Holy Terror in the Hebrides (17 page)

I waited, with a mixture of surprise and fascination, for him to go on, but he had evidently said all he intended to say, and simply sat there glaring at me.

“No, Chris, I didn’t mean it that way, and there’s no reason the music has to be religious, either. I just thought we needed something to cheer us up. You know, ‘Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we may die.’”

It was a shame that the wind rose just then, and I had to raise my voice. The silly remark came out as a shout, and did not exactly serve to lighten the mood.

It was after dinner, however, when we were gathered in the lounge eating our blackberry crumble and drinking coffee, that I utterly shattered our desperate attempts to pretend that it was a normal evening.

I looked around for my familiar little bowl licker. He was nowhere to be seen, despite the quantity of thick, rich cream that the humans were pouring over their desserts.

“Where’s Stan?” I said.

It was a casual question, to begin with, but it started a desultory search. There weren’t many places to look in the lounge. He wasn’t under any of the chairs, nor in either bookcase, nor in the wood box. A prickle of alarm began to rise.

“Stan’s a people cat,” said Teresa, her voice worried. “He ought to be here, where the people are. Where do you suppose . . . ?”

“He’s a greedy wee beggar,” said Andrew, who was serving the coffee. “I’d have thought he’d be after the cream. I’ll check the kitchen.”

He wasn’t in the kitchen. He wasn’t curled up on or under any of the dining room furniture. He wasn’t in the office, nor in the tiny private parlor behind the office that the Campbells used as a hideaway.

The cat lovers in the group were by now thoroughly alarmed. “The bedrooms,” said Chris. “Maybe he got scared of the wind and high-tailed it under one of the beds.”

We searched. Even Grace and Janet, who said they hated cats, joined in. We searched every bedroom, including the ones that weren’t in use. Apart from uncovering some interesting insights into our fellow guests (the extreme tidiness of Grace’s room and the wild disarray of Teresa’s, the stash of
Country Life
magazines that Chris kept under his bed, the bottled water in Jake’s closet, and the pitiful little stack of comic books on Bob’s bedside table), we were unsuccessful. No Stan.

I tried not to panic. “Cats are very good at hiding, you know. I swear, both of mine dematerialize sometimes. He’s probably just upset by the storm, and found a place to sit it all out.”

But Hester shook her head slowly. “He’s not that way. He likes to be smack in the middle when anything interesting’s going.”

“And when he does hide, he has his favorite places,” Andrew added. “We know them all, and we’ve looked. He isn’t there.”

“All right, then,” said Jake commandingly. “When’s the last time anybody saw the cat?”

There was a pause.

“He came around to see me this afternoon,” I said. “He wanted to share my lunch. I finally chased him off, and I haven’t seen him since.”

“How do you know it was him?” demanded Janet. “There are gray tiger cats all over this island, and your cottage is a long way for him to go.”

Chris, Teresa, and I looked at her pityingly.

“There’s no mistaking one cat for another, if you pay attention,” said Chris. “They’re as different as people.”

“Well, they all look alike to me,” said Janet stubbornly. “Anyway, this cat, or some cat, was hanging around the garden this afternoon. I was trying to show these people the way to protect their plants from the storm. I didn’t get very far, I must say, but you can’t be nice to some people. And the blasted cat was getting in our way, playing with the rags I was using to tie up the mums. I finally threw a turnip at him, and he took off down the road, toward the Abbey.”

She folded her arms defiantly and stared us all down. “I didn’t hit him with the turnip.”

That was as close as she was going to come to an apology, and all the dirty looks in the room weren’t going to make her open her mouth again.

Apparently that was the last anyone had seen of Stan; at least nobody could remember catching sight of him later in the afternoon. By about four o’clock all the guests had been helping Hester and Andrew prepare the house for the coming storm, putting up the shutters, taking in the lawn furniture. Stan hadn’t been in evidence, inside or out.

We looked at each other. The wind howled. The cries of a cat could never be heard over that uproar.

Jake and Chris moved as one man. “Back door first?” asked Jake.

“It’s the one he uses most,” Chris agreed.

Grace caught their meaning and moved to bar their progress. “Are you out of your minds?” she demanded. “Do you intend to open that door to look for a cat? A
cat?
Do you realize you may never be able to shut it again? He’d be drowned by now, anyway!”

The men said nothing, but gently pushed past her and went down the hall.

It wasn’t until they had checked the back door, wrestled it shut again with Andrew’s help and started for the front, that Teresa made up her mind.

“I’m going to look for him,” she announced, and headed for the front door with them.

This time Grace’s wasn’t the only protest. A chorus arose, my voice among them.

“Teresa, Grace has a point. He’s probably right here in the house somewhere, but if not, either he’s found shelter someplace, or he’s already . . . anyway, there’s no point in risking your life. You do realize that’s what you’d be doing? If you got hit by a branch, or a roof tile, you’d—”

She turned to me, eyes blazing. “And who’s to say my life’s worth more than his? Most animals are a lot nicer than most people. Anyway, St. Francis is my patron saint.”

“What’s that got to do with it?” demanded Hattie Mae from the edge of the nervous group, but I thought I understood. If it had been one of my cats out there in that torment of wind and rain . . . but Teresa was being either more heroic or stupider than I, depending on your point of view. Stan wasn’t her cat.

Jake and Chris stood by the door, unwilling to open it lest Teresa dart out. Hester and Andrew looked at each other, a succession of emotions chasing across their faces—fear and worry and exasperation and indecision. Finally, Andrew cleared his throat.

“He’s our wee moggie. If anyone’s daft enough to go looking for him in all this, it ought to be me.” Hester, whose hands were clasped, white-knuckled, at her waist, opened her mouth, but Andrew went on. “And I’m not going, and I’m not allowing any of you out of the house. That’s flat. He’s a fine wee friend, and if he never comes back he’ll be missed, but he’s safe or he’s not, and we’ll have no lives risked.” Andrew had already locked the back door. Now he took a key out of his pocket, turned it in the front door with a sharp little click, and stomped into the kitchen.

T
HERE’S A LOT
to be said for Italian family influence. Teresa recognized authority when she heard it. She didn’t like it, and her eyes blazed, but she went back to the lounge, indignation in every stiff line of her body, and sat as far away from Janet as she could get.

I sat next to her. She turned her head away. “It was a brave thing you tried to do,” I said mildly. “I love cats, too.”

“That’s not the point!” she said furiously. “It’s the principle—”

“Teresa, actions taken to defend a principle are dangerous. That’s the sort of thing that leads to horrors like holy wars and the Inquisition. And you know perfectly well you did it out of love. Or tried to. If it was a stupid idea, at least it was nobly stupid.”

“Are you calling me Don Quixote?” She was outraged.

“Of course I am. Now don’t slam your fist down on that table; it’s an antique, and fragile, I should think.”

“You’re worried about a piece of furniture when that poor cat is out there dying?”

I sighed and wished I had a drink in my hand. My patience had to work overtime to keep up with Teresa.

“My dear girl, if I thought for a moment that Stan was foolish enough to let himself get caught out in a hurricane, I’d be extremely worried about him. He’s a nice, friendly cat, and I love cats, as I said. But he’s also a tough, intelligent animal. I haven’t the slightest doubt that he’ll turn up, warm and dry, when he feels like it.”

Or at least, if I had doubts, I intended to keep them to myself. Given any encouragement at all, Teresa would bolt.

“Tell me about yourself, Teresa. You got your master’s in—sociology, was it?”

“Social work,” she corrected sulkily. “From Loyola.”

“And what did you intend to do with it? You weren’t a nun at that point.”

She looked at me sharply. “How did you know that?”

“You said so. When you were arguing with Hattie Mae the other night. Or at least you implied it.”

“Okay. I thought—well, anyway, no, I wasn’t. I wanted to get into work with women, a shelter for battered women, something like that. And then I got to know a couple of other students, and found out they were nuns in this really liberal order. I mean, I thought nuns still wore veils and lived behind walls and all that, like when I was a kid in grade school.”

All that long time ago, I thought, hiding a smile. At least ten or fifteen years. She must have gone to a very conservative school, if that was the kind of nun she knew best. Even I had known a few sisters, back in Hillsburg, and they wore blouses and skirts and seemed bound by few really archaic rules. None of them, however, had prepared me for Teresa.

“. . . So anyway, Nancy and Sue both want to be priests eventually. That’s why they joined the Congregation of St. Hortense. It’s really small, and liberal, like I said, and they encourage the women to seek their own destiny, and work for change. I mean, the Catholic Church is about fifteen hundred years out of date, isn’t it?”

I murmured something encouraging. I wasn’t sure I agreed with her, but she’d talked herself into a better mood, and I didn’t want to stem the flow. Besides, I was vitally interested in her background.

“So for a while I thought about the priesthood, too, but let’s face it. Nothing’s going to happen in the Vatican for years and years, and I can’t wait that long. So I decided to be a nun, to be in on the action, and I wangled this assignment I told you about, working with AIDS mothers and helping find homes for their babies.”

“It sounds heartrending. I admire you for being able to face up to that kind of tragedy.”

“It isn’t as bad as you might think. They’re just people; they have good days and bad days. We’re not allowed to get too involved with them; they switch us around so we only work with one mother for a little while, and then somebody else takes over. I hate most rules, and it hurts, sometimes, but even I can see it’s for the best. The babies—well, not all of them are HIV positive, you know. The healthy ones aren’t hard to place. The sick ones—yeah, the sick ones, and the addicted ones—they break your heart.”

Time to change the subject. “And how did you get to know Bob Williams?”

She looked away. “I didn’t really know him very well. And what I did know I didn’t like much.” She studied the hands in her lap.

“My dear child,” I said gently, “don’t feel so guilty about it. We can’t like everybody who’s going to die suddenly! I should have said, how did you come into contact with him?”

“He worked with kids a lot.” Her eyes were still downcast.

Find another subject. “What do you do in your time off? Any hobbies?”

She stood up, her face set and the fire back in her eyes. “I volunteer at the Humane Society. Excuse me.”

She had spoken loudly enough to be heard by the whole room, even over the everlasting roar of the wind. Andrew, who was putting logs on the fire, rose to his full, imposing height, his jaw set. “I’ll remind you, miss—”

I don’t know for sure who would have won that contest of two formidable wills if a diversion hadn’t occurred.

Stan, yawning, wandered into the lounge, stretched, and then sat looking intently at the small table where the empty dessert bowls were stacked.

I
NOBLY REFRAINED
from saying “I told you so.” The cat was greeted with cries of delight by everyone except Janet, who glanced at him with active dislike, but made no comment. Teresa confronted him.

“And just where have you been, cat? You’ve had us worried sick!”

Stan’s only response was another meaningful stare at the dessert bowls. Teresa put one on the floor and poured in a little extra cream. Stan advanced and dealt with it, his rusty purr at full volume, while Teresa looked on with the fond, foolish look that only a true animal lover, or a new mother, can produce.

Well, that settled her down for the time being. That volatile personality was apt to produce more little dramas before the storm was over, but for the meantime she was occupied. That meant I could approach Hattie Mae about my concert project.

She was less difficult about it than I had expected, perhaps because I managed to hit upon a diplomatic approach. She was sitting by herself on one of the couches, eyes closed and lips moving silently as the wind increased in intensity, and I suppose I shouldn’t have interrupted her prayers, but I had the feeling I could have waited all night. I plumped down beside her and her eyes opened.

“I’m sorry, Hattie Mae, but I wanted to talk to you. I’ve had an idea. Another way for you to praise the Lord.”

I thought that was rather clever of me, actually. Hattie Mae looked a little startled, perhaps at that particular idea coming from me (whom she obviously regarded as the next thing to a heathen), but she listened, anyway.

“You see, I have the feeling that we need something to cheer us up, take our minds off—oh, everything, the storm, and Bob’s tragic end, and your interrupted travel plans. I thought some entertainment might do it, and as long as we have a good piano and two fine musicians among us—what do you think?”

“With him?” She jerked her head in Chris’s direction, and her lower lip began to jut out.

I chose to misunderstand. “Oh, I’m sure he isn’t as good as you are. Who is? But I’d think he’d be quite competent to do backup.

I wasn’t sure I had the term right, but it was the very best honey. I held my breath.