Murder Superior(94)

Gregor Demarkian sighed. He had been kneeling down next to Nancy Hare—who seemed to be peacefully asleep, which wasn’t necessarily such a good sign—and keeping an eye on Norman Kevic. He could have dispensed with keeping an eye on Norman Kevic because Norm no longer seemed interested in leaving. Norm had a curious, speculative look on his face, as if he’d seen something he should have been ready to tell the police, but wasn’t Gregor supposed he had. That was the way he read Norman Kevic. He wouldn’t have put it past Norm to have seen the murderer put the fugu in the chicken liver pâté and just not reported it. God only knew what people like that did with that kind of information.

Gregor stood up and brushed off his pants. “You didn’t see Sister Agnes Bernadette put a knife into Nancy Hare’s side,” he said, “because I saw her standing right there against that wall in the moment Nancy Hare fell. She wouldn’t have had time to make the circuit.”

“You’re imagining things,” Jack Androcetti said tightly. “Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable.”

“I am not your ordinary eyewitness,” Gregor pointed out. “I spent twenty years in the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

“It doesn’t matter if you did or not,” a young nun piped up. They all turned to look at her and she blushed. “I was standing right next to Aggie the whole time. I really was.”

“You were distracted,” Jack Androcetti said.

On the floor at Gregor’s feet, Nancy Hare stirred, and moaned, and fluttered open her eyes. It was something of a shock. They had been talking about her for so long as if she weren’t there, it took an adjustment to understand that she was. Henry Hare had gotten to his feet to argue with Jack Androcetti. Now he dropped to his knees to look into his wife’s eyes. Gregor couldn’t decide if the expression in Henry Hare’s own eyes was concern or contempt. Maybe, for Henry Hare, the two emotions were one.

Nancy groaned again and tried to move. A spasm of pain crossed her face and Gregor heard a muttered “Oh, shit.” The nuns must have heard it, too, but they gave no indication that they had. Maybe they felt about it the way Gregor did—that at this point Nancy had earned a little profanity. Nancy moved again, winced again, swore again. She looked at the faces staring down at her in astonishment.

“What the Hell is going on here?” she demanded.

Henry leaned closer to her. “Nancy,” he said, “you’ve been badly hurt—”

“I can tell I’ve been badly hurt,” Nancy pronounced with withering scorn. “Would you get out of my face?”

“You’re not yourself,” Henry said.

“Now that she’s awake, we ought to do something about that wound,” Mother Mary Bellarmine said. “I know Sister Mary Joseph is supposed to be on her way, but for simple hygienic purposes—”

At the sound of Mother Mary Bellarmine’s voice, Nancy Hare’s head had swiveled around. Her eyes grew wide. Her lips pressed down into a thin line. She tried to get up and couldn’t. The wound in her side was small, but it was painful enough to make sitting up impossible. Nancy settled for lying back and turning her face in Mother Mary Bellarmine’s direction.

“You,” she said. “What’s the matter with you? You were supposed to pretend to knock me out, not go ahead and stab me.”





2


IT WAS ONE OF those moments Gregor always thought of as epiphanous. It wasn’t a surprise—he had known who had killed Sister Joan Esther and caused all the rest of the trouble yesterday—but it made motives clear in a way he wouldn’t have been able to do for himself. He didn’t think he had ever seen a woman with less respect for her husband than Nancy had for Henry Hare. It went beyond disrespect to a kind of visceral hatred that had no starting point and no end. As for Mother Mary Bellarmine, she was what Gregor had always thought she was, one of those people it isn’t good to cross, one of those people with no sense of proportion. She also had a great deal more to lose than Nancy Hare.

“I do not,” she said carefully, drawing herself up to that height only nuns in habit can reach, “know what you’re talking about. I most certainly did not stab you.”

“You most certainly did,” Nancy Hare said. Then she made a face. “Don’t give me this shit. You know perfectly well—”

“I know you’re a woman who wants to be rid of your husband,” Mother Mary Bellarmine said sharply. That’s all I know.”

“You could have had the knife,” one of the nuns said suddenly. As always when a nun spoke unexpectedly, all the others turned in her direction. This nun was older and more sophisticated than the last one, though. She didn’t blush. “Excuse me,” she said. “I’m Sister Domenica Anne.”