Stillness in Bethlehem
Page 36
Joan Esther got the last two suitcases out of the backseat—they’d been shoved down to the floor and partially covered with the car’s lap blanket; that was why she hadn’t seen them—and dragged them back inside where they belonged. Once she was sure she had the whole lot, she could start dragging them up the stairs.
When she got back to the pile, Mother Mary Bellarmine was there, right next to the suitcases, down from her perch. Mother Mary Bellarmine had gone to a modified habit with the rest of them, back in 1975, but she always gave the impression that she was still clothed head to toe in robes. She always gave the impression that she was about to pronounce the death sentence on someone who deserved it. You.
Joan Esther got the list out of her pocket and began to check off oaktag tag names against it. Mother Mary Bellarmine stepped back a little. She had always been a thin woman. Now she looked skeletal. And very, very old.
“Well,” she said, after a while. “You don’t look any different. I thought Alaska would have changed you.”
“Changed me into what?” Joan Esther said, to the suitcases, to the floor. She never looked at Mother Mary Bellarmine if she could help it. “I teach catechism to twelve-year-olds. I teach Catholic doctrine to potential converts. I teach the basics of prenatal nutrition to mothers who are interested. I’m not doing anything much different from what I was doing before I went to Alaska.”
“When you were with me, you were teaching in a seminary,” Mother Mary Bellarmine said. “And you were in California.”
“I know you like California.”
“You like California,” Mother Mary Bellarmine said. “You did it to spite me. You did it to make me look bad with Reverend Mother General.”
“I did it to get some peace and quiet.” One of the tags was marked “The Gingerbread Lady.” That would be old Sister Agnecita, who made gingerbread houses for the children’s ward of the hospital in Fairbanks. Joan Esther hoped that none of the Sisters from Canada went in for things like that, because she didn’t know any of the Sisters from Canada. She was just traveling with their luggage, which had turned out to be cheaper to send on ahead in bulk.
“The thing about Alaska,” she said slowly, is that everybody I meet up there knows what he’s doing. Nobody is wandering around looking confused and trying to figure out what she’s doing in a habit. And I like the bishop.”
Mother Mary Bellarmine sniffed. “You did it to get away from me. You told Reverend Mother General you did it to get away from me. Moving away in the middle of the term like that. Giving me less than three days’ notice.”
“Of course I wanted to get away from you,” Joan Esther said. “You were driving me crazy.”
“I was trying to turn you into a nun. A nun, Sister. Not—whatever it is you girls are these days.”
“I’m forty-two years old, Bellarmine. I’m hardly a girl.”
“You’re hardly a nun, either. You’re soft, just like all the rest of them. You have no stamina.”
“I had the stamina to put up with you for six years. Trust me, that was enough.”
The Canadians had all been polite enough to mark their suitcases clearly. Now all Joan Esther had to do was get them upstairs to the hall where these women had been assigned, parcel the suitcases out to the correct rooms, and unpack. She had to get the suitcases upstairs and parceled out fairly quickly, but she had more than a week to get them unpacked. That was good. She’d leave them where she dumped them for today. Then she’d go find herself a little food.
Somewhere up above, what sounded like a heavy iron bell rang five times.
“That’s the call to Mass,” Mother Mary Bellarmine said. “In the old days, you’d have dropped whatever you were doing and gone immediately to church.”
“These aren’t the old days,” Joan Esther said. “I can go to the twelve o’clock Mass.”
“I wonder you go to any Mass. I wonder you bother to wear the habit. You don’t believe in religious obedience anymore. I don’t even think you believe in God.”
“If you stand that close to the stairway, I’ll knock you over going upstairs.”
“You’ll probably find some way to blame it on me, too. Going to Alaska. Leaving my house—my house—with less notice than I’d have a right to expect from a cleaning lady. Telling Reverend Mother General—”
“I told Reverend Mother General the truth,” Joan Esther said. “I told her you were an evil old woman who was impossible to work for. Does that make you happy? It was three years ago, Mary Bellarmine. God didn’t strike me dead and Reverend Mother General didn’t relieve you from your post It’s over and done with. Let me by.”
“If you really wanted to get by, you could go around me.”
“So I could.”
“You don’t really want to get by me. You want to assassinate me. That’s been your plan from the beginning.”
The Gingerbread Lady’s suitcase was heavier than the one in Joan Esther’s other hand. Maybe the Gingerbread Lady had had the good grace to pack something interesting. Joan Esther backed up a little, the only way to get around Mother Mary Bellarmine without doing a complete circle of the suitcase pile. Assassination, for heaven’s sake. Mother Mary Bellarmine had always been fond of self-dramatization.
From the bottom, the stairs looked endless, steep, and unforgiving. Joan Esther got a better grip on the suitcases she was carrying and started up.
“You’d better go to Mass,” she said to Mother Mary Bellarmine. “It’s halfway across campus, from what I saw on the map. You’re going to be late.”
“Maybe I ought to offer to help you with the bags.”
Mother Mary Bellarmine had never offered to help anyone with anything, as far as Joan Esther knew. She didn’t think there was any danger that Mother Mary Bellarmine would take up philanthropy now. Carrying the suitcases, she walked steadily up the steps to the landing, turned the corner and walked up some more. When she got to the second floor and out of sight of anyone in the foyer, she put the suitcases down and leaned against the wall.
It had been such a small incident, really, such a nothing, over before it had really begun—and three years ago on top of that. She had taken her stand and won. What more could she possibly want?
It was just that it seemed like a bad omen really, that the second person she should see at this convention would be Mother Mary Bellarmine.
She picked up the suitcases again and headed for the east-wing hall.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1992 by Orania Papazoglou
cover design by Heather Kern
ISBN 978-1-4532-9305-8
This 2013 edition distributed by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
www.mysteriouspress.com
www.openroadmedia.com
THE GREGOR DEMARKIAN
HOLIDAY MYSTERIES
FROM MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM
FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA
Available wherever ebooks are sold
Otto Penzler, owner of the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan, founded the Mysterious Press in 1975. Penzler quickly became known for his outstanding selection of mystery, crime, and suspense books, both from his imprint and in his store. The imprint was
devoted to printing the best books in these genres, using fine paper and top dust-jacket artists, as well as offering many limited, signed editions.
Now the Mysterious Press has gone digital, publishing ebooks through MysteriousPress.com.
MysteriousPress.com offers readers essential noir and suspense fiction, hard-boiled crime novels, and the latest thrillers from both debut authors and mystery masters. Discover classics and new voices, all from one legendary source.
FIND OUT MORE AT
WWW.MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM
FOLLOW US:
@emysteries and Facebook.com/MysteriousPressCom
MysteriousPress.com is one of a select group of publishing partners of Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
Open Road Integrated Media is a digital publisher and multimedia content company. Open Road creates connections between authors and their audiences by marketing its ebooks through a new proprietary online platform, which uses premium video content and social media.
Videos, Archival Documents, and New Releases
Sign up for the Open Road Media newsletter and get news delivered straight to your inbox.
Sign up now at
www.openroadmedia.com/newsletters
FIND OUT MORE AT
WWW.OPENROADMEDIA.COM
FOLLOW US:
@openroadmedia and
Facebook.com/OpenRoadMedia