Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 105, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 640 & 641, March 1995

Sister Mary Teresa Dempsey was conceived by her creator Ralph McInerny (writing under the pseudonym Monica Quill) along the lines of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe — “what Nero Wolfe might have been like if he had taken the veil.” She has been entertaining readers since 1981, when Not a Blessed Thing! the first novel to feature her, was published...

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Sylvia Corrigan had been an actress in college, on stage, in the classroom, everywhere, until acting became indistinguishable from living. In interviews, she would go on about it, suggesting that the journalist posing the questions was also playing a role.

“I watch you,” she would say, her famous green eyes narrowing, making a gesture that seemed fraught with significance, “and already I covet your role. I want to play it. How long have you been with Newsweek?”

And, as the abashed reporter later wrote, that quickly they exchanged roles, Sylvia questioning, the reporter answering. Two days later, the profile Sylvia had written arrived in the journalist’s mail.

Such precocity — Sylvia called it genius, but considered genius a fate rather than an accomplishment — while at first eliciting amazement and praise, had a way of cloying quickly. One role Sylvia had never mastered was that of friend. A friend after all must be constant.

Nearly twenty years ago, an alumna who was in films, informed of the young Sylvia’s talent, had come to the college production of The Lady’s Not for Burning and told Sister Mary Teresa Dempsey that the student actress’s future was assured. Emtee Dempsey had wondered even then if this were good luck or bad. She had wondered the same thing about the closing of the college. The property had been sold off, and only a remnant of the Order of Martha and Mary (the M&M’s) remained, lodged in a wonderful house on Walton Street designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, gift of yet another grateful alumna. Former students kept in touch, bringing their troubles and triumphs to Emtee Dempsey, and she came to relish the role of wise old friend. She was surprised, therefore, to be told by Joyce of Sylvia’s appearance on Oprah.

“Sylvia is in Chicago?”

“She’s going to play Antigone. Only a short engagement because she’s scheduled to make a film. An adaptation from a French writer. George Bananas?”

“Bernanos,” Emtee Dempsey said. No error of fact ever went uncorrected in her presence.

“About some Carmelite martyrs.”

“A tremendous play!” Emtee Dempsey said. “Do you know it, Sister Kimberly? The Dialogues of the Carmelites.”

Kim, the third of the trio of M&M’s in residence on Walton Street, was a graduate student in history at Northwestern but, more importantly — at least, it consumed more of her time — research assistant to Sister Mary Teresa, who was writing a massive history of the twelfth century.

“No, I haven’t.”

“You’ll find it on that shelf there.” She rose a little behind the desk in her study. Unlike the younger women, Emtee Dempsey always wore the traditional habit of the order as decreed by the foundress, Blessed Abigail Keineswegs. The headdress gave the impression of a gull landing, the wimple was a large starched affair, the robe black, the cincture white. She had yet to hear a convincing argument why nuns should dress like other women. To remove barriers? Perhaps there should be barriers. In any case, Emtee Dempsey had never felt under any handicap wearing her eighteenth-century garb. She was an internationally recognized medieval historian and the one teacher no student was ever likely to forget.

“You can read it aloud to me.”

“In French?”

“It will be good practice.” She added, in belated and not wholly sincere self-deprecation, “For my ear.”

The old nun had little doubt that Sylvia Corrigan would visit Walton Street. She visited whenever she came to Chicago. In that at least she was like other alumnae.

“Do we have that thing she drinks? White wine and...”

“Crème de cassis,” Joyce said. “It’s called Kir.”

“Not an ungrateful one, I hope. She may want to stay for dinner.”

It turned out that Sylvia wanted a good deal more than that. She wanted to live with them.

Her telephone call came while Emtee Dempsey was still thinking of things Sylvia would want when she visited. Now she was able to ask their expected guest what they could do to make her visit more enjoyable. Emtee Dempsey would have indignantly denied that the prominence of her former student played any part in the fuss she made over her, but she seemed to follow Sylvia’s career with unusual interest.