Murder Superior (10 page)

The steps to the tall double doored entrance to St. Teresa’s House were wide and deep, but not steep. They were also made of marble. Gregor took Bennis by the arm in the old-fashioned way—it was testament to Bennis’s Main Line society upbringing that she neither protested nor stared at him in openmouthed disbelief—and led her up behind a diffident elderly couple in good tweeds who were tottering on ahead of them. Gregor thought the tweeds must have been stifling in this weather. As they got closer to the door he saw that it had been decorated. Whoever had done it had possessed enthusiasm to match Donna Moradanyan’s but more conventionality. There were large baby blue ribbon rosettes fastened to the door frames about shoulder height (for Gregor) on either side. In the middle of each rosette was an embroidered sign that read:

MAY IS MARY’S MONTH.

“What do you suppose that means?” Bennis said, pointing to one of the signs.

“May is dedicated to the Virgin Mary,” Gregor told her, “except with Mother’s Day in the middle of it all they say that May is dedicated to the Mother of God. There it is.”

“There what is?”

“One of the other signs.”

Gregor pointed to a large freestanding brass planter full of roses—full, possibly, of a still-rooted rose bush—that was standing just inside the foyer propping back one of the doors. It bore a sign that said:

ON MOTHER’S DAY REMEMBER THE MOTHER OF GOD.

It was exactly the same sign Gregor had seen just last week outside St. Rita’s Convent, when he’d helped Father Tibor Kasparian take she cartons of tuna fish to Father Ryan’s soup kitchen in the basement of St. Rita’s Church. Since the sign had confused him, he had simply asked Father Ryan to explain it.

The crowd ahead of them had turned into a barely moving knot. They were slowed almost to a standstill. Bennis was bobbing up and down on her toes, trying to see over the heads of taller people to what lay ahead.

“There’s a receiving line,” she reported, as she bobbed back down. “It looks like five or six nuns in not-very-modified habits—you didn’t tell me these were nuns who still looked like nuns, Gregor—anyway, there they are. After the receiving line, there’s another set of double doors and after that I can’t see. Do you know who that is two couples ahead of us? Shayda Marie from
One Life Is Never Enough
. With the character she plays, you’d think she’d be ashamed to show her face in a convent.”

Gregor didn’t know who Shayda Marie was. He’d never heard of
One Life Is Never Enough
. He did know this wasn’t a convent—just an ordinary building on an ordinary college campus being used for this reception—but that hardly seemed a likely topic of conversation when Bennis was in the kind of mood she was in. Gregor recognized the signs. The speeded-up speech. The vocabulary straight out of a particularly bitchy play by Noel Coward. When Bennis got nervous, Bennis reverted to type.

Fortunately, the line had begun moving again, albeit slowly. The tottering little old couple just ahead of them stepped into the foyer. Gregor saw a row of long veils and heard the polite murmur of people who really don’t know what to say to nuns, but feel they must say something. He supposed the Sisters were being told they looked well and the weather was fine. Then the tottering old couple moved on. Gregor grasped Bennis firmly by the elbow and led her into the foyer.

“Sister,” Gregor said, when he reached the first nun, and then was startled to realize that this was a nun he knew. “Oh. Mother. Reverend Mother. You may not remember me. My name is Gregor Demarkian.”

The Reverend Mother General of the Sisters of Divine Grace was not a fool or an idiot or a candidate for the Miss Marple International Ditherers Award—although Gregor had always thought she’d get along with Miss Marple quite well. Reverend Mother General was more of the era when calling the head of a religious order a “general” had more definitively military connotations than it did now. Reverend Mother General would have been an excellent administrator in time of martial law. She would have been an excellent pope in the days when popes had armies. Placed at the head of a European royal house with a mandate for absolute monarchy, she would have taken an upstart like Napoleon or Savanarola and turned him into confetti. John Cardinal O’Bannion—Father Tibor’s friend and the person who usually got Gregor involved in Catholic Church-related crime—called Reverend Mother General “a wonderful woman,” in a way that made it plain he wished she’d been a wonderful woman in some
other
Archbishop’s jurisdiction.

Reverend Mother General looked Gregor up and down. Then she looked Bennis Hannaford up and down. Then she looked back to Gregor again and stuck out her hand.

“I remember you,” she said. “I could hardly forget.”

“Of course not.” Gregor cursed himself mentally for having resorted to that kind of politeness. It wasn’t the kind of thing Reverend Mother General liked. He pushed Bennis forward a little. “This is Bennis Day Hannaford. A good friend of mine.”

“Bennis Day Hannaford.” Reverend Mother General looked thoughtful. “Ah, yes. I’ve heard a great deal about Bennis Day Hannaford. I’ll have to pass you on down the line, I’m afraid. The Sisters beside me here are the Mothers Superior of our Provincial Houses. We have four in the United States—not including the Motherhouse in Maryville—three in Europe, one in Australia and one in Asia. Our Asian house is in Japan. Mother Andrew Loretta beside me here runs it for us.”

“How do you do?” Mother Andrew Loretta said, making Reverend Mother General’s life easier by clasping Gregor’s hand and pulling him determinedly along. She was a round-faced, cheerful-looking Asian woman in her fifties or sixties. Gregor suspected she didn’t speak much English. She was trying very hard, though, and Gregor patted her hand with his free one.

“What has Reverend Mother General heard about me?” Bennis hissed into his ear as Mother Andrew Loretta passed them along to the next nun in the line. This was someone named Mother Robert Marie, who had charge of the Southern Province of the United States.

“How am I supposed to know what Reverend Mother General has heard about you?” Gregor asked. “You’re in the papers a lot.”

Mother Robert Marie passed them along to Mother Marie Genevieve, who had charge of the Provincial House in France. Mother Marie Genevieve spoke nonstop in French, as if it was beyond her comprehension that anyone on earth could fail to understand the language.

Bennis understood the language. That’s what came of spending four years at Miss Porter’s School. She made polite conversation until they were passed along to Sister Mary Deborah, who had charge of the house in Melbourne, and then hissed into Gregor’s ear: “The only time I’m ever in the papers anymore is when I’m in the papers with you, unless you’re trying to tell me Reverend Mother General reads the fantasy fan press, which I don’t believe—”

“You were on the cover of the
New York Times Sunday Magazine
.”

“That was four years ago. These days I’m only in the papers with you. Caption under the picture on the first page: ‘Gregor Demarkian with constant companion Bennis Day Hannaford.’ What does that woman
think
?”

“The same thing that everyone on Cavanaugh Street thinks,” Gregor said, “and you don’t care.”

“Everyone on Cavanaugh Street isn’t a nun.”

“Tibor’s a priest.”

“Tibor doesn’t think I’m sleeping with you.”

“This is Mother Mary Bellarmine,” Mother Mary Deborah said, passing them along one more time but looking reluctant about it. “Mother Bellarmine is the superior of our house in the southwestern United States.”

For a moment, Gregor was distracted by Mother Mary Deborah’s obvious confusion. She so plainly had no idea where “the southwestern United States” actually was or what it might comprise. Then he turned his attention to the next nun in line, and paused. Beside him, Bennis had paused, too. The woman they were standing in front of was not particularly large or particularly small, not especially pretty or noticeably ugly, not different, in any significant degree from any of the other nuns in the line. If someone had walked up to him at that moment and asked him what it was that bothered him about Mother Mary Bellarmine, Gregor couldn’t have said. She wasn’t exactly as accommodating as some of the others. There was that. She had a sour expression on her face. Gregor looked over at Bennis. She had temporarily lost her nervousness. Her head was cocked and her eyes were thoughtful. She might have been looking at a bug.

Mother Mary Bellarmine shook Gregor’s hand abruptly. Then she shook Bennis’s hand, just as abruptly. Then she folded her arms against her body and said, “Gregor Demarkian. I’ve heard all about you. You’re a friend of Cardinal O’Bannion’s. And you cause trouble.”

The nun on the far side of Mother Mary Bellarmine must have heard. She jerked into motion, swung toward the little group and said, “Oh! Gregor Demarkian. We’ve been waiting for you to come through the line. Sister Scholastica is most anxious to speak to you.”

“Sister Scholastica,” Mother Mary Bellarmine said with contempt.

“I’m Mother Mary Rosalie,” the new nun went on, holding Gregor firmly by the arm and dragging him along to her. “I’m in charge of the Northwestern Province—of the United States, that is. I know it must seem as if we’re divided up with no good plan behind it at all, and of course that’s true, to an extent, we did rather just grow, like Topsy, oh dear, I’m indulging in clichés again. You must be Bennis Hannaford. I’m very glad to meet you too.”

“Bennis
Han
naford,” Mother Mary Bellarmine said. If it was meant to be a whisper, or a mutter, it failed.

Mother Mary Rosalie still had her hand on Gregor’s arm, and Gregor could see she had no intention of letting go. She had no intention of shutting up, either.

“We’re all so looking forward to your talk,” she was saying, “because of course all that trouble in Maryville last year did upset quite a few of us. We really didn’t know what to make of it all. Of course, you’ll tell us, and then we’ll all feel much better about it. Not better about the fact that the poor girl died. God bless her. That was horrible. Oh. Here she is. Here’s Sister Scholastica.”

Gregor didn’t know how Mother Mary Rosalie recognized Sister Scholastica—now that they were this far down the line and so close to the inner doors, the world seemed to be full of nuns; with the strictly defined habit the Sisters of Divine Grace wore, the world seemed to be full of nuns who all looked exactly alike—but it really was Sister Scholastica that Mother Mary Rosalie had gotten hold of. Gregor had a distinct feeling of relief. Sister Scholastica was someone he knew.

“Sister,” Mother Mary Rosalie said. “You remember Mr. Demarkian. And this is his friend Bennis Hannaford.” Bennis winced at the word
friend
used in just that way by a woman in a habit. Mother Mary Rosalie went on. “Mr. Demarkian has just been talking to Mother Mary Bellarmine,” she said brightly, “and now he’s been passed along to me, but I’m sure he’s tired of this line. Don’t you think?”

There wasn’t much of the line left. Gregor watched as Scholastica looked back at Mother Mary Bellarmine and smiled slightly. It was not, Gregor was sure, with amusement. Then Scholastica turned her back on the open front doors and gestured to the open inner ones and the room beyond. In doing so, she turned her back on Mother Mary Bellarmine. Gregor wondered what it was Mother Mary Bellarmine had done.

“Mr. Demarkian,” Sister Scholastica said. “And I’m glad to meet Ms. Hannaford after all this time. We’d better get you both away from here.”

Gregor moved close and lowered his voice. “What is it Mother Mary Bellarmine doesn’t like?” he asked. “Armenian-Americans? Former FBI agents. Old men who show up at parties with much younger women?”

“
Gregor
,” Bennis said.

“Mother Mary Bellarmine,” Sister Scholastica said, in tones so well modulated she might have been leading the Lord’s Prayer at the beginning of a parochial-school day, “is quite simply a royal pain in the ass. And if you tell Reverend Mother General I said that, I’ll deny it. Why don’t I take you in and get you some food.”

“It sounds wonderful to me,” Bennis said. “I’m starving.”

“You’re always starving,” Gregor said.

Scholastica drew them away from the line and led them toward the inner doors, weaving through the small clots and collections of nuns dotted only infrequently by seculars.
Seculars
, Reverend Mother General had explained to Gregor once, was the proper term to distinguish people who were not in religious orders from people who were. Even diocesan priests were referred to as the “secular clergy.” Since nuns were not clergy, however, they were laypeople, which meant it made no sense to talk of “nuns and laypeople” as if there were a difference. Gregor did not remember having asked for this explanation. He hadn’t asked for most of the explanations Reverend Mother General had given him. Reverend Mother General was like that

He let Scholastica lead him into the inner room, going on ahead with Bennis and talking easily with bent head about he couldn’t imagine what. Bennis always seemed to have a lot to say to women he wouldn’t have expected her to have anything in common with at all.

Scholastica and Bennis slipped into the far room. Gregor followed them and stopped in the doorway to look around. Along one wall—the one toward which Scholastica and Bennis were heading—there was a collection of what looked like long, makeshift conference tables covered with white tablecloths. The tables were so long, no single cloths had been found to fit them. Instead, cloths were layered and dotted with flower arrangements in stoneware vases to hide the overlaps. The stoneware vases were tied with baby blue ribbons, more tribute to May as Mary’s month. The paper napkins in the three tall piles next to the plates and the silverware were baby blue, too. Gregor wondered if they were going to get a lot of baby blue food-colored food. There was meant to be a lot of food. There were no chairs anywhere near the tables, or anywhere else in the room. The tables had to have been set up for a buffet. At the moment, only one of them was in use. It had three long silver trays of what looked like cheese puffs on it and one large tureen that might have contained anything. Scholastica and Bennis were headed for the tureen. Gregor headed for them.