“Mr. Demarkian seems to be working with the police,” the Cardinal Archbishop said stiffly. “Possibly it would be wise if you refrained from making statements until you have an attorney present.”
“Oh, Your Eminence, don’t be silly. Hello, Mr. Jackman.”
“Mr. Jackman is the deputy commissioner of police,” the Cardinal Archbishop said.
“I found the body,” Scholastica told Gregor. “Sister Harriet Garrity’s body. She wasn’t, you know, a Sister like me, from my order. She was the parish coordinator. She didn’t wear a habit or anything like that. She didn’t live in a convent.”
“How did you find her?” Gregor asked.
Scholastica sat down again. “She was in my office. I was out this afternoon. I had dinner with friends. And then when I came back I decided to look in my office to see if I had any messages. Because Thomasetta, you know, she’s supposed to make copies and bring them to the convent, but it gets hectic and she doesn’t always remember. And so I went to my office and opened the door and there she was.”
“You’re sure she was dead?”
“She was cold as stone, Gregor, and she was—she was blue.” Scholastica looked at her hands. “I didn’t like her, that’s the trouble. I never liked her. She was one of those women, you know, officious and self-righteous and always so politically correct, and I’ve only been here a few weeks, and she was already driving me crazy. I don’t know. Maybe I just feel guilty.”
“You came back when?”
“I don’t know. Five-thirty. Maybe six,” Scholastica said.
“And these offices close when?”
“Oh, at five, like any other offices. Except that I’m not usually here after four, you know, because of the school day.”
Gregor looked at the tech men in their white coats, and at the annex. “So the office closed at five, and you showed up half an hour to an hour later, and she was cold. I’d have to ask the medical examiner, but I think that means she must have already been dead at five. Shouldn’t somebody have noticed that she was in your office?”
“The door was locked,” Scholastica said. “I had to use my key to get in. I don’t know.”
“And people wouldn’t have found that suspicious?”
“Well,” Scholastica said, “you can ask Thomasetta, or Peter Rose, but I don’t think so. I think they would just have thought that somebody did it accidentally. Because you can set the door to lock automatically when you go out, and sometimes people jiggle it wrong or they slam too hard when they leave the office and it sets itself. It doesn’t matter, really. There are dozens of keys that could open it. It’s not really a problem.”
“Do you think it’s odd that nobody would have opened it?” Gregor asked.
“Oh, no. Not really. Everybody knew I was going to be away today. There wouldn’t be any need to make a big fuss about it. They all knew I had a key. Thomasetta would just have put my messages in my mailbox and gone on home.” Scholastica rubbed her eyes. “I acted like an idiot. I started screaming at the top of my lungs. Reverend Mother General is going to be very disappointed in me.”
“Reverend Mother General will have nothing to reproach you for,” the Cardinal Archbishop said. Then he turned to Gregor and John Jackman. “A little while ago, I went into the church and looked out at the problem in the street. The demonstration seemed to me to have devolved into a full-scale riot. Would you say I was correct to think so?”
“Yes, Your Eminence,” Jackman said. “I would say you were correct to think so.”
“And this riot was caused by whom?” the Cardinal Archbishop said.
John Jackman blinked. “I don’t know how to answer that Riots aren’t caused like that. They’re the result of a chaotic situation—”
“But the chaotic situation was brought on by the decision of the Reverend Roy Phipps to stage a demonstration in front of St. Stephen’s Church in response to the news that Sister Harriet had been murdered.”
“Wait,” Gregor said. “Did Roy Phipps stage a demonstration in front of St. Stephen’s because a nun from this church had been murdered on this church’s grounds?”
“Yes,” John Jackman said.
“And the violence,” the Cardinal Archbishop said. “That was also caused by the Reverend Roy Phipps? And not by, what do they call themselves—”
“GALA,” Sister Scholastica said helpfully. “It’s short for the Gay and Lesbian Support Advisory. I think they didn’t want to be GALSA.”