Murder Superior(54)

Just by looking at her, Gregor knew that Sister Joan Esther had died from something that affected the central nervous system. The signs were obvious, from the paralysis of the lungs to the twitching of the extremities. He knew what something because of the conversation he’d been having with the two young Sisters just before Joan Esther keeled over. That conversation stuck in his mind so strongly, he could barely wait to get his chance to check it out. Wait, however, he had to, because he had hold of Joan Esther’s head. The big reception room was brightly lit, but like all large rooms overfilled with people, it had many shadows. One of those shadows seemed to have fallen across Joan Esther’s face, making her look oddly quasi-decapitated. It was not a comfortable sight. Gregor had caught her around the tops of her shoulders. Now he lowered her gently to the floor. The circle of people around them had gotten bigger and bigger. Nobody wanted to get too close. Gregor heard one woman say “she’s fainted” and another protest that no, no, she was dead. The protesting woman had a high tight voice just this side of hysterical. Gregor checked the pulse in Joan Esther’s wrist and then in the side of her neck. He had known it was going to be futile before he started, but its futility still depressed him. He stepped back away from her and stood up.

“Mr. Demarkian?” Reverend Mother General said.

Trust the nuns, Gregor thought. They might not understand procedures. They might think they need a course to tell them what to do in cases of sudden death. They at least don’t disappear. He couldn’t count the number of disappearing friends, relatives, and colleagues he had had to put up with in the aftermaths of various suspicious deaths.

Gregor’s hands felt dusty. He brushed them absently against the panels of his suit jacket and said, “She’s dead, Reverend Mother. She was dead before she keeled over.”

“I don’t suppose this could be some kind of heart attack,” Reverend Mother General said. Her face was very pale.

“I doubt it. You should check, of course.”

“Of course. What do you think it is?”

Gregor looked up at the doors leading out to the garden. “Something that affects the central nervous system,” he said. “Reverend Mother, you’d better go call the police.”

“I sent Scholastica to call the police before you put Sister Joan Esther on the ground. They were very close friends, you know, Scholastica and Joan Esther. Scholastica is distraught.” Reverend Mother General paused. “In the old days,” she said, “Sisters were forbidden by the Holy Rule from forming what were called particular friendships. In the sixties, that rule was labeled homophobic, as if the founder of this Order were worried that her charges would all turn into lesbians if they were allowed the least bit of latitude. It wasn’t that, of course. It was things like this that worried the founders of orders of women religious. I don’t think Scholastica is going to be of any use to anybody for the next week.”

“Mmmm,” Gregor said.

“You should tell us what’s happening,” a woman’s voice demanded from the crowd, and this time it wasn’t on the right side of hysteria. “You should tell us what’s going on!”

Reverend Mother General had never had the least tolerance for hysteria, in herself or anyone else. Gregor watched in admiration as she rose to her full height—which she managed to make look much taller than the four feet eleven or so she actually was—and took control of the Sisters of her Order with more assurance, and to better effect, than Montgomery had had control of his forces on the march to liberate Paris.

“Sisters,” she said, “there has been a death. Sister Joan Esther has died. We need a priest in here right away, if one of you near the door might look into the garden and find one willing to come in. Other than that, we need calm. I want this room cleared of all Sisters and I want it cleared now. There’s the back garden to go into. Do not wander off. The police have been called—”

A little ripple of shivers went through the crowd.

“—and since we don’t yet know why or how Sister died, the police will probably want to ask questions. You have nothing to worry about. All you need to do is tell the truth. You will be happy to know that our own expert on matters of sudden death and police contact, Gregor Demarkian, is with us now, and has agreed to be of help.”

Gregor hadn’t agreed to anything, of course. For all Reverend Mother General knew, he was due in Tahiti in an hour.

“Now,” she went on, “I want people to move and I want them to move right away. That includes the Mothers Provincial, if they wouldn’t mind—”