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

They delayed supper until seven and then went ahead, but it was a joyless meal with three sets of ears cocked to hear the doorbell or at least the phone. They had still not heard from Sylvia when the time for night prayers came and the three went silently to chapel for compline.

That night Kim did not sleep, certain that this strange development must be keeping Sister Mary Teresa awake, but in the morning, on the way to Mass at the cathedral, the old nun said she had slept like a top. She did not mention Sylvia.

Sylvia was not mentioned at breakfast either, and afterward, in the study, Emtee Dempsey looked at a note on her desk.

“I was going to ask you to bring me Molnar’s book on Bernanos, but I suppose we can let that wait.”

“What do you suppose happened?”

“I have no idea.” And then her eyes looked at Kim through round gold-rimmed glasses. “But I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.”

Before Kim set out for the university, the phone rang. It was her brother Richard, a detective on the Chicago police department, full of early morning cheer. “You’re not missing a nun, are you, Kim?”

“Don’t be funny.”

“Just checking. There’s one in the morgue, all dressed up in the old habit, and we can’t find where she belongs.”

“In the morgue?”

“That’s where we put dead nuns when we find them sitting around in public places.”

“Richard, listen. Sister Mary Teresa and I will leave for the morgue immediately. Meet us there.”

“Do you know who it is?”

Kim hesitated. “I can’t say. Will you be there?”

“Look Kim, I don’t have time...”

“Richard Moriarity!”

“You sound like Mom. Okay. I’ll be there.”

“Where is the morgue, Richard?”

Emtee Dempsey listened in silence as Kim told her of Richard’s call. She rose in silence from her chair, took her cane, and thumped down the hall toward the front door. Wedged into the passenger seat of the battered VW bug, she rode in silence as Kim headed for the address Richard had given her.

Kim knew the old nun approved what she had done and the swiftness with which she had decided. But neither of them wanted to speculate. It was too dreadful, too bizarre a possibility. Yet it would have been impossible not to make the connection after what Richard had said. How many nuns in traditional costume are there anymore?

Richard was standing impatiently on the steps, squinting in the autumn sunlight, anxious to get this over with. He hustled them right into the viewing room, asked Emtee Dempsey if she could see the monitor all right, then called through to the attendant.

The body was shown as it had been found, clothed in a religious habit. The face looked fuller because of the headdress. The profile was unmistakable, but Emtee Dempsey asked, “What color are the eyes?”

“Green,” came the answer.

Kim had turned away when the televised hand moved to open the dead woman’s eyes.

“There’s no doubt, Richard. That is the body of Sylvia Corrigan.” He looked at her, he looked at Kim, he began to smile, and then grew stern.

“Sylvia Corrigan, the actress?”

“That’s right. She’s an alumna of the college. She visited us yesterday in midafternoon. She intended to spend some time with us on Walton Street.”

“But she’s dressed as a nun.”

“She’s an actress,” Emtee Dempsey said.

He decided that was enigmatic enough to serve as an explanation. He took another look at the two of them, as if hoping to surprise some clue that they were kidding him, then went into action on the phone.

Sister Mary Teresa stood for a moment, looking at the face that still appeared on the screen, and her mouth moved in prayer. When she was through, she said, “Let’s go back to the house.”

The return drive was silent but for one remark of the old nun. “She was going to play a nun who was killed. As usual, she entered into the role completely.”

2

Sylvia Corrigan’s death was a journalistic sensation and not even Emtee Dempsey had it in her to blame the media for their treatment of it. What else could one expect in a post-Christian age? As nuns became less numerous, they acquired box-office appeal. Movies, plays, novels of a sort, appeared in incredible numbers, playing the changes on the Maria Monk legends of yore. The old nun’s considered judgment was that as a group they had been treated with excessive respect in the past and this was God’s way of righting the balance. Our Lord, too, she reminded Kim and Joyce, had come to a bad end in a worldly sense. That an actress of Sylvia Corrigan’s renown should be found dead in a nun’s habit in a Chicago hotel stimulated the jaded pens of journalists from coast to coast. A persistent theory was that she had really been a nun all along.

“You will not read such nonsense in the Tribune,” Katherine Senski fumed, her sherry dipping from rim to rim in her glass, though she did not spill a drop. “Can you imagine! They actually believe a nun could be an actress.”