Dancing Dead

by Deborah Woodworth

  “That little girl thinks you are her guardian angel.”

  Clarissa let out a belly laugh. Her eyes closed momentarily, and Rose leaped toward the closed door. She’d grabbed the handle when a slender but surprisingly strong arm encircled her waist and pulled her back into the room.

  “This has been fun,” Clarissa said. “It isn’t often I get to talk about my work.” She said no more, but Rose knew what came next. Clarissa spun her around and held the point of the tailor’s shears against her stomach.

  Rose heard what sounded like a faint shout—outside, she thought.

  “The time should be right,” Clarissa said. She flipped on the lights. “Come along.” She grabbed Rose’s arm and dragged her toward the south window. Still holding tight, she leaned over the side of the worktable and looked out at the grounds below.

  “Perfect,” she said. “Take off your clothes.”

  “Why you clever little thing, you.” Betty’s voice came from somewhere in back of Gennie. “You wanted the ghost all to yourself, didn’t you? Well, we found you out. Come on Arlin, over here,” she called. “Y’all come on this way.” A group of nine or ten materialized from the darkness and sprinted toward the Herb House.

  “So,” Betty said, “she’s up there, is she? Was you gonna go in there, try and see her up close?”

  “Well, I—”

  “That’s right dangerous, my girl. You stay here. Arlin, make sure this girl don’t go off on her own. Look! There she is, up on the second floor.”

  Betty pointed toward the south-facing window of the herb drying room. A bobbing light appeared, but that was all. The newcomers stared upward. Gennie spun around at a slight rustling in the grass behind her; more folks were approaching, at least ten of them. At this rate, she’d never manage to get into the Herb House. As the new group approached, she realized they were not of the world. They were Shaker sisters. She recognized Sister Isabel leading the group, her small figure plunging through the grass with fierce determination. Another group appeared just behind the sisters—the brethren had come, as well. Gennie looked in vain for Andrew or Grady, but surely the rest of the village had arrived. They spread out across the south lawn and seemed to be waiting for instructions.

  A racket started up behind them, and Gennie saw a lovely sight—a big dark car destroying the grass as it bounced toward them. Grady was at the wheel, with Bar beside him. Scrunched in the backseat were two more figures, probably Hank and Brother Andrew.

  “Stay back,” Grady yelled. “Let us through.” Grady and his officers pushed through to the front of the crowd just as the light flashed on in the drying room above them. All eyes watched the empty window. The Shakers, who believed their eldress was trapped inside with a killer, began to pray out loud. Catching their fear, the visitors from the world joined in.

  “Now get up on the table,” Clarissa ordered Rose. “Go ahead, do it.”

  Rose lifted herself onto the large worktable and waited. Movement was awkward in the long Shaker cloak. Beneath the cloak, she wore only her plain white cotton petticoat and underthings. Her hair hung loose inside the hood. Clarissa had slipped into Rose’s work dress and covered her hair with the white indoor cap. She’d be able to get away easily. In the dark, no one would think twice about a Shaker sister walking across the village.

  “Stand up,” Clarissa ordered. “Good. Now face the window.”

  Rose looked down on the south lawn, where a large crowd had gathered. She couldn’t see the faces clearly, but they all seemed to be staring up at her. Three figures stood in front, pointing their arms up toward her. Something glinted in the moonlight, something in the hand of one of the figures in front. Even without seeing it clearly, Rose knew what it was. A gun. Three guns pointed straight at her. And she was dressed exactly like Clarissa—the killer ghost that Andrew would have told them about by now.

  “Dance,” Clarissa said.

  Rose didn’t move. She felt the cold, sharp point of the shears poke into her ankle, just below the cloak.

  “You see, it’s like this,” Clarissa said. Her voice was calm, reasonable, as if she were simply explaining a dilemma to a friend. Rose’s skin chilled despite the heavy cloak. The woman had no conscience. She couldn’t be ruffled. Any setback was merely a problem to be solved. “I’ve killed two people,” she said. “I have nothing to lose by killing you, too.” With her weapon against Rose’s skin, Clarissa craned her neck to look out the window. “Good, everyone is in place. This will work perfectly. One of those nice policemen will shoot you, thinking he is saving an innocent Shaker. Then they’ll come up here and find you. All those people will assume that you were this ghost all along. Won’t that be lovely? It’s the perfect solution. Now, dance.”

  “Why should I, if you are going to kill me anyway?”

  This time the point pierced the skin of Rose’s ankle. She tensed against the pain but didn’t move.

  “Because if you don’t dance, I’ll still kill you, make it look like a suicide, and then I’ll make time to find out where that cute but interfering young friend of yours lives when she isn’t at your hostel. Do you understand?”

  Rose stepped forward, away from the point of the shears. She bowed toward the window. She bowed to the side.

  “That’s right,” Clarissa said. “Good girl.”

  Rose began to twirl around, slowly at first, then faster. As she spun she caught sight of Clarissa watching her with a smug smile. Her injured foot screamed at this new insult, but she steeled herself to ignore the pain. It was about to get worse. She hadn’t been shot yet, and she was less convinced than Clarissa that Grady and his men really would shoot at her, but she knew there wasn’t much time. If no one shot her, Clarissa would simply stab her and make it look like suicide. She spun faster.

  She stopped spinning with a suddenness that clearly startled Clarissa. Before she got jabbed with the shears again, Rose stiffened her entire body and jumped up and down, rattling the strong table. Clarissa held her arm straight out and pointed the shears at Rose, ready for an attack. Still jumping, Rose turned back to the window. She barked like a dog. She didn’t dare sweep back her hood to show her long, thick curls. Instead, she stretched her stiff arms straight out and waved them up and down, as if she were doing a jumping jack. The cloak swung wide open. She glanced down at the crowd and saw something that gave her hope. Now only two men held weapons aloft. The third was conferring with a tiny individual who had to be Gennie.

  Rose’s foot wasn’t going to take much more. She lowered her arms, pulled the cloak close again, and jumped around a half circle, so that she faced Clarissa.

  “Okay, that’s enough, get down now.” Clarissa said. “If those silly policemen won’t do their part, I’ll have to take care of you myself.”

  Rose barked louder and began to spring up and down.

  “I said get down.” For the first time, Clarissa’s voice showed irritation.

  Rose barked louder still.

  Clarissa lunged for her. With all her strength, Rose leaped sideways, cleared the table, and smacked down on the floor. Shock waves pulsed up her legs. Her injured foot felt as if she’d landed on a razor. She crumpled into a ball on the floor and rolled under the worktable. She kept rolling, aware that Clarissa had dropped to her knees and was reaching for her under the table. She missed. Rose rolled out the other end and struggled to her feet. Clarissa was caught in an awkward position, half under the table. While she was righting herself, Rose ran for the door and flung it open. With a hasty but heartfelt prayer of gratitude, Rose jumped aside as Grady burst into the room, followed by officers Hank and Bar.

  Rose hadn’t the strength or the heart to watch as the officers handcuffed Clarissa. She limped downstairs to find Gennie standing at the open front door, her arms outstretched. Josie was right behind her. Each took an arm and kept her from crumpling in the grass.

  “Come along now, Sister,” Josie said. “That’s quite enough for one night.”

  Twenty-three
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br />   “ROSE, I KNOW YOU’RE REALLY TIRED,” GENNIE SAID, “but we’ve got to find Mairin. I think that woman got hold of her and maybe hurt her. Can you think where she might be?”

  Josie had run on ahead to the Infirmary to prepare a bed for Rose. Supported by Lottie and Frieda, strong young sisters, Rose had relaxed to a state of semiconsciousness, from which Gennie had dragged her back. “What are you talking about, Gennie? I was in the Herb House almost the whole time. When would Clarissa have had time to kidnap Mairin?”

  “I watched Mairin walk right in the same direction as the ghost—I mean, Clarissa. They must have seen each other.”

  Rose moaned. “It never occurred to me . . . We’ve got to go back to the Herb House.”

  “Nay, Sister, you’re in no condition,” insisted Lottie. “We’re almost to the Infirmary. When we get you inside, we’ll call the brethren to go search for Mairin.” With a whimper of impatience, Gennie held the Infirmary door open for the sisters.

  Josie bustled into the waiting room. “I’ve got a bed all ready for you, Rose. Bring her along, Sisters.”

  “Wait,” Rose commanded. “Gennie, tell Josie what you told me.”

  After Gennie’s intense explanation, Josie shocked everyone by chortling. “My goodness, you two have had far too much excitement lately. You are expecting the worst.”

  “No, listen, Josie—”

  “Come along now, follow me.” Josie led the group toward the sickrooms that lined a long hallway.

  “But Josie—”

  “There,” Josie whispered as she stopped at the doorway of a sickroom. “Have you ever seen anything so precious?”

  Gennie and the sisters clustered in the doorway. Inside the room, an adult-sized cradle bed held a small bundle. Mairin slept curled on her side, her face warm and soft against the white pillow. One arm lay outside the covers, curved around a tiny ball of calico fur.

  “Angel wasn’t hungry for her supper, so Mairin was afraid she was sick,” Josie said quietly. “Mairin stayed with her for hours, and when Angel still seemed listless, she came to me for help. It was just a hairball, but Mairin couldn’t know that. When I’d gotten Angel feeling better, I put them both to bed. And now, Rose, you are going to bed, as well, if I have to carry you myself.”

  “Believe me, I’m more than ready,” Rose said, and gratefully let go of her responsibilities for one night.

  “There’s still something I don’t understand,” Gennie said. She and Grady sat on a blanket under a sweet gum tree on the Center Family Dwelling House lawn. The remains of a picnic lunch lay scattered around them.

  “What?”

  “The man so many folks heard in Mrs. Dunmore’s room Sunday morning—I realize Daisy was an actress and could sound like a man, but why? Mrs. Dunmore wasn’t killed in her room, was she?”

  Grady shook his head. “Nope, poor Mrs. Dunmore was already dead by then. Daisy—Clarissa—had met her in the Sisters’ Shop, killed her, and then killed Brother Linus. She wanted to muddy the waters, make it sound like Linus had been in the room with Mrs. Dunmore. So she imitated both their voices. She hoped it would distract everyone long enough for her to find the jewels and get away. Also, if people believed Linus was the sort to visit a woman at night in her room, it would add credence to the theory that he would blackmail Wilhelm, as well.” Grady shook his head, and a stubborn lock of straight brown hair fell across his forehead. “Clarissa should have stuck to stealing from wealthy homes; she was good at that. She got greedy.”

  “She got too big for her britches,” Gennie said.

  The two grew silent, avoiding each other’s gaze. With her index finger, Gennie lightly traced a pattern in the blanket.

  “You didn’t get your three peaceful weeks away from me,” Grady said.

  Gennie curled her legs underneath her and settled into a more comfortable position. The warmth of the day spoke of summer, and she felt her concerns melt in the sunlight. “Maybe I didn’t need peace. Maybe I needed to do just what I did. I mean, I’m awfully sorry about Mrs. Dunmore and Brother Linus. Yet I know now that I just can’t sit still and plan dinner parties. I love you with all my heart, Grady, but I can’t be the quiet, proper lady you want me to be.”

  “Is that what I want you to be?”

  Gennie leaned toward him and looked up into his face. “Don’t you?”

  Grady kissed her on the forehead. “I learned something, too, this time around. You were enormously helpful to us, Gen, and you quite possibly saved Rose’s life. After Andrew told me about Rose’s suspicions, I was ready to shoot that dancer in the Herb House window. I thought Clarissa was holding Rose hostage, tied up somewhere, maybe hurt. If you hadn’t noticed how real the dancing was and seen that she was only wearing a slip under that cloak, I might have shot Rose. And what you told me about Beatrice Berg was enough to get her husband’s murder investigation reopened. You and Rose saved Wilhelm’s life, too.” He reached over the edge of the blanket and picked up a half-rotted sweet gum ball. He sent it sailing across the grass. “You showed me how dangerous my own stubbornness can be.”

  He leaned forward and kissed the tip of her nose. “So the answer to your question is no. I want you to be Gennie. My Gennie. I’d be proud and honored to have you as my wife.”

  This time Gennie, being Gennie, rose to her knees, took his face in her hands, and gave him her answer.

  “How is Wilhelm faring since his release?” Rose asked. She sat in Agatha’s retiring room, her bandaged foot elevated on a short-backed chair borrowed from the dining room. Dazzling sunlight shone through the window and warmed her.

  “Josie says he is regaining his strength,” Agatha said. “According to Grady, the only thing he ate during his imprisonment was the one slice of Mairin’s birthday cake.”

  “That’s interesting.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “I don’t suppose he has expressed any gratitude to everyone who helped free him?”

  “Nay, but I believe he feels it in his heart.” Agatha smoothed a thin, shaky hand over her blanket, as if comforted by its softness. “There is something I must tell you about Wilhelm,” she said. “He told me this in the early days, but it never seemed necessary to reveal it to anyone else. I know it looks like he came to us as a Winter Shaker, but his reasons were quite different. He is still deeply grieved over how he lived his life before becoming a Believer. He was wild, driven by his passions. He deserted his family because the responsibility felt too burdensome. He admitted as much to me, with great shame.”

  “Yet it took him thirteen years to reach us,” Rose said. She had prayed for release from her anger with Wilhelm, but so far she’d been left to stew in it.

  “He did not immediately feel his shame. It took another experience. Grady discovered, did he not, that Wilhelm had served in the war? He had volunteered, thinking it was just the thing for him—action, violence, excitement. It was the reality of war that changed him. The horrors—seeing the terrible destruction of life, the impersonal cruelty. He watched friends die. One day he shot a German soldier. When he checked, he found the man still alive—and no more than a young lad. The boy held against his heart a photo of his wife and baby. He died in Wilhelm’s arms. I believe Mother Ann took pity on Wilhelm that day and opened his heart. But an open heart is not always a peaceful one.”

  “I see,” said Rose. “So that is why he sought us out and became a Believer.”

  “And it is why he often goes in a different direction than you and I. I used to remind myself of that several times a day when I served as eldress alongside Wilhelm.”

  “Did it help?”

  “Sometimes.” Agatha laughed softly.

  “And Elsa? Do you have any stories that might help me understand her?”

  “Nay, but I have an idea she sees Wilhelm more clearly than the rest of us do. The trance you described to me—I suspect Holy Mother Wisdom might have had a hand in it.”

  “I wondered about that myself,” Rose said. “In a sen
se, Elsa’s revelations were correct. All the guests had secrets that drew them to the Shaker Hostel—with the exception of Gennie, of course. There was indeed a terrible soulless evil to be stomped out. And Horace started it all. He did not kill anyone, but he wrote the stories that brought Clarissa here, hoping for riches. His stories served as the catalyst for murder.”

  “Have we recovered all the items stolen from the village?” Agatha asked.

  “I think so,” Rose said. “Grady said Saul made the most charming and thorough confession he’d ever heard, in hopes of leniency. He even confessed he’d gone into Mrs. Dunmore’s room the morning she was found dead. He’d found the door unlocked and the room empty, so he took a quick look around for something worth stealing. That’s how he knew about the port bottle Clarissa had planted in her room.

  “He admitted he’d romanced a widow living near here on a run-down farm, and she agreed to bring her wagon to the village every night to pick up whatever Saul had been able to steal. When Grady went there, he found everything still piled in her barn, waiting for Saul to find buyers. I’ve no doubt he would have abandoned the poor woman as soon as her usefulness ended.”

  “Unlike Wilhelm,” Agatha said, “he would have felt no shame.”

  Rose gazed out the window to a large sweet gum tree, where two people sat near each other on a blanket. “It looks like Gennie and Grady are resolving their differences,” she said.

  “Does that still sadden you?” Agatha asked.

  “Nay. Gennie is a wonderful friend, but she belongs in the world. I wish her every happiness.”

  “Besides,” Agatha said, “you have another charge who might just make a wonderful Shaker, when the time comes.”

  “Mairin. Yea, I believe you are right, though she certainly is a handful.”

  “A handful of promise, Rose,” Agatha whispered, as she relaxed against the back of her rocker. “A handful of promise.”