A Circle of Dead Girls

by Eleanor Kuhns

  They started off. Since Aaron had not brought his own lantern, he followed Rees closely behind, almost too closely Rees thought.

  They arrived in Zion long after supper was over. Since most of the Sisters and Brothers had retired for the night – daytime chores began early – few candles illuminated the windows of the Dwelling House.

  Rees went up the steps and into the building. It was silent and felt almost empty despite the number of people living behind those closed doors. He opened the front door and peered inside. The entire first floor was dark but candlelight glimmered from one of the rooms at the top of the stairs. Rees hurried up the staircase and tapped lightly on the door.

  ‘Come.’

  Jonathan was sitting at the desk, the light from a solitary candle spilling over the papers spread across the surface. He looked up at Rees without speaking. ‘I found them,’ Rees said. ‘And brought them back. They’re downstairs.’

  Jonathan sighed and rose to his feet, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He gestured for Rees to precede him down the staircase. When they stepped outside, Rees found that Aaron had awakened Shem. The boy was standing by the wagon looking both drowsy and confused.

  ‘What happened?’ Jonathan asked.

  Shem launched into a confused, and confusing, explanation. Finally, Jonathan held up his hand. ‘I am not sure I understand entirely,’ he said, ‘but I gather you accompanied Leah into Durham. While there you engaged in conversation with one of the circus performers, the one currently accused of Leah’s death, and you were still talking to him when she left town to come home.’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Shem in a hesitant voice. ‘I know I’m in trouble.’

  ‘I’m disappointed in you,’ the Elder said. ‘You would have saved us all a lot of grief by telling the truth in the beginning.’ The boy hung his head. ‘However, you’ve returned now and are making an attempt to put things right.’

  ‘It was the girl’s disobedience that caused her death,’ Aaron said suddenly.

  Rees turned and stared at the other man, shocked into an appalled silence. He heard the faint rustle of Elder Jonathan’s movement. ‘Surely you are not implying, Brother Aaron,’ Jonathan said in a soft voice, ‘that Leah deserved to die.’

  ‘No. Of course not. But just because Shem was with her—’ Aaron began.

  ‘After all,’ Jonathan continued, overriding Aaron’s truculent protest, ‘Shem was disobedient as well.’

  ‘Just because Shem was talking to that groom, it don’t mean he’s innocent.’

  ‘Enough.’ Jonathan’s voice was no less quiet but the coldness in it could have put frost on the ground. Aaron started to say something else but Jonathan held up his hand. ‘Please go inside, Brother Aaron. After Shem has been fed and put to bed, we will discuss your punishment for disobedience. This was the second time in as many days that you left without permission.’

  Aaron hesitated as though he might want to argue. Then he turned on his heel and stalked into the Dwelling House.

  TWENTY-TWO

  It was close to midnight when Rees finally turned down the drive to his farm. The moon floated high and there was enough silvery light for him to see his way to the barn. He unhitched Hannibal and released him into the pasture. Tomorrow Rees would give the gelding a bag of oats – he’d earned it. But now Rees was so tired he could barely stay upright.

  He picked his way cautiously up the porch steps and went into the silent kitchen. Save for the dull red glow of the banked fire, it was totally dark inside. He began to feel his way through the kitchen, past the table. He banged into the chair at the end with a clatter. As pain shot up his thigh he uttered an oath. Limping, he made for the door to the hall.

  ‘Stop right there.’ Illuminated only by the glow of the banked fire, Lydia came around the corner. She was clad in a voluminous white nightgown with a shawl draped around her neck. But Rees’s attention focused on the old musket she held to her shoulder. ‘If you come any closer, I vow I will shoot you.’ Only a slight quaver betrayed her fear and Rees had no doubt she would do exactly as she threatened. Or try to; he doubted the musket was loaded.

  ‘It’s me,’ he said.

  ‘Will?’ She lowered the musket with a gasp. ‘What are you doing home? I didn’t expect you for at least another day, maybe more.’ Rees stepped forward, removed the musket from her grasp and hugged her tightly. It felt so familiar. ‘You didn’t find them?’

  ‘Aaron and Shem are back at Zion,’ Rees said. ‘And the circus is returning to collect Boudreaux.’

  ‘Returning here?’ Lydia pulled free of Rees’s embrace. Although he couldn’t see Lydia’s expression in the dim light he could tell by the tone of her voice she wasn’t pleased.

  ‘Only until they collect their fellow,’ Rees said. Although he had nothing to be ashamed of – at least that was what he told himself – guilt colored his voice.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ Lydia asked after a few seconds. She collected the candle from the draining board in the kitchen and used it to light the tapers on the table. Golden light flooded the eating area.

  ‘Ravenous,’ he admitted, adding, ‘don’t bother heating something up. Is there anything cold?’

  Lydia brought out cheese and bread and two pickles for him. ‘Not even coffee?’ she teased.

  Rees shook his head. ‘It’s too late. But I’ll take a glass of small beer.’ He carried his plate to the table. Lydia followed with his glass and sat down across from him.

  ‘So, what happened?’ she asked.

  ‘Well,’ Rees said, taking a huge bite of bread and cheese and washing it down with a large gulp of beer, ‘I met Piggy Hanson in Grand Forks.’

  Lydia’s mouth dropped open. ‘Did he see you?’ she asked in a hushed tone.

  ‘He did,’ Rees said. ‘It was strange. He offered me a direction to the circus.’

  ‘I know you were worried that he might find us. Did you tell him where we lived?’

  ‘He guessed,’ Rees said. ‘Of course, he knew your connection to Zion …’ His voice trailed away. Lydia bit her lip.

  ‘Well, there’s no help for that now,’ she said.

  ‘Perhaps he won’t care we’re here,’ Rees said hopefully. ‘He seemed more interested in Leah’s murder.’ He paused. ‘There were several odd things about our conversation. I don’t know what to make of it.’

  Giving herself a little shake, Lydia said, ‘So the circus did stop at Grand Forks, as the constable thought they might. And Brother Aaron and Shem were with them?’

  ‘They were. But the circus didn’t stop at Grand Forks. The constable wouldn’t allow it. Circus folk are troublemakers, you know.’

  ‘Was one of their young girls murdered?’ Lydia asked anxiously.

  ‘No,’ Rees said. ‘Curiously, the constable was investigating a murder when I first met him. But it was the murder of a boy. There was family conflict, I understand. No, the circus was still four hours distant from Grand Forks and I likely would not have caught up with them there but for a broken axle on one of their wagons. But I’m glad I followed them. Shem’s account pretty much exonerated Boudreaux.’

  ‘Not entirely?’ Lydia asked with a teasing smile.

  Rees responded with a grin of his own. ‘You know I’m never happy until I understand everything,’ he said.

  Lydia rose to her feet and picked up his empty plate and cup. ‘It is very late,’ she said.

  ‘I know. And I must be up early for chores,’ Rees said.

  ‘You may have a surprise tomorrow morning,’ Lydia said.

  ‘What surprise?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be a surprise if I told you.’ Lydia picked up the candle and put her hand on his arm to lead him upstairs. Rees was suddenly very glad he was home.

  Rees discovered what Lydia meant by a surprise when he stumbled out to the barn to milk Daisy. It was closer to five in the morning instead of four and overcast and he still felt as though he hadn’t slept nearly enough.

  When he stepped inside the out
building he found Annie. She had already finished the milking and had released Daisy and her calf into the pasture. The water buckets, filled at the stream, waited for her to carry them inside. He stared at the girl in shock.

  She smiled at him now in return. ‘Jerusha and Nancy are hunting for eggs,’ she said. ‘Those chickens will stray.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.

  ‘I stayed over last night,’ she replied airily. ‘To help Miss Lydia.’

  Rees stared at her for a moment before picking up the yoke with the buckets hanging heavily from the hooks. ‘I’ll bring in these,’ he said. He did not know how he felt about this new development. But he wished Lydia has said something to him.

  Lydia already had eggs and bacon and a mug of steaming coffee waiting. ‘Surprised?’ She asked with a smile.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, sitting down.

  ‘Annie will help with chores,’ Lydia said, ‘and you’ll have more time for the investigation.’ Feeling churlish for his earlier bad temper, Rees nodded his thanks. But he still wished she had discussed this change with him.

  He intended to leave for town as soon after breakfast as possible, but Lydia threw his plans into turmoil. She announced very calmly, just as though he should have anticipated it, that she planned to accompany him. ‘What?’ he said. The last gulp of coffee went down the wrong way and he choked. ‘You want to do what?’

  ‘There can be no question of danger now,’ she replied. ‘And with Annie here I won’t worry. She’ll watch the babies and is fully capable of starting dinner.’ She waited a few seconds and then asked challengingly, ‘Why? Don’t you want me to come?’

  Rees hesitated. Although he had missed Lydia on the trip to Grand Forks he did not want Lydia to join him in town. With her he felt like an old married man. Without her he felt young and free; not tied down with the responsibilities for a farm, a wife and five children. He knew it was an illusion, but it was one he wanted to live in for a few hours.

  ‘You don’t want me to come?’ Lydia’s voice broke on the last word.

  ‘Of course, I want you to come,’ Rees lied. ‘I’ll enjoy your company. But what about …?’ He swung his arm around the kitchen to indicate the waiting chores.

  ‘I have ironing but if we return for dinner, I’ll certainly be able to finish it this afternoon.’ Her eyes took on a faintly mocking gleam. ‘And you, husband mine, should spend the afternoon planting.’

  Rees could feel his lips drooping into a sour grimace. He loathed farm work, although planting was not the worst of it. But the back-breaking chores on a farm had to be done if they were to eat. ‘I should finish the weaving first,’ he said. ‘It is the last commission I have at present. Once that is completed, I’ll turn my attention to the planting.’

  He knew, with the money from the finished cloth, he could hire some day laborers, the rootless men that roamed the roads from spring to fall looking for work. He hoped that by the time the fields were planted in buckwheat and rye – the corn would be put in a month from now – he would have obtained additional weaving commissions. He would rather spend all day, every day, at the loom than out in the fields.

  ‘How much time do you think that will take?’ Lydia asked.

  Rees hesitated. ‘A few hours, no more. I can start the planting tomorrow.’

  ‘Don’t be so unhappy,’ she said, smiling at his glum expression. ‘Sister Esther told me Jonathan plans to send a few Brothers to help out.’ Relief swept over Rees and he grinned. Jonathan had promised some help but Rees hadn’t known when it would come.

  ‘And I wrote to David,’ he said. He shook himself, almost like a dog coming out of the water, and said, ‘Let’s leave after breakfast.’

  TWENTY-THREE

  Since it was early on a Monday morning the tavern was almost entirely empty. Rouge stood at his usual place at the bar reading the newspaper. He looked up when he heard the door and abandoned his reading. ‘Come with me. I have something to show you.’ Shouting at Thomas to come out and mind the bar, he preceded his two visitors toward his office down the hall. The small room was no less messy than it had been a few days earlier.

  Rouge went directly to the desk and rummaged among the papers. ‘Sit down,’ he said. Rees looked at the two chairs. Their seats were covered with bills and a blue jacket had been dropped over the back of the nearest one. He scraped the ledgers from one of the seats and added the books and papers to the piles on the table.

  ‘I’ll stand,’ Rees said as he gestured Lydia to the newly available chair.

  ‘I wrote to all the constables I know,’ Rouge said. ‘And I rode to some of the nearer villages. Besides that, I put classified advertising asking for information about Asher’s Circus in the papers of more distant towns.’ He turned and shoved a fistful of papers in Rees’s direction. ‘These are the responses I’ve received so far.’ His eyes flicked to Lydia and he added reluctantly, ‘It looks as though your wife was right. The villain who murdered Leah has been doing this awhile.’

  Rees suspected Rouge had only done so much because he wanted to prove Lydia wrong. He did not like admitting a woman had solved a piece of this more quickly than he had.

  Rees took the sheaf of letters from the constable and began to look through them. Some were written in smooth educated prose, others with misspelled words and ink blots. But almost all missives told the same story: the body of a young girl was discovered either while the circus was in town or after the show’s departure. One of the constables went so far as to describe one of the performers, a tall lanky horseman much praised for his abilities to stand on a running horse’s back. Although the letter described the man as possessing pale blond hair, Rees knew that performer was Boudreaux.

  ‘Still think he’s innocent?’ Rouge asked Rees.

  Rees shuffled through the papers once again. ‘But Boudreaux couldn’t have murdered Leah,’ he said, distracted by the letters in his hand. Most of the letter writers assumed the murderer was a member of the circus, primarily because the deaths occurred when the show was in town. Rees went through the missives again and then handed them to Lydia. ‘I don’t see any evidence,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean? Those murders took place while the circus was in town or shortly thereafter,’ Rouge argued.

  ‘The circus performers are outsiders,’ Rees said. ‘That alone makes me question these assumptions.’ As a traveling weaver, he was an outsider in all the places he visited – and he’d been accused of crimes too many times to accept the convenient belief that it was always the stranger. ‘We know Boudreaux is innocent of Leah’s murder. Not only do the times not work but he was either seen by someone or engaged in conversation during the afternoon when the crime was committed.’

  ‘Then the murderer is someone else from the circus,’ Rouge said with the confidence of one for whom no other conclusion was possible. ‘Maybe that Asher fellow. Or one of the clowns.’

  Rees shook his head but did not reply. He reviewed the letters once again, this time paying particular attention to the villages in which these constables served. He cast his mind back to the bills he’d seen posted on the walls of the temporary amphitheater. He thought most of the towns listed on the bills were the same as those from which these letters came but couldn’t be sure. Oh, how he wished he’d paid more attention to the names crossed out on the posters. ‘Do you have the circus bill?’ Rouge handed the crumpled and dirty paper to Rees. Some of the names were illegible but at least one of them was not represented in the packet of return letters Rees held in his hand.

  ‘Do these constables represent all the neighboring towns?’ Rees asked as he handed the packet to Lydia.

  Rouge shook his head. ‘Too soon to hear from everyone.’

  A slight hesitation in his reply ignited Rees’s suspicion. He looked at the constable in sharp surmise. ‘And?’ As Rouge’s gaze darted involuntarily to his desk. Rees followed the constable’s gaze to a stack of papers. ‘There weren’t murders in all the towns where
the circus stopped,’ Rees guessed, his hand snaking out and scooping up several letters.

  ‘One or two,’ Rouge blustered. ‘That doesn’t mean anything. Not compared to that.’ He gestured to the stack in Lydia’s hand. Rees grunted but did not reply, his eyes fastened upon the replies from towns that had had no similar murders. He did not recognize all the names of the villages but several were listed on the bill. In fact, one letter had come from Constable MacGregor of Grand Forks.

  ‘Asher’s circus visited these towns,’ Rees said, holding the papers aloft. ‘And there were no murders.’

  ‘That don’t mean anything,’ Rouge said. ‘Just because Bou …’ He glanced at Rees and rephrased his words. ‘Just because the murderer skipped a town or two don’t mean he wasn’t murdering girls in the other ones.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Rees admitted.

  ‘Monsieur Boudreaux would be the first circus performer anyone would see,’ Lydia said, speaking for the first time. When the men turned to her, she added, ‘When he was exercising the horses. He’d be memorable.’ Rouge nodded, conceding her point. ‘Doesn’t mean he’s guilty.’

  ‘Well, someone in that traveling wickedness is guilty,’ he said. Although Rees did not speak he could not help thinking of Otto, the circus strong man, and those large hands. Those large, scratched hands.

  ‘I agree with the constable,’ Lydia said.

  ‘You do?’ Both men turned to her in surprise.

  ‘The correspondence from these neighboring towns does make the situation look extremely bleak for Asher’s Circus,’ Lydia said.

  ‘Since I don’t trust them to come back to Durham, despite Asher’s promise,’ Rouge said, gesturing emphatically, ‘I’m going after them. I’ll just pull in the whole crew. And we’ll keep them here until we identify the guilty party. Maybe I’ll just hang the lot of them.’

  Rees and Lydia left the tavern in silence. The ground underfoot was slick with mud but the sky was a beautiful clear blue and the air felt soft on bare skin. The warm sun beamed down, a harbinger of the summer to come. Lydia lifted her face to let the sun shine on her cheeks and sighed happily.