Read Online The Christening Day Murder by Lee Harris - Free Book Online Page B

years dead and buried,” he said reflectively. “Before I got to know you, I wouldn’t have given you a chance in hell of finding anything useful, but I guess if anyone can, it’s you.” He was referring to the first case I’d fallen into, when I’d met him. “Certainly smacks of premeditation. And you’ve pretty much accounted for all the young girls in town?”
    “If my sources are right, and I have no reason to think they aren’t.”
    “I like your idea that it was someone who came and went. Of course, it may have been someone from far away who was inveigled there just to meet her death. If that’s so, the dentists won’t turn up anything, and you’ve got lots of problems.”
    “I’ll let you know after I’ve given this a try.”
    “You have someone to stay with up there?”
    “I’m going to a convent in northern Pennsylvania.”
    He gave me a strange look. “You aren’t thinking of going back, are you? We really need you in this world.”
    As tough and ornery as he is, Arnold is the sweetest man I know. He’s become something of a father figure to me, and I sometimes think he thinks of me as his youngest daughter. “I’m here to stay,” I assured him.
    “You need me,” he said, “you call collect.”

8
    Jack came up on Saturday afternoon, and we fulfilled a fantasy of mine by turning our kiss at the door into an act of love in very little longer than it takes to say it. Later on we went down to the private beach on the Long Island Sound that I have a part ownership in, and we walked on the sand. It was cold and windy, and I remembered the first time we had walked here during the summer, when we had just met and I was just getting used to being Christine Bennett and not Sister Edward Frances. This time we walked holding each other, partly for warmth and partly for all those other reasons lovers have for staying close. It was a placid, comfortable afternoon, finishing with dinner out. Jack stayed over, keeping my bed warm and my excitement high.
    In the morning we were both up early, and after a good breakfast, he left for Brooklyn and I set out for a convent in Pennsylvania and the beginning of a great adventure.
       There is a certain feel to a convent. When I was thirteen it was seductive, beckoning to me. When I was thirty and knew I was soon to leave, it was like a mother’s open arms,there when I needed them but not stifling. They could not hold me anymore, but they would never reject me.
    I arrived at the Convent of the Sacred Heart at three in the afternoon and was greeted by Sister Gracia. As Sisters of St. Joseph, they were dedicated to teaching, and ran a school for the lower grades on the convent property. Although wearing the habit had become optional, all the nuns I saw had adopted black suits with skirts at midcalf and a modified veil that exposed some hair above the forehead. The voluminous habit of decades ago was now part of their history. That afternoon most of the nuns were out walking or visiting. A few were in their “store” selling the nuns’ “products,” homemade preserves for which they were well known. There were no postulants or novices this year; it was an aging convent that would not endure much beyond the start of the twenty-first century.
    Sister Gracia showed me to my room, a small, spare dormitory-style room with one window, a small closet, and the essential furniture in worn, but well cared for maple. Like all rooms in a convent, this one had no mirror.
    First I made my bed with the sheets I had brought. I also had my own towel and soap, and when the bed was made, I found the communal bathroom down the hall and washed, brushing and pushing my hair into a semblance of shape by feel. Although it had grown a couple of inches since I had left St. Stephen’s, it still lacked a definite style. Style would come with time. I had found love and work and satisfaction in the months since I had taken up residence in Oakwood. I could live with unstyled