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woman,
quite attractive, sweet nature. Shortly after her thirty-first
birthday, she began withdrawing from her family and
wandering around staring at cats. Then
she started chasing mice—rather uselessly. Mewing,
licking herself, eating raw meat. That’s what finally
brought her to me: rampant intestinal parasites
caused by her diet.”
    “Was this a constant delusion?”
    “More like a series of fits—acute spells, but they
lasted longer and longer as time went on. By the time I
saw her the periods between the fits weren’t good, either.
Appetite loss, poor concentration, bouts of weeping. Tell
all that to a psychiatrist and he’d probably diagnose
psychotic depression or a bipolar mood disorder. An
anthropologist, on the other hand, would pounce on tribal
rituals or a plant-induced religious hallucinosis. The
problem is, there
are
no native hallucinogenic plants on
Aruk nor any pre-Christian shamanic culture.”
    He ate more rice but didn’t seem to taste it. “Interesting
from a diagnostic standpoint, wouldn’t you say?”
    “Did the woman drink heavily?” I said.
    “No. And her vitamin B intake was sufficient, so it
wasn’t an idiopathic Korsakoff’s syndrome.”
    “What about the parasites? Had they infiltrated her
brain?”
    “Good question. I wondered about that, too, but her
symptoms made conducting even a gross neurological exam
impossible. She’d gotten quite aggressive—snarling and
biting and scratching to the point where her husband tied her
up in her room. She’d become quite a burden.”
    “Sounds brutal.”
    He looked pained. “In any event, the symptoms didn’t
conform to any parasitical disease I’d ever come across, and I
was able to treat her intestinal problems quite easily.
After she died, the husband refused an autopsy and I
certified cause of death as heart attack.”
    “How did she die?”
    He put down his fork. “She screamed out one night—a
cri du chat—
cat’s cry. Louder than usual, so the
husband went in to check. He found her lying on her bed, open-eyed,
dead.”
    “No evidence of any kind of poisoning?”
    “My lab was rather primitive in those days, but I was
able to test her blood for the obvious things and found
nothing.”
    “What was her relationship with her husband like?”
    He stared at me. “Is there any particular reason you
ask that?”
    “I’m a psychologist.”
    He smiled.
    “Also,” I said, “you said she’d become a burden.
And that he only went in because
her cat’s cry was louder. That implies he usually ignored
her. It doesn’t sound like marital devotion.”
    He looked up and down the table, then past it, into the
living room, as if making sure we were alone.
    “Shortly after she died,” he said, “her husband took up
with another woman and moved off the island. Years later, I
found out he’d been quite a Don Juan.” His eyes dropped to
his plate. “I suppose I’d better get through this or Gladys
will have my head.”
    Eating a few mouthfuls of vegetables, he said, “I
fibbed. Had some chow mein brought into the clinic. Sudden
emergency, influx of jellyfish on North Beach.”
    “Pam told me. How are the children?”
    “Sore and covered with welts and totally
unchastened.   .   .   . Any more thoughts on our
catwoman?”
    “Did she have a history of fainting or any other
evidence of syncope?”
    “A cardiac arrhythmia to explain the sudden death? None
that I picked up. And no family history of heart disease.
But the mode—sudden death. Her heart stopped so I called it
heart disease.”
    “Allergies? Anaphylaxis?”
    He shook his head.
    “No heavy drinking,” I said. “What about drug abuse?”
    “Her habits were clean, Alex. A lovely lady, really.
Until the change.”
    “How completely was she bound when she slept?”
    “Hands and feet.”
    “Pretty severe.”
    “She was considered dangerous.”
    “And she was tied up the night she died.”
    “Yes.”
    “Perhaps something frightened or upset her,” I