Killing Gifts

by Deborah Woodworth

  “I’ve come with difficult news, Abigail,” he said. “I may not be able to finish those oval boxes you wanted as quickly as I’d hoped. The police want to question me again this afternoon. I suspect they may arrest me for Julia’s murder.”

  Abigail dropped onto her rocking chair with a thump, ignoring the pile of knitting beneath her. “They can’t possibly think you had anything to do with that. Can they?” Her voice came out as a squeak.

  Now that she was no longer the object of attention, Gennie watched Sewell carefully. She was surprised at his open admission of his fears. She noted that he was more than thin; he was gaunt, his flesh drawn tightly over long, slight bones. In the light from the windows, his cheeks were hollow caverns beneath his cheekbones. Gennie felt an urge to feed him.

  Before Sewell had a chance to answer, a thin young woman, dressed in worldly work clothes and carrying a basket full of fabric items, slipped in the door just behind him. She edged around and stood too close to him. He didn’t move, but his eyes darted nervously. The young woman’s grin and one arched eyebrow conveyed both flirtation and challenge, as if she were daring him to step out of bounds.

  “Hello, Carlotta,” he said. With a nod to Gennie and Abigail, he was out the door before Carlotta could formulate a response.

  Carlotta turned her grin on Gennie. “Dreamy, isn’t he?” she asked. “You must be the girl who’s takin’ Julia’s place, now she’s dead.”

  Gennie said nothing. As she remembered from Rose’s description, Carlotta was a hired girl, a friend of Julia’s, who worked in the kitchen, which probably explained her odd disposition. Kitchen work could make anyone cranky and rebellious.

  “Are those the extra pincushions the sisters promised?” Abigail asked, with none of the warmth she’d lavished on Sewell.

  “Yeah, and some of those ugly apple-head dolls.”

  “I’ll take them, and you can get back to work.”

  “Sure,” said Carlotta. “Also, Fannie said I should ask if you want Miss Gennie here to have a sandwich during the noon meal, like Julia used to sometimes, so you can go eat in the dining room with the others. Of course, after Julia, you may not want any more girls left alone in the shop.”

  “That’ll be enough, Carlotta. No one can be sure it was Julia who took those items, so don’t go spreading stories around. The poor girl is gone; leave her be.” Abigail turned to Gennie. “Would you be willing to stay and eat here while I’m in the dining room? After I return, you can have an hour to yourself before coming back to work. Otherwise, we have to close the store during the noon hour.”

  “That would be fine,” Gennie said, trying to keep her enthusiasm out of her voice. An hour on her own, to wander around the village. Then she could finally get some useful sleuthing done.

  “I’ll be along in about half an hour then,” Carlotta said. “Wish I could stay for a chat, but the food won’t cook itself.”

  Abigail and Gennie watched Carlotta negotiate the snowy walk toward the Brick Dwelling House. “I know that girl is a friend of Dulcie’s,” Abigail muttered, “but I’m glad she’ll only be here through Mother Ann’s Birthday. I doubt she does much work at all when no one is looking. It’s so difficult these days, with so few of us. Right now we have nearly as much hired help as we do Believers, and none of them cares about work as we do. Not even Dulcie and Theodore, though they’re the best of the lot.”

  Abigail shook her head and returned to her rocking chair to resume her knitting. She seemed to have forgotten Gennie’s presence. “Imagine accusing Julia of theft, just because she worked here,” Abigail muttered under her breath as she frowned at her stitches. “Why, it could have been anyone wandering in when there was just poor Julia to watch over everything. Probably just a child wanting a toy to play with. They have so little nowadays.”

  NINE

  GENNIE DEVOURED HER CHEESE SANDWICH AND LINGERED over the pot of peppermint tea Carlotta had brought her from the kitchen. She was alone in the Fancy Goods Shop, since Sister Abigail had invited Mrs. Butterfield to join her in the dining room. Gennie was plotting the hour she’d have to herself, after Abigail’s return. If she could escape Mrs. Butterfield and find other transportation back to the boardinghouse, maybe she could extend her investigations after store hours.

  Helen Butterfield was becoming a problem, but not one that couldn’t be solved with a little cleverness, an alteration in Rose’s plans for her, and maybe a tiny white lie. Gennie had decided to plead poverty and see if she could wangle a room in the Brick Dwelling House, where she knew other hired girls lived. Rose wouldn’t like it and would probably worry endlessly about her, but Gennie was determined. She would surely go crazy if she could have only one hour of excitement a day. Right after her time off, she’d talk to Abigail about moving in that evening. She’d offer a cut in her wages. She didn’t really need the money, after all; Grady had given her plenty.

  Grady. She frowned at the soggy bits of peppermint leaf in the bottom of her cup. He’d find out about the plan as soon as she called him that evening, as she’d promised to do, and he wouldn’t like it any better than Rose. On the other hand, if she were to spend one more night in the boardinghouse, she could sort of forget to mention to him that she was moving the next day. They’d agreed she would call every other day. That would give her two whole days living in Hancock before she had to deal with Grady, and maybe she’d have gotten Rose on her side by then. Honestly, those two. She loved them both deeply, but they just wouldn’t let her grow up. She was nearly twenty, and she’d been out in the world for almost two years. It was time they understood that she was a modern woman. She could take care of herself.

  With the noon meal finished, Rose put aside her worries about Dulcie and planned her afternoon. Arranging a car to take Dulcie to a doctor later in the afternoon had turned out to be easy. Brother Ricardo hadn’t questioned her purpose or even asked whether she felt comfortable driving on snowy Massachusetts roads. Rose wasn’t entirely confident of her ability and almost wished he had insisted upon driving her, though it would have made Dulcie anxious. On the other hand, a nice, private chat with the young woman could prove helpful.

  With the noon meal just finished, Rose set out to see the place where Julia Masters had died—the Sisters’ Summerhouse. Rose wrapped herself in her cloak and pulled a pair of galoshes over her shoes, so she could wander around in the snow without catching her death. She knew the Summerhouse was unheated, so she expected to suffer even inside.

  As she walked around outside the small building, it struck her that the killer had been bold to the point of recklessness. The Summerhouse was so near the Brick Dwelling House. Though it was largely ignored during the winter months, the thought that someone had strangled Julia so close to the living quarters of all the Hancock Shakers chilled her far more than the snow drifting over the tops of her galoshes.

  The body had been found at a small old table where the sisters often sat on warm summer evenings to share a pot of tea. The windows of the nearby dwelling house were usually kept closed during the winter, and the other buildings surrounding the Summerhouse would have been empty at night, so it was understandable that no one heard a scream or a struggle. However, it surprised her that no one could determine how long Julia had sat at the table, her dead hands seeming to reach for some unknown item. Fannie had said only that the village was so distracted by the plans for Mother Ann’s Birthday celebration that no one had even glanced into the Summerhouse.

  Rose tried the front door. It was unlocked, open to the world even after such a betrayal. She stepped inside. The building was tiny, especially compared with the huge Brick Dwelling House. Unlike many of the other buildings, it was still used. Yet, to Rose, it had the forlorn look of an abandoned home. It held one nicked old table and a ladder-back chair badly in need of repair and a new finish. Dust gathered in ridges across the floor. For Rose, the smell of death still lingered.

  There wasn’t much more to be learned from the lonely building; it ra
ised more questions than it answered. How could a girl in a summer dancing gown be enticed to a nighttime rendezvous in such a place? Had Julia been positioned after death to look as if she were reaching for something? Food? A gift? Was she meeting with a blackmailer, who had something she wanted back? Surely a blackmailer would be unlikely to kill his source of illicit income. Was Julia the blackmailer, killed by her victim? Were her outstretched arms meant to symbolize a greedy, grasping nature?

  A gust of wind from the open door swirled snow around her feet, and Rose shivered, more with horror than with cold. She believed, along with her brethren, that all killing was evil, but there was something especially malevolent about this murder. The frigid air in the Summerhouse befitted the cold-blooded nature of the act. This killer was surely no jilted lover, driven by anguish to destroy the thing he loved most. The murder must have been planned with precision, or it would never have happened.

  Rose was more than ready to leave and begin her search for answers. She closed the door behind her and felt her soul lighten just to be out of the building. She wondered if the Hancock sisters might consider a cleansing ritual, to purify their Summerhouse before they used it again. A few years earlier, Rose would never have seen the value of such an old-fashioned service, but she’d found herself changing recently. Those century-old rituals, used so frequently during Mother Ann’s Work, were now almost unknown. The dancing and the singing and the mimed actions bound Believers together and connected them to Heaven, their spiritual home. She’d come to see how valuable this could be—though perhaps she wouldn’t admit it to Wilhelm just yet.

  “Well, sweet Nellie, have you missed me?” A man the size and shape of a leprechaun slapped the rump of a Holstein, which mooed in response. “I thought you might, so I’ve come to visit you.” The man’s short, scrawny body curved backward as he stretched and yawned. “Time for a nap,” he said. “Try not to make a racket, there’s a good girl.”

  Rose’s galoshes made little noise on the wood floor of the Barn Complex as she approached the sound of the hired man’s voice. She caught sight of his head, covered with tight sandy curls, just before he slipped down to the hay-coated ground beside the passive animal, presumably to begin the promised nap. This has to be Otis, she thought. No Shaker brother would be so lazy as to nap during work hours.

  Otis Friddle had, according to Fannie, found Julia’s lifeless body as he’d headed past the Summerhouse on his way to the Barn Complex, which was east of the abandoned Round Stone Barn. It was astonishing that such a lazy man would even bother to look into the Summerhouse—but then, since he was walking the long way around, he was probably trying to slow down his journey to work.

  “Are you Otis?” Rose asked loudly, as she peered into the stall.

  His sandy head, with hay woven into the curls, popped up over the Holstein’s black-and-white back. “Lord Almighty, you scared the life out of me! Sister, I mean. I mean, you startled me, Sister. Yep, that’s me—Otis Friddle, rhymes with griddle.”

  Otis’s head ducked down again and reappeared at Nellie’s rump. He flashed a smile full of crooked, tobacco-stained teeth.

  Rose had visited Hancock before, but hired folk came and went, and Otis had not been among the ones she’d met. Nor, she suspected, would he stay long.

  “I believe Fannie explained that she asked me here to help solve the tragic death of Julia Masters.”

  “Ah, yes, I remember now. Your name’s Violet, right?”

  “Rose,” she said. “Sister Rose.”

  “Right. Rose.” He smiled again and backed up, as if he considered the conversation over.

  “I was told I’d find you here,” Rose said. She tried to sound friendly, though she was growing impatient. “I was also told that you were the one who discovered Julia’s body.” Otis had wizened, weather-worn features that made it difficult to determine his age. He could have been anywhere from thirty to fifty years old.

  “Poor Julia. Yeah, I’m the one found her. Gave me a terrible shock, I don’t mind telling you.”

  “Would you be willing to interrupt your work and talk with me about it?” Rose asked.

  “Sure,” Otis said. Her sarcasm was lost on him.

  “I need to know everything you remember, no matter how inconsequential it might seem.”

  “I already talked to the police.”

  “I know, but Fannie has asked me to look into this, so I’d appreciate hearing your observations firsthand.”

  Otis ducked around the cow’s rump and let himself out of the stall. “Glad to help, of course,” he said. Rose suspected his willingness had much to do with avoiding work, but she had to admit he was also giving up his nap to talk to her.

  “This floor’s cold on the feet,” Otis said.

  Rose controlled her irritation as Otis sauntered through the long, chilly main section of the Barn complex looking for a place to sit. If he’d move a little faster, she thought, maybe his feet wouldn’t get so cold. Rose sighed at her own impatience. She certainly did have a penchant for uncharitable thoughts, and a confession to the eldress might be a good idea.

  Otis led her to some hay bales piled crookedly against the wall and climbed on top of one, crossing his legs underneath him. Rose was grateful he knew enough not to offer to help her up—though his motivation was more likely sheer laziness than good manners. Never mind, she just wanted to get on with the task at hand. Luckily, she was tall and strong, since she did some physical labor every day, as did all the able-bodied Believers in North Homage. She hoisted herself onto a hay bale next to Otis’s.

  “What time did you find Julia?” she asked.

  Otis pulled out a piece of hay and began chewing on it. “Way before dawn,” he said. “I was on my way to do the milking.”

  The sun rose about six-thirty this time of year, but it was likely that Otis was not quite as prompt as he’d implied.

  “Did you see anyone else around? Anyone at all?”

  “Nope, not a soul. Not after I got past the Barn Complex, that is.”

  “Who did you see near the barn?”

  Otis scrunched up his face and multiplied his wrinkles. “Just the usual folk. Hired men.”

  “Who, exactly?”

  “Well, Theodore, but he’s our boss, so of course he’d be up and about. Then just as I was passing the barn, Theodore met up with Aldon and then Sewell, those two baby Shakers. They didn’t see me.”

  Probably because you stayed out of sight to avoid getting hauled in to work, Rose thought. “If you were on your way to milk the cows, what took you to the area of the Summerhouse? Surely it was out of your way?”

  Otis spit a hunk of pulverized hay on the stone floor, then selected another. “Had to pick something up at the Brethren’s Workshop,” he said.

  “So you left the Brick Dwelling House, walked past the Barn Complex, then headed northwest to the Brethren’s Workshop?”

  Otis nodded and chewed.

  Rose had an excellent geographical memory, and she could see the arrangement of Hancock Village in her mind. “I’m still puzzled,” she said. “To return to the barn, you should have headed southeast, but instead you went west and rounded the Summerhouse. Why was that?”

  Otis stiffened. “Didn’t know I was going to get the third degree about it,” he said. “I just wanted a walk, was all. It was snowing. I like snow.”

  Perhaps it was not out of the question for an Easterner to do such a thing, Rose reasoned, though it made little sense to her. The pleasures of wandering around in the snow escaped her.

  “All right, so you walked past the Summerhouse and looked inside, where you saw—would you describe what you saw, in your own words?”

  Otis chewed, spit, then began the ritual again. Rose felt her appetite dwindling.

  “I looked in through the window and saw the table and the chair, with Julia in it. Damn shame. Pretty girl.”

  “Tell me everything you did after that.” Rose was hoping to get him to say more than a sentence or two
at a time. At this rate, the questioning would take all afternoon.

  Otis shrugged. “I ran inside, of course, to see if I could help her. She was too far gone, though. Cold as ice. So I left and went to the big house and called for help.”

  “Did you move Julia?”

  “Are you kidding? The whole thing was too spooky for me. I just wanted the hell out. There she was, leaning on the table with her arms out like she was reaching for food or something, and she was wearing that frilly dress with no sleeves. I thought maybe she’d had a spell and then froze to death, but I couldn’t figure why she’d be there in the first place.”

  “Could you tell she’d been strangled?”

  Otis looked sheepish. “Well, I guessed it, on account of that long piece of her dress was still wrapped around her neck. Didn’t look decent, so I unwound it. The cops gave me hell for that.”

  “I can imagine,” Rose said. If Julia had been strangled with her own dress, the killer could be either a man or a woman. It wouldn’t take an inordinate amount of strength to strangle someone from behind with a long length of fabric.

  “After you called for help, did you go back with the others to the Summerhouse?”

  “Well, yeah, I did. I mean, I was spooked and all, but this is a pretty boring place most of the time. I didn’t want to miss anything. Besides, I figured these Shakers would be too shocked to be worth much, so I went back inside with Sister Fannie. She was the only one brave enough to look. Besides Dulcie, of course.”

  “Dulcie? She saw her sister’s body?”

  “Yeah, she was there first, before me and Sister Fannie. She must have run right over. She was Julia’s sister, after all. When we got there, she was fussing over Julia’s body like she was trying to figure out how she died. She even lifted up the skirt. Don’t know why.” Otis’s face broadened in a ghoulish grin. “I didn’t mind seeing Julia’s legs one last time, I can tell you.” He watched Rose closely, as if hoping for signs of embarrassment. She did not oblige.