout desk, the reader looked up and smiled. Dulcie did her best to smile back. Making eye contact with a fellow student helped her ignore the guard, who had turned in her direction. If she could just keep walking  . . .

‘Miss?'

Dulcie froze, halfway past the guard. If she ran, could she make it to the doors before him?

‘Miss?'

Probably not. She turned, that smile turning stiff on her face.

‘I have to check your bag.' He looked almost apologetic.

‘Of course.' She hadn't even been aware that she was holding her breath till then. Still, it was difficult to open her bag with one hand clenched tight. The guard didn't seem to notice, though, and after a cursory poke through her things, looked up with an answering grin of his own.

‘Thanks, miss. Have a nice day.'

She nodded, unable to respond in any more articulate sense, and was out the door.

Five minutes later, Dulcie found herself sitting on a bench in the Radcliffe Quad, trying to figure out what to do next. The police were looking for her, and now she knew why. Or thought she did. Carefully, her hands trembling, Dulcie spread out the little slip to examine it more closely. DULCINEA SCHWARTZ, it said, clear as day. That made sense: on anything official, Dulcie would use her full name. By now, she'd even become inured to the smiles her mismatched monikers produced. The date, however, defied her closest examination; the sweat of her nervous hand hadn't made it any clearer. The only thing she could make out, she thought, was a ‘5'.

Dulcie wracked her brain. Had she visited the Mildon collection in May? On the fifth of a month prior? In truth, she couldn't quite remember when she'd last used her access. The segregated area – a specially secured library within a library, tucked into the corner of one of the lower floors of Widener – kind of creeped her out. The rumors that its state of the art fire-protection features involved a special vacuum to suck out all the oxygen in the room didn't help.

She looked back at her name, written out large in block letters. Would she even write her name like that? For a moment, she felt a flood of relief. Maybe this was a forgery. After all, she really did have no memory of visiting in the previous month. Maybe she was being framed, an innocent patsy for an international ring of thieves.

No. Dulcie shook her head. As much as she'd like this all to be a story, that theory was as fantastic as any in her novels. She was merely one graduate student among many. Even if she couldn't remember the last time she'd gone into the rare book room, she had visited it, several times. And even if she couldn't recall her most recent visit, she hadn't forgotten the instructions, repeated every time, to press down hard enough to make all the copies legible. All of which probably accounted for the smudged date – and for the thick block letters in which her name had been recorded for all time, like a guilty secret. If she was going to question something, she should be asking about this ticket: how did this little blue tag get from the Mildon – or more likely, from Dulcie's own bag – to Trista's secret hideaway in a secluded corner of the science library? Had Trista been holding on to it for some reason? Had she – Dulcie paused – taken it?

Dulcie punched in Trista's number and again heard it go to voicemail. ‘Trista, call me.' She was getting angry now, which at least beat being afraid. Where was her friend? On a whim, she tried Lloyd.

‘Hey, Dulcie, are you coming in?' Of course, he was back at their basement office.

‘No. I mean, I don't think so.' Somehow office hours seemed like a foreign concept. ‘I was wondering – Trista didn't come by, did she? Or call?'

‘Funny you should ask.' Lloyd sounded as distracted as always, so Dulcie waited. ‘No, she didn't. One of your students did.'

‘And that was it?' She didn't even want to mention the police.

‘Yup, nobody else. I guess the term really is winding down.'

‘About time.' Dulcie suspected her sigh was audible over the phone. That was fine; Lloyd would assume she was grateful not to have a dozen calls to make. Only a week or so ago, when exams were in full force, Dulcie had found it necessary to turn her phone off even when she wasn't in the library. Students were a necessity – teaching paid the bills – but when they panicked, as they seemed to do every exam period, they were truly the bane of a grad student's existence.

Still, she felt a little bad for leaving one of her charges in the lurch.

‘Which one?' She ran through her current crop. ‘Lisa C.? The one with the purple hair and no concept of sentence structure? Tom the procrastinator?'

She heard a chuckle. ‘I'd swear those were my students, Dulcie, but no. This one didn't leave her name.'

‘And she wants me to call her back, right?' Undergrads. They thought they were the center of the universe. Or at least of their section leaders' lives.

‘Probably. I'm sorry, I should have pressed, but she seemed upset and just kind of turned on her heel. And I've been trying to get through the notes for the Gryzinski paper.'

‘That's OK.' Dulcie hoped the irritation in her voice didn't come through. ‘I really appreciate you covering for me.'

She prepared to hang up, when Lloyd came back. ‘That's fine. It was useful to have the office for another hour, especially after the kerfuffle this morning.' He paused, and Dulcie could almost see him blushing. ‘I was a little flustered, I know. But I have gotten a lot done and, well, I know you're in writing mode. So if you want to come in, I'll get lost. Just let me know.'