A Great Day for the Deadly(47)

“Or the third party was part of a break in,” Gregor said. “Yes.”

“Do you have logical reasons like this for why Brigit Ann Reilly ended up covered with snakes?”

“The snakes aren’t part of it,” Gregor said. “It’s that storeroom that counts. There’s Sister Scholastica.”

“I know that’s Sister Scholastica.”

“I’m going to get her.”

Donovan was startled and more than a little put out. Gregor picked up on the signs. He didn’t do anything about it. He didn’t want to talk about Brigit Ann Reilly right now. Ever since he had first begun to examine the body of Don Bollander, his mind had been working overtime—but it needed to work some more. He could almost see the bare bones outline, the structure of the crime. That wasn’t enough. He needed to fill in the details, to color by the numbers. He needed to understand the personalities. Right now, he needed to know how a convent really worked.

Scholastica had come out of the corridor door closest to the utility room and was hurrying across the hall in the direction of Reverend Mother General. Gregor forced his way through a small knot of policemen into the only open space in that hall and shot out his arm to catch her.





[2]


Gregor Demarkian and Pete Donovan had been so intent on bodies and sinks and body bags and evidence, they had been oblivious to everything else that was going on around them. Gregor especially had forgotten that he wasn’t in the midst of what he still thought of as the “normal” venue for a homicide, the scene most often chosen by the serial killers he had spent so much of his professional life tracking. He was in a living, breathing, functioning institution, not an abandoned building or a vacant lot. While his mind had been elsewhere, great changes had been taking place around him. The nuns who had crowded the door to the courtyard and the space just beyond it were gone, he didn’t know where. Reverend Mother General was still holding the fort in an unobtrusive corner, watching the naive young men with a frankly contemptuous eye, but she was so silent she could have been invisible. Gregor saw her see him catch Scholastica’s arm and nod, as if she had been expecting something of the sort to happen soon. He was getting that feeling he always got with old-fashioned nuns, that he got with the Cardinal’s secretary: The feeling that wheels upon wheels were turning in a mind much more intelligent and much more disciplined than his own.

“He wants to know how a convent runs,” Scholastica told Reverend Mother General, after she had heard Gregor out and dragged him across the room to her superior. “He says it makes a difference to how the body got into the utility room.”

Reverend Mother considered this. “Tell me you’ve done what I asked you to,” she said to Scholastica. “Spell it out.”

“Yes, Reverend Mother, of course. The postulants are darning socks. Sister Gabriel is with them and she’s enforcing silence. The novices are in chapel with Sister Agnes Bernadine, praying for the repose of Don Bollander’s soul and the quick apprehension of his killer. They aren’t silent, but they won’t be getting a chance to talk about this for at least an hour. Sister Alice Marie has taken over portress duty so she can answer the phones. If parents call up being hysterical, she’ll calm them down. As for the Sisters—”

Reverend Mother General waved away the Sisters. “They’ll be all right,” she said. “I can trust most of them in a real emergency, even Peter Rose.” Then Reverend Mother General turned to Gregor Demarkian and smiled. “I know what you’re getting at,” she said. “You think this man was alive and well when he got here.”

“Not necessarily alive and well,” Gregor said cautiously, “but alive. It can take quite a long time for coniine to work, especially on a large man like Don Bollander. He could have swallowed the poison any time up to an hour before he arrived at the convent and still have been moving under his own power.”

“Are you sure it was coniine?” Reverend Mother General wanted to know.

“No,” Gregor admitted. “It will take forensics to tell me that for sure.”

“You think they will tell you that for sure?”

“Don’t you?”

Reverend Mother General smiled, much more broadly this time. “Of course I do. We all do. Every Sister in the house. We’d rather not, but we do. All right, Mr. Demarkian. You want to know how a convent runs, I’ll show you how a convent runs. I’ll show you how this one runs, at any rate. There are a great many variations these days.”

“Is Mr. Donovan going to go with us?” Scholastica asked.