“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!”