Doctor Death by Lene Kaaberbøl Page A

three hundred girls,” she said. “What are you planning to tell the students?”
    “The truth, of course,” I said. “That we are here to investigate whether the mites we found on Cecile have infected anyone else.”
    “I would not recommend using the word ‘mites,’ ” said Mother Filippa.
    “Why not?”
    “Because I would like to keep the hysteria to a minimum. How do you think the average sixteen-year-old reacts if she is informed that she might have potentially deadly mites in her nose?”
    “Umm . . .”
    “We try to discourage tight corseting for health reasons, but not everyone follows our suggestions. In addition to shrieks and screams and hyperventilating, you should probably expect some fainting.”
    “But . . . This is hopefully only to determine that the mites are not there.”
    “Nonetheless . . .”
    “That is not rational!”
    Mother Filippa looked at me for a few seconds. “We do in fact try to encourage our young pupils to become thinking humanbeings,” she said. “But not all of them are as rationally inclined as you seem to be, Mademoiselle Karno.”
    “So you want me to lie?”
    “Not at all. But perhaps you could leave the explanations to me?”
    Fifteen minutes later I thus heard Mother Filippa explain to the first group of Cecile’s previous schoolmates that the hospital sisters and I were going to perform a preventative and painless Pneumonyssus examination that would be “over in a few minutes.” Eight girls in gray uniforms nodded seriously and sat down in turn on the three chairs we had arranged, allowed themselves to have their nose and throat illuminated, and accepted the pipette sampling with minimal objections. Cecile Montaine was not mentioned, and no one used the word “mite.”

    The rest of the morning passed with student examinations. Luckily, we did not find any signs of mites, a result that microscopic testing later confirmed. A few had irritations in the mucous membrane, but as far as I could determine, they were simply the result of a common cold. Then it was the turn of the adults who had been in contact with Cecile, which was more or less the school’s entire faculty and the sisters and novices and lay sisters who took care of the laundry, cleaning, cooking, and so on. There was no sign of a mite infection among them, either, though two of the kitchen maids were found to have lice.
    As the afternoon wore on, I was becoming thoroughly tired of staring into nostrils of varying sizes and degrees of hygiene and hairiness. When I closed my eyes briefly, a procession of noses flickered past my inner eye, and every time I was introduced to someone new, I initially saw nothing but this one organ.
    “Are we done?” I asked Mother Filippa, who had patiently remained with us.
    “Not quite,” she said. “But all that remains now is to see to the sisters who do not go out into the world.”
    “How many are there?”
    “About a dozen. We are not a cloistered order, but even so, for some the convent is a refuge and a retreat. Some of the older sisters in particular have withdrawn from the world to live out the rest of their lives behind the walls of the enclosure in prayer and contemplation of God. But there are a few younger ones among them, too. Until a month ago, one of them was Cecile’s teacher in physics, biology, and chemistry. Would you follow me?”
    I cleaned the magnifying glass, mirror, and pipette with carbolic solution—I had insisted that this be done after every examination; we were there to stop infections, not to spread them—and wrapped them in a clean cloth before I put them back into my bag.
    “So she has only recently . . . withdrawn from the world?”
    “Yes, she is still a postulant.”
    “Why?”
    “In the case of Imogene Leblanc, it was probably not only God who called to her but also the world that frightened her. It is too bad; she was a good teacher and worked tirelessly to develop her pupils’ abilities. She offered