Murder Superior(66)

That nun.

Nancy took a drag—they were English cigarettes, much too strong and much too harsh—and tapped her ash into the crystal ashtray in the shape of a fish that Henry kept on top of the TV set. Since he didn’t smoke, Nancy didn’t know who it was for, either. living around Henry was eerie. It was as if he weren’t himself at all, but an alien from outer space who had occupied the body of a much gentler, much more sophisticated man.

“A nun accused of deliberately murdering one of her Sisters at a Main Line convent is out on bail,” the woman on the TV said. “News coming up at eleven, right after these messages.”

The bedroom door opened and Henry stood in the doorway, his shirt off and his belt unbuckled, looking blank. That was eerie, too. If Nancy did something outrageous, Henry looked annoyed. If she didn’t—if she was nice, or neutral, or just not sufficiently obnoxious to get attention—Henry looked blank. Nancy had the odd feeling that she was never really there for him.

She had put the bottle of Scotch on the night table. She picked it up, topped her drink off again, and went back to watching the news.

“They let Sister Agnes Bernadette out,” she said, pointing at the set. It wasn’t necessary, but it was conversation. If she didn’t start one, he never would. “I wonder what happens now. Does she go back to the convent and act like nothing ever happened? Does she still cook?”

“How do you know she cooks?”

“She was cook at the convent when I was at St. Elizabeth’s,” Nancy said. “She’s been there forever. And if you want to know the truth, I don’t think she’d have had the heart to deliberately kill Hitler, never mind some nun everybody says she actually liked.”

“I thought it was some nun nobody knew,” Henry said. “Some nun from Alaska. I thought the point was that this Sister Agnes had gone off her nut.”

“Sister Agnes Bernadette.”

“I wish you wouldn’t drink at this time of night. When you drink, you always make a scene.”

Nancy’s cigarette was burned almost to the filter. That was something you really didn’t want to do with these cigarettes, because the closer they got to the butt the worse they tasted. They were supposed to be the most wonderful cigarettes in the world and they made her gag. She got up, got another one, and lit up again. She almost never smoked when Henry wasn’t around. She was addicted to nicotine only in his presence. It had something to do with the fact that when he saw her smoke he always worked around to lecturing her. She wished he would work around to something else, but he wouldn’t and she wasn’t going to ask for it. There was a time in this marriage when she had asked for it a lot and been turned down too often.

“There,” she said as she got back to the bed, “there’s Sister Agnes Bernadette. She looks miserable.”

“You’d look miserable, too, if you’d just been arrested for murder.” Henry had moved in from the doorway now and was standing next to his built-in wardrobe. He would leave his clothes over a chair and his valet would take them away in the morning. Someone would iron his underwear and someone would put creases in his trousers and someone else would make sure he found only the tie that went with the suit he was supposed to be wearing that morning.

“I’m surprised they haven’t come here asking to talk to you,” Henry said, “with that stunt you pulled and then disappearing on me so I couldn’t find you for better than half an hour—”

“I didn’t disappear on you. I just went to talk to someone.”

“Well, you were missing and you were still at St. Teresa’s House, and we were supposed to be gone. You don’t know how that burns me. She shouldn’t have asked me to go. She should have gotten rid of you and left it at that.”

“Why? Because you’re giving them umpteen jillion dollars?”

“Yes.”

“Some people don’t operate on a totally cash basis, Henry. Some people have other considerations.”

“I don’t give a damn what she considers for herself,” Henry said, “I only care what she considers for me, and I shouldn’t have been tossed out of that reception like a gate-crasher. I’m not a gate-crasher. I’m the man who made it all possible.”

“You didn’t have anything to do with the nuns’ convention.”

“That’s not what I meant. I’ve donated six million dollars in goods and services to this project of theirs. That college wouldn’t survive without me.”

“The college wouldn’t survive unless you built them a field house?”