Holy Terror in the Hebrides Read Free Page A

gray tiger cat who lay on the counter, and rang the bell.
    I was in luck. The pleasant woman who answered the bell had a charming face and a melodious, rather English-sounding voice; went to an English school, was my guess. She introduced herself as Hester Campbell and assured me that, yes, they could accommodate me, they had several rooms free, not large, but with en suite facilities (which, in Britspeak, meant a bathroom), if that would suit?
    At that point a roomy closet would have been fine, so long as it had a bed. A private bath was an unexpected luxury. I gratefully signed the register and asked for my key.
    “Key? Oh. Well—certainly there must be one somewhere—if you’d like me to look . . .” Mrs. Campbell had clearly never run into this particular eccentricity on the part of tourists, but was prepared to put herself out if I insisted. I smiled, accepted the idea that Iona was a place where police weren’t needed and hotel rooms didn’t have to be kept locked and, at my hostess’s insistence, stepped into the lounge for a moment while she went out to deal with my bags.
    There were seven people in the lounge, sitting in little silent clumps, and I recognized three of them. Teresa-not-of-Avila sat next to a very attractive young man with fair hair, dressed in a pale blue sweater and wearing one small gold earring. He shifted his feet uneasily and avoided looking at the nun. In a corner sat the two women from the bus, petulant expressions on both their faces. So they were staying on the island, were they? Well, perhaps I could avoid them.
    A burly, bearded, sixtyish man in a sports jacket sat by himself, turning the pages of a magazine, and a very thin, pale young man with big, awkward hands and bad skin sat in front of the fireplace next to a strikingly lovely silver-haired woman in her fifties, both of them staring into space. As they became aware of me, every face turned in my direction, and every one of them wore the same expression.
    Surely it was my imagination that all these strangers looked at me with naked hostility.

2
    A LAN NESBITT TELLS me I havesound instincts, and should pay more attention to them. I will regret for the rest of my life that I did not heed my instinct then, and leave Iona by the next ferry.
    In any event, I told myself I was imagining things, turned away from the unwelcoming faces, and dismissed the matter. I went out to pay my obliging driver and book a full tour of the island for the next morning, took possession of my room, and unpacked (with the aid of the cat, who was introduced as Stan and who found it necessary to sniff every article of my luggage). A quick glance in the mirror told me I looked neat, at least, which at sixty-something is often all that can be expected, so I pulled my hat to a little more rakish angle, smiled at myself, and hied off to the Heritage Centre before they stopped serving lunch.
    The lunchroom was a tiny room at one side of the museum; if the building had originally been the manse for the parish kirk next door, as seemed likely, this might have been a spare bedroom. The ambience was amateurish, with a distinct aura of church basement, but the thick soup was warming and delicious, the sandwiches were made of crusty homemade bread, and the woman serving me, the last customer of the day, was friendly. A short, plump, cheerful woman wrapped in a businesslike apron, she bustled about clearing tables and putting things away in the minute kitchen, chatting all the while. Finally finished with her chores, she poured herself the last cup of coffee and sat down to share the last two brownies with me.
    “This was just what I needed,” I said with a contented sigh. “I’m Dorothy Martin, by the way.”
    “Maggie McIntyre. And what brought ye to Iona so late in the year?”
    I explained about my friends and the plans that had gone wrong. “But you’re the second person to mention it being late. I would have thought September—”
    “Late for here. The