Holy Terror in the Hebrides

by Jeanne M. Dams

  “You thought he killed himself because you turned him down.” It was time to get rid of innuendo and talk plainly. “You can take my word for it, he didn’t. Of that I am absolutely sure. However, I’m glad you decided to tell me about your little—encounter. Now I—I think I really must get up while I still can.”

  He hauled me to my feet, surprised me by planting a rather gritty kiss on my cheek, and went back to his work while I escaped into the house with a large basket of vegetables, to wash my hands and try to settle my mind.

  I found Grace in the kitchen, surrounded by a huge pile of carrots and potatoes.

  “Oh, good, more. Put them down there; I’ll deal with them.”

  “Heavens, you’re glad to have them? I’d think you’d never want to see another muddy vegetable again.”

  “They’re food. If you had seen as much hunger as I have, you might feel differently about anything edible.” She returned to her work, and I began to work at her side. Act normal.

  I had all the pieces now. I knew about the conversation Jake had overheard, that had put the match to the fuse. I still didn’t know what to do about it, and I was no closer to an answer when Hester shooed us out of the kitchen so she could prepare lunch.

  Grace and I, tired of standing, went to the lounge and sat. It was a sad room, with little furniture and no rugs. It would be days, perhaps weeks, before everything was dry and clean again. I more or less fell into a chair; Grace sat down more smoothly, but a little sigh of relief did escape her lips as she relaxed.

  “I do believe you’re as tired as I am, Grace. It certainly looks better on you than on me.”

  I was aware that my face was dirty, and that there was mud under my fingernails and on the knees of my slacks. My hair was uncombed. I was a mess.

  Grace smoothed her skirt. Her hands, though wrinkled from being in water, were clean and well-kept, and every silver hair on her head was smoothly in place. “I haven’t been gardening. You look fine. It’s honest dirt.”

  “Ah, but even when I’m clean, I can never achieve that effortless elegance you manage all the time. Your kind of beauty is in the bone; you’ll be beautiful till the day you die.”

  She looked at me coolly, and then smiled a little. Perhaps it was because she was tired that she allowed her shell to crack a trifle. “I seldom receive such a delightful compliment. Thank you, Dorothy. It’s all the more valuable because it seems totally disinterested, unlike those of—most people.”

  “Of whom?”

  She gave me a long look, her smile wiped from her face.

  “Please. I have a reason for asking. You had someone specific in mind, didn’t you?”

  She frowned a little, and then shrugged.

  “Oh, I suppose it doesn’t matter now. You’re right, of course, though it applies generally, too. I am involved in a great deal of charity work, and I must also serve, often, as hostess for my husband’s fund-raisers.”

  She saw my puzzled look. “Oh, that’s right, you don’t live in America anymore. My husband is an Illinois state senator. At any rate, my point is that I operate in many capacities in which a compliment is usually a veiled request, or a bribe, to put it less charitably. I have come to view my beauty as a burden rather than a gift.”

  I nodded. “I’ve often thought that really beautiful women must have rather a hard time of it, contrary to what most people would think. You’d never know when you were being appreciated for yourself.”

  “Yes. But I haven’t really answered your question, have I? And you’re waiting for me to tell all.” She grimaced. “I dislike thinking about it, although it was a trivial business, really. It’s simply that Mr. Williams—I cannot bring myself to call him ‘Bob’—paid me a number of fulsome compliments Monday night, just before he attempted to—that is, he—”

  She searched for a suitably delicate euphemism, while I vaguely remembered an odd little scene in the lounge that first night.

  “He ‘put the moves on you,’ is, I believe, the way the young would put it.”

  “Exactly. The phrase has a certain vulgarity that precisely matches the fact. Not to mention the ludicrous side of it; I must be at least twenty years older than he was. I was, of course, disgusted, and told him to go take a cold shower.”

  That, I thought, made two pointed, personal rejections in one night. Bob was acceptable, apparently, to neither sex. I could understand why he had been moody the next day. Was it possible that I’d been wrong all along? Had he, in fact, committed suicide?

  But again the tape replayed behind my eyes. And again I saw him falling, quite definitely not jumping.

  “Not to interrupt, but they said I should tell you lunch was ready. And I could maybe escort two lovely ladies to the dining room?”

  Jake stood, beaming, in the doorway.

  19

  IF I NEVER have to suffer through a meal like that again, I won’t be sorry. Hester, in gratitude for our help (and with her cooking pots returned to her), had produced an excellent lunch for us. The crab claws had probably come out of Iona Sound, and must have been sweet and tender. The bread was homemade and hot, the vegetables were perfectly cooked, and the dessert was some light, creamy concoction that looked like food for the gods.

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t eat. When Jake insisted I sit next to him, my stomach knotted into a hard little ball of misery, and my throat closed up every time I tried to take a bite. The longer he talked, with that twinkle in his eye, the more he flirted, impartially, with Grace and me, the closer the tears in my eyes came to spilling out. I lifted my wineglass, took the tiny sip that was all I could manage, and put it down again with an unsteady hand.

  The other people in the room were in that excitable mood that follows a narrow escape from disaster, and my gloom was noticeable. It was Hattie Mae, of course, who drew everyone’s attention to me. “You ain’t eatin’ nothin’, Dottie!” she boomed out across the table.

  I didn’t even protest her corruption of my name. I’d had all I could stand; I pushed my chair back. “I’m sorry, Hester. This was lovely, but I’m afraid I’m not feeling very well. If you’ll excuse me?”

  Jake tried to go with me, but I brushed him off. “No, thanks, I have a really wicked headache, and I need to be alone. I’ll be fine, and I’ll see you all later.”

  It was true enough about my head. It was pounding so badly I was afraid I was going to be sick. But the worst malaise was in my soul.

  The industrious villagers had already done a rough job of clearing the footpath. It wasn’t perfect, but it was passable, and I was in a hurry. I pushed my way through, almost running, heedless of the twigs that caught at my sweater and the roots that tried to trip me. I was panting and almost sobbing when I reached my cottage, and my head was hurting worse than ever.

  After I was sick—several times—I felt better. Or at least my head felt better. I drearily cleaned up my mess, changed into clean clothes, and then lay on my bed, hoping blessed sleep would come, and with it, oblivion.

  I wasn’t surprised to hear the knock at the door. I lay rigidly still, willing him to go away. He couldn’t know for sure that I was awake.

  “Mrs. Martin! Mrs. Martin, are you quite all right?”

  The voice was gentle, male, English, and slightly familiar, although I couldn’t place it. I dragged myself to the front window, opened it, and shouted, “I’ll be right down.” The tiny roof over the front door hid any view of my caller, but it certainly wasn’t Jake. I went down and opened the door.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, but I saw you coming home, and you seemed to be in distress. I couldn’t quite make up my mind whether I should interfere, but in the end . . .”

  “Oh, do come in, Father—I mean Mr.—I’m sorry, I can’t remember your name.”

  “Pym. Are you certain it isn’t an intrusion?”

  Suddenly I was quite sure. “Not at all. In fact, I think you may be exactly the person I need to talk to right now. Please sit down. Would you like some tea?”


  “No, no, I’ve only just eaten my lunch. But if you—”

  “What I need is some aspirin, actually. I’ll be right back.”

  “I rather thought you looked as though you had a headache,” said Mr. Pym when I had returned.

  “It was a bad one, but it’s passing, thank you. Now my problem is—well, I don’t know what to do.”

  “Then tell me, and let me see if I can be of any help,” he said simply, and sat back. His glasses were thick, but his nearsighted eyes were warm with understanding. I sat back, too, trying to put it all into words.

  “Well—I suppose you heard about the tragedy? The young American who fell to his death in Fingal’s Cave?”

  He smiled gently. “Iona is a very small island, Mrs. Martin. Yes, I know about him. I have prayed for him every day since.”

  “He was murdered.”

  I hadn’t meant to blurt it out quite that way, but Mr. Pym had been a priest for a long time; he wasn’t easily startled.

  “Indeed,” he said mildly.

  “I suppose you don’t believe me.” I sat up a little straighter and tried to stop sounding forlorn. “There’s no reason why you should, really, but I’m afraid I do have some experience with murder.”

  I briefly recounted my unfortunate adventures in Sherebury. “So you see, I think rather carefully before I make statements of that kind. Mr. Pym, I’m sure. And I know who did it.” I couldn’t keep the tears from my voice.

  “I see. And you are—fond of this person?”

  “I—yes, I am. He—oh, dear, I didn’t mean to let you know even that much—”

  “I am capable of keeping a great deal to myself. Indeed, I am often required to do so. You may tell me his name if you like, and be assured that I will tell no one else. But your very hesitation tells me that you are not certain you want to reveal his name to anyone.”

  He quirked his head to one side and studied me with those old eyes that couldn’t see across the room, but saw so far into a human soul.

  “That’s just it, of course. No, I won’t tell you his name, but I want to tell you about the circumstances. You see, I’m not sure he wasn’t justified in what he did.”

  I explained all about Jake and his grandson. “Mr. Pym, he was all the poor man had, and he meant everything to him. And Bob must have been a real monster, preying on the children he was pretending to help. If he molested Aaron, he might have done it to others, and they might be infected, too. I think he—the murderer—felt it was more of an execution, a way of getting rid of a menace to society.”

  “Do you think so? Or are you letting your sympathy with the murderer cloud your judgment? Are you sure it was not quite simply an act of retribution?”

  I studied my hands in my lap. “No,” I said at last. “Of course I’m not sure. But what difference does it make? The police don’t care much about motives.”

  “God cares, however. In fact, all that really concerns him about our actions is why we commit them. If we truly believe ourselves to be doing good, however mistakenly, God counts the action as good, even if it involves a crime for which human justice must punish us.

  “And rightly so. That is, since human judges and juries can never truly know our souls, they must often pass judgment on actions alone. But the point of the question was not to make you feel guilty, as I see I have done.”

  My hands were twisting in my lap, and my eyes looked anywhere except into his.

  “I was attempting, ineffectually perhaps, to help you make a decision about what you must do. You are not a judge, Mrs. Martin, nor a juror. You are bound in this particular instance by God’s law, not by the laws concerning evidence and procedure and so on. Your dilemma, as I understand it, centers around what you must do with your knowledge.”

  “Especially since it’s only guesswork. I could be very wrong—”

  “But you believe you are right. So you must decide whether you are to turn this man, whom you perceive to be a decent, upright person, over to the authorities, or to say nothing and let him go on his way. Is that a fair statement of the problem?”

  It was putting it more clearly and more brutally than I had permitted myself to do, but I nodded.

  “Legally, of course, you know what the answer is. Morally, you may feel that the man was justified in what he did, and poses no danger to society, so that you may safely keep your ideas to yourself.”

  “No one else has any idea, you see!” I said eagerly. “It will be accepted as an accident, or just possibly as suicide, and forgotten.”

  “That has nothing whatever to do with your decision,” said Mr. Pym sternly, “as you should know perfectly well. We are dealing here with what you ought to do, not with what you can get away with. It may not even be true that no one else suspects. But, true or not, it doesn’t enter into the picture.”

  And then he simply waited in silence for me to think it through. It was a long silence, and my cheeks were wet when I finally broke it.

  “You’ve answered it for me, haven’t you? When you talked about my trying to ‘get away with’ something. I hadn’t realized I was looking at silence as a sneaky option, but I was. I knew all along what I should do, didn’t I?”

  “The Platonic method has many merits,” said Mr. Pym, with the hint of a smile. “One can take all the credit for a brilliant answer that always lay, in fact, in the mind of the questioner.” He took my hands. “Don’t be too distressed, my dear. The end result can safely be left in the hands of God, you know. Tell the truth and shame the devil, as the old saying has it. And to be quite practical about it, the actions of Scottish policemen and Scottish courts, when dealing with one American killing another, are apt not to be frightfully direct.”

  “I hadn’t thought about that aspect of it, I admit. It does make me feel a little better. But, oh, Mr. Pym, he’s such a nice man!” I was starting to cry in earnest, and Mr. Pym handed me a large handkerchief, rather shabby but quite clean.

  “You’ll feel better when you’ve cried it out of your system,” he advised. “And then have yourself a good sleep; you’ve exhausted yourself, and we’re never at our best when we’re tired. I’m having a special service of Compline tonight at nine o’clock, in thanksgiving for our deliverance from the storm. Come if you like. They’re lovely old prayers.”

  He let himself out the door, waving as I tried to thank him, and I followed his advice, went upstairs, and cried myself to sleep.

  IT WAS DARK when I woke. I had apparently slept for hours. It was Friday evening, when the ceilidh had been planned, I suddenly remembered. There would be no ceilidh tonight; the island had little reason for merrymaking.

  I sat up, stiffly. It was very cold in the bedroom, once I was out from under the duvet I had thrown over me, clothes and all.

  Mechanically, I went about the small chores that had to be done. Lighting a fire was the first job; I had to take the chill off the house. I heated the soup and ate it, made coffee and drank it. Soon I would have to buy more oil and charcoal; I made a note on the pad I had put back by the telephone and even remembered I would have to ask for “paraffin,” the Brit word for kerosene.

  I had put my earlier notes in the fire. There was no point in keeping them. Every salient point was burned into my brain. Soon—tomorrow, perhaps, if the telephone people could get a new cable laid—I could notify the authorities of my conclusions and wash my hands of the whole affair.

  I wished I hadn’t thought of that particular phrase. I was feeling like Judas anyway. Echoes of Pontius Pilate didn’t help.

  I wasn’t going to cry anymore. Weeping had been replaced by a sorrow beyond tears. I could not weep for all the horrors of our society, for all the crimes beyond punishment and the sins seeking no redemption. I could not, anymore, even weep for Jake. He had done what he thought he must do. Now I would do what I thought I must. And may God be merciful, I thought bleakly.

  I added my warmest sweater to the layers I already had on, and decided, a little before nine, to go to Com
pline, more because I was restless than out of any hope that it would bring me relief. There was no relief for me until my duty was done, and perhaps not then. Perhaps not ever. This was a terrible thing I had committed myself to do. For the first time I appreciated the enormous debt society owes to the police and the justice system, who take these life-and-death decisions out of the hands of ordinary people like me.

  I had, twice before in my life, been instrumental in hunting down a murderer. In both cases they’d been people I knew, at least slightly. But they hadn’t been especially admirable, and their crimes had been brutal, their motives petty. I had felt very little remorse when I’d brought about their downfall.

  But this—this was different. Logically, it shouldn’t matter that I approved of the villain far more than the victim. Murder was murder, and it was the ultimate crime, and it had to be punished. It was simple cowardice to wish that I were not the instrument.

  I put my coat on, checked the fire to make sure it was safe, blew out the lamp, and stepped outside my door.

  I would have gone back in immediately for the flashlight I’d forgotten, if the touch on my arm hadn’t frozen me in my tracks.

  “Ah! And you’d like to go for a walk with me, maybe, it’s such a fine night?”

  20

  I DIDN’T THINK; my brain had stopped. I turned and ran. The clouds were clearing, and there was a glimpse of the moon now and then, enough, when it was visible, to show me where I was going. Perhaps I had walked that village street enough in the past few days that I had some muscle memory, or perhaps the angel that is said to watch over fools kept me from tripping. The occasional lamp in a cottage window helped, too, and once I neared the jetty, the little cafe’s lights were showing; they must, I thought as I tore past, have their own generator.

  I couldn’t keep up the pace for long. My wind was better than it would have been a week ago, from the sheer amount of walking and climbing I’d been doing, but it still wasn’t terrific, and nothing short of a transplant was going to help my knees. I slowed once I had passed the cafe, but I kept going, glancing behind me every few steps.