The Nearly Notorious Nun

by Rie Sheridan Rose

  Roderick pulled up the horses outside the sturdy stone orphanage I remembered quite well. More than ten years of my life had been spent within those grimy sandstone walls. There had been good times, but they were far out-weighed by the boredom and misery. I dreaded the thought of going back behind those banded wooden doors.

  In my mind’s eye, I could still see the children I had grown up with superimposed on the scene before me—lanky Sophie Martino, with her coal-black hair and Italian temper; petite Dorothea Johnston, who was always sick with one disease or another; mischievous Bridget Doyle who laughed like tinkling bells and got everyone in trouble with her wild schemes. There had been others, but those three were my special friends…until the day I left and never looked back. I wondered what had become of those childhood playmates.

  Did Sophie ever become a schoolteacher as she dreamed of doing, her nose always in one book or another, her hand up like a shot when a question was asked in class?

  Had Dorothea outgrown her illnesses, or was she an invalid somewhere? I certainly hoped the former rather than the latter.

  And what had become of madcap Bridget, my best friend in the entire world when we were children? We both had the flaming hair and emerald eyes of our Irish ancestors, and had been mistaken for twins more than once in our matching uniforms. Something we had exploited on occasion, to be honest.

  I made my way toward the mother superior’s office. My heart pounded as if I had been called into her presence for misbehavior—which had also happened more often than I cared to admit in the past. There was the time I tried to hide a puppy in our dormitory room until the custodian found him and hauled me to Mother Mary Margaret’s study. Or the time Bridget found a half-empty bottle of rum hidden in the boiler room, and we all shared it around, making ourselves well and truly ill. What times we had had…

  I steeled myself, squaring my shoulders and lifting my chin. My hand shook a bit as I knocked on the door.

  I half expected to hear Mother Mary Margaret’s abrasive tones answer despite the letter. Instead, a cheerful voice bade me enter. It gave me pause. The voice was different, but still somehow familiar. Taking a deep breath, I opened the door and stepped through it.

  The office was as I remembered, still furnished in heavy oak pieces—a desk, two chairs, a tall bookcase stuffed with volumes of scripture and philosophy. The mother superior’s big desk chair was turned away from me, facing a bank of sparkling windows.

  “Mother Superior,” I began hesitantly, “I got your letter—”

  The chair spun toward me.

  “Well, what took you so long to get here?” asked Bridget Doyle.

  “Bridget! Is that really you?” My heart leapt at seeing her again, and then plummeted when I took in the somber habit she wore. The dizzying shift in emotion made my head spin, and I groped for the back of the chair before the desk.

  “It’s Mother Mary Frances, now, but yes…it’s me.” Her eyes twinkled with the same merry mischief I remembered from my childhood.

  “You’re a nun?”

  She glanced down at her habit and back up at me.

  “Why, it appears I am!” she agreed with mock shock. “How did that happen?” She laughed her infectious tinkling-bell laugh, and I felt my heart lift once more.

  I didn’t realize until that very moment how much I had been dreading meeting with the mother superior of my childhood. She had been a strict woman with little sense of humor or sympathy for her charges.

  “Sit down before you fall down, Josephine. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “I must admit, you’re not what I was expecting,” I said sheepishly, settling into the chair across from her.

  “I assume you’re here only because you got my letter and not to take vows.”

  I shuddered at the thought. I was definitely not cut out to be a nun.

  Bridget—Mother Mary Frances—laughed again.

  “The look on your face! Don’t worry, Jo. No one will force you into a nun’s habit against your will. But I do need your help.”

  “Of course, Brid—Mother Superior.”

  She leaned forward and put her hand on my arm.

  “Tell you what—when we’re alone, we will be Bridget and Jo like when we were children. What do you say?”

  “That would make life easier,” I said gratefully.

  “Mother Mary Margaret always advocated starting at the beginning. Do you remember the time I had to explain to her why your hair was green and Dorothea was blue all over?”

  “Oh, my! I hadn’t thought of that in years.”

  Memories swept over me once more. The four of us had gotten into such scrapes as children. The reminder of past camaraderie made it easier for me to accept that this was really the Bridget I had grown up with.

  “Tell me, Bridget, how is it that you are now Mother Superior of the orphanage?”

  “Well, I took my vows soon after you left the orphanage—right after my seventeenth birthday, as a matter-of-fact. This is a relatively small order, as you might remember, and I was the only new novice for many years, while the other sisters just continued to age. Three years ago, Mother Mary Margaret became ill. As you might also remember, a new superior is elected by the community of sisters. Sister Agnes was expected to be her successor, but when the votes were collected—after much meditation and prayer on everyone’s part—mine was the name called. I think it quite likely that no one else wanted the job—I recognized Agnes’s scrawl on the first ballot.

  “It isn’t always easy handling the children. They can be a handful for anyone, and I was the youngest and strongest. Besides, I had been the designate dealing with day-to-day paperwork and other administrative duties as Mother Mary Margaret’s secretary. Everyone else was content to remain in their teaching positions and let me do the brunt of the work! I didn’t really mind. I love my vocation, and my charges.

  “But enough about me. Tell me, Jo, what are you doing with yourself these days?”

  “It seems improbable, I know, but I have become the laboratory assistant to a university professor. I help with his experiments, take notes, things like that. It’s been most interesting. Alistair—Professor Conn—and I had a very exciting adventure this spring…but I’ll tell you all about that another day. Today, I’m here for you.”

  “Alistair, is it? I can’t wait to hear the details.” Bridget shook her head. “You always did have a way with the boys, Jo. Do you remember Patrick Logan?”

  A memory of blue eyes and a warm smile flashed through my mind. He had been the handsome son of the caretaker, and the first boy I ever kissed. I was thirteen and he was fifteen. I think he would have been interested in more than kisses if Mother Mary Margaret hadn’t caught us and put the fear of God into him.

  I never saw him again.

  “I can tell by the look on your face that you do,” Bridget—Mother Mary Frances—said with a chuckle. “Don’t worry, I’m not nearly as strict about the interactions between the sexes as Mother Mary Margaret was. I know that young boys and girls are curious about such things. Not that I condone inappropriate behavior, of course, but I can understand its attractiveness…and a stolen kiss or two seldom leads to harm. I’ve been known to walk the other way if I stumble on a tryst.” She winked.

  I was a bit taken aback. It was a strange speech for a nun. Especially a mother superior.

  As if reading my thoughts, Mother Mary Frances grinned her infectious grin.

  “I’m not what you expected to find here, am I? Mother Mary Margaret was always so proper and strict. I’ve tried to find a middle ground between her iron hand and absolute laxity. Most of the time, I feel I’ve succeeded.

  “I know I must have seemed like a flighty child, Jo, but I knew when I was very small that I wanted to be a nun when I was old enough to take my vows. Hard as it is to believe, when you only remember the hellion that I was, I think I was just trying to get it all out of my system. I don’t have any regrets, I assure you.”

  “What b
ecame of Sophie? And Dorothea. Do you know?”

  “Last I heard, Sophie gave up her dreams of teaching after she tried it for a year, married a banker and moved to Buffalo. She has twin boys—they’d be five or six now. Dorothea became a nurse, if you can believe it. I heard she volunteered to go to the South after the War to aid in rebuilding, but I don’t know if she was accepted or not. We lost touch soon after you left.”

  It was strange to think of little Dorothea ministering to the sick when she couldn’t go a day without some ailment of her own. And Sophie—a mother…raising her own children instead of teaching other people’s.

  We had all grown up and gone our separate ways.

  “This has been lovely, Bridget, but I know you didn’t just call me here to reminisce about the old days. There must be a reason you needed my help so urgently. What is it I can do for you?”

  She sighed, looking down at her clasped hands.

  “It isn’t easy for me to discuss this, Jo, but I absolutely had to talk to someone about it. My uncle works for the police department, and he mentioned your name…”

  A memory flashed through my mind of the first visit Alistair and I made to the police station earlier in the year. I remembered Sergeant Doyle clearly, a grizzled man with bushy eyebrows who seemed much more interested in paperwork than crime solving.

  “I remember him. He didn’t like me.”

  “He doesn’t much like anyone. He’s a bachelor because no one wanted to put up with him,” she said, with a laugh. “I keep in touch with him, because he is the only family my sister and I have.

  “But that is beside the matter. His mention of your name reminded me how resourceful you were as a child, and I knew if anyone could help me, it was you. So, I tried to think like you might. I couldn’t imagine you leaving the city—you always loved it so—so I started contacting boarding houses, looking for you. I prayed that might be a logical course of action, and I was right. Thank the good Lord.” She crossed herself, and reached into her desk drawer, pulling out a stack of papers and sliding them across the desk to me.

  “Take a look at these letters. I received the first of them three weeks ago. There has been a new one every week since.”

  I glanced at the top sheet of paper, quickly scanning through the lines written there. The first letter was fairly short, and cryptic:

  I know what you did and what came of it. You ought to be ashamed! Soon the entire world will know of your infamy.

  I frowned, flipping to the next…and the next. They were progressively more belligerent and hateful. And there was a common theme. If the information in these letters was made public…

  “Bridget, this is terrible. You do realize what these letters mean?”

  She nodded, her face somber.

  “Blackmail.”

  “Amy, you must give me your word that you will tell no one of this…” Constance Truemore’s exquisite face was twisted into an unhappy frown. “It would be more than my life is worth if Patrick were to discover my shame.”

  Amy was used to hyperbole from her dearest friend, but there was a note of real pain in Constance’s voice.

  Reaching out to catch up Connie’s hand, Amy assured her of her utmost discretion.

  A tear coursed down the other’s cheek. “It’s my engagement ring. I’ve lost it, and Patrick will be livid if he finds out. It was his godmother’s—his only legacy from her—I must find it before the spring ball at Whispering Pines next Friday. He wants to formally announce our upcoming nuptials and show off the ring to our entire set.”

  “Calm down, dear. Where did you have it last?”

  “That’s the problem…I can’t remember!”

  -- Garrett Goldthwaite

  Analytical Amy and the Case of the Covetous Cad

  Chapter 4

  I looked more closely at the stack of missives. All of them seemed to have been written on one of the new mechanical writing apparatuses that were beginning to make good penmanship obsolete. They really are fascinating machines. I must ask Alistair about purchasing one of them…

  All of the letters were unsigned, and the first one was dated almost a month ago.

  “I didn’t think anything of the original,” Bridget confessed. “It was so vague, and the Church is not popular with all the citizens of our fair city. I ignored it until the next one came.”

  I set the first letter aside. I would examine it with a magnifying glass at the earliest opportunity to see if I could learn any clues about the machine that had made it. It was precisely what one of the detectives in the dime novels would do, but I would have to purchase a glass on the way home. Or maybe there was one in the laboratory—I should check first. After all, a penny saved would help expand my wardrobe.

  The second letter was much more explicit:

  Scarlet Woman—

  You may ignore me at your peril. You are a disgrace to your Church and your calling. How can you sit at the head of the table knowing of your sin? The world shall know all, villainess!

  “It isn’t very effective blackmail,” I mused. “Two letters, and they haven’t made their point at all. They still haven’t said who they are or what they want.”

  “Which, I suppose, is what led to this third.” She pointed to the longest of the batch:

  Whore of Babylon—

  You have conceived and brought forth a child out of wedlock—and you a woman of the veil! I know the truth. I know the father’s name. If you do not wish to have this sin revealed to the world, you will hand over the deed to your den of iniquity before it is too late. If you do not deliver the deed to the orphanage into my hands, I will shout your secret to the world!

  “Ah, well. Now we get to the heart of the matter.” I glanced over the top of the letter at Bridget. “I assume there is no truth to the allegations.”

  She blushed as red as her hair.

  “No—of course not! How could you think that? Even for a moment!

  “However, some years ago, when I first became a novice, I contracted scarlet fever, and was sent to the countryside for several months of convalescence. Mother Mary Margaret arranged it because she felt there was no reason to expose the older nuns to the dangers of the illness.

  “I stayed at a sister convent while I recovered, but no one who remains here on staff is cognizant of all the details. That time away from the orphanage could be twisted to appear as proof that I am guilty of this offense.”

  “I see.”

  This was a very sticky problem, indeed. I believed her, of course. Bridget had been a wild child, but never a wanton one. When the rest of us were plotting with Patrick Logan and his friends to steal kisses behind the garden shed, Bridget had always insisted on being the lookout. Now, I understood why she had been uninterested. If she had determined to be a nun even as a young girl, stealing kisses would have been low on her list of activities.

  “Do you have any idea who could have sent the letters? Was there a return address on any of the envelopes? It isn’t very intelligent to ask for compensation without giving you a name.”

  “Not yet,” Bridget replied, shaking her head with a sigh. “It isn’t very intelligent to ask for such an impossible payout either. There is no way I could hand over the deed to the orphanage. It isn’t mine to give, even if I wanted to. The property belongs to the Church, and the Bishop would never relinquish it—especially under such circumstances.” She picked her rosary up from the desk, and ran it through her fingers distractedly. “Still, I expect whoever it is will send another communication any day now. Can you see why I need your assistance? You are the most levelheaded person I’ve ever met, Jo, and you always were good at solving puzzles. Can you help me?”

  I tapped the stack of letters together neatly as I thought the matter over. Without more information, I didn’t see what I could do.

  On the other hand, Bridget’s problem could provide a welcome distraction until Alistair and the others came back to town. Ever since I began working for Professor Alistair Conn as
his lab assistant about two months ago, I had spent most of my time waiting for my employer to return from Ohio. Alistair had been shuttling back and forth to court proceedings trying to ensure that Paul Blessant went away to prison for a very long time. Blessant is such an unpleasant man—so, of course, I don’t begrudge Alistair helping to insure that happens.

  Unfortunately, none of those trips required my assistance, so I was relegated to puttering about the lab, answering correspondence, and being bored out of my mind. There were only so many ways that I could rearrange the machine parts in the laboratory, and Alistair had absolutely forbidden me to tinker on my own among his things. Until Alistair and the others came back to town, I had little else to do…although I did have an idea for something that I could do that wouldn’t technically go against Alistair’s prohibitions.

  Still, Bridget had been my first true friend. If she needed my help, she would get it.

  “Of course, I’ll help,” I blurted out. “And I know just where to begin. I have an acquaintance on the police force—a detective—who could provide us with advice on what to do next.”

  “Oh, Jo, do you think we really have to involve the police? I haven’t even told Uncle Thaddaeus,” she whispered, her face as white as her wimple. “This is a most delicate matter!”

  “Inspector Reilly is very discrete, I assure you.”

  “I think I have heard his name mentioned in some of Uncle Thad’s stories. If you feel it’s for the best, I bow to your greater experience.” She sighed, her brow furrowed with worry.

  “May I take these to show him?”

  “Certainly.”

  I folded the letters and tucked them into my reticule.

  “It’s too late to visit the precinct house this evening, but I’ll do so first thing in the morning, Bridget, I promise.” After I purchase a typewriting machine and find a magnifying glass. I’ll make sure Alistair pays me back.