Murder Superior(27)

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.