A Deadly Shaker Spring

by Deborah Woodworth

  “Run,” Grady said with a laugh. “What can they do? We’d hear them come in, and I’m the law. They shouldn’t be living here. Chances are they’re the ones who’d run.”

  “And then we’d lose track of them,” Rose said.

  “Well, that’s one way to get rid of them. Do you want to leave?”

  “Nay, I need to know what’s going on, even at the risk of giving them warning.”

  Grady seemed fascinated by the printing press. “Old model,” he said. “Linotype. I remember seeing one like this as a kid. My father was friends with the editor of the Languor Weekly Advocate, and he used to take me over to watch the paper go to press sometimes. It would take some determination for them to cart this thing here and set it up.”

  “Determination and knowledge and anger,” Rose said. She had carried a large candle over to the table and was reading a page with printing on it. “Grady, look at this.”

  Grady took the paper she held out to him, and read:

  CITIZENS OF LANGUOR COUNTY

  The time is NOW!!!

  The Shakers have kidnapped their last child!

  The message ended in the middle of the page. “Strong words,” Grady remarked. “Any idea what it’s about?”

  “It’s more than strong, it’s a horrible lie. They’ve got something planned, I suspect. My guess is it’s coming up soon. Several of these pages are variations on this one, some longer, as if they were drafts. Yet there is no evidence of a final version.”

  “Being distributed, you reckon?”

  “I’m afraid so.” Rose scanned the room. “There’s nothing here. I want to look upstairs in the bedrooms.” She was up the basement stairs before Grady could blow out the candles.

  They split up, Grady searching the man’s room, and Rose, the woman’s. The woman’s dresser held a few underthings, not enough to hide anything underneath, so Rose moved to the large closet. Stacked neatly into a far corner, she found what she’d hoped to find.

  “Grady, come in here and look,” she called. “These are Shaker journals.” Ignoring the dust and dirt, Rose scrambled on her knees on the floor of the closet. “I’m certain these are Samuel’s journals,” she said, opening one volume in the middle. “I don’t really know his handwriting, but here he’s talking about discussing his sales trips with Fee. Fiona, our late trustee,” Rose explained when Grady looked puzzled. “I’m taking these back.”

  “Are you sure that’s wise? I bet they’ll notice.”

  “I’m afraid they will destroy everything. These belong to us, to all Believers. And these journals are the only way I’ll really understand what has been happening in North Homage. Will you help me?”

  Grady sighed. “All right, I’ll help.” He began gathering up the small volumes. “These look different,” he said. “Different handwriting.”

  “That’s Agatha’s handwriting,” Rose said, grabbing the whole stack. “These are the volumes someone stole from my retiring room.” She held one volume to her chest.

  “Rose, are you positive the folks involved are former Shakers? I mean, couldn’t they have gotten plenty of information about you all from these journals?”

  “Nay, the articles about us began before any of these were stolen. But they must have one more set of journals.”

  “Why?”

  Rose told him about the old journal pages Sarah had given her.

  “I’m fairly certain,” she concluded, “that the handwriting on those pages does not match Samuel’s.” She stood and brushed the dust from her dress. “Did you find anything in the man’s closet?”

  “Just piles and piles of old newspapers. They contained articles with the byline “Klaus Holker.”

  “Then it’s certain. Klaus Holker and Evangeline Frankell are involved, and Klaus is almost certainly the author of the Watcher. Did you find any other Shaker journals in Klaus’s room?”

  “Nope, not a one.”

  Rose looked back at the closet. “I do want to take these with me.”

  “How about we just take the ones you’re sure you’ll need? Maybe then they won’t notice right away that any are missing.”

  Rose nodded in sad agreement. She selected volumes for 1906 and 1910 through 1912 of Samuel’s journals, along with his most recent one, and Agatha’s 1912 journal. She carefully stacked the remaining books to look as they had originally.

  “What time is it?” Rose asked.

  Grady pulled out his pocket watch. “Just past eleven. We’d better get out of here. If Worthington and these folks are together, and he is due at the bank at noon, they may return soon.”

  They left the house quickly, relieved to find the street still deserted. Worthington had chosen the house well; it was on a remarkably quiet street. They stowed the journals in the small trunk of the Society’s car.

  “If my guess is right,” Rose said, “and the apostates are planning something, can I find you quickly?”

  Grady nodded. “Call me at the sheriff’s office or my home, anytime, day or night. Harry won’t be back for a few more days, or I’d have a hard time being so helpful. I’m hoping you won’t have any need to mention this visit to him in the future? Good, thanks. Let me know if anything happens, and I’ll be there.”

  A rattling Model A turned onto the street, and Rose slipped behind the wheel of her car. Grady strolled to his own Buick as if he had just finished admonishing someone for erratic driving. Both started their cars and drove off before the Model A had sputtered close enough for the driver to see them clearly.

  Rose’s mind churned with plans and with fears. She was convinced that Samuel’s journals would fill in enough details to help her figure out what was going on in her village, but she didn’t have time to pore over them just yet. She drove toward Richard Worthington’s elegant mansion on the other side of town. Despite Worthington’s coldness, Rose believed he was the only one she could approach. It was in character for him to threaten to call in North Homage’s loans, but she could not envision him taking part in an angry mob. If he planned to be at the bank by noon, he might just be home now, preparing for work.

  Worthington’s estate covered several acres on the corner of the most exclusive street in Languor. The home had originally been built by his wife’s grandfather with the questionably gotten profit from his railroad empire. The Depression had not touched the house or grounds. A high wrought-iron fence surrounded the property. Just inside, a thick wall of lilacs and golden forsythia obscured any view through the fence.

  Rose parked the Plymouth around the corner from the entrance, hoping to attract as little attention as possible. She walked around the corner and slid through the gate, from which hung an open padlock. The Worthingtons might own a mansion, but they still lived in a rural Kentucky town, where locks were rarely used. Her feet crunched on the shell fragments lining the driveway, which split into two directions—off to the right, toward a carriage house converted into a garage, and to the left, toward the curving limestone stairs that led to the front door. Rose stuffed wisps of hair back in her bonnet, shook out her wrinkled dress, and approached the door.

  A uniformed maid answered her ring and stared at her, her wide eyes moving from Rose’s dusty black shoes and loose dress to her heavy bonnet.

  “I’ve come to speak with Mr. Worthington,” Rose said.

  “He’s not home,” the girl said with a deep Southern drawl. No wonder she stared; she might never have seen a Shaker.

  “Will he be home soon? It’s important that I speak with him.”

  “Who is it, Abbie?” Frances Worthington’s small, pinched face peered around the shoulder of the taller maid. “Oh, hello.”

  “Mrs. Worthington, my name is Rose Callahan, and I’m eldress of North Homage Shaker village.”

  “Yes, of course, I know who you are. Richard isn’t home yet.”

  “May I speak with you?”

  “Well, I suppose so.” Her dark eyes registered an emotion stronger than discomfort. Fear, perhaps? “Come in. Abb
ie, bring coffee to the parlor.”

  “You needn’t bother, truly. I’ll only take a few minutes of your time, and we don’t drink coffee.” Her stomach was complaining again, and she longed to request a snack, but she decided against it. Best to make this a quick visit and get back to North Homage.

  “Oh, yes, of course. I forgot.” Frances rubbed her arms as if she were chilled and led the way to the parlor.

  Rose stifled a gasp when she saw the room. The size did not surprise her; Shaker rooms were large enough to accommodate groups. But Shaker rooms also gave a sense of openness and light, with their generous windows and sparse furnishings. The Worthington parlor looked as if its owners had begun to collect possessions during the Victorian era and forgot to stop when it was full. Small Persian rugs lay on larger ones, while furniture, paintings, and painted statuettes lined all four walls. Heavy brocade curtains, slightly open, allowed only a sliver of light. To Rose, the room felt as stale and unlived-in as the abandoned house the apostates were using.

  Frances Worthington perched on the edge of a velvet wingback. “What can I do for you?” she asked, in a voice as small and sharp as her body.

  “Mrs. Worthington—”

  “Oh, do call me Frances.” A quick, nervous smile flashed across her face. “I feel as if I know you all. I’ve always appreciated your kindnesses to others.”

  “Then I hope that you’ll be willing to help me now,” Rose said. “We Shakers are in some danger, and I am quite certain that your husband knows what the danger is. Were you aware that he is threatening to call in our loans, claiming that we have not been making our payments?”

  Frances slid into the deep chair. “No,” she said, “I didn’t know. I’m sorry, but I really don’t see—”

  “Mama, Mama, where are you?”

  “In here, darling.”

  Rose turned toward the sound of the young voice, and Rickie Worthington bounded into the room. He stopped and stared at Rose, then giggled.

  “It’s one of the funny ladies! Why does she wear a funny hat like that, Mama?”

  “Rickie, don’t talk like that, darling, it’s rude. Come here and sit on my lap.”

  Rickie ignored her and continued to stare at Rose, who longed to get him into a Shaker school and teach him some manners.

  “Look what I can do, Mama.” Rickie crumpled into a ball on the rug and rolled over in an awkward somersault, narrowly missing a delicately carved end table holding a glass-beaded lamp and several figurines.

  “Sweetheart, stop that. Papa will be very unhappy if you break anything.” Frances’s voice verged on a whine. Clearly she was used to being ignored.

  “When’s Papa coming home?” Rickie asked, as he tried to stand on his head, bracing himself against a love seat.

  “Rickie! Papa will be home very soon, and he won’t like seeing you do that.”

  Rickie fell over and rolled to a sitting position. “Papa said he’s gonna take me tonight.”

  “Where is your father taking you, Rickie?” Rose asked gently.

  Rickie stared at her as if he had forgotten her presence.

  “Yes, where, Rickie?” Frances asked.

  Rickie shrugged his pudgy shoulders and bounced to his feet. “Someplace fun. He promised this time he’d take me along.” The boy marched from the room, imitating a train whistle at the top of his voice.

  Rose turned back to Frances, who lowered her gaze to her fidgeting hands. “What is going to happen, Frances? Please tell me. You’ve said that you respect us. Our lives could be in danger. Do you want to be a party to that?”

  “No, no, of course not.” Frances drew a ragged sigh. “You see, I don’t really know what’s going to happen, only that something is planned. I can’t believe Richard would be involved in anything that would endanger your lives. He’d never take Rickie someplace dangerous.”

  “Perhaps he doesn’t really intend to take the boy along?”

  Frances sighed. “Rickie does tend to get his hopes up.” Her voice deepened with bitterness. “Sometimes I think Richard tells Rickie more than he tells me. He has been getting phone calls from . . . those people. I don’t know who they are, but they have squeezed the goodness out of Richard and made him angrier than I’ve ever seen him. They brought back old memories that I thought he’d gotten over.”

  “Memories of what?”

  Frances shook her head and sighed again. “I don’t know all of that, either. He always kept things to himself. I do know they had to do with his mother and with you all.”

  “His mother was named Faithfull, and she was a Shaker sister,” Rose said.

  “Yes, I know. And she died, I know that, too. When Richard was seventeen. He blames you all for her death. Once he even said that the Shakers killed her. I asked him what he meant by that—you know, if he knew that a certain Shaker had killed his mother. He wouldn’t answer.”

  “Is that why he hates us so much? Because he blames us for his mother’s death?”

  Frances stared at the rug, a sad droop to her eyes. She shook her head slowly. “No, I know that isn’t the real reason. You see, I know why he is involved in whatever is happening. He wants his family’s land back—the land his mother signed over to the Shakers when she became a sister. When I said he blamed the Shakers for her death, I didn’t tell you everything. What he really said was, ‘The Shakers killed her before I could convince her to demand her land back.’ All he really cares about is the land that he thinks should have been his.”

  Rose made a hurried stop at the Languor County Sheriff’s Office and left a note for Grady O’Neal, telling him what she had learned from Frances Worthington. She asked him to be available later in the day, in case trouble arrived at North Homage. She sped home as fast as the Plymouth would travel along the rutted road between Languor and North Homage, rehearsing in her mind her next steps.

  By the time Rose parked next to the Trustees’ Office, preparations for the evening meal were under way. She could borrow Elsa from the Center Family kitchen and have that long-delayed talk. However, she made the mistake of stopping in her office to place the recaptured journals in the bottom drawer of a spare desk, and two Believers accosted her as she emerged. Day-to-day problems refused to delay just because Rose needed to handle threats to the Society. She assigned several unused rooms in the Trustees’ Office for storage of all the returned jars of preserved fruits and vegetables. And she promised to find yet another place to move Elsa since the kitchen sisters found her impossible. By then, the evening meal was about to begin.

  When Rose slipped through the outside door into the Center Family kitchen, three kitchen sisters were filling serving plates with baked chicken in a creamy tarragon sauce and grimly avoiding each other’s eyes. Rose recognized the handiwork of Sister Elsa, who clumped cheerfully through the swinging doors from the dining room.

  “Where is Gertrude?” Rose asked, as she grabbed a hot corn muffin from a stack ready to be carried into the dining room. Gertrude was kitchen deaconess and would normally be directing the work.

  “Helping out in the Ministry kitchen,” a sister answered glumly. “We offered to go, all of us did, but she thought she should go.”

  “Can you blame her?” mumbled another sister.

  “Look alive, now, Sisters,” Elsa chirped. “We got a pack of hungry brethren out there, been out in the fields all day.” Elsa assumed power at the slightest opportunity.

  “Elsa, I’d like a word with you, please,” Rose said.

  “Can it wait until after the evening meal? Somebody’s gotta get the food on those tables.”

  “The kitchen sisters are very experienced,” Rose said. “They will see that everyone is fed. Come along with me now.”

  The kitchen sisters shot Rose glances of pure love as she took Elsa by the elbow and led her through the outside door. The early evening air was warm and pleasant, so Rose brought Elsa into the kitchen garden.

  “Walk with me awhile,” she said. “I have some questions to ask you
, and I want you to consider your answers carefully.”

  Elsa pursed her lips and crossed her arms over the loose bodice of her work dress, which had grown tighter over the winter. “Nothin’ comes out my mouth that ain’t considered careful. Elder’ll agree, just ask him.”

  Rose let the challenge hang in the air. Elsa was a favorite of Wilhelm’s, and nothing, not even her most outrageous behavior, seemed to change that. “At Samuel’s funeral, you revealed some information about Samuel’s past that very few people knew about,” Rose said. “I want to know how you got that information.”

  “Well, I can’t rightly say how it happens. Just a gift I guess I got,” Elsa said, with a failed attempt at humility. “Leastways, Elder says I got it. I guess it’s just sort of a mystery.”

  “I’m not asking how Believers receive messages from predecessors who have passed on. I want to know how you got the information you revealed—that Samuel had a child. I do not for a moment believe that the message came from Mother Ann. She would not be so gossipy nor so unforgiving. Tell me the truth. My patience is growing thin.”

  Rose let Elsa walk in silence for a few moments, hoping that she would tell the truth as soon as she realized she could deny it all later, to Wilhelm. Instead of pressuring her further, Rose enjoyed a moment of calm in the garden. The perennial herbs—thyme, oregano, and sage—were already lush and green. Stalks of lavender were turning from brown to gray-green and would soon have fragrant purple buds. Rose longed for quiet hours tending herbs, rather than fending off threats to their peaceful way of life.

  Elsa sniffed, and Rose snapped her attention back to the present. “I might’ve heard something in town,” Elsa said.

  “From whom?”

  “Can’t say as I remember, not for sure.”

  “Try.”

  Another silence followed, and Elsa again sniffed. “Guess it might’ve been while I was in the Languor dry-goods store, picking up fabric for the sewing room.” Allowing Elsa a few trips into town—usually in the company of other sisters—was one of Rose’s attempts to find work for her to do that wouldn’t drive the other Believers to question their vows of pacifism. A few times, Elsa had been allowed to go alone to pick up fabric that Sarah had called ahead and ordered.