Jessica visits a convent to see a former sorority sister and winds up searching for a nun’s killer.

Season 4, Episode 4: Old Habits Die Hard (October 11, 1987)

Jessica arrives at a convent to visit an old college friend who is now a nun. As you’d expect, they soon discover that the convent’s unofficial record keeper has killed herself. At her friend’s request, Jessica promises to figure out how this death is connected to a young woman who sought refuge at the convent years ago, her dying father and the city’s mayor and his wife.

Who’s in it, outside of Angela Lansbury?

Eileen Brennan (Marian Simpson): You know her as Captain Lewis in Private Benjamin and Mrs. Peacock in Clue. Perhaps you always know her for her uncredited turn in The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking.

Cindy Fisher (Nancy Bates): Best known as Rebecca Miller on The Waltons, but she scored her permanent genre pass by starring in the 1982 killer-computer exploitation classic The Hideous Sun Demon reimagining, Hideous Sun Demon: The Special Edition and the sci-fi horror flick The Outing (aka The Lamp).

Clu Gulager (Ray Carter): A literal god of genre cinema. When he wasn’t playing Burt in The Return of the Living Dead, he was getting his face split open in A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge, battling subterranean monsters in Tremors or starring in the absolute masterpiece of 80s neon-slasher sleaze, The Initiation.

Evelyn Keyes (Sister Emily): Golden Age royalty who played Suellen O’Hara in Gone with the Wind. But she cemented her place in our hearts decades later as Mrs. Gordon in Larry Cohen’s A Return to Salem’s Lot.

Mark Keyloun (Mike Phelps): Best known for playing physical roles in 80s dramas like Mike’s Murder and Sudden Impact. He also popped up in the cult favorite TV movie The Midnight Hour, which is basically the ultimate 80s Halloween party captured on film.

Ed Nelson (Mayor Albert Simpson): The ultimate B-movie workhorse. He was the lead in Roger Corman’s A Bucket of Blood, battled giant leeches in Attack of the Giant Leeches and popped up in The Brain Eaters. If a movie had rubber monsters or cheap corn syrup in the 1950s, Ed was usually there trying to shoot it.

Scott Paulin (Dr. Marshall): He was Deke Slayton in The Right Stuff, but comic book geeks know him as the villainous Red Skull in Albert Pyun’s wonderfully unhinged 1990 Captain America. He also brought the creepiness to the 80s psychological horror-thriller The Unholy.

Jane Powell (Rev. Mother Claire): A massive MGM musical star from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. She was mostly way above the movies we like, but she did step into the world of TV-terror for the mystery-horror movie The Letters.

Robert Prosky (Bishop Patrick Shea): An incredible character actor from Thief, Mrs. Doubtfire and Broadcast News. Horror freaks know him best as Will Darnell, the cranky garage owner who gets crushed to death by a possessed 1958 Plymouth Fury in John Carpenter’s Christine.

Audrey Totter (Sister Paul): A legendary film noir femme fatale from The Set-Up and High Wall. She spent her later years doing TV, but she did her time in the psychological thriller trenches with William Castle’s The Chunky and The Carpetbaggers.

Sherri Stoner (Sarah Martino): She was the literal physical animation model for Ariel in The Little Mermaid and Belle in Beauty and the Beast. But before she became Disney royalty, she was terrorized by mutant underground kids in the 1980s direct-to-video trasherpiece The Zero Boys and starred in the cult sci-fi comedy Reform School Girls.

Wendy Brainard (Amy): A steady 80s TV face seen on Family Ties. Her major contribution to cult was playing one of the teenagers in The Midnight Hour.

Fay DeWitt (Sister Mary-Margaret): A comedy legend from the theater scene who later popped up on Mork & Mindy. She also lent her comedic timing to the weirdo 1970s sex comedy The Great Sex War.

Carol Swarbrick (Sister Margaret-Marie): A regular procedural guest star who showed up in The Jeffersons and Matlock.

M’el Dowd (Sister Margaret-Mary): A Broadway powerhouse who played Guenevere in Camelot. Genre fans know her as the classy but sinister presence in the psychological thriller The Wrong Man and the oddball 70s drama The Third Cry.

Hunter Mackenzie Austin (Sister Anne): Credited here as Caroline Gilshian. She mostly did high-octane 80s television guest spots, appearing in The A-Team and Riptide.

Len Felber (Garden Party Guest): Keep your eyes peeled for Len in the background. He is a legendary uncredited Hollywood background staple who has put on a tuxedo for everything from Die Hard to Ghostbusters.

Linda Harmon (Nun): An uncredited background sister who also popped up doing vocal work and background scenes across a dozen 80s sitcoms.

What happens?

Jessica takes a break from the mean streets of Cabot Cove to visit her old Kappa Delta sorority sister, Claire, who has traded college mixers for a habit, now serving as the Reverend Mother at the Immaculate Heart Convent. Where is this convent, you ask? Well, the script says Bergen Falls, Louisiana, which doesn’t exist. The character’s name-drop Shreveport, Blanchard and Grand Bayou, pinning it to the northwest corner of the state. But then the Mother Superior complains about having the scrawniest tomatoes east of the Mississippi, which means the writers completely forgot how geography works, or they accidentally set the episode in a tiny, swampy slice of southeastern Louisiana. Either way, it was actually filmed at the Ramona Convent Secondary School in Alhambra, California, which was tragically wrecked by the Whittier Narrows earthquake just ten days before this episode aired.

Naturally, because J.B.  is a walking harbinger of doom, she barely gets her bags unpacked before a young novice named Sarah (Sherri Stoner, the actual physical model for Disney’s Ariel!) finds elderly Sister Emily dead in her room. Novice Sarah didn’t just get the calling. She’s hiding from a pathologically obsessed ex-boyfriend who stalks the perimeter daily and even stole her Celtic cross.

She’s safe, or as safe as someone on Murder She Wrote can be. The convent locks down tighter than a maximum-security prison from 6:00 PM until morning. No one could get in. Or could they? Jessica spots the psycho boyfriend wearing Sarah’s stolen cross and realizes there’s a secret, unmapped entrance into the cloister. Jessica and the local Bishop walk in on Dr. Marshall aggressively tossing Sister Emily’s filing cabinet. Turns out he’s not a ghoul; he just knew her raised pill dosage couldn’t have killed her and was looking for the bottle to prove it wasn’t a suicide.

The twist? Enter the local political machine. Mayor Albert Simpson and his high-speed, mile-a-minute-talking wife, Marian, get involved. She seems more invested in her husband’s career than he is. But the second a sleazy private eye starts snooping around, asking about a mysterious girl named Linda Stone, Marian completely shuts up. It turns out Linda Stone had a son she claimed was fathered by a soldier killed in Vietnam. Well, that kid was actually the product of a secret affair with the mayor 15 years ago. Sister Emily knew the truth and knew where the mother was hiding. If that gets out, Simpson’s political future is headed for the garbage disposal.

Who did it?

When the cops try to write it off as a tragic suicide, Jessica knows that the water pitcher in Sister Emily’s room was completely full. If the poor nun had swallowed a fatal dose of Metholityl (side effects include sudden-onset 80s hair expansion, fictional organ failure, swelling of the perenium, wimple lust, knee pain, throat pain and pain), she would have needed a glass of water to wash it down. Sister Emily didn’t drink a thing. She was held down and given a lethal injection.

The killer? Marian Simpson murdered to keep her husband’s skeleton in the closet. She slipped into the convent, injected the ailing nun, stole a photo of the illegitimate child’s mother to destroy the evidence and then stole an extra nun’s habit to disguise herself and sneak back out through the locked gates.

Who made it?

Welcome back, director John Llewellyn Moxey. This episode was written by Chris Manheim, who worked on Xena: Warrior Princess.

Does Jessica dress up and act stupid? Does she get some?

No. If this episode were a few seasons later, she’d be in the habit.

Was it any good?

Yes, even if, in the end, we have no idea what happened to anyone else.

Any trivia?

Eileen Brennan and Clu Gulager were in The Last Picture Show together.

Give me a reasonable quote:

Jessica Fletcher: Bishop Shea, we couldn’t have done it without your blessing.

Bishop Patrick Shea: Well, yes, that, that’s true, isn’t it? Oh. There’s one more thing that you can do for me before you go.

Jessica Fletcher: Oh, what’s that?

Bishop Patrick Shea: Try to impress on your dear old friend here the obligation of obedience. She is a troublemaker, you know.

Jessica Fletcher: I’m afraid that is your problem. And a delightful one you’re going to have to deal with for a long, long time.

What’s next?

A business tyrant’s sudden death puts Jessica on the trail of several of his suspicious company executives. Richard Jaekel! Joanne Pettet! Nancy Dussault!