Dancing Dead

by Deborah Woodworth

  “Horace von Oswald? The name sounds familiar, but I can’t place him,” Terrence said, after expressing his surprised pleasure at hearing from her. Rose tried to keep her friendly greetings brief but sincere. “Funny, too—Birdhill is still quite small,” Terrence continued. “I know most everybody, even the Southern Baptists. Let me ask around and call you back tomorrow. Why do you want to know about him?”

  “Could I explain that tomorrow, as well?” The last thing she wanted to do was tell anyone, even a friend, that Wilhelm was sitting in jail accused of murdering two people. She doubted even Terrence could keep such a juicy story to himself. “You and I will catch up then, too,” she said.

  “I look forward to it,” Terrence said, a hint of concern in his voice.

  Just as she hung up, the bell rang for the evening meal. And rang and rang. It was the alarm bell, and it hadn’t rung like that since the Water House burned down. Rose sprinted down the Trustees’ Office steps and across the lawn, praying fervently, “Oh please don’t let there be another killing. This really is too much.”

  Believers were coming from all directions and converging on the Meetinghouse lawn, where the alarm bell stood. Sister Isabel, tiny and frantic, was yanking the bell with all her strength.

  “Isabel, what on earth—” Rose was panting so hard she couldn’t force out another word.

  “Thank heavens,” Isabel said. “I didn’t know where you were, and I had to find you fast. Come on.” She grabbed Rose’s hand and nearly jerked her arm out of her socket. “Elsa is at it again.”

  “Holy Father, Holy Mother Wisdom, we pray you, reveal the killer to us. Send us a sign, we beg you.” Sister Elsa Pike flung out her arms and began to spin, faster and faster. Her normal walk could shake a room, but when she danced, her feet seemed to hover above the floor. She had removed her apron so her loose, brown dress billowed out around her like a chestnut. She had claimed the middle of the Shaker Hostel parlor for her performance. The hostel guests had pulled the furniture out of her way and sunk into their seats looking dazed and a little dizzy.

  “Oh dear,” Rose said, under her breath. She considered her choices. If she stopped Elsa and dragged her off, it would announce to the world that she believed the sister to be a charlatan. Elsa certainly had a checkered history when it came to dancing worship, but it was unfair to assume the worst of her. Was it out of the question that Mother Ann might communicate with Elsa? As eldress, Rose could not let herself believe that Mother would find Elsa forever unworthy. On the other hand, Elsa was inclined to misinterpret messages, at times believing them to come from angels when in fact they came from her own hopes and ambitions. She might easily create havoc.

  Rose decided to let Elsa dance but keep a close watch on her. If the situation got dangerous, she would step in. Meanwhile, perhaps she could learn something by observing the guests’ reactions. The guilty party might just give himself or herself away. She motioned Isabel to take a chair facing the hostel guests, while Rose positioned herself so she could watch the audience’s faces yet step in quickly to subdue Elsa, if necessary.

  Elsa’s lips were moving, and Rose guessed she’d begun to speak in tongues. The hostel guests all appeared fascinated. No one betrayed any hint of guilt. Elsa stopped twirling and stood motionless, her arms straight out from her sides. Rose’s immediate and less than kind thought was that she was trying to regain her balance. Elsa’s arms dropped to her sides and stiffened, as did her whole body. She began to hop up and down like a wooden doll with springs for legs. Every few jumps, she lurched toward the hostel guests. After a minute or two, Rose realized she was pointing at the guests, one by one, with her entire body. Was she asking the heavens about each individual? Perhaps she was offering her body as an instrument, hoping to feel a surge of certainty when she pointed to the guilty one? She included Gennie in her ritual. Surely she couldn’t believe that Gennie had anything to do with these murders, could she? Rose took a step forward, ready to call a halt, trance or no trance.

  Elsa stopped of her own accord. She stood still, her eyes closed. She leaned her head one way, then another. Her face twitched, as if she might be listening to the voice of an invisible messenger. Her white indoor cap had come loose at the nape of her neck; one side hung down from her ear, revealing thin, gray hair pulled back from her face in a tight bun. Rose scanned the guests’ faces and saw Horace von Oswald smile. For the first time in her memory, Rose felt protective of Elsa. She wanted to retie Elsa’s cap and replace her apron. Most of all, she wanted to protect Elsa from Horace’s mockery.

  Elsa opened her eyes and announced, “I have heard the angels speak, and I know the truth. It was all of thee!” She swept her arm before them in a gesture that included all the guests, even Gennie. “Thy guilt is known to the Holy Father, and not even the intervention of Mother Ann can save thee from thy fate.” Whenever Elsa fell into a trance, her speech lost its coarseness and became cultured, even faintly British. This was one reason Rose often hesitated to declare her trances to be false.

  Horace chuckled, then threw his head back and shook with laughter. Smiles broke out among the audience. Even Gennie cracked a grin before raising her hand to cover it. Horace shook his head and took a deep breath to quiet his gasps of mirth. “I must hand it to you, Sister, that was a masterful performance,” he said. “Everything looked so authentic, just like the old days. You had us all gripping the edges of our seats. My goodness.” He again dissolved into laughter. He drew a handkerchief from his pants pocket to wipe beads of sweat from his forehead.

  The tension in the room had broken. Guests began chatting with one another and moving about. Elsa seemed oblivious to the loss of her audience. Once again, she closed her eyes and began spinning, this time slowly. The guests turned their backs to her but kept their distance. Only Gennie kept watching Elsa, as if she knew the show wasn’t over.

  Elsa raised her arms above her head, reaching for the heavens, and let out a cry like a wounded wolf. The effect was instantaneous. Conversation ceased. Heads swiveled back toward her. Elsa clenched her fists and pulled them downward. Her muscles strained and her jaw clenched; she seemed to be hauling a wild and struggling creature down to earth. She lowered her fists all the way to the floor, opened them as if releasing an invisible demon. With another cry, this time more like the bark of a dog, she leaped into the air and stomped the spot where she’d placed the unseen creature. Rose felt confused—she was familiar with the stomping movement, had done it herself a few times to symbolize stomping out sin. But what was this horrible thing Elsa had dragged down to earth? What was her dancing supposed to show?

  Elsa stomped over and over with such force that a vase on the fireplace mantel teetered and crashed to the floor. Elsa didn’t flinch. She kept stamping the ground, even though shards of glass punctured the soles of her soft summer shoes.

  “That’s enough, Elsa,” Rose cried, running toward her. “Stop this instant. You are hurting yourself.”

  Elsa ignored her. She hurtled herself at the offending but invisible creature as if she must destroy it even if it killed her. Saul Halvardson hurried over and reached toward Elsa.

  “Don’t touch her,” Rose said. “I’m sorry, I know you mean to help, but you must leave this to me. The rest of you,” she said, raising her voice, “please leave the room at once.” Her only hope of controlling Elsa was to deprive her of an audience. Isabel herded the guests toward the parlor door, and everyone was more than happy to comply. Within moments, only Rose and Gennie remained. Gennie closed the door. It didn’t make any difference. Elsa just kept right on stomping. Sweat rolled down the sides of her face, her indoor cap had fallen off, and blood dotted the floor.

  “Stop it, now!” Rose grabbed Elsa’s shoulder and bore down. Rose was strong and also tall, which gave her a small advantage. Gennie tried to help by clasping Elsa around the waist. But Elsa was in a spell that gave her unnatural power. She easily threw off Rose’s grasp and continued to stamp the floor, dragging Gennie behind
her like a weightless doll. Rose could think of nothing to do but wait her out. Surely she couldn’t last much longer. Gennie let go of her just in time to avoid getting slammed down on top of broken glass. The two women collapsed on the settee.

  While they waited, Rose pondered why Elsa might have come to the Shaker Hostel, trapped everyone in the parlor, and gone into an apparent trance. She suspected she knew the answer. Elsa was deeply committed to Elder Wilhelm—she believed as he did, followed his instructions over Rose’s, and always went to him for guidance. This episode was, more than likely, Elsa’s way of saving Wilhelm. In the past, Elsa’s so-called trances always seemed to benefit Elsa herself—in particular, they enhanced her importance in Wilhelm’s eyes. Perhaps that explained the unusual intensity of her trance; this time it was life or death—Wilhelm’s. For the same reasons, Rose had to admit that the trance might be real. Perhaps angelic visits were more likely when the recipient was acting for the welfare of another.

  Elsa leaped and barked for another five minutes or so, until Rose felt ready to drop from the exhaustion of watching. Then the strength seemed to leave Elsa’s legs, and she slipped to the floor. She lay still, breathing rapidly, her face flushed and damp with sweat. Rose knelt beside her.

  “Elsa? Are you back among us?”

  Elsa groaned and pulled her knees up against her chest. She opened eyes brimming with tears. “My feet,” she whispered. “What’s wrong with my feet?”

  “You stepped on broken glass. Don’t try to stand up. We’ll get Josie over here to wrap your feet, and we’ll use the hostel car to take you back to the dwelling house.” Rose scanned the walls and saw no broom to sweep away the glass. Plenty of empty hooks, but no broom. “Gennie, could you find something to clean up this mess with?”

  Gennie reappeared with a broom and dustpan and soon had cleared an area so Elsa could sit up.

  “Elsa, try to remember—what were you told in your trance?” Rose knew she’d learn nothing if she expressed doubt about the truth of Elsa’s experience. Indeed, it seemed a truer trance than Elsa had ever displayed before.

  “What’re you talkin’ about? What happened to my feet?” She pulled off her shoes.

  “Please, Elsa, I know your feet hurt, but try to concentrate. You were in a trance. You listened to angels, you said, who told you that all the hostel guests were responsible for the killings we’ve had here. Then you pulled something down from the sky and stomped on it. What did all that mean? It’s important. You could help a great deal.” She looked into Elsa’s confused eyes. “You might help Wilhelm greatly if you could just remember.”

  Elsa’s eyes took on a familiar cunning glint. Rose could only pray that she found the truth in her memory before she began making up stories just to help Wilhelm. “I’m mighty distracted when I have a trance,” Elsa said. “I usually figure the folks around me’ll remember better’n me what I said.”

  “Well, most of what you said was incomprehensible,” Rose said.

  “To ordinary ears, anyway.” Elsa grasped one of her feet and turned it over to inspect the sole. She grimaced and laid it back on the floor, apparently hoping it would hurt less if she didn’t see it. “Well, let me think a spell. Sometimes it comes back to me in pieces.” Rose sat back on her heels and waited. “I don’t rightly remember who all was talkin’ to me, but it seems like there was a whole passel of angels flyin’ around. They was speakin’ different languages, but I could understand them.” Her tone had turned haughty, but Rose chose not to suggest humility just then. Later, definitely.

  “I do remember them sayin’ how everyone at this hostel is heavy with guilt. ‘Heavy with guilt’—that’s what they said exact.” Elsa nodded to herself. Her cap was long gone and strands of straight damp hair hung like gray strings around her face.

  “But the angels didn’t say that all of the guests had committed murder?” Rose asked.

  “Nay,” Elsa said, “Nay, they didn’t.” She dragged herself across the floor toward the settee. “My back hurts. This here’s no place to have a trance, that’s for sure.” Rose helped her raise herself onto the settee. Gennie made a quick visit to the kitchen and found a clean rag to spread under Elsa’s feet. The soft soles of her shoes had absorbed most of the pressure of the broken glass, but some pieces had cut through to her skin. Elsa lifted her feet up onto the settee and lay back against the arm. She looked about to drift off to sleep.

  Rose pulled up a delicate chair with a round padded seat, embroidered in bright colors. “Elsa, do you remember, in your dance, leaning toward each hostel guest, one by one?”

  “Yea, reckon I do. Seems like one of the voices told me to do that so’s I could tell what was in their souls.” She shook her head and noticed the hair swing in front of her face. “Where’s my cap? Get me my cap, it’s over there,” she said. Rose bent to retrieve the cap, hoping she hadn’t given Elsa time to make up a dramatic lie.

  “I got a bad feeling from most of ’em. But that man, though, he was the worst—the fat one with the pasty face. Never did a lick of work in his life, I’ll bet.”

  “You mean Horace von Oswald?”

  “Don’t know his name, don’t want to. He’s a demon in human form. Well, near human, anyways. Where’s Josie? My feet are killin’ me.”

  “Is there anything else you remember, especially anything about the individual guests?”

  Elsa shrugged. “They ain’t what they seem. Not a one of ’em. Exceptin’ Gennie, she was okay.”

  “Why were you stomping the floor? What did you pull down from the heavens?”

  Elsa’s hazel eyes, which could burn with zealotry, looked tired and faded. “Don’t remember,” she said, with obvious regret. “Maybe it’ll come to me in a dream.”

  She pulled herself up straighter against the side of the settee. “I could always try again,” she said. “The angels’ll understand. Maybe Mother will come next time—to help Wilhelm.”

  Rose said nothing. She had no intention of encouraging another display, yet . . . For the first time, she found herself believing in one of Elsa’s trances. Elsa couldn’t know much, if anything, about these people, yet her conclusion that none of them was what he or she seemed matched the information Rose had gathered so far. The notion that they were all somehow guilty—if not of murder, then of something else—was intriguing. On the other hand, Elsa’s information, if it qualified as information, didn’t get them much further. Rose still had to sort out who among the guests had killed two people, and she didn’t have much time to do it.

  Seventeen

  A CIRCLE OF LIGHT POOLED ON ROSE’S RETIRING ROOM desk, turning the pine a mellow gold. Rose felt immense gratitude that, simple as their lives were, the Shakers never shunned a useful new invention—they’d been the first in the entire county to install electricity, and it had given them many more hours to finish their work. As a consequence, they had more time for worship. Having attended the evening worship service downstairs in the large meeting room, Rose felt free to organize her jumbled thoughts on paper.

  She sipped the warm, fragrant tea Sister Josie, bless her, had brought to her room. Josie had tended to Elsa’s wounded feet and put her to sleep with some peppermint-valerian tea. Knowing her eldress would be at her desk for some time, trying to sort out the details of the past few days, Josie had brewed a pot of Rose’s favorite rose hip and lemon balm tea to “help her think.” For energy, she’d added a dollop of honey from the Society’s own hives.

  Rose scribbled nonstop for twenty minutes, listing each hostel guest, followed by what she knew about him or her. To be fair, she’d included Brothers Wilhelm and Linus, as well as the reputed ghost, Sarina Hastings. She sat back to read her notes. Interesting patterns jumped out at her, as did the holes in her knowledge. Growing excited, she wrote down her questions. She took out a fresh sheet of paper and began again, this time listing what she knew and what she needed to know. When she’d finished, she went back to the top of her list and considered ways to get the informat
ion she needed. There was no time like the present.

  She’d begun with the first victim, Mina Dunmore. She had written : We have evidence she was Wilhelm’s daughter and might have come to the Shaker Hostel to blackmail the father who abandoned her. Was she the “ghost”; was this disguise part of a plan to punish Wilhelm and the Shakers? Who was the man in her room the night she died? Did she have previous or hidden relationships with anyone else staying at the hostel?

  Next she’d listed Horace von Oswald. He was very eager to stay in the Shaker Hostel, he knows a bit about the Shakers, and he dislikes us. So he came here with a distinct purpose in mind—perhaps to gather information about us, or to hurt or embarrass us in some way. He has copies of stories about our “ghost,” which he takes care to hide. Are these stories part of a plan? Find out—What has he done to earn a living? Does he have a previous connection with the Shakers? Or with Mrs. Dunmore?

  As an afterthought, she turned the paper sideways and added a question to Horace’s segment. Why did Elsa claim that Horace was particularly evil, compared to the others? Did the angels speak, or does Elsa know something she isn’t revealing?

  Daisy Prescott was a cipher in many ways, but Rose had at least some information. She apparently worked as a secretary. She had given Andrew a phone number for one employer—probably not her most recent—rather than for her home or a family member. Why?

  Saul Halvardson. He lied about seeing the advertisement for our hostel in the Cleveland paper. Did he lie about his sales route, as well? He said it went north; Andrew thought he remembered it went south. What is his purpose in staying here? Did he lie about hearing a man in Mrs. Dunmore’s room? Where does he get the money to be so generous?

  Beatrice Berg had several strikes against her, yet her past might have nothing to do with the current situation. If she murdered her husband, and it looks likely that she did, then she has experience with poisoning, which ties her to Mrs. Dunmore’s death and to the Languor County Courier story in which Sarina Hastings was reported to have been poisoned. Is this just coincidence, is it evidence, or does someone else know about Beatrice’s history and is using it to cast suspicion on her? She claims to have seen the (plump) ghost in the hostel, and she told the story of the ghost looking for jewels. She had a spare master key made, which she used to search Horace’s room. Is she just a snoop? A blackmailer? Did she get her story from Horace, or did he get it from her?