Murder Superior (22 page)

“Do you think not? Not even by the Order or the Church or whoever?”

“Androcetti had a point in there. I am not a lawyer. I have no official standing. If I am asked to consult by the Order or the Church, what will I do? My effectiveness depends on the police. I’ve always had their cooperation. I don’t think I’d get much of anywhere without it.”

“So what do you think will happen?”

“I don’t know.” Gregor sighed. “I suppose Androcetti will do something dramatic, especially now that the television cameras are here. I even have a suspicion I know what the stupid something will be.”

“What?” Bennis asked.

“Arrest Mother Mary Bellarmine.”

“What?”

The low stone wall was very close to the gate to the garden of St. Teresa’s House. The gate’s opening was stuffed full of nuns, much as every other inch of ground in this place seemed to be stuffed full of nuns, but with less room to move. Now one of the nuns closest to them turned around and peered into his face. She was not a nun Gregor knew, but from the way she was looking at him he surmised that she knew him at least by reputation. She had the wrinkled, very soft skin of old women who have never worn much makeup.

“Mr. Demarkian?” she ventured.

“That’s right,” Gregor said. “This is Bennis Day Hannaford.”

“I’m Sister Mary Celestine. I hope you don’t mind. I overheard what you said. About that policeman arresting Mother Mary Bellarmine.”

“It was just a speculation,” Gregor said quickly. “It hasn’t actually happened.”

“Oh, I know that,” Sister Mary Celestine said. “I know that. There would have been much more fuss if someone had been arrested. But if it does happen it will be wrong. I hope you realize that. Especially if it happened the way everybody says it happened. Because poison was put in the pâté.”

“I think I just had this identical conversation with Sister Mary Alice,” Gregor said.

“I don’t think so,” Sister Mary Celestine told him. “You see, I was standing right next to her. To Sister Joan Esther, I mean. When she died. I was standing right up against that table the whole time the sculptures were being brought in and Reverend Mother General was making her speech and—well, everything. Do you see?”

“I don’t know,” Gregor said.

“I think I do,” Bennis jumped in. “I think Sister saw something.”

“Well, I didn’t see anything sinister.” Sister Mary Celestine shook her head. “I didn’t think anything of it at the time. I mean, I’m assigned to St. Elizabeth’s. I live and work here. I’ve met Norman Kevic a dozen times.”

“What has Norman Kevic got to do with it?” Gregor asked.

“He picked up the ice sculpture,” Sister Mary Celestine said promptly. “I saw him do it. He was weaving in and out among the tables, trying to get something to eat. You know how he is. And he’s good at that, at insinuating himself in places where he’s not supposed to be. Not that anyone was paying any attention to him. I mean, Norman is Norman. And there was such a crowd.”

“But he picked up the statue,” Gregor prompted.

“That’s right.”

“When?”

“While Reverend Mother was making her speech. All the sculptures had been put down on the tables, and he was at the table closest to the door. When Reverend Mother started talking he picked that statue up there—I forget who that belongs to—and then he started working his way down the line of tables. He’d just got to Mother Mary Bellarmine’s table when Reverend Mother started to wind up her remarks, and he stopped.”

“But he picked up the statue.”

“Oh, yes.”

“By the head?” Gregor asked. “By the feet? How?”

“Oh, by the feet,” Sister Mary Celestine said. “It was most definitely by the feet and by the shoulders, if you know what I mean. He picked it up the way you’d pick up any statue and turned it over in his hands.”

“And then what?”

“Then he put it down again,” Mother Mary Celestine said. “Oh, dear. This all sounds so trivial. And it probably was trivial. Norman was probably just being Norman. He’s like that.”

Gregor considered everything she had told him. He didn’t like it. It was too complicated, and it seemed to rest too much on chance. Granted, there was a huge crowd. If Norman Kevic had been intent on poisoning the pâté and killing someone, he couldn’t have counted on going unseen. He had been, after all, a man in a crowd of nuns.

“Did Norman Kevic know the Sister who died? Sister Joan Esther?”

“I wouldn’t think so,” Sister Mary Celestine said. “Joan Esther lived in Alaska, and before that she lived in California, at the Provincial House. I don’t think she’s been out East since her formation.”

“What about Mother Mary Bellarmine? Would Norman Kevic have known her?”

“Well, they certainly would have met Norman has been very involved in our field house project, and Mother Mary Bellarmine was a consultant on that. That’s because she’s built similar things for our Order in other places. They must have been at meetings together off and on all last week.”

“I thought you said you weren’t going to be involved in this case,” Bennis said.

“Involved or not involved, I like my world to make sense,” Gregor told her.

Bennis raised an eyebrow. Sister Mary Celestine was still standing patiently before them, her hands clasped next to her waist and her face expectant. Gregor tried to concentrate on her.

“Well, Sister,” he said, “I’m glad you told me all this. I hope you understand that you also have to tell the police.”

“I’ll tell the police,” Sister Mary Celestine said, “and when I do I’ll give him a piece of my mind.”

“Yes,” Gregor said. “Well. My point here is that this is very significant information, even if it comes to nothing, and you shouldn’t think you don’t have to say anything to Lieutenant Androcetti because you talked to me—”

“I don’t think that,” Sister Mary Celestine said, “but I tried to talk to three different police officers and none of them would listen to me. I suppose they were the wrong police officers, but what was I to do?”

“I don’t know,” Gregor said. “Did you notice the young black officer giving orders in the reception room?”

“Oh, of course. The smart one.”

“Try him. His name is Collins. Sergeant Collins. You’ll still have to talk to Lieutenant Androcetti, but at least you’ll have given your story to one officer who will listen to you.”

“Listen to me,” Bennis said suddenly. “Here comes the fuss you were talking about.”

Gregor turned in the direction in which Bennis was pointing—toward the gate to the back garden, through the gate and into the lawn beyond—and saw a swirling mass of movement that looked like a black ocean in the middle of a storm. The black ocean resolved itself into nuns’ black veils and the storm into the white veil of a novice. Under the novice’s veil Gregor recognized Sister Mary Angelus.

“Let me through,” she was shouting, “let me through! I’ve got to find Mr. Demarkian.”

Gregor climbed up on the low stone wall where Bennis was still sitting. It made him more visible, although it also made him look ridiculous.

“I’m over here,” he called out to Sister Angelus. “Come this way.”

She must have heard him. She pushed two older nuns out of her way—Gregor could hear her “excuse me” ’s because they were loud in spite of being distracted—and barreled through the gate into the field. Once on open land, she stopped, looked around, and trained her sight on Gregor. Then she took off again at a full run. Her veil flapped in the breeze. Her calf-length black habit flapped up to expose her knees. Her long rosary slapped against her side. She got to Sister Mary Celestine out of breath and panting wildly.

“Oh, Mr. Demarkian,” she said. “Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. Demarkian, you have to come quick. Reverend Mother General said to get you and tell you to come right away.”

“But why?” Gregor asked. “What’s happened?”

“What happened is that they’ve taken Sister Agnes Bernadette away in handcuffs.” Sister Angelus wheezed, still breathless. “And there are cameras out there from all three networks watching them do it.”

Sister Agnes Bernadette.

Cameras from all three networks.

Gregor Demarkian groaned.

How bad was all this going to get?

T
HERE WAS A BOTTLE
of Johnnie Walker Black behind the copy of
Anna Karenina
on Henry Hare’s bedroom bookshelf, and when Nancy Hare decided she wanted to go to bed that evening, she went right to it. Nancy didn’t sleep in Henry’s bedroom, and hadn’t for years, but she still treated it as her own turf. She borrowed his shirts to sleep in and his bathrobes to lie around the house in and his ties to try out various things she read about in
The Joy of Sex
. She never tried out anything from
The Joy of Sex
on Henry, because Henry didn’t think sex was a joy. He thought it was more of a responsibility. He thought it was like working at the office or paying his taxes, something he didn’t like to do much but was much too honorable to try to get out of. Of course, Nancy didn’t like to do it much, either, but there was something about
Henry
not wanting to do it that she found insulting. It was as if she lacked something fundamental that would make him behave like a normal human being.

Was it one of the ordinary duties of a wife, to make her husband behave like a normal human being?

The Scotch was in an unopened bottle. The bottle was unopened because Henry’s valet checked it every morning and replaced it if a drink had been taken out of it. A drink was taken out of it once or twice a month, when Henry wanted to make himself feel like James Bond. Nancy took one of the clean crystal drinking glasses out of Henry’s private bathroom—Henry had to have clean crystal drinking glasses to fill with water to clean his mouth out after he brushed his teeth, he also had to have brand new, never before used socks to wear every morning, because he’d heard that J. Paul Getty never wore a pair of socks twice—and filled it to the brim. She drank half of it down and topped it up again. Then she took a cigarette out of the gold box on Henry’s bureau and lit up with a gold Dunhill lighter. It was crazy. This bedroom was like some fantasy out of
Penthouse
magazine, except not so gross. The bed was the size of California and up on a platform. There was a switch in the bedside table that could make the ceiling panels turn until the ceiling had become a mirror. There were pillows the size of outboard motors tossed randomly on furniture and carpet the way the loaves of manna had been tossed from the Heavens. It was all calculated to seduce someone, but Nancy didn’t know who. Henry certainly wasn’t interested in seducing her.

She turned on the television and sat back to watch the eleven o’clock news. She didn’t expect to hear much more than what she had heard at six. It was all over town now, that a nun had died at St. Elizabeth’s. She’d even had phone calls about it. And Henry was furious. Henry was taking it personally. Henry thought it was all her fault, because she’d thrown those flowers on that nun.

That nun.

Nancy took a drag—they were English cigarettes, much too strong and much too harsh—and tapped her ash into the crystal ashtray in the shape of a fish that Henry kept on top of the TV set. Since he didn’t smoke, Nancy didn’t know who it was for, either. living around Henry was eerie. It was as if he weren’t himself at all, but an alien from outer space who had occupied the body of a much gentler, much more sophisticated man.

“A nun accused of deliberately murdering one of her Sisters at a Main Line convent is out on bail,” the woman on the TV said. “News coming up at eleven, right after these messages.”

The bedroom door opened and Henry stood in the doorway, his shirt off and his belt unbuckled, looking blank. That was eerie, too. If Nancy did something outrageous, Henry looked annoyed. If she didn’t—if she was nice, or neutral, or just not sufficiently obnoxious to get attention—Henry looked blank. Nancy had the odd feeling that she was never really there for him.

She had put the bottle of Scotch on the night table. She picked it up, topped her drink off again, and went back to watching the news.

“They let Sister Agnes Bernadette out,” she said, pointing at the set. It wasn’t necessary, but it was conversation. If she didn’t start one, he never would. “I wonder what happens now. Does she go back to the convent and act like nothing ever happened? Does she still cook?”

“How do you know she cooks?”

“She was cook at the convent when I was at St. Elizabeth’s,” Nancy said. “She’s been there forever. And if you want to know the truth, I don’t think she’d have had the heart to deliberately kill Hitler, never mind some nun everybody says she actually liked.”

“I thought it was some nun nobody knew,” Henry said. “Some nun from Alaska. I thought the point was that this Sister Agnes had gone off her nut.”

“Sister Agnes Bernadette.”

“I wish you wouldn’t drink at this time of night. When you drink, you always make a scene.”

Nancy’s cigarette was burned almost to the filter. That was something you really didn’t want to do with these cigarettes, because the closer they got to the butt the worse they tasted. They were supposed to be the most wonderful cigarettes in the world and they made her gag. She got up, got another one, and lit up again. She almost never smoked when Henry wasn’t around. She was addicted to nicotine only in his presence. It had something to do with the fact that when he saw her smoke he always worked around to lecturing her. She wished he would work around to something else, but he wouldn’t and she wasn’t going to ask for it. There was a time in this marriage when she had asked for it a lot and been turned down too often.

“There,” she said as she got back to the bed, “there’s Sister Agnes Bernadette. She looks miserable.”

“You’d look miserable, too, if you’d just been arrested for murder.” Henry had moved in from the doorway now and was standing next to his built-in wardrobe. He would leave his clothes over a chair and his valet would take them away in the morning. Someone would iron his underwear and someone would put creases in his trousers and someone else would make sure he found only the tie that went with the suit he was supposed to be wearing that morning.