Dancing Dead

by Deborah Woodworth

  “Does Mairin understand?” Rose asked.

  “Yea, I think so. I explained to her that their absence has nothing whatsoever to do with her, and I think she accepted it, though it’s hard to tell sometimes. She does seem thrilled about her birthday, even so.”

  Gertrude was holding Mairin’s hand to steady her as she clambered onto a wooden stool, so she’d be high enough to slice the cake. Mairin took the knife from Gertrude, then looked around until she saw Rose. “Come on. It’s time to cut the cake,” she said, a note of command in her voice.

  Rose and Charlotte obeyed. With intense care, Mairin sliced thirteen more or less equal pieces. “One is for Sister Agatha,” she said. To Rose, she said, “I want you to take the other extra one to Brother Wilhelm. Maybe it will cheer him up.”

  The children’s prattle didn’t diminish as they jostled one another for the best positions in line, but the three adults grew still. Gertrude wiped her eyes with the edge of her apron. As always, Agatha is right, Rose thought. It was a rare twelve-year-old who had such compassion. Perhaps Mairin would someday be a Shaker, and a gifted one indeed.

  As Mairin, with Gertrude’s help, slid each piece of cake onto a plate and handed it to the next child in line, Rose made her way to Gennie’s side.

  “You look more cheerful,” Rose said. “I do hope it isn’t murder that has raised your spirits.”

  Gennie chuckled. “I know it’s just terrible, but I suppose the excitement does distract me from my own problems. I’m awfully sorry about Brother Linus, though. He always seemed so kind.”

  “Yea, he was. Are you truly not sorry about Mrs. Dunmore?”

  “Oh, of course I am. No one should die like that. But she was a frightful woman. She was so bitter all the time, and she made everyone else suffer for it. I guess we know why now, don’t we?” Gennie glanced toward the children, half of whom were still waiting for their plates of cake. “Rose, do you want me to try to find out more about Mrs. Dunmore?”

  The eagerness in her voice sparked fear in Rose’s heart. “Nay, I’m sure Grady will do that as he builds a case against Wilhelm, and he has far more resources than we do.”

  “Then what shall I do? I want to help.”

  Rose thought fast. Telling Gennie to stay out of it was tantamount to a dare. It might be best to give her an assignment—one that sounded adventurous but wasn’t too risky. “After the party, I’m going to Languor to look into Mrs. Berg’s background. Has she said anything to you that might be helpful?”

  “Nothing that I can remember,” Gennie said, with regret. “Do you want me to—”

  “Nay, Gennie, please don’t search Mrs. Berg’s room.” Rose patted Gennie’s shoulder to soften the warning. “But if she says anything, pass it along. And there’s one more thing you could do for me, if you would.”

  “Anything.”

  “When she’s settled down from her party, ask Mairin to tell you every single place she has seen the ghost. Make her think it through night by night. We know she has followed the creature through buildings, but she’s afraid we’ll be angry with her, so she tells a little at a time. Convince her we won’t punish her and that she’s helping us by telling everything.”

  “Sure, but why? Do you think a ghost is killing people?”

  “At the moment, I haven’t any idea what’s going on, but this so-called ghost just happened to appear right when we opened our hostel. I’m betting there’s a connection. I want to know what it’s doing wandering around our buildings at night.”

  The last child was reaching for her slice of cake, so Rose and Gennie walked back toward the party. The noise level had declined now that the children concentrated on eating. The smallest two had frosting smudged faces, which Gertrude and Charlotte were attempting to wipe off with their aprons.

  “Gennie, one more thing,” Rose said, before they were close enough for Mairin to hear them. “Ask Mairin if she has seen the ghost in the last few days.”

  “You mean you think Mrs. Dunmore might have been—”

  “I have no evidence one way or another,” Rose said. “I haven’t heard any reports since Mrs. Dunmore’s death, so I just wondered.”

  “But why would she do such a thing?”

  “Well, think about it. You said yourself she seemed bitter, and she had good reason to hate the Shakers. This ghost has brought us nothing but problems—our village is overrun with people from the world hoping to catch sight of the ghost, so they were right on hand when the murders occurred, making everything more public and more complicated for us. Mrs. Dunmore might not have known how much trouble she would cause—surely she didn’t expect her own murder—but, if she was the ghost, she has certainly exacted revenge on us.” Rose didn’t add that she hoped Mrs. Dunmore had indeed played at haunting the village. It would be so much simpler that way.

  With Andrew off sleuthing in the community’s staid black Plymouth, Rose had been forced to borrow Gennie’s roadster. The car was smaller and showier than anything Rose had ever before driven, and she had to admit to a smidgen of guilty pleasure. Given the current situation, she was glad the car would make her less recognizable as a Shaker, at least while she drove down Languor streets. North Homage’s relations with its neighbors were generally peaceful, even friendly, except during periods like this—when hard times combined with fear, rumor, and suspicion.

  The dirt road from North Homage to the town of Languor got bumpier every spring. There was no money to maintain it or most of the other roads in rural, poverty-stricken Languor County. Rose felt the ruts even more in the smaller car. Yet the countryside exploded with vivid greens, the intense purple-pink of redbud trees, and the subtle white of dogwood flowers. In nature, there was no poverty.

  Only when she reached the outskirts of Languor, the poorest section of town, did Rose see the effects of interminable Depression. Each spring, the shacks looked shabbier and their inhabitants thinner. A few curious heads swiveled toward her as she drove through the shantytown area, but she sensed no antagonism. Perhaps they were now too hungry and dispirited to care.

  Rose stopped first outside the county courthouse, which housed the Languor County Sheriff’s Department. The courthouse had once been an elegant building, and would be again if its limestone façade ever got cleaned. She found a parking spot right at the bottom of the worn stone steps. Normally she would park a block or two away to enjoy the elm-tree-lined walk to the building and the chance to run into old friends from the world, but today she was in a hurry—and she was nervous about the town’s reaction to the murders at North Homage.

  Inside, the first-floor rotunda was dark, cool, and empty. She climbed the staircase to the second floor, where the Sheriff’s Department door was wedged open. Grady’s predecessor, Sheriff Brock, had kept the department as inaccessible as possible to anyone but his patrons and friends. Since Grady had become sheriff, the department had opened up and become responsive to all, earning Rose’s fervent gratitude.

  Still, thought Rose, if Grady can so easily conclude that Wilhelm would kill two people, then he doesn’t truly know us.

  With a surge of determination, Rose barged through the open door and nodded to Hank, who glanced up in surprise. She burst into Grady’s office without knocking.

  “I don’t care what you think,” she said. “I know Wilhelm is innocent, and I mean to prove it. I want to know all the evidence you’ve collected, and then I want to see Wilhelm.”

  Grady’s startled expression turned to amusement. “Whoa, you’re loaded for bear today. Sit down, Rose, please. Whether you believe me or not, I want you to be right. Okay now, you asked to know what evidence we’ve collected, and I’ll tell you. As you predicted, we found nothing in Wilhelm’s room to prove that Mina Dunmore had contacted him personally. However, in her room, we found this.” He held out a small leather-bound book. Rose took it.

  “As you can see,” Grady said, “it’s full of references to Wilhelm. The lady would have made a fine investigator. She’d uncovered j
ust where Wilhelm was and what he was doing every year back to nine years after he’d left her and her mother.”

  Rose skimmed the pages, which contained precise notes along with the rantings of a vengeful woman. The first few pages, though short on details, made it clear that Wilhelm had not gone directly from hearth and home to the Society. That was a problem. It looked like he’d simply deserted his family, roamed around for a number of years as if he hadn’t a care—or a responsibility—in the world, and then joined the Shakers. He did not, apparently, leave his wife and child to serve a higher purpose.

  “You are welcome to read it all,” Grady said, “but I can save you time by summarizing. Wilhelm took off in 1905, when little Wilhelmina was only seven years old. Wilhelm was twenty-nine—plenty old enough to assume adult responsibilities, I’d say. In 1917, he enlisted at the ripe old age of forty-one and served six months in the war. Most un-Shaker-like, I’m afraid. He was sent home, wounded and suffering from shell shock. He spent some time in a hospital in Lexington, then checked himself out and disappeared for almost a year. In the fall of 1918, he showed up at North Homage, wanting to become a Believer. Don’t y’all call that a ‘Winter Shaker’?”

  Rose skimmed through rest of the journal. According to this account, Wilhelm did indeed look like a bread-and-butter Shaker—one who arrives in the autumn, professing conversion to the Shaker faith, then leaves in the spring after using the Society for room and board. Yet many Shakers had lived less than admirable lives before finding their way to Mother Ann. These notes, assuming they were true, did not prove Wilhelm’s faith to be false. However, they might make him look suspicious to the world.

  “What else have you found?”

  Grady consulted some papers on his desk. “We have statements from several folks who’ve been spending time in North Homage recently.” He glanced up at Rose, who waved her hand impatiently. She knew full well what these witnesses had been doing in her village. “Anyway, several of them claim they saw Mina Dunmore enter the Ministry House shortly after Wilhelm on Saturday afternoon.” Rose was another witness, but she didn’t admit it. Grady took her silence as disbelief.

  “They described her perfectly—middle-aged woman, slightly stout, dressed in bright pink. That’s her, right?”

  Rose nodded.

  “Which puts them in the same building at the same time. And yet Wilhelm denies having met her. Why would he do that if he had nothing to hide?”

  “He might not have seen her in the Ministry House. Perhaps he was cleaning out his own retiring room with the door closed.”

  “Perhaps. To be honest, we don’t have any witnesses to a conversation between them. Still, the Ministry House isn’t a large building, and according to most everyone, Mrs. Dunmore barged in just about anywhere she pleased.”

  Rose said nothing. It was true, of course, that Mrs. Dunmore had seemed fearless when it came to intruding upon the Shakers’ lives, but Rose felt no need to add weight to Grady’s suspicions.

  “How did Mrs. Dunmore and Brother Linus die?” she asked.

  “Ah, now that’s interesting.” Grady tipped his chair back on two legs, making Rose anxious for his balance. Perhaps it was the strain of the past few days, but she had to stifle a giggle. She remembered stories of some of the first rocking chairs fashioned by the Shakers—in an effort to create an efficient design, the carpenter had made the curved bottom pieces shorter than usual, and Believers had routinely rocked themselves into a back flip.

  “Mina Dunmore was poisoned. There wasn’t a mark on her body. She was already dead when she was stuffed into that dyeing vat, as was Linus when his killer shoved him onto that shelf. But Linus was strangled. When we moved Linus’s body, we found a skein of a sort of brownish-colored yarn, like what was hanging around the room where we found Mina Dunmore. Doc Hanfield said it could have caused the bruises around Linus’s neck.”

  “Could Dr. Hanfield determine when Linus was killed?” Rose asked.

  “He said a day or two was as close as he could get. Rigor was complete, he said. We figure that Wilhelm killed them both early Sunday morning. Mina Dunmore’s death seemed planned. There was nothing unusual in the port bottle Gennie took from her room, but somehow Wilhelm got her to ingest poison—maybe he met with her in the Sisters’ Shop and offered her another drink. After he’d stowed her in the vat, he grabbed a skein of yarn and met with Linus in the root cellar. Or maybe he hadn’t intended to kill Linus; maybe Linus surprised him.”

  “Then why would he take the risk of carrying Linus into the South Family Dwelling House? There were more vats handy in the dyeing room.”

  Grady shrugged. “Heck, there could be lots of scenarios that make sense. Maybe Wilhelm convinced Linus he’d pay hush money if Linus would meet him a little later in the root cellar.”

  “Wilhelm had no money of his own.”

  “Gennie has told me something of Shaker history,” Grady said. “There have been occasions, haven’t there, when elders or trustees have absconded with Society funds?”

  Rose’s fingers cramped, and she realized she’d been clutching the sides of her chair. Grady’s speculations seemed so logical, but they made no sense when they were about Wilhelm and Linus. How could she convince him? She couldn’t, not without evidence.

  “Both murders would have taken some strength,” Grady continued, “and Wilhelm is plenty tough, even against a younger man.”

  “I’ll bet I could accomplish both those feats,” Rose said. “The shelf we found Linus on was quite low. Someone could have lifted his lower half onto it, then his upper half. It wouldn’t take excessive strength. And Mrs. Dunmore wasn’t really very stout; I could surely have tipped her into the vat.”

  “You’d have splashed green dye all over you, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yea, I suppose so. But if I were wearing a dark-colored Dorothy cloak, it probably wouldn’t show much once it had dried. You haven’t found such a cloak, have you?”

  “Nope, but it’s a good idea. I’ll send Hank over to look.”

  “What poison did the killer use?” Rose asked.

  Grady’s chair landed on all four legs with a clunk. “That’s the part that makes me so suspicious of Wilhelm. During the autopsy, Dr. Hanfield found some tiny bits of a plant, ground fine enough so Mrs. Dunmore could have ingested them in a glass of port. When we emptied that dyeing vat, we found some rags that might have been used to clean up after someone who’d been pretty sick.”

  “Poor woman,” Rose said.

  “Yeah, it couldn’t have been much fun.”

  “You said all this made you suspicious of Wilhelm. Why, just because of the plant?”

  “Dr. Hanfield called in a chemist he knows in Lexington. His best guess was she was poisoned with monkshood. Only place I know of where that’s grown is right here.”

  “It’s all over, if you know where to look,” Rose objected. “Besides, it’s too early to harvest monkshood.”

  “Yeah, but I checked with one of the brothers in your Medicinal Herb Shop—Howard, I think it was. Andrew was gone. Howard said they keep some dried monkshood leaves and roots in the shop, clearly labeled as poisonous.”

  “Anyone could have taken that.”

  “But only Wilhelm had a reason to. As elder, he can go where he pleases, when he pleases. Sorry, Rose, but it all adds up.”

  Fifteen

  BEFORE VISITING WILHELM IN HIS CELL, ROSE WANTED to start her investigation with at least one interview. Maybe she’d have something hopeful to report to Wilhelm. She drove through the center of town and parked half a street down from Winderley House, the most respectable of Languor’s boardinghouses, located just a block away from the town square.

  Winderley House had once been an elegant Victorian mansion, owned by the wealthiest family in the county. One Winderley still remained, a middle-aged spinster named Ida, but the family fortune had vanished even before the onset of the Depression. Ida had never lived anywhere but in that house, and she had no intention of
giving it up, so she’d turned it into a boardinghouse expressly for genteel persons in limited straits. Beatrice Berg claimed to have lived in the house for several months. Luckily, Rose knew and liked Ida, who often ordered eggs and woolen blankets from the Shakers.

  “I wondered if I’d be hearing from you one of these days,” Ida said, once Rose had explained the reason for her visit. “As a boarder, Beatrice was perhaps less refined than one might have hoped. Do come into the parlor. I have the kettle on for tea, and I’ve baked some currant scones.” As a child, Ida had traveled extensively in England, and the effect had never worn off. Despite limited funds, she somehow managed to obtain a steady supply of tea, sugar, and cream to keep the illusion alive. Rose knew better than to refuse.

  While Ida was in the kitchen preparing afternoon tea, Rose wandered around the formal parlor, letting the atmosphere quiet her mind. The furniture dated back to the previous century, but Ida had refinished and recovered in lighter hues to alleviate the oppressive effect of Victorian décor. A settee and two wing chairs of pale blue velvet clustered around a mahogany tea table covered with a white lace cloth. Andrew might do well to consult Ida about sprucing up the Shaker Hostel parlor—if it remained in operation long enough for him to do so.

  “Here we go, Rose. Now, you just settle down and sip some tea before we speak of unpleasantness.”

  Ida had made chamomile tea flavored with lemons—Rose could smell the apple-lemon scent as she took the offered cup. She treated herself to a spoonful of sugar in her tea and a scone, which felt warm, as if it had just come out of the oven. After all, she told herself, with all this sleuthing, she might easily miss the evening meal. For just a few moments, as she chewed the fresh scone and sipped her sweet fruity tea, Rose felt her tight shoulders relax. With a sigh, she put her empty cup and plate on the table and tackled the “unpleasantness.”