Holy Terror in the Hebrides

by Jeanne M. Dams

  “Ye know the police will be on the island soon, to question you and the others.”

  I put my teacup down carefully, hoping the jerk of my hand hadn’t spilled tea on the carpet.

  “Oh,” I said as soon as I thought I could control my voice, “the police? Why is that? We already talked to the constable once.”

  “Sudden death,” he said laconically. “Or presumed death, but the Coastguard willna find him alive, if they find him at all. The currents round here can be verra unreliable, and a gale like yon . . .” He shook his head. “Wi’ the sea running as it is, the constables’ll no’ be here soon, I’m thinking. They’re no’ worried aboot foul play, and they’ll no’ want to get oot in a dinghy; they’ll wait for the ferry.”

  “I wondered about that.” Change the subject. “I haven’t seen the ferry today. Do they take it to some safe harbor in a storm?”

  “She’s in the Bull Hole wi’ the rest, and she’ll stay there for a bit. She can handle a bit of weather, but her computers can be touchy, and Cal-Mac willna take chances when it’s too rough.”

  “Cal-Mac?”

  “Caledonian MacBrayne,” explained Fiona softly. “They offer the ferry services for the whole of the Hebrides.”

  “Do ye not know the auld rhyme?” David asked me.

  “What old rhyme?”

  “‘The airth belongeth to the Lord, And all that it contains, Excepting for the Western Isles, And they belong to MacBrayne’s!’ Caledonian MacBrayne has run the service for the islands for generations, time oot o’ mind.”

  There was something comforting about the thought of a continuity like that, “time out of mind.” Maybe part of the eternal peace of Iona had to do with that sort of changelessness.

  But there was no peace for me until I settled a few things, at least in my own mind. I rose. “Thank you, Mrs. MacPherson, for a lovely tea. I must get to the hotel to check out.” I thought about adding that I was now staying in Dove Cottage, but everyone on the island who cared probably already knew that my key had arrived.

  “There’s a shortcut, if ye’re in a hurry,” said Mr. MacPherson, plainly considering a hurry to be an odd, foreign sort of idea. No one except tourists hurried on Iona, but he was ready to oblige if I really wanted to do so. “Juist the other side of the Argyll, a footpath. There’s a fuchsia hedge for a good part of the way; mind the bees.”

  “Thanks, I will. When—um, when do you think the police might get here, Mr. MacPherson?”

  He shook his head and looked at me with those direct blue eyes, rimmed with a sailor’s wrinkles. “My name’s Davie. We’ll know each other well enough before this is over, I’ve nae doot. I dinna know when the constables may be on Iona. Ye see, a storm’s on its way, a real one, they say. Coming tomorrow, next day. I hate to tell ye, but this island may be cut off for two, three days.”

  8

  I DECIDED TO make my hotel stop first, and then stock up on groceries. For one thing, though the Campbells weren’t the sort to hold me to a rigid checkout time, they deserved as much notice as possible that I wouldn’t be in to dinner. I supposed I should also pass the word about the storm, and perhaps, though I was reluctant, about the probable visit from the constabulary. I was in a hurry, so I found the footpath and followed its winding way, fighting the unwise impulse to shoo away every bee that happened across the path.

  By the time I got back to the Iona, the rest of the group had returned from their afternoon’s exertions. They were sitting around in various poses of exhaustion, waiting for tea to be served. I was in no danger of being cornered alone by one of them.

  Only Hattie Mae showed any signs of animation. “Come over here and talk to me, honey.” She patted the seat of the couch next to her. “All the rest of ’em is too tired to do nothin’ but moan.”

  “I can well believe everyone’s tired,” I said, sitting down with some reluctance. The Campbells were apparently busy elsewhere, though, so I supposed I might as well talk to her. Kill one more bird. “Just the morning half of the walk wore me out. I’m glad I went, though—in retrospect.”

  “I guess that means you wouldn’t want to do it again, huh?” Hattie Mae laughed, a deep, warm laugh that startled me. It was the first time I’d encountered her acting genuinely pleasant. She and Teresa both in one day . . .

  I laughed in return, and hoped it didn’t sound hollow. “Well— not for a while, anyway. I wish I were in better shape, though. It’s disgraceful how I pant and toil away, when someone like Teresa just bounds along.”

  “Honey, you and me ain’t never again gonna be as young as her, nor as skinny, neither. Nor as downright blind-as-a-bat stupid.”

  What did that mean? “Teresa’s actually quite well-educated, you know,” I began, but Hattie Mae shook her head with heavy patience.

  “I ain’t talkin’ book-leamin’, honey, I’m talking deep-down ignorance. Sociology, huh! Social means people, and what she don’t know about people’d fill all the books in her college liberry. She’s got all these high-flown ideas, but she just ain’t lived long enough, or hard enough, to know nothin’. ‘With the ancient is wisdom; and in length of days understanding.’ Job 12:12.”

  I wasn’t sure whether Hattie Mae was calling me ancient, or herself.

  “I guess she means well,” she added grudgingly. “We had us a little talk this mornin’ about that Bob, and she was all for not speakin’ ill of the dead and that. Even quoted the Bible at me; First Corinthians 13.”

  She gave me a quizzical look, and I nodded my familiarity with St. Paul’s essay on Christian love. She must think me a real heathen if she thought I wouldn’t know that! I wondered how she would react if I told her it had once helped me discover a murderer, but she swept on.

  “I told her charity was all very well, but I believe in tellin’ the truth and shamin’ the devil, and the truth is, that boy was no blessed use to nobody, includin’ himself. I was willin’ to go along with him when he was alive, bein’ charitable like Teresa says, but I don’t see no call to make a saint of him now he’s dead.

  “You, now, you seem kinda sensible, and you ain’t afraid to tell a person off, like you did me yesterday morning.”

  I looked at my lap and fidgeted.

  “No, I ain’t sayin’ you was wrong. This here tragedy we done had in our midst showed me I was bein’ too harsh. ‘Judge not, that ye be not judged.’ Matthew 7:1.”

  “The Sermon on the Mount,” I murmured, and Hattie jumped on it.

  “So you do know your Bible!”

  “No, no,” I said with the embarrassment of an Episcopalian accused of a specific Christian virtue. “Bits and pieces, is all. But Hattie Mae, I still don’t quite understand what you had against Bob. I mean, nobody liked him, but everyone else seems to feel he was doing a good job, and making some personal sacrifices for it, too. Why are you so sure you’re right?”

  This was risky. She looked at me hard, her brown eyes turning flat and dark and challenging, and finally answered my question with a question of her own. “You got kids?”

  “No.” I didn’t feel like elaborating on how much Frank and I had wanted them, how hard it had been to accept, finally, that they weren’t going to happen.

  “If you got kids you care about, and you live in a place like Chicago, you gotta keep your eyes open about the people they go with, and you get a feelin’. A good feelin’ or a bad feelin’. I had a bad feelin’ about Bob Williams. Never nothin’ I could put my finger on, so I didn’t say nothin’, not while he was alive. But I know the kids laughed at him behind his back, ’cause I heard mine doin’ it. They didn’t have no respect for him, for sure, and there’s things they coulda told me, only they wouldn’t. You know how kids are. Well, maybe you don’t, seein’ as how you never had none, but—”

  “I taught school for nearly forty years,” I interrupted. “I know what you mean. Yours are teenagers, then?” That’s the age when they clam up, usually. I had preferred fourth-graders, who were still open and friendly, alth
ough the last few years I’d taught, they were starting to act older and more obnoxious. Kids grow up too soon these days.

  “Harold Jr., he’s fifteen, and Michael’s twelve.” She fumbled in her purse and drew out a folder full of pictures. “Harold’s on the baseball team; he’s a little squirt like his father and can’t play no basketball or football. Michael, he thinks he’s named after Michael Jordan, which he ain’t, and he thinks he’s gonna be Michael Jordan, which he might—he’s pretty good.”

  “They’re good-looking boys. You must be proud of them.”

  “They’re good kids. Go to a good Christian school, the same one my mama sent me to. And we live in a decent neighborhood, but you never know these days. We can’t afford to buy ’em all the stuff they want, fancy shoes and jackets and I don’t know what all, and I get scared they’ll start dealin’ drugs to get what they want. I’ve tried to bring ’em up right, but . . .” She sighed deeply, and I shook my head in sympathy.

  “It isn’t easy being a parent now. I don’t suppose it ever was. But look at you. I don’t suppose your parents had all the money in the world, either, but you turned out all right. Did you go to music school?” I still wanted to know more about her.

  “No, my mama said I’d better learn somethin’ I could make money at, so I studied to be a secretary. She scrubbed floors nights so’s I could go, and I didn’t care much for it, but I went. That’s how I got the job at the church, and that’s how I got to be the choir director, in the back door, you might say, filled in when the old director got sick.” Hattie fell into a reminiscent tone of voice. “I was just the church secretary then, but I’d always been good at music—piano, singing. My mama wouldn’t let me get into the commercial end of it, neither, said it was no life for a girl, always on the road and mixin’ with riffraff. She was real strict, my mama. Still is, for that matter. She’s stayin’ with the boys these two weeks. Big as they are, you can’t take no chances with kids, the way the world is these days, and their daddy’s gone a lot; he drives a truck.”

  “What is your church?”

  She lifted her head in a proud gesture. “You ever hear of First African Baptist?”

  “Good heavens, yes, I’ve seen them on television. They have the most wonderful music—you don’t mean to say you . . . ?”

  She nodded complacently, her chins compressing.

  She deserved the self-congratulation. Chicago’s First African Baptist Church is famous, at least throughout the Midwest. The sort of rock gospel music they perform is utterly foreign to my own more austere church music tradition (Palestrina, Byrd, Thomas Tallis, Ralph Vaughan Williams), but in its own way it’s absolutely first class. When I lived in Indiana I used to watch the televised services occasionally. Frank never understood why I liked them, but there was something about their enthusiasm that stirred my soul, and the musicianship was thoroughly professional. It was like really good jazz: improvisatory, intensely personal, and for me genuinely exciting. I looked at Hattie Mae with new respect.

  “I had no idea. Have you been doing this long?”

  “Fifteen years.”

  Then it was her choir I’d watched.

  “I’ll bet you make a lot more money now than you did as a secretary.”

  “I do all right. Mama still keeps at me about it, though. Says it ain’t steady, and I better keep practicin’ my typin’.” She chuckled. “I tell ’er ain’t nobody uses a typewriter no more, and I don’t know nothin’ about them computers, so I’ll just have to stick with what I’m doin’. Makes her mad, I hope to tell you!”

  Hester came in just then with tea, and I jumped up. “Hattie Mae, I must go. I’m moving into my cottage. I want to hear you sing, sometime before you leave Iona!”

  I intercepted Hester before she could leave the room. “Hester, I’m so sorry, but the key to my cottage arrived, and I’ll be leaving the hotel. I wish I’d known sooner, so I could give you some notice.”

  “Don’t worry. The only thing is, I’ll have to charge you for dinner tonight, since we’ve begun cooking it. So you may as well stay and eat it, as you’re paying for it!”

  I laughed with her. “I won’t stay, but I’ll come back. I want to get to the store before it closes. But if you can make out a bill for me, I’ll settle up later, and get my belongings out of your way. And, Hester—” I drew her aside and lowered my voice “—I’ve been talking to David MacPherson. He says another storm’s coming, a bad one, in a day or two. And either before it gets here or after it passes, the police are going to want to talk to everyone again about the—er—accident.”

  Hester sighed. “Aye, we’ve heard the weather forecast. It’s not good. And the police—” She shook her head. “That creates a problem. Our duty is to our guests, and they’re planning to leave Friday. Mrs. Desmond told me their flight back to America leaves from Prestwick Saturday morning. So we daren’t delay them, but if the police don’t hurry . . .”

  I saw what she meant. Prestwick is the airport that serves Glasgow. If the Chicago group were traveling by train they’d need to leave by the first ferry Friday morning in order to make the connections to get them back to Glasgow on time. It was now (I checked my watch) quarter to five, and this was Wednesday. Even if the waves calmed suddenly, the ferry wouldn’t operate today. If the storm came early tomorrow, my compatriots could kiss their plane good-bye. On the other hand, if good weather stuck around for a while, and for some reason the police didn’t make it, the Campbells were going to be in the position of requesting that their guests stay, when staying put their travel plans in jeopardy.

  “Indeed,” I said thoughtfully. “Well, I must get to the grocery store. Let’s hope for the best, both from the weather and from the police. I’ll be back soon.”

  “Would you like to borrow my trolley? I use it when I’ve a few supplies to get and Andrew has the car.”

  I gratefully accepted the loan of her folding, wheeled shopping cart, and sped down the hill.

  It took the best part of an hour to buy the items on my list (to which I added rolled oats to please the clerk, who was horrified at the idea of breakfast without porridge), cart them to the cottage and put the perishables away in the minute refrigerator, and speed back to the hotel by the footpath, Hester’s cart bumping along behind me.

  There was no one in the hall but Stan, who smelled the salmon I had been carrying. He gave the cart a thorough, hopeful examination before looking at me and meowing his deep disappointment that nothing edible was left.

  “You, my lad, are quite fat enough, you know,” I informed him. “However, if you come and see me tomorrow, I might have a snack for you anyway.”

  He made no promises, but I reflected, as I went upstairs to pack, that I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see him turn up. Stan rather liked me, and he was a shameless beggar.

  I am continually amazed by how much clutter I can create in a room, even when I occupy it for only a few days. I was just rechecking all the drawers, and my favorite place for forgetting things, the back of the bathroom door (I’ve lost more bathrobes that way), when a knock on the door announced Andrew, ready to take my bags down.

  “I’ll run you down in the car,” he said amiably, picking up most of the pile of assorted bags, cases, and boxes. “You’ll not be able to manage that lot by yourself.”

  “You’re right about that, and I do appreciate the offer. You and your wife have certainly been nice to me; in a way I’ll miss the Iona.”

  Then I was afraid he would misinterpret my careless remark, but he simply grinned and started down the hall.

  As we drove to the cottage, the ineffable peace of Iona seemed a tangible thing. The clouds were beginning to gather, and they deepened the twilight, but there seemed no threat in them. Maybe the forecasters were wrong; maybe there would be no serious storm. The velvety quiet, the yellow lights shining from cottage windows, the silhouette of the Nunnery, timeless and serene against the fading light—I heaved a deep sigh. Why did people and their problems have
to intrude on such perfect beauty?

  Andrew offered to drive me back up to the hotel, but I shooed him away. I wanted to unpack and get settled, and it was less than a ten-minute walk. I needed all the walking I could get in, anyway, to offset the stiffness brought on by the morning’s unaccustomed exercise, not to mention the shortbread and tablet and scones and all the other goodies I’d been eating nonstop ever since I’d landed on Iona.

  Ever since I’d landed. Good heavens, could it have been only two days ago? I felt I had lived through a hundred years since Monday. Soon, now, I’d be safely alone, and could sort out everything that had happened, and what little I had learned about the Chicagoans.

  They weren’t actually as bad as I’d thought at first. Grace might have an unbreakable shell, and I’d had no chance to talk to Chris or Janet, but certainly Jake was a pleasant man, and had borne the tragedies in his life with great courage. Hattie Mae had her redeeming qualities, and even Teresa had been quite civil this morning.

  I’d think about why later.

  I puttered and fussed, taking longer than I should to unpack, put away the rest of the food, and settle myself in my domain. By the very last of the light I picked a few flowers from the back garden, those that hadn’t been flattened by the gale, and crammed them into a water glass. I was going to be late for dinner at the hotel if I didn’t hurry.

  I had to find my flashlight. Iona has little outdoor lighting, and if there was such a thing as a moon, it was hidden by clouds that evening. I’d have to take the shortcut to make it on time, and those high hedges would cut off what little light there might be. Fortunately, I hadn’t had time yet to lose the blasted flashlight; I found it (amazingly) exactly where I had put it half an hour before, and set out.

  The path had more twists and turns than I had remembered. Things always look different in the dark, and more than once I was convinced I was lost. It was impossible, of course; the path only led up to the road above, with no choices to make, no wrong turns to take. But with the only light the rather feeble cone cast by my small flashlight, I might as well have been in a maze. Twigs reached out and touched my sleeves; small insects blundered against my face. The hedges closed in and my claustrophobia gathered itself to pounce. I was nearly running, and panting like a warm dog, by the time the path opened out and I arrived in a little field, with only one gate between me and the road. Then scudding clouds receded for a moment, the moon shone benignly, and Iona was its peaceful self once more.