They were aware of vehicles arriving in the courtyard and then departing, and eventually Melinda walked into the parlor in robe and slippers, with uncombed hair and no makeup. She looked wan and troubled. The group fell silent as she faced them and said in a hollow voice, “Irma was the first patient to walk into my clinic—and the real reason for my coming on this trip. And I’ve lost her!”
When someone asked the cause of death, Qwilleran turned on his tape recorder. At this moment he could feel only compassion for this young doctor; she was so distraught.
“Cardiac arrest,” Melinda said wearily. “With her heart condition she should never have undertaken this project. She had this driving ambition, you know, and she was such a perfectionist.”
Polly said, “I didn’t know she had a bad heart. She never mentioned her symptoms, and we were the best of friends.”
“She was too proud to admit to any frailty—and too independent to take my advice or even medication. It could have saved her.”
Carol said, “But, Irma, of all people! Who would think—? She was always so cool and collected. She never hurried or panicked like the rest of us.”
Melinda explained, “She internalized her emotions—not a healthy thing to do.”
“What was the time of death?” Qwilleran asked.
“About three A.M., I would say. Does anyone know what time she came in?”
Polly said, “I don’t know. I never waited up for her. She told me not to.”
“What happens now?” Larry asked.
“I’m not allowed to sign the death certificate over here,” Melinda said. “A local doctor will have to do that. I’ll notify Irma’s parents and make whatever arrangements are necessary.”
Qwilleran offered to call the Hasselriches, since he knew the father well.
“Thanks, but I feel I should do it. I can explain exactly what happened.”
“We’re certainly grateful that you’re here, Melinda. Is there anything we can do for you—anything at all?”
“You might talk it over among yourselves and decide how to handle the rest of the tour. I’ll fly back with the body. There’ll be some red tape before they release it, the constable said, but they don’t anticipate any problem . . . So, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go up and get dressed. You can stay here and talk.”
When Amanda arrived from the other bedroom wing and heard the news, she said, “I move to cancel the tour and fly home. Anybody second it? Let’s cut our losses.”
Polly spoke up with conviction. “Irma would want us to continue, I’m sure.”
“But do we know what to do and where to go?” Lisa asked.
“Everything is in her briefcase—itinerary, confirmations, maps, and so forth. I’m sure we can follow her plan to the letter. Since we have an extra day here, we’ll have time to work it out.”
Riker said, “What time is it in Pickax? I want to call Junior and get him started on the obituary. It’ll take some digging, because she was a very private person—would never let us do a feature on her volunteer work.”
Guests from the other wing straggled into the parlor, and Bushy said, “Why so glum, kids? Did somebody die around here?”
At the breakfast table the members of the Bonnie Scots Tour halfheartedly discussed their options for the day: Go shopping in the village . . . Watch the fishing boats come in . . . Take the ferry to one of the islands . . . Loll around the inn. Larry said he would wander in the hills and study his lines for the play. Amanda thought she would go back to bed. The MacWhannells announced they were leaving the tour and would hire a car to drive to Edinburgh. They gave no reasons for cutting out, and no one bothered to ask why.
After breakfast, Qwilleran and the school superintendent strolled down the winding road to the village below. “Don’t forget, Lyle. What goes down must come up,” Qwilleran warned. “We have to climb this hill again.”
Compton said, “I hope I didn’t contribute to Irma’s stress by blowing off steam about Scottish history and challenging her statements. Lisa said I should have kept my big mouth shut, but—dammit—Irma drove me up the wall with her sentimental claptrap about the romantic Jacobite Rebellion and her beloved Prince Charlie.”
“Don’t worry. She was a tough one. She didn’t earn the name of Sergeant for nothing. They say she ran the volunteer crew at the Senior Facility like an army battalion.”
They stopped awhile to admire the view: the patchwork of rooftops down below, the curve of the harbor crowded with boats, the islands beyond, floating placidly in a silver sea. Behind them the hills rose like Alpine meadows, dotted with sheep and the ruins of stone buildings.
“Lyle, you promised to tell me how the sheep took over the Highlands,” Qwilleran said.
“Don’t blame the sheep. Have you heard about the Highland Clearances?”
“Only superficially. Okay if I tape this?”
“Go ahead . . . Well, you know,” he began, “when the Rebellion failed, the clan system was deliberately destroyed, and Highlanders were forbidden by law to wear kilts or play bagpipes. Instead of clan chieftains they now had rich landlords renting small bits of land to crofters, who shared their one-room huts with the livestock. Then, with the growing demand for meat, the big landowners found it easier and more profitable to raise sheep than to collect rents from poor crofters. Also, sheep could make money for investors in Edinburgh and London.”
“Agribusiness, eighteenth-century style,” Qwilleran remarked.
“Exactly! To be fair, though, I should say that not all the landlords were villains; some of the old families tried their best to help their people, but overpopulation and old-fashioned farming methods combined to keep the crofters in a state of near-starvation.”
“What happened to them when the sheep took over?”
“They were driven off the land and forbidden to hunt, fish, or graze livestock. Their pitiful crofts were burned before their eyes.”
“Where did they go?”
“They were sent to live in destitution in big-city slums or in poor coastal villages. Many were transported to North America, and that’s another story! They were exploited by ship owners and sent to sea in leaky tubs overcrowded and without sufficient food and water . . . I shouldn’t be telling you this; it shoots up my blood pressure.”
The two men wandered around the waterfront and watched the fishing boats coming in, surrounded by screaming seagulls. Crewmen in yellow slickers were slinging prawn traps onto the wharf, laughing and joking. Facing the docks were freshly painted, steep-roofed cottages huddled in a row, with flowers around the doorsteps and seagulls on the chimney pots. Some of the cottage windows had cut-off curtains that allowed cats to sit on the windowsills.
Lyle said, “The Scots today are nice people—sociable, hospitable, and slyly witty—but they have a bloody history of cutting throats and pouring molten lead on their enemies.”
They lunched at a pub before returning to the inn. There they learned that Melinda had checked out and was on her way to Glasgow in a hired car, leaving a message: “Don’t feel bad about my giving up the rest of the tour. This is my responsibility as Irma’s friend and physician.”
Lisa reported to Qwilleran, “Polly and I packed Irma’s belongings to ship home. Polly’s all broken up. She’s in her room, saying she doesn’t want to be disturbed by anyone.”
“I guess that means me,” he said.
For him the death of their leader was an excuse to phone Mildred Hanstable and inquire about the Siamese. They were often on his mind, although he refrained from talking about them to anyone except Polly. Grace Utley showed pictures of her teddy bears to anyone who sat next to her on the bus. Nevertheless, Qwilleran often looked at his watch, deducted five hours, and visualized the cats having their breakfast or taking an afternoon nap in a certain patch of sun on the rug. He wondered how they were hitting it off with Mildred. He wondered if they were getting fat on her cooking. He wondered if they missed him.
When he telephoned Pickax,
it was eight o’clock in the morning, their time, and Mildred had heard the news of Irma’s death on the radio. “They didn’t give any details on the air,” she said. “There’ll be more in the paper when it comes out, I hope.”
“It was a heart attack. She’d been under a lot of stress. Conducting a tour is a big job for an amateur guide—with a bunch of Moose County individualists in tow. The obituary will probably be in today’s paper. Please save it for me . . . How are the cats behaving?”
“We get along just fine! Yum Yum is adorable. When I’m quilting she sits on the frame and watches the needle go in and out. Koko helps me read the tarot cards.”
“If the Siamese were humans,” Qwilleran explained, “Yum Yum would win prizes at the county fair, and Koko would discover a cure for the common cold . . . Is he there? Put him on.”
Mildred could be heard talking to the cats. There was a faint yowl, then some coaxing, and then a louder response.
“Hello, Koko!” Qwilleran shouted. “How’s everything? Are you taking care of Yum Yum?”
It took the cat a while to understand that the voice he knew so well was coming out of the instrument held to his ear, but then he wanted to do all the talking, delivering a series of ear-splitting yowls and even biting the receiver.
Wincing, Qwilleran shouted, “That’s enough! Take him away!”
There were sounds of scuffling and arguing, and then Mildred returned to the line. “There’s one unusual thing I’d like to report,” she said. “Last night while I was quilting, I heard an unearthly howl coming from one of the balconies. Koko was in my bathroom, howling in the shower. It made my blood run cold. I went up and talked to him, and finally he stopped, but it really gave me a scare.”
“What time did it happen?”
“Between nine-thirty and ten, when that crazy DJ was on WPKX. I turned off the radio, thinking Koko objected to the program.”
“I don’t blame him,” Qwilleran said. “That guy makes me howl with pain, too.”
After hanging up the phone, he realized that Koko had howled between two-thirty and three, Scottish time. That cat knew the moment that Irma died! . . . He had a sense of death that spanned the ocean!
Only eleven of the original sixteen travelers reported for dinner that evening, and they were quieter than usual. The meal started with cock-a-leekie soup served with small meat-filled pastries called bridies, followed by lamb stew with barley and neeps, as well as a dish of tatties and onions called stovies.
Lyle Compton asked, “Has anyone seen Bruce today?”
No one had seen the bus driver. They all agreed he deserved a day off, and they wondered if he even knew about Irma’s death.
Lisa said, “According to the Bonnie Scots game plan in Irma’s briefcase, Bruce is not to smoke on the job or mix with the passengers, and he must be clean and presentable at all times. For this he’s getting $1,000, plus meals and lodging and whatever tips we give him. He was paid $100 up front.”
“We should tip him generously when the tour ends,” Larry said. “He’s an excellent driver. He picks up the luggage unobtrusively while we’re at breakfast and has the bus packed for departure on time. He’s not friendly, but he’s courteous in a businesslike way.” Everyone agreed.
After dinner, Lisa said to Qwilleran, “Polly and I decided that Larry should manage the tour.”
“Why? You two are completely capable, and you’ve studied the contents of the briefcase.”
“That’s the problem,” she said. “If a man is in charge, he’ll be considered well informed, well organized, and a good leader. Because Irma was a woman, she was called fussy, bossy and a know-it-all.”
“That’s preposterous, Lisa!”
“Of course it’s preposterous, but that’s the way it is in Moose County, and it’ll take a couple of generations to change the attitude. I just wanted you to know why Larry will be calling the plays.”
The next morning, Amanda was absent from the breakfast table, and Riker explained to Qwilleran, “She has a dental problem. She broke her upper denture, and she’s too embarrassed to open her mouth. Until we reach Edinburgh and get it repaired, she’ll have to live on a soft diet, like porridge and Scotch.”
Arch Riker was wrong. At that moment, Amanda was arranging for transportation to Glasgow; she was canceling the rest of her tour.
Carol said, “We’re like the Ten Little Indians. Who’s next?”
After breakfasting on a compote of dried apple slices, prunes, and figs, followed by creamed finnan haddie and oatcakes, the group shook hands with the innkeeper and his wife and prepared to board the bus in the courtyard of the inn. The baggage was loaded in the bin, but Bruce was not there to help the women aboard. Neither could he be found smoking a cigarette on the grounds, nor passing the time with a cup of coffee in the kitchen. At nine o’clock there was still no driver. In fact, they never saw Bruce again.
FIVE
THE EVENTS OF the last twenty-four hours bewildered the members of the Bonnie Scots Tour as they switched from sadness at the loss of their leader to indignation at the loss of their driver. Obviously Bruce had been there earlier, picking up the luggage in the hall and loading it properly in the waiting bus. The assistant cook said she had given him his breakfast in the kitchen at six o’clock.
Some of the passengers sat in the bus waiting hopefully for his return, while others trooped back into the inn for another cup of coffee. Mrs. Utley, who had been late in rising as usual, reported that she looked out her bedroom window while everyone was at breakfast and saw a car pull into the courtyard. It left again immediately and went downhill in a cloud of dust. No one paid any attention to her.
Eventually the innkeeper called the constable, and Larry gave the constable a rough description of the missing driver. No one knew his last name, and a quick check of Irma’s briefcase failed to fill in the blank. The nearest hospital also was called, but no red-haired forty-year-old male had been admitted.
Larry addressed the group seriously. “How long do we sit here, wondering if he’ll show? We have a reservation at another inn tonight and a lot of traveling to do in the meantime.”
“Let’s not hang around any longer,” Riker advised. “It’s our bus, not his. Let’s hit the trail.”
“That is,” said Larry, “if anyone is comfortable with driving on the wrong side of the road.”
Qwilleran volunteered to drive, if someone else would navigate, and Dwight was elected. Larry offered to read Irma’s travel notes en route, and Lyle said he would fill in the historical facts. With this arrangement in effect, the bus pulled away from the inn for Day Seven: another castle, another loch, another stately garden, another pub lunch, another four o’clock tea with shortbread.
Qwilleran was a good driver. Everyone said he was better than Bruce. “Cheaper, too,” he boasted.
At lunchtime, Carol said to him privately, “I feel terribly sorry for Melinda. My father was a surgeon, and even after thirty years in the operating room he was absolutely crushed if he lost a patient. So Irma’s death was a terrible blow for Melinda, coming right on top of her father’s suicide and the rumors about her mother’s death. She has no immediate family now. She lost her only brother while she was in med school. She and Emory were only a year apart and grew up like twins. His birth was a difficult one, and that’s what started Mrs. Goodwinter’s decline into complete helplessness.”
Why is she telling me this family history? Qwilleran wondered.
“You know, Qwill, it’s none of my business, but I wish you and Melinda had gotten together. You always say you’re not good husband material, but the right woman makes a difference, and you don’t know what you’re missing by not having children. Forgive me for saying so.”
“No offense,” he said, but he suspected that Melinda had coached her.
“All aboard!” came the commanding voice of their leader. The mild-mannered Larry Lanspeak could project like King Lear on the stormy moor.
During the afternoon dr
ive through Glencoe, with its wild and rugged mountain scenery, Lyle entertained the passengers with the story of the Glencoe Massacre in the late 1600s.
“King James had fled,” he began, “and the Scottish chieftains were forced to pledge allegiance to William of Orange—by a certain date. There was one chief who missed the deadline: Macdonald of Glencoe. When his oath finally arrived at government headquarters—late—a high official suppressed it and gave orders to exterminate the clan. A Captain Campbell was dispatched to the glen with 128 soldiers, and they lived there for a while on friendly terms with the Macdonalds, presumably accepting the chief’s hospitality. Suddenly, one day at dawn, the treacherous attack took place. Campbell’s men put more than forty members of the clan to the sword, including women, children, and servants . . . I never trust a Campbell,” Lyle concluded.
“Don’t forget, dear,” said his wife, “you married one.”
“That’s what I mean. They make great apple pie, but I don’t trust ’em.” Then he went on. “The order for the attack was supposedly written on a playing card, and ever since that time, the nine of diamonds has been called the Curse of Scotland.”
That night they checked into a rustic inn that had been a private hunting and fishing lodge in the days when upper-class sportsmen came up from London for grouse-shooting and fly-casting. The Bonnie Scots group entered through massive oak doors, iron-strapped and green with mold, and walked into a lobby hung with hunting trophies. An ancient leather-bound journal recorded the names of sporting notables who had bagged 86 grouse and 33 pheasant on a certain weekend in 1838.
Larry picked up the room keys and distributed them. “Hey, look! We have locks on our doors!” he announced. “We’re back in the civilized world!” Then, while the other men unloaded the bus, he telephoned the previous inn to inquire about the missing driver. There was still no clue to his defection.
The Cat Who Wasn't There Page 7