Murder Superior(48)

“Mother Mary Bellarmine,” Gregor repeated.

Bennis helped him out “Mother Mary Bellarmine is the woman who got the flowers dumped on her,” she explained, “and turned all green and had to go change. She’s apparently infamous from one end of this convention to the other.”

“She’s driving everybody crazy,” Sister Angelus said. “Even me, and you know me, Mr. Demarkian. I don’t drive easily. And I’ve only been here for about a week.”

“Is she back yet?” Gregor asked. “I didn’t see her when I came through.”

The three of them looked through the double doors leading to the foyer, but if Mother Mary Bellarmine was around, they didn’t see her. They might not have even if she was standing right next to their little group. There were so many nuns. Gregor did see the man Bennis had pointed out to him as the famous Norman Kevic. He had planted himself next to one of the empty cloth-covered tables that were supposed to hold the food when someone decided to get around to it. From the look on his face, he would refuse to budge for anything less than the General Judgment.

“Anyway,” Bennis said, “Sister Angelus has been filling me in on Mother Mary Bellarmine, as far as I can be filled in, because we still don’t know why Mrs. Hare dumped the flowers on her.”

“Mother Mary Bellarmine having problems with Mrs. Hare isn’t something I’ve heard about,” Sister Angelus said.

“But the thing is, the other stories are much better, which are all about this woman named Sister Joan Esther—”

“She works in Alaska,” Sister Angelus said.

“And Sister Joan Esther’s done something to get Mother Mary Bellarmine really furious, so all week the two of them have been fighting.”

“It’s been worse than fighting.” Sister Angelus blushed. “Mr. Demarkian, you must be getting just the worst impression of us. First Brigit and now this. We’re really not like this. Most of the time we’re a very dedicated, very God-centered community of women—”

“That sounds like a publicity brochure,” Bennis said.

“It is.” Sister Angelus blushed even harder. “It’s from the pamphlet they send you when you think you might want to join.”

“Wonderful,” Bennis said.

“Never mind,” Gregor broke in hastily. “I hope you’re not really worrying about the impression you’re making. That mess in Maryville wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t your Order’s fault.”

“Oh, I know. And good things came out of it, too. The wedding. They write us, you know, and send us things. They’re in Tahiti and they’re going to Egypt at the end of the summer. But Brigit’s still dead. And the way they behave sometimes—”

“Who’s they?” Gregor asked.

Sister Angelus turned around and looked doubtfully in the crowd. “I don’t see either one of them. Not that I blame Joan Esther. She’s not the one who’s persecuting anybody.”

“Right,” Bennis said.

Pronouns, Gregor thought Neila Connelly had always had a lot of trouble with pronouns. “Who’s persecuting whom?” he demanded.

“Mother Mary Bellarmine is persecuting Joan Esther, of course,” Sister Angelus said. “At least, it sounds like persecution to me. I don’t know. Maybe I’m too thin skinned. Sister Margarita—she was Carole Randolph when you were in Maryville, Mr. Demarkian, you met her—anyway, Margarita says Joan Esther doesn’t pay any attention to it at all, that it just rolls right off her back. And maybe it does.”

“What does?” Gregor asked.

“Well,” Sister Angelus said, “take the night before last at dinner. It’s not like the Motherhouse here. We don’t all have lunch at the same time and dinner at the same time and we don’t all go in to prayers together the way we do up in Maryville. People have too much to do and too many places they have to be, so all that gets made up catch-as-catch can. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a dinnertime, if you see what I mean. Sister Agnes Bernadette puts dinner out every night at five thirty and if you’re around you eat it, because leftovers are cold unless you’ve got access to the microwave, and getting access to the microwave around here at night is like the camel and the eye of the needle, if you know what I mean. Everybody wants to use it.”

“I have the same trouble in my own house,” Bennis said, “and I live alone.”

“You live alone in name only,” Gregor said sharply.

“The thing is,” Sister Angelus said, “Mother Mary Bellarmine always makes it to dinner. She gives this big lecture about how in the old days nobody was ever allowed to skip dinner unless they asked permission, and she thinks all this disorganized nonsense is ruining the Order. Only I don’t know, Mr. Demarkian, I mean, there’s a fair percentage of our Order that does nursing, you know what I’m saying? What did they do in the old days when they had a woman in labor and the dinner bell rang?”