Dancing Dead

by Deborah Woodworth

  “Can you come over to the library? Right now? I need your help.”

  Gennie arrived so fast, Rose suspected she’d galloped. In flat shoes and a comfortably loose light blue dress with two long pleats down the front of the skirt, she looked fresh and ready for anything. Rose put aside her qualms. Gennie was a grown woman; it was time to stop treating her like a half child. Besides, Rose needed the help of someone who could mix more easily with the world’s people.

  Rose went over all her notes with Gennie, then sat back while Gennie went through them again.

  “Looks like you need some help with Daisy,” Gennie said, handing the pages back to Rose. “What can I do? Shall I search her room?”

  “Nay, I don’t think we’ll have to do that. We have a source of information about the contents of everyone’s rooms, if we handle her carefully.”

  “Mrs. Berg!”

  “Precisely. I believe we have enough information about her to throw her into a tizzy. She’ll be only too glad to cast suspicion on everyone else in the hostel.”

  “So what do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to tell Mrs. Berg to meet me here. Don’t alert any of the other guests. Then stay in the hostel and try to keep anyone from slipping away to wander around the village. If someone does leave, follow him or her—at a discreet distance, of course. I don’t want anyone to know I’m talking to Mrs. Berg. I’m very afraid the killer will become suspicious and run.”

  Gennie’s small face puckered. “You know, there’s something I don’t understand. If one of the hostel guests is the killer, why hasn’t he or she left already?”

  “I can think of a couple of reasons,” Rose said. “The other guests are staying, and the killer can’t be the only one to leave—it would look suspicious. But I think the more important reason is that the killer still hasn’t fulfilled his or her purpose. The killings might be part of the plan, or they might have become necessary because Mrs. Dunmore and Brother Linus learned too much.”

  “Which would put Mrs. Berg in danger.”

  “It would put everyone in danger.”

  Rose was not one to sit on her hands. While she waited for Mrs. Berg to show up, she closed the library door and made a series of brief phone calls to newspapers in and around the Lexington area. She checked her notes again and decided she needed more information about the self-effacing Daisy Prescott. She placed another call to the number Daisy had given when she’d moved into the hostel. This time she asked to speak to the lady of the house, Mrs. Carswell Houghton.

  “Mrs. Houghton, I have rather a strange question to ask you,” Rose said, after she’d explained who she was.

  “I don’t mind strange,” Mrs. Houghton said, “as long as it’s brief.”

  “Of course.” This time, rather than using the name Daisy Prescott, Rose described her in detail.

  “The more you say about the woman,” said Mrs. Houghton, “the more she sounds like that person our son was engaged to briefly five or six years ago. The hair was different—black, as I remember, though I never thought it was her natural color. But she carried herself just as you describe. At first we thought she was a lovely girl. She was polite, well-spoken, well-dressed. She seemed to hail from the right part of society, and she certainly presented herself as well-to-do. We must be careful, you know. All sorts of unsuitable women have pursued our son simply to get their hands on our money.”

  Mrs. Houghton didn’t seem to require any answering comments, so Rose remained silent.

  “I’m afraid I’ve forgotten her last name—there have been so many women, you know—but I seem to remember her first name was Clarissa or something like that. When they announced their engagement, my husband, Mr. Houghton, had the girl’s background investigated. Well, you can imagine our shock when we discovered she was nothing but an actress. She wasn’t wealthy and well-born at all; she was just playing a part. We got rid of her quickly, of course. Haven’t heard a word about her since then. Is that all? I’m in rather a hurry.”

  “Just one more question. Your butler mentioned your husband has a secretary named Daisy Prescott.”

  “Off and on, when he requires her services. He hasn’t needed her for a while, though. I believe she keeps busy with other clients.”

  “How long has she worked for your husband?”

  “Oh, at least ten years,” Mrs. Houghton said. Impatience showed in her voice.

  “What does she look like?”

  “Tall, thin, lightish hair. She always wears her hair pulled back in a practical style, most appropriate for her station. Is that all?”

  “That’s very helpful,” Rose said. “Thank you so much for your time.”

  Mrs. Houghton broke the connection without any further niceties.

  So, thought Rose, our Daisy might easily have known the real Daisy Prescott. Perhaps they’d become friends. But why assume her identity?

  Beatrice Berg still hadn’t arrived, and Rose suspected she was dawdling out of innate distrust. Rose had just begun to rearrange a few books on the new library shelves when the telephone rang. Worrying that Mrs. Berg might be getting ready to flee, she grabbed the phone. To her delight, the operator put through a call from Brother Andrew.

  “How good to hear your voice, Andrew.”

  “Yours, too. I have interesting news about Saul Halvardson. May I speak freely now?”

  “Yea, but I might have to cut you off. I’m expecting Mrs. Berg to drop by. I have some tough questions to ask her.”

  “Wish I could be there. I’ll be brief. Saul Halvardson lied to you about his route. What he told me originally was the truth. Perhaps he thought of us as so unworldly he had no need to lie—until he met you, that is. He told you he traveled north, all the way to Cleveland, but according to several of our customers, he had a regular southern route, down to Lexington, at least. That’s as far as I’ve checked—or need to. Several folks told me the same story. Saul had a habit of romancing the ladies to whom he sold lingerie.”

  Knowing the world all too well, neither Andrew nor Rose was embarrassed or shocked by the topic of conversation. So neither wasted time on cries of disapproval.

  “Finally he romanced one woman too many. He left a young woman with child. About a month ago, the woman confessed everything to her husband, including the name of the child’s father. The husband gathered together a band of friends, and they took off to find Saul and punish him. There was talk of a lynching. Saul disappeared right around the time our advertisement appeared in the Lexington paper. He reappeared at our hostel, apparently thinking no one would look for him there.”

  “I’m a little surprised he used his own name.”

  “From what I’ve heard about Saul, he greatly exaggerates his own abilities. He was often heard to say that he’d always been blessed with ‘the most wonderful luck,’ so it might not occur to him to question the wisdom of any plan that might pop into his head.”

  Rose heard a belligerent knocking on the library door. “I must hang up now,” she said.

  “I understand. At the risk of sounding like Saul, good luck with Mrs. Berg. I’ll see you very soon.”

  “Would you close the door behind you, Mrs. Berg? It seems a bit drafty today.”

  “I got lunch to get ready, can’t set around jawin’.” Beatrice Berg edged into the library and stood halfway between the door and the desk. Rose had quickly ordered a pot of spearmint tea and requested a few of the cinnamon cakes Gertrude had whipped up as a treat for the children. Mrs. Berg shifted her weight from foot to foot as if she couldn’t decide between the safety of the hallway and the allure of those cinnamon cakes.

  “Thank you for taking time from your busy schedule,” Rose said. “This won’t take long. Have some tea and a cake.” She used her firmest eldress voice, so Mrs. Berg would assume she didn’t really have a choice.

  “That tea—spearmint, ain’t it? My gram used to collect spearmint from the hills and make up tea for us chillen when we took sick. She used to put a hea
p of molasses in it, said it’d give us strength.”

  “Will sugar do?”

  “Reckon it’ll have to.” Having made her decision not to bolt, Mrs. Berg wasted no more time. She stirred three heaping teaspoons of sugar into her tea, dipped a cinnamon cake in it, and ate crouched over the cup so the liquid would catch the crumbs. Rose watched quietly as she gobbled up the cake, then drained the cup.

  “More?” Without waiting for an answer, Rose filled Mrs. Berg’s cup and offered the plate of cakes.

  With no apparent diminution of appetite, Mrs. Berg began the process again. As she chewed her second bite, Rose spoke. “It has come to my attention,” she said, “that you have been less than open with us about your background. Because of that, and given the recent tragedies in our hostel, I have become increasingly alarmed.”

  Every muscle in Beatrice Berg’s body froze. Her stare held more surprise than cunning, which had been Rose’s aim.

  “So this is what we will do—first, I want the truth, all of it. I know already that you lied about where you lived before coming here. You never owned a home near the center of Languor. Before living in Winderley House, you lived near Hazard, Kentucky. Your husband died of poisoning, which you very probably administered. He was a violent man, but he beat you in secret, and he gave away money that should have been yours. So you killed him.”

  Mrs. Berg opened a mouth still full of partially chewed cinnamon cake. “That’s a lie,” she said. A few crumbs spilled out into the teacup. She swallowed quickly. “I never poisoned him, never.”

  “The evidence seems clear,” Rose said. She had been trained all her life not to lie, so she chose her words carefully. In fact, the evidence did seem clear—just not conclusive.

  “Who you been talkin’ to? It’s that woman, ain’t it? I heard Brother Andrew left all of a sudden—you sent him down to check on me, didn’t you? He talked to that woman, didn’t he? Well, she’s lyin’. She thought he’d leave me and she could get ahold of his money, but—”

  “But you killed him first.” Rose said it as a statement, though she knew it was a guess. If she were wrong, she could lose her temporary advantage.

  Mrs. Berg’s gaze jumped around the room, landed for a split second on Rose, then jerked away. But not before Rose saw the fear in her eyes. Her guess had been right. Mrs. Berg would never admit to killing her husband, but she had done so all the same.

  “If I kilt him, how come I ain’t in jail?” Mrs. Berg asked. “Answer me that one.”

  Rose poured herself a cup of tea and took several sips, to give herself time. She had driven tough bargains with businessmen from the world, stood her ground against Wilhelm, convinced recalcitrant sisters to confess, even tracked down criminals before. But she had never used her training and skills to manipulate a liar and killer into trading information for silence. It was wrong in so many ways, yet she saw no other way to get what she needed, as quickly as she needed it. Wilhelm’s life hung in the balance, and perhaps other lives, as well.

  “I know, too, that you had a second hostel master key made, so you could search the other guests’ rooms. You made it obvious you left the original key in your apron pocket. That way, everyone would know where it was. If the others suspected their belongings had been gone through, you could say the key was there for anyone to borrow when you weren’t around. It also means that if we asked you to leave at some point, you could sneak back and get into all the rooms. Were you just thinking ahead, or did you have a plan in mind? Did you think you might leave, then come back and kill Mrs. Dunmore and Brother Linus?” Rose knew she was on shaky ground, since she had no evidence to indicate Mrs. Berg had a motive for the killings, but one more hard push might loosen the woman’s tongue.

  “I never—that’s a damn lie. All right, I did make a key. But I never kilt nobody.” She flapped her hand at Rose as if to dismiss the importance of the whole discussion. “It’s just a game, that’s all. I’m right curious, always have been. ’Specially when folks is uppity—that type usually’s got a heap of secrets.”

  “And knowing their secrets gives you power over them.” Rose was starting to feel tired and a little sick. More than ever, she was deeply grateful to be a Believer. Believers were fully human, of course, and therefore capable of every evil, but they were blessed with Mother Ann’s guidance and the Shaker way of life to show them the path of goodness. Mrs. Berg was of the world—the worst of the world. Mrs. Berg began to eat again, more slowly, and Rose knew she hadn’t much time to press her advantage.

  “I should call Sheriff O’Neal right away,” Rose said. Mrs. Berg watched her warily. “But I will not, on one condition.”

  “What?” She held the cake in front of her mouth but stopped eating.

  “You must tell me everything you have discovered about your fellow guests, every little detail.”

  Mrs. Berg’s eyes narrowed. “Oh yeah? And you a Shaker and all. Aren’t you supposed to be against killin’ and gossip and all that?” She put down her unfinished cake and leaned back in her chair. “You must want that information real bad. Mind you, I ain’t admitting nothin’, but seems to me, you want this bad enough, you should give me a whole lot more. I want to get out of here, home free, no callin’ the police after me, and I want some money, too—enough to take care of myself for the rest of my life.”

  Rose might be new at this type of negotiation, but she wasn’t naïve to the ways of the world. She’d anticipated that the wily Mrs. Berg might try to raise the stakes. “Perhaps you are right,” she said. “Violating my beliefs is too high a price to pay. I’ll call the sheriff right now.” She stood quickly and walked to the phone. Picking up the receiver, she turned her back on Mrs. Berg and spoke clearly into the horn.

  “Ring the Languor County Sheriff’s Office, please.”

  “Wait.” As Mrs. Berg stood, her chair scraped back and fell over. She laughed nervously. “Don’t pay me no mind, I was just joshin’ you. Can’t blame me for that.”

  Without replacing the receiver, Rose turned to look at her.

  “Hang that thing up. I’ll do like you asked.” She looked genuinely frightened. Rose had won, but she did not feel elated. She prayed silently and very hard for forgiveness, for guidance, and for the eventual arrest of Beatrice Berg for murdering her husband. Rose knew she had no firm proof of that murder, but she knew in her bones it had happened, or Mrs. Berg would not now be so willing to talk.

  “All right,” Rose said. She replaced the receiver. “Pick up your chair and sit down again, then we’ll talk.” She kept her voice firm, edged with impatience, to maintain control of the situation. When they were seated again, Rose said, “Begin with Horace von Oswald. What do you know about him?”

  Mrs. Berg shook her head. “Not much. He’s a mean one—I wanted to know why, that’s all.” Her glance darted to Rose and down to the floor. Rose did not reply. “Writ a lot, he did, but he tore the pages into little bitty pieces, so’s I couldn’t read even a word when I cleaned up his room. Every now and again, he’d take the car away without askin’ the rest of us, till Daisy took him to task. So then he’d offer rides to us, and sometimes we’d go with him.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “Don’t know. He’d drop us off where we asked, then he’d drive off to somewheres and come back for us later. Sometimes we had to wait a spell.” She crunched her iron-gray curls with one hand. “Knew lots about the Shakers. All that about y’all being against killin’? I learnt it from him. He told us about how y’all don’t have babes or famblies like normal folks, and you let the women be in charge just like the menfolk. He said y’all go crazy when you dance, like that Sister Elsa did, and then you see ghosts.” Mrs. Berg now seemed to have forgotten her fear.

  “What exactly did Mr. von Oswald say about ghosts?” Rose asked.

  “Just that they was real to y’all, even if we couldn’t see ’em, and maybe they was really real.”

  Rose was surprised. She’d expected Horace to make fun of the Shake
rs, the dancing worship and trances. “I heard that you told a story last Saturday evening about the ghost of a young sister who searches for some jewels.”

  “Yeah?” The guarded look returned to Mrs. Berg’s eyes.

  “Where did you get that story? Was it from Horace von Oswald?”

  “No, he never told that story.”

  “You didn’t read it in his room?”

  “Told you. He tore everything up in little pieces. Waren’t nothin’ to read.”

  So Mrs. Berg hadn’t found Horace’s hiding place under his bed. “Then where did you get that story?”

  “It was in a newspaper,” Mrs. Berg said. She picked up her cup and began to sip with intense concentration.

  Rose realized that Mrs. Berg wanted to keep as much information to herself as she could manage. More than likely, she still had hopes she could use some of it for her own benefit. “What newspaper?” Rose asked.

  “Don’t remember. It was just some newspaper story, what does it matter?”

  “It surprises me that no one in North Homage has seen it. Since you came here from Winderley House, in Languor, how did you see a paper no one else has seen?”

  Mrs. Berg’s shoulders dropped. “Oh, all right. I got a cousin in Owensboro. The story showed up in the paper there, and she wrote and told me about it.”

  “I see. Let’s go on then. What have you learned from Daisy Prescott’s room?”

  Mrs. Berg grinned. “She tries to hide things behind her undies in that little cupboard in the wall. If she wanted to hide things, she should’ve stayed somewheres else.”

  “What else did you find there?”

  “A whole passel of stuff, like a carved wood box, prettiest thing I ever did see. Inside she had paint for her face and a spare set of spectacles and so on. Funny thing, though—those spectacles, I’d swear they was clear glass. Nothin’ got fuzzy when I looked through ’em. Ain’t that what’s supposed to happen?”

  “Perhaps her eyes need only a little correction,” Rose said. Mrs. Berg was cunning; if she hadn’t already figured out that Daisy Prescott was playing a role, it was best not to encourage her.