The detective took one foot out of the basin. “Did you say Jeopardy!? What’s that?” he asked, drying his foot with the towel.
“See? He doesn’t know either,” the voice said.
Samuel stopped for a few seconds and then kept writing.
“Jeopardy!? Oh, Detective, it’s amazing! People stand behind little podiums and answer all sorts of questions. It’s surprisingly educational.”
“Does the abbess enjoy watching it too?” he asked, taking his other foot out.
“Of course. All of us do! We watch it after dinner in the common room. We have a TV there. It was a generous donation from the mayor.”
“Interesting. Tell me about the abbess.”
“I’m not really the best person to ask. I was assigned here two years ago. Sister Claire knows her much better.”
“Why did they send you here?”
She took a deep breath. “They never really told me why. They just said, ‘Go there and find out what’s going on. Report once a week.’”
“Now I know what this is all about,” the voice said.
“You said that already,” Samuel replied.
“Yes, but... now it’s different.”
“You say that every time. How is it different?”
“Don’t you see it? It’s so obvious even a child could see it.”
Samuel leaned back in his chair. “Okay, so what is it? Surprise me.”
“Alright — the nun is a spy.”
“A spy? Where did you get that from? Does she have a suspicious accent or something?”
“Well, you said she was British.”
“So?”
“British intelligence services exist for a reason.”
“Right, because MI6 spends its time investigating collapsing convents in the middle of nowhere.”
“Where exactly does it say it's in the middle of nowhere?"
“...”
“Think about it. This could be anywhere. London, Timbuktu...”
“A collapsing convent in London?”
“Stranger things have happened.”
“Tell me about it.”
Honestly, I was expecting a pun here. I would understand "She didn’t come to watch Jeopardy! as usual" as "she usually does watch Jeopardy", whereas "She didn’t come to watch Jeopardy!, as usual" (with a comma) to me would mean the exact opposite: that she usually doesn't watch it. Of course a lot changed in the last years, but I can't imagine a monastery where monks or nuns would watch Jeopardy on TV.
Haha. I really appreciate your critical eye. Your radar for puns is becoming as sharp as your radar for mistakes and unrealistic situations. When I started writing this story more than two years ago, I had to adapt it to my limited vocabulary. That resulted in a bunch of absurd situations, or at least that's what I thought. Now I’m rewriting it, thinking that since my English has improved, my stories should improve too. But I’ve realized these past few days that even if my English were flawless, my writing style wouldn’t change at all. It’s the way I see things that shapes my writing, not my English.
As for monks and nuns watching Jeopardy!... I think movies have a lot to do with t how we see them. Thanks a lot for your corrections.
QUESTION: What is the historical period of this story? (If it were during World War II, I could understand the British having spies in convents. If it were after the mid-1960s this seems unlikely.) SUGGESTION: Think to make the historical period clearer in the story.
@T-Newfields, I actually left a hint in the dialogue. Jeopardy! has been around for decades if you'd like to look it up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeopardy!