A Great Day for the Deadly(74)

“Deeply meaningful discussion my foot,” Mrs. Barbara Keel said. “Well, I just hope you two have your brains in the right place. If you can’t be good, at least be careful.”

And with that, Mrs. Barbara Keel sailed through the door Gregor Demarkian had left open and on into the library proper, looking for all the world like a proud old ship gliding into the sunset at the end of a long and distinguished career. She couldn’t have looked any more like the Queen Mum if she’d had plastic surgery. Sam stared after her in astonishment. Glinda stared after her in astonishment. Then they each looked at the other and burst out laughing.





[2]


It got dark early in Maryville in March—not as early as it got in February, but early enough. On bright days, the Motherhouse turned its lights on at three thirty in the afternoon. On overcast ones, it turned them on at three. By quarter after four it was almost always pitch black out and threatening to get blacker. Sister Mary Scholastica had been born and brought up in the region, so it didn’t bother her, but it often bothered both postulants and novices who came from farther south. Scholastica didn’t know how long it took to get used to it. It was now five o’clock on Saturday night. Standing at the side of the Motherhouse’s open front doors, Scholastica found it easy to imagine she was looking out on midnight. She tried to concentrate on Gregor Demarkian instead. He was coming up from the gate, walking carefully on pavement that was icing over in the increasing cold that came with the absence of the sun. He looked as thoroughly tired as his voice had sounded not ten minutes ago on the phone. Scholastica stepped into the doorway and waved him a greeting.

“You ought to move faster,” she said. “It keeps you warmer in the cold. What an odd thing for you to call up and ask me, under the circumstances.”

“Mmm,” Gregor said. He had reached the door. He slipped into the foyer and closed it after him, with a click, as if doing something definitive. “Well, there I was, standing outside my own hotel, and it hit me I could ask you what I had to ask you on the phone as well as in person. It wasn’t as if there was anything else I needed up here.”

“Except there was,” Scholastica said.

“Well, that depends on what Neila Connelly has to say. Have you done the checking I asked you to?”

Scholastica nodded. “When you called we were just going into chapel. Most of the Sisters are there now. Reverend Mother stood up and asked the congregation right out before prayers started. It’s the most efficient way to get anything done around here.”

“Reverend Mother was telling me all about it earlier,” Gregor said. “Nobody came forward? Nobody admitted to even knowing that somebody else had been in town on the day Brigit died?”

“No,” Scholastica said, “and quite frankly, I didn’t expect them to. I really do think Neila’s explanation is the right one. I realize that was the day of the flood and things were a little less organized around here than they usually are.” Scholastica looked to see if Gregor seemed to be thinking that that wasn’t very organized at all, but she couldn’t tell. “Anyway,” she went on, “it’s still not 1966. There aren’t two or three hundred women in the house. There are only about sixty.”

“Meaning you would have noticed.”

“Meaning Reverend Mother would have noticed,” Scholastica said. “And I know there weren’t any postulants missing, because right before we started working on the evacuation I counted them. Brigit was gone. The rest of them were sitting in my classroom, listening to me make a hash out of the theology of Thomas Aquinas. Or somebody.”

Gregor Demarkian was getting that glazed look on his face Scholastica remembered from the first time she had led him through these halls. She was so used to the Motherhouse after seventeen years of long and short visits to its halls, it didn’t faze her any more. She did remember what it had been like in the beginning, though, and decided to help him out.

“Through here we have the office corridor,” she said, opening a fire door and shoving him through. “And that door second from the end on the right is Reverend Mother’s. It’s open. Go right in. Reverend Mother and Neila are waiting for us.”

Reverend Mother General and Neila Connelly were indeed waiting for them. In fact, they were sitting right where Scholastica had left them, Reverend Mother General in the chair behind her desk, Neila on a small folding chair Scholastica had had to bring in from outside during their first discussion. That had been hours ago, and the strain was telling on Neila’s face. It had that glassy, rough-shined look of skin that has recently been bathed in tears. Still, Scholastica thought, it was better than she had been expecting. She was sure that as soon as she was out of sight, Reverend Mother General was going to take the opportunity to take Neila Connelly apart. It didn’t seem to have happened. In fact, Reverend Mother General and Neila Connelly seemed to be sitting quite companionably, as if they’d come to a new understanding of each other while Scholastica had been away.