Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 130, No. 1. Whole No. 791, July 2007

Monica Quill is a pseudonym of mystery writer, mainstream novelist, and philosophy professor Ralph McInerny. The author’s varied life is chronicled in his recently published autobiography I Alone Have Escaped to Tell You: My Life and Pastimes (University of Notre Dame Press). The Quill pseudonym is reserved for stories featuring Sister Mary Teresa Dempsey, who has not had a novel-length case since 1997.

1.

“I don’t know a thing about poetry,” Sister Mary Teresa Dempsey said, and Kim and Jane exchanged a look. Such a disclaimer usually prefaced a lengthy lecture on the allegedly unknown subject. Their visitor stirred in her chair.

“What I really want to know is whether the college literary magazine has been preserved.”

“Preserved?”

“There were bound copies in the college library, from the very first issue to...”

Hannah Fence’s voice trailed off. The closing and subsequent sale of the college that the Order of Martha and Mary had once run in a northern suburb marked a dark day for many alumnae. For Emtee Dempsey, it had been almost apocalyptic. In those mad days when novelty was its own excuse, the past had been cast aside like a squeezed orange. The house on Walton Street in Chicago and a summer retreat in Indiana were all that remained of the once extensive property of the order. The three nuns were the remnant of a once thriving community.

“Preserving the past was not uppermost in many minds at that time. You are referring of course to Fennel and Rue?”

“Of course.” Hannah sat back. “Where did they ever find that name for the magazine?”

“William Dean Howells, of course.”

Neither Hannah nor Emtee Dempsey’s housemates responded to this.

“You don’t know William Dean Howells?” A shadow passed over the rounded countenance of the old nun, but in a moment it was gone. She put her fat little hands on the arms of her chair. “But enough. So you have made your debut as a poet, Hannah?”

Hannah’s small book of verse had recently been issued by a local press. Small books of verse are regularly issued by small presses and the usual fate is swift and sure oblivion. But Hannah’s collection had known a surprising reception. A review in the Sun Times and a piece on the poet in the Sunday Tribune had created a demand for copies in bookstores throughout the region. It had actually gone into a second printing, the first run of 500 copies having sold out. That a woman in middle age had produced such fresh and haunting lyrics made it news indeed. She had brought a copy for the old nun, suitably inscribed.

“Are you at work on a second collection?”

“Sister, I don’t think I could go through it all again.”

“Perhaps some juvenilia?” The old nun’s countenance suddenly brightened. “Is that the basis of your interest in Fennel and Rue?You did publish in it, didn’t you?”

Hannah looked hurt. “Sister, I was editor in my senior year.”

“Ah yes. I remember now. I should have thought you would have saved issues of the magazine.”

“Only the odd ones. Perhaps if I had majored in history I would have realized how fragile the past...”

But Sister Mary Teresa was not listening. There was a far-off remembering look in her blue eyes. “Who was the girl who wrote such lovely poems? It must have been in your time.”

“So many of us tried to write poetry, Sister.”

“But this girl succeeded. Oh!” The little hands flew up. Delight gave way to dismay. “The girl who disappeared.”

“Disappeared?” Kim cried.

“Disappeared off the face of the earth. She didn’t leave a trace.”

“Catherine Raines,” Hannah said softly. “Catherine Raines.”

Over the next fifteen minutes, Emtee Dempsey recalled the facts of that long-ago episode in the college history. Hannah reluctantly corroborated the old nun’s memory.

“We were classmates, Sister.”

“Ah.”

“I have a theory. During the days before her disappearance I was nagging her to submit a poem for the Cardinal Mundelein prize. You may remember that the Mundelein was the most prestigious prize of all.”

“And Catherine never submitted a poem?”

Hannah shook her head. “Inspiration is an unreliable friend.” Emtee Dempsey recognized the phrase from the Tribune interview. “She became almost desperate. The deadline came and went and Catherine had disappeared.”

“A wise virgin is always supplied with the oil of inspiration.”

Hannah blushed prettily. “Then you’ve already read it.”

“It?”

“My book. One of the poems...”

“Just coincidence.”

Eventually they got back to the subject of bound back issues of Fennel and Rue. The only hope Emtee Dempsey could offer was that there might possibly be a set in the attic and soon Jane took Hannah off to the attic.

“How could a student just disappear?” Kim asked.

Emtee Dempsey tipped her head to one side. “Admittedly, it was rare in those days, but given the veritable plague of disappearances in recent years I cannot understand your surprise. It is almost as if the Rapture had begun. Two men at work in the field, one is taken, one is left. Two women writing poetry in a college, one is taken, one is left.”

“Is that a new translation?”

Emtee Dempsey looked stern. The constant flow of new translations of Scripture irked the old nun, and she was for banning them all.

“There are only two worthy English translations. The King James, precisely for its English, and the Douay-Rheims, for its closeness to the Latin vulgate. You realize that medievalists rely on the Douay-Rheims for just that reason. You must read the parable of the wise and foolish virgins in either of those translations.”

“Tell me about Catherine Raines.”

“You’ve already heard what is known. One day she was a student on campus, the next day she had vanished as if into thin air.”

“But that’s impossible.”

“Of course it’s impossible. But it was never learned exactly what happened.”

“What do you think of Hannah’s theory?”

“It’s possible.”

“You’re not serious. Disappear because she couldn’t write a poem and win a prize?”

“Sister Kimberly, you were once that age, and not all that long ago. Of course it’s possible. The scale of importance is proportionate to circumstances and age. I realize that you could dismiss the momentary loss of poetic inspiration...”

“I have never written a poem in my life!”

“You should try. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote poetry,” she added piously.

“Have you ever written poetry?”

“You must wait for my autobiography.”

Jane returned with Hannah empty-handed. Not only was there no bound set of the college literary magazine in the attic, there were not even loose copies of one issue or another.

“I can’t believe they could disappear without a trace,” Hannah said.

“Like Catherine Raines.”

Hannah turned to Kim and seemed about to say something angry. But the moment passed.

“Like Catherine Raines,” she repeated.

2.

Kim looked into the matter of the disappearance of Catherine Raines during the next several days, convincing herself that this was more or less in the line of duty. Her own research always took second place, of course, but how was she to operate as Sister Mary Teresa’s research assistant if she did not... Well, it wasn’t much of an argument but Kim was determined to find out about the girl who had disappeared into thin air.

The disappearance had been a three-day wonder in the Chicago papers and then subsided, giving way to other horrors and outrages. Kim wondered if the address given for the girl’s parents could possibly still be valid. It wasn’t. The current owner had no idea where Mrs. Raines had gone.

“Just Mrs. Raines?”

Kim gave the first name.

“Who did you say is calling?” The question was wary.

“I represent the college that Catherine Raines attended. We are trying to get in touch with our graduates.”

“Why don’t you ask at the St. Basil rectory?”

The house in which the Raineses had lived was in St. Basil parish, but great changes had taken place in the past few years. The church itself was as big as a basilica; it would have dwarfed the cathedral downtown. The rectory was equally imposing, and there was a school and convent as well, conveying a period of remarkable growth in the church—a time of ethnic pride, with neighborhoods and parishes unabashedly devoted to one immigrant group or another.

The current pastor was black, a native of Nigeria. He looked at Kim with large soft eyes and when he realized that she was a nun, was even more courteous. Father Tzenga was here to preside over the slow demise of St. Basil’s. There was now only one Sunday Mass in the huge church, and it was sparsely attended. The descendants of the original founders of the parish had fled to the suburbs. The parish school went on, taking the pressure off the local public school.

“The cardinal wants to close St. Basil’s, Sister.”

Kim wondered if the records of the parish would become as difficult to trace as those of their college. She told Father Tzenga that she was looking for a Mrs. Raines, a former member of the parish, who had lived at such and such an address. The priest just smiled at her.

“I have no idea.”

“There are no records?”

“They would tell you the woman was a member of the parish. You already know that.”

“But where would she have gone?”

“You must ask her children.”

Kim stood. At the moment the dusty paths of medieval history seemed more promising than the recent history of the city of Chicago.

“You could ask at Little Flower,” the priest suggested.

Little Flower was a nursing home two blocks away, run by the nuns who had once taught in St. Basil’s school. Their patients were largely old parishioners. The place was bright and fragrant and happy. And when she asked for Mrs. Raines the answer was immediate.

“Ward B,” the nun behind the counter said. She was peering at the cross pinned to Kim’s lapel.

“The Order of Martha and Mary.”

“Ah.”

At the end of the corridor there was a large windowed room in which old people sat in wheelchairs, ignoring television, enjoying the sun, looking placidly out the windows at the neighborhood in which they had lived their lives. Mrs. Raines was a prim little woman in her eighties. Her silver hair seemed freshly shampooed, her color was good, and her eyes shone with intelligence. She listened to Kim’s explanation of her visit as if her mornings were filled with such callers. But her daughter’s name sent a swift look of pain across her face.

“But how is Sister Mary Teresa?”

“I should have brought her with me.”

“You must do that next time.”

“Tell me about your daughter.”

Old Mrs. Raines looked at Kim. “I will soon be reunited with her.”

When Kim returned to the house on Walton Street, Emtee Dempsey was in her study. A book was open in her hand. She lifted a hand and then read aloud.

She looked at Kim through her rimless glasses. “Now that is an interesting view of the scriptural parable.”

“Hannah Fence?”

She waved the book in reply.

“What is the answer?”

“It wasn’t selfishness but concern for the bridegroom.”

“I have spoken with Catherine Raines's mother.”

The old nun put down the book. “Tell me about it.”

Kim recounted the visit with the thoroughness the old nun expected.

“You might mention it to Raymond.”

Raymond was Kim’s brother, a detective lieutenant in the Chicago police department.

“Are you serious?”

“Sister, I am always serious.” But she smiled sweetly when she said it.

3.

The newspaper accounts of the disappearance of Catherine Raines stressed the mystery rather than suggesting any explanation. Hannah Fence, identified as the missing girl’s best friend, was described as inconsolable. And there was a matter-of-fact quotation from history professor Sister Mary Teresa Dempsey: “A young woman does not simply disappear.” One reporter sought possible motivations for Catherine simply to run away, but such curiosity died with the story. Within a week, Catherine Raines had disappeared from newspaper accounts much as she had disappeared from the campus.

At Emtee Dempsey’s suggestion, Kim went to the little bookstore owned by Hannah Fence on Rush Street, where she found the poet in her office at the back of the store.

“Any luck?” she asked Kim.

“I have talked with Mrs. Raines.”

Two hands covered Hannah’s mouth and rounded eyes looked over their fingertips. “She’s still alive?”

“In the Little Flower nursing home.”

“I must go see her.”

Hannah’s office was a pleasant place, three walls covered with bookshelves. It was here that she had been photographed by the Tribune. It was studying that photograph that had prompted Emtee Dempsey to ask Kim to visit the poet.

“The newspaper accounts are so dissatisfying.”

“I know. Sister, it was the most frustrating event of my life. Catherine and I were very close. There was scarcely an issue of Fennel and Rue that did not contain something of hers while I was editor.”

“And yet she couldn’t come up with an entry for the Mundelein Prize.”

“Inspiration is an unreliable friend.” It might have been a mantra.

“Who won the prize that year?”

“I did! But what pleasure could I take in that after what had happened to Catherine?”

“It was good of you to dedicate your book to Catherine.”

“It was the least I could do.”

“I wonder if Catherine would have gone on writing poetry.”

A clerk looked in to tell Hannah that a customer wanted her to autograph her little book of poems. She left the office with a pleased expression, excusing herself. Kim stood and examined the shelves in Hannah’s office. She met the poet in the shop and thanked her for seeing her.

“Must you go?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“When I went to Sister Mary Teresa I had the mad thought that, after all these years, she would solve the riddle of Catherine’s disappearance.”

“Perhaps she will.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Out of blind loyalty.”

After a moment, Hannah laughed. “How satisfying it must be to live with such a woman.”

“That’s what she tells me.”

A little bell tinkled when Kim went out the street door. She could easily walk to the house on Walton Street and she did, wondering what Emtee Dempsey would make of the result of her visit to Hannah’s bookstore.

“Well?” The old nun put down her huge fountain pen and looked at Kim.

“You were right. She has a complete bound set of Fennel and Rue on the shelf in her office.”

Emtee Dempsey took from a drawer the Tribune story on Hannah Fence the poet and studied the accompanying photograph. “I was sure that was what it was.”

“What is the explanation?”

“I was about to ask you.”

“Why would she claim to be searching for a set of the magazine when she already had one?”

“Oh, there are several possible explanations of that.”

“Such as?”

“She wanted another set?”

“That’s silly. So what other possible explanations are there?”

“Are you testing me?”

“I am simply asking a question.”

“To which, no doubt, you have already devised an answer.” Emtee Dempsey picked up her fountain pen and pulled toward her the page on which she had been writing her daily stint on her history of the twelfth century. Kim felt dismissed.

“You’re just teasing.”

But the study was filled with the scratching pen as it moved steadily across the page.

4.

Jane answered the door when Raymond called. He brushed past her and headed for the study.

“Is she in?”

Jane ran ahead of him to forewarn Emtee Dempsey of her visitor. Kim was with the old nun. Raymond came to a stop before the desk.

“Did you think you could keep it a secret forever?”

Emtee Dempsey looked at him over her rimless glasses. “You are the one who is dealing in secrets. Or at least in riddles.”

“Tell me you haven’t heard.”

“Raymond, will you please sit down and make an effort to engage in sequential thought.”

Raymond sat and glared silently at the nun. “They found the body.”

Emtee Dempsey waited, but Kim noticed that the old nun was pressing her palms flat on the desk.

“Body isn’t quite accurate. There can’t be much left but bones.”

Eventually the story became clear. A developer who had bought half their old campus was engaged in putting up luxury housing. In preparing the site, he had come upon an old storm drain. When what appeared to be bones of a human cadaver were found, he called the police.

“And you assumed he called here as well.”

Raymond looked at Kim. “I suppose it was just an accident that you mentioned that twenty-year-old disappearance to me just a few days ago.”

“Raymond, you can’t believe we knew.”

Like Emtee Dempsey, like Raymond, Kim assumed that they were talking about the remains of Catherine Raines.

“Have you been out there, Raymond?” Emtee Dempsey asked.

“I stopped here on my way.”

“Good man. Sister Kimberly can go with you.”

Raymond objected to this until the old nun convinced him that had been his reason for coming by Walton Street on his way to their old campus. Kim said, “I’ll be right with you.”

Jane said, “Can I go?”

Emtee Dempsey thought about it. “You’re right. Nuns should always travel in pairs.”

If that had once been the rule, it was now more honored in the breach than the observance. The old nun was constantly sending Kim off on solo errands.

From time to time, Kim had made a sentimental visit to their old campus and, it turned out, so had Jane. Emtee Dempsey, on the other hand, had never once visited the scene of her academic life. Some memories were simply too painful. Raymond parked his unmarked car and went in search of the builder. Kim and Jane walked silently along a ruined walk, the great slabs of pavement tumbled aside by the busy little machine that had been parked when the grim discovery was made. A manhole cover angled against a mound of dirt. Kim and Jane were staring into its depths when Raymond returned with Wallace Stevenson, the developer.

“You’ll need a light to see anything.” He directed a flashlight into the depth and Jane leapt back with a cry. Kim was immediately at her side. Neither of them had ever seen anything more gruesome than a recently dead person prepared for burial. The bones in the depths of the well told a surer tale of our common destiny.

Raymond had taken a look and then was on the radio, summoning the appropriate experts. Jane and Kim continued to back away. They were both assailed by memories of long-ago evening strolls along that sidewalk. How often had they passed the hidden remains of Catherine Raines?

For that is what the skeleton proved to be. A glass from the nursing home provided DNA that made the identification certain. Of course, old Mrs. Raines was not told. When Emtee Dempsey sent Kim to her it was with instructions to use discretion.

At the nursing home, Kim sat with Mrs. Raines and talked about her daughter.

“I understand that she was a poet,” Kim said.

“Oh, she got that from me. And I got it from my mother, who was a great fan of Edgar Guest.” There was no irony in the old voice when she said this.

“You wrote poetry, too?”

“Most of my life. Look in that chest, you’ll see.”

The chest beside her bed held half a dozen notebooks. Kim took one and began to read it. After a moment, she looked up.

“I’d like so much to show these to Sister Mary Teresa.”

“Does she write poetry?”

“You’ll have to wait for her autobiography.”

Mrs. Raines was flattered by Kim’s interest and so the notebooks went back to the house on Walton Street. Kim just put them on the old nun’s desk and left her alone. Fifteen minutes later she was summoned to the study.

“Did you read any of these?”

“I leafed through one of the notebooks.”

“And?”

“What do you think?”

“What anyone would think. Ask Hannah Fence to come see me.”

5.

Shortly before Hannah was due to arrive, Kim went off to the Rush Street bookstore and busied herself with the bound volumes of Fennel and Rue, comparing poems in back issues with those that made up Hannah’s little volume of verse. When Emtee Dempsey’s guess was verified, Kim headed back to Walton Street. Hannah was still with the old nun.

“Well?” Emtee Dempsey asked Kim.

Kim nodded. “You won’t need me.”

“Sister, please sit down. Tell Hannah what you have discovered.”

But a gasp from the poet, who had been following the odd exchange between the two nuns, told the story.

“The collection of poems you published were not your own, were they?”

“Oh, Sister, that wasn’t my original intention. I meant to bring them out as a tribute to Catherine. In her memory.”

“But once you’d put your name on it you were afraid that someone with access to a bound set of Fennel and Rue would discover what you had done.”

Raymond had arrived and taken a chair in a corner of the study.

“It was such a stupid thing to do.”

“Of course that wasn’t all.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think you know. The poem that won you the Mundelein prize was not yours either, was it? Catherine must have submitted it.”

Hannah looked abjectly at the old nun. “You make me feel like a schoolgirl again.”

“Yes. And a rather uncommon schoolgirl at that. Why don’t you tell us the full story?”

Conscience is a powerful thing, and doubtless Hannah’s had gnawed at her during the years when she had recalled what she had done, winning a prize with another girl’s poem.

“You can imagine how I have felt all these years. That is why I wanted to publish Catherine’s poems. As a posthumous tribute.”

“So you were certain she was dead.”

Hannah looked at Kim and at Raymond, and then back at the old nun. “I just assumed... Everyone did. Didn’t you?”

“No need to assume anymore, Hannah. The body has been found, what is left of it. I think you know where.”

“Oh my God!”

Raymond broke in to give a description of what had been found on the campus of their old college.

“Sister, this is so eerie. Catherine and I had passed that manhole cover a hundred times without really noticing it, and then one afternoon we did. We managed to pry it loose and look inside. It gave us the creeps, a hole in the earth opening up like that...” She stopped, and seemed to shrivel into herself. Had she rehearsed for this confrontation?

“When did Catherine discover that you intended to use as your own the poem she had given you as editor?”

“Sister, you don’t think...”

“Yes, Hannah, I am afraid I do.”

But there are deeds that can be known and cannot be proved. Raymond’s presence brought back caution to Hannah.

“Plagiarism is not that much of a crime,” she said to Raymond, trying to laugh. “Surely you don’t intend to arrest me.”

“Lady, I wouldn’t arrest you even if you told me you had pushed your friend into that hole. The prosecutor wouldn’t go near it.”

“Of course not! It is nonsense to think I would do such a thing.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Raymond said. He stood, nodded at the old nun, and left the study. Kim went with him to the street door. He looked at Kim.

“Did she really think I would arrest that woman?”

“I’ll ask her.”

Raymond shook his head and stepped out into a present more troubled than the past.

Hannah was still seated facing Emtee Dempsey when Kim returned.

“Would you feel better if I announced that those poems are Catherine’s?” Hannah said.

“Oh, I wouldn’t bother. They’re not Catherine’s either.”

“What do you mean?”

“Someday I’ll tell you. After you’ve made your peace with God.”

When Hannah was gone, shown out by Jane, the old nun sat in silence for a time. “I suppose a logician would say that you can’t plagiarize a plagiarism.”

“You think she killed Catherine, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

More silence. “It would be nice if Mrs. Raines could be told. But what is the point now?” She picked up the copy of the book of poems that Hannah had published as her own. Her lips moved, and then she read aloud the second quatrain of the poem she had read earlier.

“The metrics are regular and the rhymes are sure. But it is a poor poem, hardly more than a jingle.”

“Yet it won a prize.”

“Let that be a lesson to you,” Emtee Dempsey said enigmatically. “Not every wearer of the laurel has run a good race. And not every winner knows that she has won.”

And Kim thought of Mrs. Raines, winner of the Mundelein prize, waiting patiently in Little Flower nursing home until she could join her daughter.

© 2007 by Monica Quill