Grey Matters

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

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 . . .

‘
W
hy 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 window. 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.