Holy Terror in the Hebrides (11 page)

And does this mean
, my nasty inner voice piped up,
that you intend to forget about Bob?

I sighed. Try as I might, I
couldn’t
forget about Bob. But surely I could be allowed to defer the problem for a little while?

As I was nearing the Argyll Hotel, a door opened in the cottage just beyond and David MacPherson popped out, making me hope I hadn’t been muttering to myself.

“Mrs. Martin! Have ye a moment?”

“Of course, Mr. MacPherson.” I was glad to see him, actually; he just might have some news that would mean I could stop worrying. Exactly what news that might be, I didn’t stop to define.

“Would ye like to step inside for a cup of tea? My wife’s juist set it to brew.”

“That sounds very nice, thank you.” Actually, if the tea was anything like what had been in his thermos yesterday, I’d have to be very cautious and add a lot of milk, but as my father used to say with a twinkle in his eye, “Never suppress a generous impulse.”

I was introduced to Fiona, his attractive wife, and, of course, I’d already met young David. The family was just sitting down to their tea, and I made only a token protest when I was offered fresh scones and shortbread. The tea was, indeed, too strong for my taste, but lots of milk and sugar made it drinkable, and the food was heavenly. I slathered butter on a hot scone, lumpy with currants, and told myself firmly that I deserved it. Anyway, I’d worked it off this morning. Of course I indulged in these rationalizations far too often, but
this
time it was justified. Sure it was. I defiantly accepted another piece of shortbread.

While we ate, the three MacPhersons kept up a gentle flow of conversation about the gale and the other villagers, whose roof had been damaged, whose garden needed work. The two men, father and son, had made it home easily in the dinghy after mooring
Iolaire
in the Bull Hole for the night. They plainly thought me too easily impressed by a wee blow, while I was filled with awe at the thought of anyone crossing the Sound in a small boat in that weather.

“Was the
Iolaire
damaged at all in the storm?”

“Nay. She’ll ride oot a wee gale like yon. She’s a good boat, Mrs. Martin, and we take good care of our boats here on Iona. For islanders, they’re a lifeline. But we’ll no’ be able to take her oot soon; there’s too big a swell for passengers.”

“Then I suppose the Coastguard hasn’t been able to—find anything. Or do you know?”

“Aye, I’ve a radio in the hoose as well as on the boat. They’ve been oot since first light, in boats and helicopters, and the police have been sairchin’ the shore, as well. They’ve no’ found anything yet.”

“Will—do you think the body will stay in the cave, or be washed out to sea?” I thought about the impression I’d had of a strong undertow.

He thought about that for a moment, and then shook his head. “I dinna know. Debris that floats, wood and that, can stay for weeks in the cave, but something heavy . . .” He shook his head again. “We’ll have to let the Coastguard sort it. It’s their job.”

I thought about Bob’s body, being dashed against the rocks, finally floating, but perhaps unrecognizable by then . . . I decided not to think about it.

“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.”

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, although 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.