A Simple Shaker Murder

by Deborah Woodworth

  Gretchen settled herself toward the middle of the sisters’ row, separating two clusters of sisters with their backs turned to her chair. She blushed slightly as Earl claimed the chair across from her. This time Rose was sure of her emotion—she was growing anxious. The other four New-Owenites made equally deliberate seat choices, while Gilbert hung back. Was he hoping somehow to sit next to Wilhelm? Nay, Gilbert still didn’t move when Wilhelm, with a triumphant stride, chose a seat for himself.

  Several sisters, out of courtesy, were waiting for Rose to take her place, so she settled beside Theresa, for comfort. She nodded to the sisters, sat down, and looked across to the brethren to find Gilbert smiling at her. He continued to smile, unconcerned, as Wilhelm stood, holding several bright drawings.

  “We are greatly honored this evening in two ways. We are privileged to share our Union Meeting with our guests. And we have been favored by Holy Mother Wisdom with a rare treasure—three new gift drawings.” He held up the drawings, one by one, and panned the room so everyone could see them. There were gasps of awe from the Shakers, but Gilbert and his followers showed no reaction.

  “Normally our meetings are reserved for social discourse,” Wilhelm said. “But as always, we Believers are open to any opportunities to discuss our faith, and this is an important time to do so. These drawings were made by a little girl, sent by Mother Ann to show us all the way. The drawings provide proof. The girl may seem to be of the world, but she is, in fact, a messenger; otherwise, she would not so clearly have re-created Mother Ann’s Work, here and now. So, Believers and friends, I urge thee to put aside thy mundane, petty chats for this one evening and to explore the meaning of these gifts, for all of us in this room. God is with us.” He laid out the drawings on the long, narrow rug that covered the space between the men and the women.

  For a few moments, curious participants leaned toward the drawings, studying them in silence. Rose watched the faces of the New-Owenites. They showed interest, but no surprise, no shock or alarm or anger.

  Conversations began, halting at first, then with growing intensity. Rose wanted to be everywhere at once, especially with Gretchen and with Andrew, but she realized Gilbert had spoken to her.

  “I said, I imagine this is what you tried to warn us about,” Gilbert repeated.

  “And I imagine there was no need for me to do so.”

  Gilbert shrugged. “We do appreciate your concern, but we are well aware of Wilhelm’s hopes for us. Moreover, this is not the first time Mairin has made her night drawings. Celia tried to cure her of it by taking away her pencils and paper, but she always found more. Some of her drawings have been quite alarming.”

  “Did it occur to you to try to find out what was causing her to make these ‘alarming’ drawings?” Theresa, sitting next to Rose, shot her a sideways glance, and she realized her tone had become sarcastic. But Gilbert seemed not to notice.

  “I understand them quite well,” he said. “Celia never has, unfortunately, but Hugh and I were in complete agreement.” Gilbert tilted his head, turning his smile crooked. “Robert Owen was not without his spiritual instincts, you know.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Of course, he was not religious, in the strictest sense. Quite opposed to organized religion, in fact. But later in his life he came to believe in spiritualism, as Hugh and I have come to as well.”

  Rose cast her mind back many years to conversations with Agatha about spiritualism. Communication with the dead was important to Believers—it was how they received guidance and comfort—but during the period just following Mother Ann’s Work, such communications had become almost overwhelming. Agatha had been a young child at the time. She’d been frightened yet fascinated by the mysterious rappings that answered questions Believers posed to the spirit world. Mediums from the world often visited and conducted seances, which Agatha had now and then sneaked away to watch. Even though some of the mediums were less than honest, to the Society these manifestations proved the existence of the after-life and reassured them that death was not final.

  “So then, you agree with Wilhelm?” Rose asked, astonished. “You believe Mother Ann is speaking through Mairin for the purpose of uniting our two groups?”

  “After a fashion,” Gilbert said. He pursed his thin lips. “Hugh and I always believed Mairin is a natural medium. She may or may not be communicating with your Mother Ann—personally, I doubt it. I do, however, firmly believe that Mairin’s drawings are messages, perhaps warnings, from the spirit world.”

  “Warnings?”

  “Indeed,” Gilbert said. “We New-Owenites are being warned of danger, imminent danger.”

  “From us?”

  Gilbert shrugged. “Possibly.”

  “Yet Mairin’s pictures are so similar to our own gift drawings from the time of Mother Ann’s Work. Why would Mother Ann warn you of danger from us?”

  “Ah, I wasn’t aware of the similarity in style. Intriguing. That would explain the violent colors and the frightening nature of the images.”

  “How?”

  “Well, of course, now it is clearer than ever. We are all being warned, Shaker and New-Owenite alike, of the dire consequences for all of us if our people join with you in the Shaker faith. You look skeptical, but just examine those drawings. Look at that tree with its funereal coloring. If that is an image of the Shaker community, then I’d worry it has become diseased from the inside. And that unfortunate snake, once so powerful, and now its head has been ripped off. Well, the message is certainly clear to me.”

  Rose quelled a series of impulses, from walking away to laughing. Surely Gilbert was playing a game with her. He couldn’t be serious, could he?

  “You see,” Gilbert continued, “Mairin is serving as a medium from concerned spirits, who want to tell us that in fact Shaker ways are contrary to the laws of nature. We New-Owenites must not be absorbed into what is—forgive me—a rotting way of life, rapidly losing its strength. I know this is painful for you to hear, Rose, but believe me, I am concerned for your future. The best and most immediate way for you to save yourselves from inevitable destruction—” Gilbert leaned toward Rose and gazed in her eyes with an intensity that sent a shiver through her body. “—Is for you to join us, to drop these religious superstitions of yours. Give up this foolish denial of natural human urges and become New-Owenites.”

  He shifted to the edge of his chair and opened his hand toward her. For a nervous moment, Rose feared he would reach over and touch her knee. She pushed her spine against the slats of her chair. She could think of nothing to say.

  As if coming out of a trance, Gilbert relaxed and sat back in his chair, his intensity wiped clear away and replaced by his usual faint smile. “Wilhelm doesn’t worry me,” he said, keeping his voice low, so it would not attract attention. “Wilhelm’s faith blinds him and makes him a predictable opponent.” Gilbert stood and buttoned his jacket. ‘Think about what I’ve said, my dear. You would do very well as one of us. I have been searching for years for my intellectual equal in the body of a woman. I regret I have work to do, so I’ll bid you good night.”

  He stood, bowed to her, and strode from the room, signaling to the other New-Owenites to remain seated. Rose’s face felt like she’d just leaned into the steam from a boiling kettle, and she didn’t dare look around to see if anyone was watching. She comforted herself that at least she could hear the sisters on either side of her engaged in pleasant and engrossing conversation with brethren across from them. Perhaps her humiliation had gone unnoticed.

  Rose had just seen a side of Gilbert Griffiths that repelled and alarmed her. She almost pitied Wilhelm. No longer could they dismiss Gilbert as a pedantic dreamer. He was ruthless. And he was smart.

  Gretchen lifted down a ladder-back chair for herself and offered her rocker to Rose. Gretchen’s retiring room was much like every other sister’s room—neat and meagerly furnished, with a narrow bed, small desk, built-in drawers, and a tiny mirror over a washstand. To Rose, tho
ugh, the room seemed cozy and safe, after her experience in the Union Meeting.

  Rose struggled between her duties as eldress and her avid curiosity.

  “I promise all he did was talk about the New-Owenites,” Gretchen said. “Earl was very respectful. I think he’s just getting fed up with those people. Earl really, truly believes in all those ideas Gilbert keeps talking about. But Gilbert—well, Earl said Gilbert talks a lot better than he acts. And Hugh wasn’t any better.”

  Rose decided that giving in to her avid curiosity might just be her duty as eldress. “All right,” she said, “you’d better tell me everything you learned from Earl. Start with his opinion about Mairin’s drawings.”

  Gretchen hitched her chair closer and leaned toward Rose like an excited schoolgirl about to share some luscious gossip about a despised fellow student.

  “Well, Earl hardly paid any attention to those drawings, just said that if Wilhelm thought he could use them to influence Gilbert, he’d get nowhere fast.”

  Rose nodded. Earl’s comment supported her own observation that Gilbert was cleverer than he appeared.

  “Earl had a lot more to say about Gilbert,” Gretchen said. “And about Hugh and Celia, too, although he thinks Celia’s been treated badly.”

  “Who has treated Celia badly?” Rose’s eldress instincts alerted her to the hint of jealousy in Gretchen’s voice. A confession would be in order. But not just now.

  “Both of them, Earl said—Gilbert and Hugh. Earl said Hugh was very rich and was funding Gilbert’s whole dream.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Because of Celia. Earl said Celia was hopelessly in love with Gilbert, though he couldn’t figure why, and Gilbert pressured her to marry Hugh, so the New-Owenites could get hold of his money. She went through with it, even though she didn’t love him. Hugh was very jealous of her and practically kept her a prisoner.”

  Rose had difficulty imagining Celia as anyone’s prisoner. Perhaps she adored Gilbert so much she’d do anything for him—but that, too, was hard to imagine. Celia did not seem capable of forgetting herself long enough to love so deeply.

  “Earl said Hugh was practically a monster,” Gretchen said. “He had a drinking problem, you know, and he gambled a lot when he was away on business. It made Gilbert very angry, the gambling did, because he was afraid Hugh would lose all his money, and then he wouldn’t be able to finance Gilbert’s dream community.”

  Rose’s head was spinning with too much information. Her absent-minded rocking only confused her more, and it was beginning to bother her knee, so she wandered around Gretchen’s retiring room. A small part of her mind noted with approval the dust-free surfaces as she sorted through what Gretchen had told her.

  “Did he mention anything about unpaid gambling debts?” Rose asked, remembering Earl’s comments during the discussion she’d overheard through the South Family Dwelling House heating pipes.

  “He said Hugh had lots of them, and everyone had been worried that gangsters might come after him.” Gretchen’s eyes glowed with excitement. “Do such things really happen, Rose?”

  “In the world, anything is possible. Let’s hope our guests have left such evil behind them and far away from us.”

  “There’s more, too,” Gretchen said, “and you won’t like this at all. Hugh used to whip Mairin—that’s why she keeps running away, Earl said.”

  “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised or shocked,” Rose said, a now-familiar fierce protectiveness surging through her, “but I am. Still, I can’t see any of the New-Owenites killing Hugh to stop him from beating Mairin, nor can I believe Hugh hanged himself out of guilt for his behavior. There does seem to be a consistency in Hugh’s behavior. But why have the New-Owenites been telling me that Hugh was soft-hearted, if not terribly responsible?”

  Gretchen shrugged.

  “Although, if they were involved in Hugh’s death, it makes sense . . .” Rose muttered, as she paced the room. They certainly would want to keep any possible motives for murder to themselves, and a soft-hearted Hugh would be more likely to kill himself. But why would they believe they could get away with the falsehood? Did they assume Rose was too stupid or too unworldly to find out Hugh’s true nature?

  She was starting to feel that pain behind her eyes that usually only Wilhelm could trigger. Dropping back into the rocking chair, she said, “I’m grateful for one thing, at least—that this time no Believers can be suspected of violence.”

  “Well . . .” Gretchen wriggled in her chair.

  “Nay, it can’t be,” Rose said, leaning her head back with a sigh. ‘Tell me.”

  “You know the brethren who’ve been fixing up furniture for the New-Owenites, Matthew and Archibald? It seems they are overfond of Celia. She’s been to visit them in the Carpenters’ Shop several times, which she should never have done, of course, but she did, and I guess she cried on their shoulders a bit about how Hugh was treating her, and you know how kind most brethren are, and I guess they just felt more and more sympathy for her, and—”

  “Matthew and Archibald are both in love with Celia Griffiths? Have they fallen into the flesh?”

  “Not . . . not that I know of,” Gretchen said, reddening at Rose’s bluntness.

  Rose hated to believe that the two brethren could be so susceptible, though she’d seen some evidence of it herself. Matthew and Archibald were quick to defend Celia against criticism.

  “Thank you for telling me, Gretchen—for all of it. I’ll see if I can sort it out You stay clear of Earl, do you understand?”

  “Yea.”

  “Get some sleep now.” Rose squeezed Gretchen’s shoulder. “Heaven knows I need some myself.”

  “I was just wondering . . .” Gretchen said, as Rose reached for the door. “Should Wilhelm know? About Matthew and Archibald, I mean.”

  “I suppose he should. Let’s wait, though. I’ll warn the brethren to avoid further contact with Celia and to confess, if their consciences are impure. You can drop it from your mind, Gretchen. Sleep tight.”

  Rose hurried back to the Ministry House under a dark sky punctuated by bright stars. A chill north wind pushed her from behind, plastering her cloak to her back. Her weary mind resisted, but she had to decide what to tell Wilhelm. Despite her temptation to tarnish Wilhelm’s belief that the New-Owenites would make excellent Shakers, she simply could not trust him to resist using the information somehow to further his own plans. For now, she would tell him nothing.

  FIFTEEN

  “SHE DROPPED RIGHT OFF, POOR SWEET,” JOSIE WHISPERED.

  Rose hung her cloak on a wall peg and sank into a chair. “Thanks for putting her to bed and watching over her, Josie. You must be exhausted.”

  “No more than you, from the looks of it. Are you sure you don’t want me to keep Mairin in the Infirmary for a spell?”

  “Nay, I’m happier when she’s under my eye, especially at night. There’s so much going on inside that little head, and I want to be around if it starts emerging. You run along and get to bed.”

  “Call if you need me, dear,” Josie said. “I’ll be up much of the night, anyway, with Sister Viola down with her autumn cough and fever. She’s so frail, I keep expecting it to carry her off, but she always pulls through. Rose, you’re falling asleep in your chair. Get to bed this instant.”

  Josie helped Rose out of her work dress and into bed, then fussed over the blankets. Rose was asleep within seconds, in the middle of Josie’s whispered chatter.

  When Rose’s eyes opened again, the room was dark. She heard a mumbled voice. At first, Rose thought Josie must have decided to stay after all, and was chattering with herself to keep awake. But as she listened more carefully, the muttering made no sense.

  Rose hoisted herself up on her elbow and listened. It was Mairin, babbling, undoubtedly in her sleep. Rose wanted to awaken her, to hold and comfort her, but some instinct told her to be still, to listen for words, clues to Mairin’s fears.

  Minutes inched past,
and Mairin said no more than a few mumbled syllables. Rose’s knee began to ache. She lowered herself back under the covers, her head on the pillow, and tried to stay awake to listen. If it hadn’t been for the persistent ache in her knee, Rose might have lost her struggle and been fast asleep within seconds. If she had done so, she might have leaped out of bed and done her poor knee lasting damage when Mairin screamed in anguish.

  “No, no, no! No, don’t!” Her pleas subsided into staccato cries that sounded at times like a sobbing child’s, at times more like a frightened animal’s.

  Rose was alarmed, yet disappointed. Mairin’s outcries could easily be related to the ongoing abuse she had experienced. Rose had hoped Mairin’s nightmares would provide more direct access to whatever was buried in the girl’s memory, but even in sleep, she was hidden. Rose decided to try another tactic. She slid out of bed and went to Mairin, staying quiet, to avoid rousing her too early. The crayons and paper lay on the table set next to Mairin’s bed.

  “Mairin.” Rose shook the sleeping girl’s shoulder. Mairin’s eyelids flew open. She whimpered and curled in a tight ball, like a cornered animal expecting an attack. She clutched her doll against her chest.

  “It’s me—Rose. I’m sorry I startled you. You were having a bad dream, and I was worried about you.”

  Mairin’s body loosened, but she kept her distance. Rose switched on the bedside lamp. The girl’s stillness and wide pupils gave her the look of a startled fawn.

  Rose picked up the paper and crayons, and laid them on the bed in front of Mairin. “I was thinking, if your dream frightened you, it might help if you drew for a while. It has helped before, hasn’t it?”