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

“Just a cell like any of yours,” Sylvia said in rare tones. Her voice, like her manner, had the ability to assume different pitches, accents, pronunciations. It was hard to know what persona Sylvia had adopted. “I will live according to your schedule, go to chapel with you, everything. Is there a copy of the rule?”

“Why don’t you simply take the veil, Sylvia?”

“That is precisely what I shall be doing.”

A nun for the nonce, that is. Sylvia could assume, as an actress, an indefinite number of lifetime commitments. But in real life the only role she could no longer play was that of Sylvia Corrigan.

“I am a blank piece of paper. A role has to be written on me.”

She had never married. There were equivocal references to her liaison with Carlos Bonifacio, an Argentine whose career flourished in both North and Latin America. He would be appearing with her in the film adaptation of Bernanos’s play.

“I want to be a nun,” Sylvia said.

Being a nun was not as definite a thing as it once had been. Bernanos’s Carmelites would recognize the Carmelites of today, but such minor orders as that founded by Abigail Keineswegs had undergone profound upheavals and faced total extinction. Sylvia’s impression of the M&M’s would have been formed at college, however, and even so short a time ago as that they had been numerous, disciplined, distinctive. Sylvia’s motive in inviting herself, given these changes, led to predictable difficulties when Sylvia arrived.

On previous occasions she had been brought to the door in a limousine and so quickly did her entourage produce a crowd that her passage from car to door was a royal one, as she threw kisses to the fans, touched an outstretched hand here and there, refused autographs. On this visit, when Kim went to the door she found a waif. Hair pulled back in a ponytail, wearing jeans and sweatshirt, tennis shoes, a pea jacket, Sylvia carried one airline bag. The famous green eyes were the giveaway.

“Sylvia?”

Two abrupt nods and then, chin on her chest, looking at the floor, she said, “Sister Mary Teresa is expecting me.”

If the actress had been trouble before in all the glory of stardom, she was in this incarnation an infinitely more demanding guest. She wanted to dress like Sister Mary Teresa.

“I don’t think any of my habits would fit you, child.”

Sylvia turned to Kim. She clearly disapproved of Kim’s Oxford gray suit and polka-dot blouse. Joyce came in to see the celebrity and was surprised to find her sartorial twin.

“One of you can lend me a habit, can’t you?”

“Not me,” Joyce said. “We voted not to wear it and that was good enough for me.”

“You don’t even own one?”

Kim and Joyce confessed that they did not.

“But Sister Mary Teresa...”

“One could retain the traditional habit if one desired, Sylvia. I, of course, chose not to change.”

“I must wear a habit. It’s no good if I just dress like anyone else. Nuns should look like nuns.”

Emtee Dempsey beamed at such sound doctrine. “Indeed. But the important thing is to be what one seems.”

“I’ll have one made.”

“Better order a Carmelite habit, Sylvia. It’s what you’ll be wearing in the film.”

Sylvia agreed and looked to the window. Was she thinking she should have chosen a Carmelite convent in which to accustom herself to her role?

“Show me where I’ll be staying, let me take a copy of your rule, and I’ll go get a habit. Theatrical costume suppliers should have what I want.”

It was Kim’s idea that Sylvia take the apartment in the basement which would give her privacy and where there was a television.

Sylvia shuddered. “No television. My Carmelites did not have television.”

Kim showed Sylvia to a room on the second floor whose lack of austerity disappointed her.

“Let me see Sister Mary Teresa’s room.” Sylvia was whispering.

In Emtee Dempsey’s room was a single bed, a chair, a prie-dieu.

“This is what I want!” Sylvia cried. Kim promised to reduce the guest room to the same uncluttered condition and Sylvia called a cab and was off to find a habit.

Emtee Dempsey was at work in her study, so Kim went into the kitchen for a cup of coffee.

“Did you ever dress up as a nun when you were a kid?” Joyce asked.

“When I was a kid, becoming a nun was the furthest thing from my mind.” Encountering Emtee Dempsey had planted the seed of her vocation.

“Just asking. Neither did I. All the girls I knew who dressed up as nuns got over it by the time they were teenagers.”

“Are you suggesting the reverse is true?”

“If the habit fits...”

Sylvia had come to the house at two-thirty; she had left again shortly after three. The idea was that she would be back in no time. But an hour went by, two hours, and then it was six o’clock, and no Sylvia Corrigan.

“Where has she been staying, I wonder?” Emtee Dempsey said.

Joyce said, “I could call Oprah.”

But the talk show had no idea what hotel Sylvia had gone to on arriving in Chicago. So all they could do was wait.