Murder Superior(4)

“Work,” Scholastica told her.

Linda held the schedule out again. “It’s the one under Friday I’m interested in. The one at the bottom, for the evening session. See? ‘Gregor Demarkian: Investigating the Catholic Murder.’ See?”

“What?”

“ ‘Gregor Demarkian: Investigating the Catholic Murder.’ It’s right here. Didn’t you know about it?”

“Of course I knew about it,” Scholastica said. That was half true. She had known Gregor Demarkian was to speak. She had suggested it to Reverend Mother General in the first place, and she had telephoned Gregor herself to extend the invitation. She had not, however, suggested the title, “Investigating the Catholic Murder.” She couldn’t imagine who had. She couldn’t imagine what Gregor Demarkian was going to think about it when he heard about it, either. The best she could hope for was that he’d be polite. She took the schedule out of Linda’s hand again, read the offending line, and sighed. “Incredible,” she said.

“I was thinking,” Linda said.

Scholastica bit back the urge to tell her it was a bad idea. “About what?”

“Well, about this Gregor Demarkian. He’s the private detective, isn’t he? The one the Inquirer calls The Armenian-American Hercule Poirot’?”

“Yes, he’s the one. But I don’t think he likes to be called that, Linda.”

“I won’t call him that to his face. I was just saying, he’s the one who solved the murder of that postulant that Shelley Corrigan’s got the room of now, isn’t he?”

“You’ve figured out which room Bridget Ann Reilly was in? What do you do, hold séances?”

“Of course not. That wouldn’t be Christian. But we know, Sister. I mean, we’d have to. It was in all the papers.”

It had also been in People magazine and on 60 Minutes. Scholastica supposed the girl had a point. Murders in convents did not happen every day, never mind right before St. Patrick’s Day, and the country had a certain amount of interest. Excessive, morbid, and totally out of line, according to Reverend Mother General, but interest nonetheless.

Scholastica stowed away a box of glazed chestnuts. “If you want to know if you can go to hear his speech, you can. It’s being set up so that everyone can hear him. In the main auditorium. The one they use for convocation.”

“Oh, I know about that. It says so right here. What I want to know is…”

“What?”

“Well.”

“Well, what?”

“Well,” Linda said, “I thought, I mean, since he is in the business of investigating murders, not giving talks, and the Order had all that trouble before, you know, I thought maybe he was coming out here because, you know, because something was wrong.”

“Wrong? Linda, what are you talking about?”

“Wrong,” Linda said doggedly. “You know. Maybe there have been threats, or someone’s been acting funny, or you—”

“Don’t. Don’t say ‘you know’ even one more time.”

“I didn’t mean to get you angry, Sister. I just—I mean, there was his name, and there were all the things they said about him when Bridget Ann Reilly died, and now here we all are together like this, like sitting ducks if some nut out there wanted to, ah, you—um—”

“Never mind,” Scholastics said. The next box had glazed pineapples in it. “Look,” she said. “Nothing is wrong, except for the title they’re giving his speech, which he isn’t going to like. But there isn’t anything wrong. That’s the point.”

“I don’t get it.”

“All that happened last year at the Motherhouse,” Scholastica said slowly, “and we tried to get the information out to as many people as possible, about what happened, and how it happened, and how it was cleared up, but it isn’t always that easy. And so we thought—since Gregor is right here in Philadelphia anyway—we thought that we’d ask him to come and tell the Sisters everything they could possibly want to know, and then everybody would calm down a little. At last, if you ask me.”

“You called him ‘Gregor,’ ” Linda said. “Is he a friend of yours?”

“Not really. He asked me to call him Gregor.”

“Will he have slides with pictures of blood?”

Scholastica stood. “Go back to work,” she said. “Sometimes I wish we still maintained the old discipline. I’d have you begging your soup at dinner for a week on the strength of that. What kind of a question—”