Holy Terror in the Hebrides (8 page)

“No!” I was still worked up enough to not want to be alone. “No, indeed. I don’t want to put you to the trouble. I’m sure you’re right, Mrs. Campbell. I just need something to eat. I’ll get dressed and come right down.”

“It’s Hester, please. We did a buffet tonight, in the lounge. Everyone was a bit upset, and it seemed more fitting than a formal meal. There’s plenty of food, if you’re sure you’re able . . .”

I protested once more that I was perfectly all right, and shooed her out. I needed a little more time to think.

Of course my theories and fears were absurd. Bob’s death was undoubtedly pure accident. All the same, those prickles weren’t going to go away until I could figure out where that water had come from. I’m cursed with a larger bump of curiosity than most people.

I dressed quickly and went down to the lounge. A man I assumed was Hester’s husband, Andrew, was tending the buffet, although all the other guests were sitting finishing their meals. All the lamps were lit, and they’d replaced the electric heater with a real fire in the vast fireplace, roaring and crackling and flickering madly as wind blew down the chimney. It added an element of cheer, which was undoubtedly the point. Stan, tail held high, was working the room, exercising his considerable charm in hopes of some tidbits of salmon. The scene, in short, looked cozy, and perfectly normal.

I took a deep breath to relax, took the plate Andrew filled for me at the buffet table, and found a chair near the fire, next to Jake.

Nobody was talking much. I ate a little, and began to feel slightly better. When I had finished, and put my still full plate on the floor for Stan, I turned to Jake.

“I wish people were sorrier Bob is dead,” I said quietly. I felt a little shy with him, not certain what to say after Teresa’s sad story. But we were both caught up in the same trouble now, and he was an easy sort of person to talk to.

“Hmm? Sorry, I wasn’t listening.”

“I keep worrying because nobody’s mourning. I know Bob wasn’t exactly a pleasant person, but surely we ought to be having a—a kind of wake.” I looked around the room. “Only nobody seems to care much.”

Jake shrugged fatalistically. “There’s no family here, no friends. What do you want, weeping and wailing for a guy we hardly knew, and would have been as happy not to know at all?”

All the same, Jake wasn’t eating much, and neither was anybody else. Apart from the tumult of the wind, the room was quiet; the silence thickened. I cleared my throat. “I suppose,” I said tentatively to the room in general, “someone ought to let his family know. Or will the Coastguard do that, or the police?”

“Don’t know if he had kin,” said Hattie Mae. “Never talked about his family—that I heard.”

There were nods and mutters of agreement around the room.

“Well, then, his church,” I said, trying again. “Someone should call his church. What time would it be in Chicago? I’ve forgotten how many time zones away they are.”

That at least sparked a brief discussion, since the United Kingdom had just switched back from Summer Time to Greenwich Mean Time, whereas America was still on Daylight Savings Time, and no one was sure whether that meant Chicago was now five hours or seven hours earlier than Scotland, rather than the usual six-hour difference.

“Look, why don’t I just try to make the call?” I finally said, impatient with them. “It might be easier for me, since I didn’t really know him. I don’t suppose anyone knows the number?” Of course they wouldn’t. Why would anyone carry around the phone number of somebody else’s church?

But Grace stood up and went to the bookshelf where she had laid her elegant leather purse. “It’s in my church directory. I always carry it, and unless I took it out for the trip—no, here it is. St. Paul’s United Methodist Church on Taylor Street.” She handed me the book, a small personal phone directory. It listed dozens of churches by denomination, with addresses, phone numbers, and staff names, all in tiny, precise handwriting.

I must have shown my curiosity. “It’s for my work,” Grace said with a shrug.

“Excuse me?”

“I coordinate soup kitchens all over Chicago,” she explained briskly. “I learned long ago that I never know when I may need the help of someone from a neighborhood church, so I compiled this. Please give it back to me as soon as you’ve finished; it’s extremely valuable to me and would take some time to duplicate.”

“Yes, of course.” Whew! Formidable lady.

“Please use the phone in the office,” murmured Andrew, who had been standing by unobtrusively. “Come with me.”

Jake followed me, and when I was about to sit down at the desk, he laid a hand on my arm.

“You want maybe I should make the call? I didn’t have to see it happen.”

I hesitated for only a moment. I felt some responsibility, but it was foolish, I knew. Jake was being a dear. “Thank you so much, Jake. Of course I’d rather you did it. But I’ll stay here, in case they want—well, whatever.”

“The details they can wait for,” said Jake with a frown, and punched in the long series of numbers for an international call.

He was efficient on the phone, very much the important rabbi. “Hello? This is St. Paul’s? Speak up, I’m calling from Scotland.
Scotland!
This is Rabbi Jacob Goldstein, from Sinai Temple. Is your minister, um—” he consulted Grace’s directory “—is Dr. Allen available?”

There was a pause.

“Never mind, then, this is costing money. When he gets back, tell him there’s some very bad news. Are you sitting down? I have to break something to you. Yes, it’s about Mr. Williams. An accident, yes. I’m afraid it’s the worst news—yes. A drowning accident, this afternoon.”

Another pause. Jake shook his head impatiently.

“This connection isn’t good. I’ll fax the details as soon as I can. Look, is there anybody else who should know?” Pause. “Okay, you do that. Yes, we’re all very—shocked. Well, I guess he can maybe call if he wants, but it’s almost nine o’clock here—no, at night—and we’ll be going to bed pretty soon—we’re wiped out after all the trouble. Tomorrow would be better. You’ll notify the family? I see. Sure. Good-bye.”

He turned to me, looking a little gray. “The girl took it hard, wanted to talk about it. I hope her minister knows what he’s doing; she’s going to need a shoulder to cry on. She said they don’t know if he has any family—none in Chicago, anyway. But they’ll try to find out.” He sighed.

“Well, at least someone is sad about his death. It’s almost—obscene—that no one here cares.”

Jake shrugged again. “He wasn’t an appealing man. The Scriptures talk about casting your bread upon the waters—well, his was soggy and moldy even when it started out.”

That was neither a pleasant nor a reassuring thought, however you looked at it. Depressed and apprehensive, I went back to the lounge. It was going to be a long evening.

Andrew appeared at my elbow. “Mrs. Martin, would you perhaps like to finish your wine? We put it away for you; there’s a good half bottle left.”

I smiled at him gratefully. “That’s just what I need. And I’m Dorothy, please. Here, Jake, let’s share it and drink it up.”

Jake grunted again. “Not me, thanks. Such a headache I had last night! I’ll stick to water.” He lifted his eyebrows at Andrew, who obligingly brought him a bottle of mineral water and a glass.

So I drank my wine by myself and listened to the wind. It was beginning to fray at my nerves, which were none too steady anyway, and from the electric quality of the silence in the room, I realized I wasn’t the only one ready to jump out of my skin. Something had to be done.

And I still wanted to know more about our unpopular preacher.

“I wonder,” I said, my voice, raised against the wind, sounding too loud. I lowered it a bit and tried again. “I wonder if anyone can tell me anything about Bob. I know only that he’s—he was—a youth minister. Somehow it seems wrong not to—to be able to talk about him.”

Teresa spoke first. She sounded oddly angry, but then Teresa nearly always sounded angry.

“He worked at St. Paul’s Methodist Church, as Grace told you. It’s a very large church, probably about two thousand parishioners. Or whatever Methodists call them. Anyway, it’s in a transitional neighborhood. Some of the oldest parts have been gentrified.” She spat out the word as if it tasted bad, and Stan, who had fallen asleep in her lap, woke abruptly. She stroked his head, but her tone remained bitter. “Lot of rich people moving in, forcing out the people who lived there. Other parts have gone downhill fast, areas where the gangs are starting to take over. And in the middle there are a bunch of students and young couples with kids in the cheaper houses.”

“How you know all that?” asked Hattie Mae, her lower lip jutting out. “Ain’t your neighborhood.” We could all clearly hear her unspoken postscript,
And you ain’t poor or black,
and I held my breath, but Teresa only glared.

“I did a paper on the changing face of Chicago, for graduate school. I wasn’t born a nun.”

“Yes, well, what is important,” put in Grace in her crisp business-executive voice, “is the work Mr. Williams put in to try to make that area a decent place to live in again. He was tireless. He started the youth center on Rush Street, just around the corner from the church, to give the young hoodlums something to do besides dealing drugs on the street corners or killing each other, and he used to spend a lot of his own time there, playing basketball with them, teaching them soccer, that sort of thing. He welcomed everyone, children from all backgrounds and from all over the city. He was a lay worker, you know, not an ordained minister, and I believe he wasn’t paid a great deal. And he worked with some of your people, Teresa, to set up the day care center down the street.”

“My people? Catholics, you mean? Or Italians?”

Teresa didn’t even try to sound polite, and Grace bit her lip. “I meant an order of nuns. I don’t know which one. I am not familiar with the more byzantine structures of the Catholic Church.”

“An’ what none o’ you seem to’ve figured out,” Hattie Mae broke in before Teresa could retort, “is that the kids couldn’t stand him.”

It was a flat statement, falling like a stone into the room, and the undertext was again clear:
I know about ghetto kids and what they’re thinking. You don’t
.

Teresa opened her mouth and shut it again.

Hattie Mae went on, her voice just slightly less belligerent. “They went along with it, o’ course. Kids are smart, an’ they know which side their bread is buttered on. They’d go to ’im with hard-luck stories, and he’d fall for it every time, raising money for this and that when the kids were just takin’ it to buy drugs. He was too simple to know!”

The silence reverberated.

Grace responded, finally, in her cool, distant way. “Oh, it’s true enough that he was a young twerp. Anyone who knew him knew that. But he did do a great deal of work, even if his personality was not—charismatic.”

“But what about this award?” I ventured. “Surely the Religious Assembly—I mean, they must have researched . . .”

Six pairs of eyes looked at me pityingly, including Jake’s.

“If,” said Chris precisely, speaking for the first time, “the Chicago Religious Assembly were told that Jesus Christ had appeared in person on Michigan Avenue, announcing his candidacy for mayor against Richard Daley, the assembly would take out a full-page ad in the
Tribune
urging everyone to vote for Him. Without making a single phone call.”

“I see.”

The wind howled, the trees groaned, unknown things out there in the dark crashed and banged, and we sat in depressed silence.

O
NE BY ONE
we found excuses to go up to bed, but not, at least in my case, to sleep. Oh, I intended to. Feeling that it was a silly thing to do, I nevertheless jammed the back of my chair against the door. With the lever-style handle prevalent in Britain, it was actually a fairly effective deterrent against illicit entry.

So I had taken care of that, and that was absolutely as far as I intended to go in dealing with the absurd idea that I might be housed in the same building as a particularly clever murderer. The evening’s conversation hadn’t produced anything very productive, and I refused to analyze it further tonight. I was extremely tired, and when I get tired I get cross, and I do not think clearly in that condition. Tomorrow was time enough for pondering. Tonight was for sleep.

It’s just possible that I might have managed it, if it hadn’t been for the wind. Wind has always frightened me, far more than thunderstorms or blizzards or any of the other weather phenomena I grew up with. I understand it has the same effect on many people. In the parts of the world where a hard wind will sometimes blow for days or weeks, the chinooks in the American West, or the mistrals in France, people go crazy, suicides and murders multiply. Police departments dread the winds.

In my room upstairs, close to the roof of the old house, the wind seemed louder and more threatening than ever. It made me just that much more restless and nervous than I already was, and totally unable to settle myself for sleep. I thought of a hot bath but wasn’t sure I wanted to be immersed in water if thunder and lightning should come along to join the party. I said my prayers and recited the twenty-third psalm. I counted to a thousand twice, the second time backwards, and tried to work complicated multiplication problems in my head. None of the rituals worked.

What I wanted was someone to talk to, someone who would understand, a friend.

My best friend, my husband, was beyond human conversation. That thought didn’t bring tears tonight; perhaps part of me had healed at last, or perhaps—well, to be honest, the idea of Alan, alive and sensible and within reach of a telephone, was definitely cheering. I could call him.

I wouldn’t, of course. For one thing, much as I wanted to hear his soothing voice, he’d figure out immediately that something was wrong, and it wasn’t such a good idea to discuss unfounded suspicions over several hundred miles of international telephone wire. Besides, I wasn’t about to call some hotel in Brussels, where it was some unknown hour of the night—probably even later than here—and deal with an operator whose command of English might not be able to cope with an American accent. No, I wouldn’t call Alan until tomorrow, but the thought that I could if I wanted to made me feel better.