A Deadly Shaker Spring

by Deborah Woodworth

  Gretchen was a no-nonsense young woman, already Laundry deaconess at twenty-eight, but this turn of events brought an excited sparkle to her eyes. Now that Rose was all right, Gretchen seemed ready to enjoy herself.

  “Well, I’m a very light sleeper, you know,” she said with a touch of pride. “I hear all sorts of sounds at night, but usually it doesn’t bother me because I know what it is, like if a sister needs to make a nighttime visit to—” She paused as Josie raised her eyebrows to quell any further digression. “Anyway, tonight I stayed awake for hours because there seemed to be an awful lot going on in the hallway. Once I peeked out and saw you, Rose, going into Sarah’s room, and then you came out again and went back to your own room.”

  “Sarah!” Rose croaked. “Is she all right?”

  “I’m right here, Rose.” Sarah’s soft eyes appeared near Rose’s face. “I didn’t know you were that worried about me.” She sounded guarded, as if she thought Rose might not have trusted her. Rose did not reassure her. She nodded and relaxed again against the pillow that had so recently been used to attack her.

  She looked toward Gretchen to encourage her to continue.

  “Well, I was getting tired, as you can imagine,” Gretchen said. “I was just drifting off when I heard an awful clatter. At least it sounded awful to me. I got all twisted up in my coverlet, so it took a while for me to run into the hallway. I didn’t see anyone; they must have gotten away. But your door was wide open, Rose, so I ran here, and there you were, out cold on the floor, and your rocking chair was turned on its side. Your pillow was off to the side on the floor, and at first I wondered if you’d been napping in your chair and it tipped over. Then I got really frightened—you looked dead! I thought you weren’t breathing at all, but then you sort of gasped, and I could see you were just unconscious. I tried to bring you to but I couldn’t, so I called Josie from the hall telephone, and she came right over,” Gretchen finished, breathless.

  Rose had been recovering rapidly while Gretchen spoke. She pulled herself to a sitting position, waving aside Josie’s murmured objections.

  “I must get up,” Rose insisted, tossing off her blanket.

  “Nay, my dear, the only thing you must do is rest,” Josie said, gently pushing Rose’s shoulders back toward the bed. But Rose had regained much of her strength.

  “Josie, I insist,” she said. “I know you are concerned for me, but this is important.” She did not wish to alarm the others. Josie saw the intensity in her eyes, though, and understood.

  “How can I help?”

  “Stay with me for a bit,” Rose said. “And the rest of you, I’m fine now, so run along and get ready for breakfast. I’m afraid we’ll all be short on sleep today, but it can’t be helped. There’s no harm done; don’t tire yourselves more with worry.”

  Reluctantly, the sisters left Rose’s retiring room and scattered to their own. With Josie hovering, Rose slid off her bed and tried her legs. They were shaky but serviceable. She led the way to her sitting room and stopped so suddenly that Josie nearly ran into her. She stared at her desk, then scanned the room. The door of her built-in cupboard hung open. Agatha’s journals were gone, every one of them. Rose yanked open her desk drawer. At least her attacker had not found Fee’s journals and the anonymous journal pages Sarah had given her. She moved them to the back of a recessed dresser drawer in her bedroom, while Josie watched, silent and wide-eyed.

  Taking Josie’s hand, she hurried into the hallway and down the staircase to her office. The door was ajar. They entered the room. Both sisters stood in silence as they surveyed the devastation. Cabinets and drawers were open and the contents strewn around the floor, as if the intruders had tossed over their shoulders anything they didn’t want. Ledger books were pulled off the shelves and scattered around the desk, some open with pages ripped or smeared with spilled ink.

  “Oh, Rose,” Josie whispered. “What is happening to us?”

  Rose quickly closed the office door and switched on the light. “We must keep this as quiet as possible,” she said. “I’ll have to tell Wilhelm, of course, but I’ll want to find out what is going on without spreading panic among Believers.” She reached down and rescued a bent copy of Mother Ann’s sayings that lay at her feet. “The intruders must have been very quiet,” she said, “to have done all this without being heard upstairs, especially with Gretchen so wakeful. They must have come up to my room when they didn’t find what they wanted here.”

  “What is going on? Do you have any idea at all?”

  Rose nodded. “I have some idea, or maybe part of an idea, but too many pieces are missing. Someone tried to smother me with the pillow you all saw on the floor. I never saw who it was, but I did scratch them before I blacked out.” Rose inched among the scattered papers and books, now and then lifting one and piling it on her desk. Josie had a faraway look on her face.

  “Josie? What is it?”

  “I was just thinking. When someone has been smothered, the death can look very much like a heart attack.”

  The papers in Rose’s hand drifted to the floor again. “So Faithfull could have been smothered,” she said. “And Samuel, too. It would have taken some effort, some planning, but even someone smaller than Samuel could have done it, coming from behind. Maybe Samuel had fallen asleep. It would explain why he was still sitting in the rocking chair, and why there were no signs of a struggle. The cookies, though; I wonder . . .” Rose sank into her desk chair, and Josie lifted a chair from a wall peg and sat at the other side of the double desk.

  “If someone wanted it to look like a natural death,” Rose mused, “they might have placed the cookies there, taking a bite to make it look more real. That would explain why there were no crumbs around Samuel.”

  “Then surely it could not have been a Believer,” Josie said, her eyes bright with hope. “Not everyone knew of his vow to avoid sweets—you didn’t, certainly—but everyone had noticed that he never ate them. He was so thin, too. No one would think he sneaked into the kitchen at night to snack on cookies! Only someone from the world would set up such a ruse.”

  “I’m afraid I can think of at least one other explanation for the cookies,” Rose said. “I doubt they were poisoned, or they wouldn’t have been left just so. But a Believer who hated Samuel might have placed the cookies there to shame him, even in death, with evidence of his broken vows.”

  “But is there anyone who would have hated Samuel that much?”

  “That is what we must find out,” Rose said.

  TWENTY

  AFTER SENDING JOSIE BACK TO THE INFIRMARY TO sip chamomile tea and rest, Rose decided to contact Deputy Grady O’Neal, rather than clean up her office immediately. She placed a call to the Languor County Sheriff’s Office, and luck was with her; Grady was in his office and promised to drive right over to North Homage.

  With a sigh of reluctance, Rose then placed a call to the Ministry House. Keeping the news from Wilhelm would only further impair their ability to work together as elder and eldress.

  “I want to be there when you speak with that deputy,” Wilhelm said, when she had filled him in. To her surprise, he had not criticized her decision to call in the police. “He is very much of the world, and I don’t trust him.”

  “Well, I do,” Rose said. “He has been sympathetic to us before. He is certainly a better choice than Sheriff Brock, who has never been our friend.” She had come to trust Grady during a previous investigation of a young drifter’s murder. Unlike Sheriff Brock, Grady had been open-minded and fair with the Shakers.

  Wilhelm grunted but did not object further. “I’ll be right over.”

  Grady must have flown over the rutted road from Languor, because he and Wilhelm arrived at the same time, to Rose’s relief. She had dreaded having to argue with Wilhelm about what to tell Grady.

  They scanned the office silently for a few moments, as Grady made notes in his small notebook, and Wilhelm glowered.

  “The world has a vicious heart,” Wilhelm said,
running his hand over a section of Rose’s desk where the pine, aged to an orange glow, was dotted with splashes of ink. “What will the police do about this outrage?” he asked the room at large. “Nothing, probably. What do they care if we Believers are persecuted?”

  Grady glanced at him but wisely said nothing. Rose relaxed. Grady was a self-possessed young man, unlikely to be drawn into a quarrel that would give Wilhelm an excuse to become even more self-righteous.

  “Did you notice any pattern to the damage?” Grady asked Rose. “Did it seem to you that they were trying to destroy anything in particular?

  Rose shrugged. “It seems random to me, but I can’t be sure yet.”

  “Wanton is more like it,” Wilhelm said. “The world is hounding us, hoping to drive us to extinction.”

  “What about this attack on you?” Grady asked. “Did you see anything at all?”

  Again Rose shook her head. “The attacker was behind me. I thought I heard a gasp when I scratched the person, but I couldn’t identify a voice from that.”

  “You scratched the guy? Did some damage, did you? Something we could see if we looked at a suspect’s arms?”

  “I think so.” Rose wanted to confide more in Grady, but Wilhelm was likely to interfere at any time, so she kept quiet.

  “Are these useless questions finished yet?” Wilhelm asked. “May we begin to set our house right again?”

  “You really should put locks on all your doors,” Grady said.

  “Never!” Wilhelm’s nostrils flared as if Grady had suggested eliminating Mother Ann from the lexicon of Shaker godhood. “We have always lived with our doors open to the world, welcoming, even when the world abuses our openness.”

  Sometimes Wilhelm’s contradictory logic confused Rose. He seemed to invite the world to their door even as he pitted himself against it. The better to convert them, Rose supposed, though she had yet to see his approach succeed. Their numbers continued to dwindle.

  “Sure, you can go ahead and clean up now,” Grady said, his cheerfulness sounding forced. As Wilhelm bent to pick up some papers, Grady caught Rose’s eye and flicked his head toward the office door. “I’ll just be running along. I’ll let you know what I find out.”

  “Wilhelm, I’ll be back to help clean up in a few minutes,” Rose said.

  Intent on his task, Wilhelm grunted and ignored their departure.

  * * *

  “I know you, Rose; you’ve learned more than you’re saying,” Grady said. He leaned against the dusty black Buick that served as one of Languor’s two squad cars. He studied Rose, concern in his open face.

  Reaching into her dress pocket, Rose extracted her list of apostates. “These are names of people who might be involved in the incidents here lately,” she said, handing the list to Grady. “They are all Shaker apostates who left North Homage about twenty-five years ago, angry with us, apparently. It seems they are living in Languor right now.”

  Grady’s boyish face grew serious as he studied the list. “Richard Worthington? I didn’t know he was a Shaker.”

  “He wasn’t. He was brought up here and left as a young man, seventeen or eighteen, I believe. His widowed mother brought him here as a child. He left after she died.”

  “He’s been mighty vocal in town against the Shakers, that’s for sure. Any idea why?”

  Rose shrugged. “None. Unless his mother’s death . . .”

  Grady’s head snapped up. “Something suspicious about his mother’s death, you think? What was her name, anyway?”

  “Faithfull. And nay, I don’t know anything for sure.” She looked hard at Grady for several moments before continuing. “I’ll tell you what I’ve pieced together, and what I suspect, and you can make your own judgments.” She told him that both Faithfull and Samuel had died of apparent heart attacks, with no physical warning, and she reported Josie’s observation that suffocation with a pillow could look like a heart attack—as it would have if Rose had died, too.

  “Would have started to look like a whole lot of sudden heart attacks,” Grady said, “but I can see how it might have passed by unnoticed. If you’d died, I’d have looked into it mighty carefully, though,” he added. “Gennie would never have spoken to me again if I didn’t.”

  “What a comfort,” Rose murmured.

  Grady cleared his throat and busied himself with the list of apostates again. “Okay, I’ll check these folks out. Caleb Cox is a drunk, and we’ve had some suspicions about him setting some little fires and defacing a few houses when he’s pie-eyed. Seems a decent enough sort when he’s sober, but drink brings out the devil in him.” He reddened slightly. “Sorry, I meant no disrespect.”

  “And I took no offense, I assure you,” Rose said with a light laugh. “Remember, Grady, though I’m a Believer, I’ve spent a good deal of time out in the world, and there is little I haven’t seen. Violence offends me, and cruelty, but never bluntness.”

  Grady nodded. “There’s a couple of names here I don’t recognize,” he said, looking back at the list of apostates. “Klaus Holker and Evangeline Frankell. Don’t recall hearing those names in town. Are you sure they live in Languor?”

  “Nay, not certain, but Charlotte thought she saw a man and a woman last Sunday, driving away after someone threw raspberry preserves against the Meetinghouse during worship. Apparently those two are now married. They may be the couple who ran the public meeting at St. Christopher’s. They introduced themselves as Kentuck and Laura Hill.”

  Grady shot her a stern look at her mention of the danger she’d put herself in, against his advice. “Okay, I’ll ask around,” he said. “Meanwhile, I’d feel a lot better if you all would put locks on your doors.”

  “We’ll think about it,” Rose promised.

  To Rose’s relief, Wilhelm had left by the time she returned to the Trustees’ Office. The defaced papers and books were stacked neatly on her desk. She looked them over briefly. The worst damage seemed to be in her loan-payment ledger, which was unfortunate but not disastrous, since the bank held duplicate records. She would try to decipher them, though it would take precious hours of her time.

  She left the piles for later and set off for the Infirmary. She had missed her visits to Agatha and was concerned that her friend might have learned of the attack on her and be worried.

  Josie’s desk in the Infirmary waiting room was empty, so Rose made her way back to Agatha’s room. As she reached the doorway, she heard Josie’s encouraging voice. Agatha was no longer in a cradle bed. She sat up, without support, in a regular bed, while Josie guided her right arm in gentle exercise.

  “Agatha! What a wonderful surprise!” Rose said.

  At the sound of Rose’s voice, Agatha’s thin face softened. The right side of her mouth still drooped, but the left side curved into a greeting smile. She said something that came close to “Rose” and held out her left hand. Rose ran to her side and took her hand in both of her own.

  “Agatha has been making wonderful progress,” Josie said, beaming at the former eldress as if she were a prize-winning pupil. “Her will is powerful, and maybe all those prayers of ours didn’t hurt either.”

  Agatha’s face grew serious. She extracted her hand from Rose’s and pointed toward the empty hanging shelf which had held her old journals.

  “You asked me to take them and read them, remember?”

  Agatha nodded lopsidedly. She said a few indistinct words—five words, Rose thought.

  “Josie? Did you understand her?”

  “Say it again, dear,” Josie said to Agatha. Agatha repeated the five words.

  “‘Did you’ . . . I got that much. Did I what? Read the journals?”

  Again Agatha repeated the sentence, this time with some irritation.

  “‘Did you find the evil?’” Josie said. “She’s asking if you identified some source of evil in those journals; is that right, Agatha?” Agatha gave her crooked nod.

  “I read both your journals and Fiona’s for the same years,” Rose said.
“I found the names of four apostates, and I found out about—” She hesitated to discuss Samuel and Faithfull’s liaison and their child, Sarah, in front of anyone, even Josie.

  “I’ve got piles and piles of work to do,” Josie said briskly. “I’ll just leave you two to talk, shall I?”

  Again Rose hesitated. Could she understand Agatha without Josie, who had so much more experience interpreting the garbled language of stroke victims? She decided it best to try. “Thank you, Josie, that would be fine.”

  “Agatha, it may be difficult for me to understand you, so do be patient with me,” Rose said after Josie left. “It is important that I learn what you know about what went on in North Homage twenty-five years ago. I know about Samuel and Faithfull and about Sarah, their child.” Agatha closed her eyes and nodded again. She remained quiet for a moment; she seemed to be gathering strength. She refocused her eyes on Rose and said distinctly, “Others.”

  “Others? The apostates? I have their names from the covenant, and I believe they are all in Languor and are responsible for some strange incidents we’ve had here. Nay, don’t be alarmed, everything is under control.” She had no intention of disturbing Agatha with the full story.

  “The names I have are Caleb Cox, Richard Worthington, Klaus Holker, and Evangeline Frankell. Is that all of them?” Agatha nodded.

  “You were so careful in your journals, Agatha. You used only initials and never mentioned specifics when someone’s reputation was at stake.” She thought she saw regret flash across Agatha’s face. “Some questions are left unanswered—such as: Was Faithfull’s death truly due to a sudden heart attack?”

  Agatha’s sparse white brows drew together, wrinkling the paper-thin skin of her forehead. She said nothing, but her left shoulder hunched up and lowered.

  “Were you not sure?” Agatha nodded.

  “Did you . . . did you suspect she had been killed?”

  Agatha took a deep breath and held it. On the exhale, she closed her eyes and nodded.