“Could you at least let me in so we could take a quick look around?” Gennie asked, shaking out her wrinkled skirt and moving hopefully toward the door.
“It wouldn’t be right for you to go in there with me,” Albert said sternly. He turned his back to her and began to inspect the broken window latch.
“I’ll look later,” he said, without turning around.
EIGHTEEN
DISAPPOINTED IN HER SEARCH FOR MOLLY, BUT EXCITED by her glimpse of the object on the Water House floor, Gennie went in search of Rose. She found the trustee heading toward the herb fields and fell into step with her.
“You look like you could use a good ironing,” Rose said, eyeing Gennie’s wrinkled dress. “Where on earth have you been?”
Gennie swiped at her skirt. “Have you seen Molly? I’ve looked everywhere.”
Rose sighed. “I’m sure she’s about. I hope she’s thoroughly ashamed of herself, too.” She glanced sideways at Gennie. “I’m sorry, dear, I know you two are friends. But that girl is rebellious and troubled. Too troubled, I think, for you or me to help her.”
“I’m scared for her.”
“So am I,” Rose said grimly. “But her soul is too twisted right now for anyone but God to help her.”
“I don’t mean her soul! I mean her. I’m scared for Molly. I’m afraid something bad has happened to her. Can’t you understand? You just don’t seem to understand anymore!” Gennie kicked at a rock in the grass and avoided Rose’s eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Gennie mumbled. “I didn’t mean all that. It’s just that . . . it used to be I could tell you anything, ever since I came here as a little girl. But now there are things . . . I don’t know what’s happening anymore.”
Rose slipped her arm around the girl’s shoulders. “It’s time we talked,” she said.
They strolled past the Herb House and into the fields. A few lacy clumps of fennel and coriander still struggled to form their seeds during the last sporadic warmth of the season. Ordinarily, Gennie loved to walk these rows, even when the harvesting was nearly done. But she might as well have been back in the kitchen, for all the pleasure it gave her now. She barely noticed the pungent rosemary, as she brushed against it upon entering the fields.
“Gennie?”
Gennie didn’t respond. She wished she could take back much of what she had already said.
“My dear child,” Rose began. “Nay,” she corrected herself, “my dear friend. You aren’t a child anymore, Gennie. You don’t know how difficult it has been for me to accept that. I know I should love everyone equally, but you and Agatha are the two people I love most in the world. And I fear I am losing both of you. Nay, don’t shake your head at me, we both know it’s true. Agatha is failing, and you are growing up—and maybe away.”
“But we’ll speak more of that in a moment. First, Molly. Please don’t think me heartless, but I do believe that Molly’s soul is in much more peril than her body. I don’t know where she has gone. Perhaps . . . perhaps it would be best if we never found out.”
“Nay!” Gennie stomped hard on a clump of discarded basil root and a scattering of dirt flew out.
“Gennie, hear me out. The sheriff arrived as the service was ending, and we talked. He had found out—from others, not from me—that Molly and Johann had . . .”
“I know that they were together,” Gennie said.
“Oh.”
“Molly told me right after I found Johann. I promised her I wouldn’t tell, and I had to keep my promise. You taught me that. And, anyway, what they did, that doesn’t make her a bad person. It doesn’t make her not worth looking for, does it? Anyway, I don’t think so.” She crossed her arms and rolled back on her heels.
“Of course she is worth looking for. But there’s more that you don’t know. Come on, let’s walk.”
Still frowning, Gennie strolled with Rose between rows of blackening plant stumps.
“Without my knowledge,” Rose began, “the sheriff questioned Molly again. He’s convinced that she killed Johann because he used her and then scorned her. The sheriff thinks that’s probably why she ran off, because she knew he was getting close to the truth. You see, she was . . . with Johann . . . only a short time. Then he turned his attention elsewhere.”
“Where?”
Gennie shot a sidelong look at Rose and waited to see how grown-up she really was in the older woman’s eyes. A deep shadow passed overhead, followed by the far-off rumble of thunder. Rose glanced at the sky.
“All right, you don’t have to tell me,” Gennie said. “I know who it was. Charity.”
“Did Molly tell you that, too?”
“She said enough for me to guess. Anyway, it was easy after seeing them look at each other at the Union Meeting.”
“Of course, the Union Meeting. What else haven’t you told me?”
Gennie folded her arms tightly against the growing wind and the edge in Rose’s voice.
“Someone was giving Molly gifts or something,” she said slowly.
“Gifts of what?”
“Well, things to make her pretty, like lipstick and perfume. I think I saw one of the lipsticks just now in the Water House, but Albert wouldn’t go in with me to get it. And, also, she had a bunch of money. Maybe a hundred dollars.”
“Money! Did Molly tell you that these were gifts?”
“Well, nay, just that someone gave them to her. I just thought . . . What else would they be?”
Rose walked silently, head bent. Another crack of thunder failed to distract her. Gennie hurried to keep up and watched her with growing concern. The information about Molly was important, that was clear. She should have told Rose sooner.
“There’s more, too. Molly was out really late on Saturday night, and I went to look for her, and . . . Wilhelm found me and sent me back. He looked sort of sick, too, like maybe he wasn’t sleeping well.”
Frowning, Rose halted and stared down a row of gray-green lavender plants.
“Rose, are you mad at me?”
“What? Oh, Gennie, I’m sorry, I was just thinking, trying to understand . . .” With a slight shake of her head, she faced Gennie.
“Nay, I’m not angry with you,” she said. “You have kept a great deal from me, but you did what you thought right.” Her delicate face looked strained, her pale red eyebrows drawn together. “And I have not been completely honest with you, either. It is time that I told you a few things about myself, about my past.”
The thunder rumbled closer now. There would be a downpour soon, and that would make it even harder to repair the trampled herb fields, but Gennie didn’t care at that moment.
A spray of lavender stems had fallen to the ground during the harvest. Rose knelt and retrieved them. Twisting them absently between her fingers, she said, “Do you remember Seth Pike, the man I introduced to you at the market in Languor? He helps out with the farming chores, too, and he is Elsa’s son.”
Gennie nodded. None of this was new to her.
“When I was just a little older than you are, only eighteen, I left North Homage for about a year.”
A few drops of rain splattered against Gennie’s bonnet. She squinted to see Rose’s face in the dim light.
“I’d been here since I was three, you see, so I’d never seen the world except those few tantalizing glimpses when Agatha took me into town for some errand or other. I used to make up stories for myself about the beautiful dresses I’d wear if I lived in the world, and the dances I’d go to. And about boys, how they would flock around me. So you see, I’m not so different from you. At eighteen I wanted to love and to be loved.” Rose shook her head at her younger self.
“I met a young man, Seth Pike. He was gentle in those days, and eager for the future. We planned to marry. But I felt the call to come back, to become a Believer. It was so strong. I don’t believe it was just guilt, I believe that God called me. So I left Seth.”
“Did you tell Agatha that you wanted to leave the Society?”
Rose laughed. “Nay, I did not tell Agatha. Not until I decided for certain to leave. I didn’t want to hurt her or lose her love.” Rose looked intently down at the smaller Gennie.
“Gennie, you will never lose my love. Not ever.”
“Not even if I leave, too? Even if I marry someday?”
“Maybe I’m not meant to be eldress,” Rose said with a short laugh. “Sometimes these questions are too much for me. But, yea, even if you marry. I do truly believe that to be chaste is the higher calling, but I could never stop caring about you. And perhaps I’m not qualified to judge. I never married.” She gazed steadily into Gennie’s eyes. “But I was not chaste.”
NINETEEN
MONDAY BROUGHT SUNSHINE BUT NO SIGN OF MOLLY and no improvement in Agatha’s condition. Just before lunch, Rose closed her ledger books early to allow time for a visit to the eldress’s bedside.
She bent and kissed the cool forehead. The eldress lay in an adult-sized cradle, tucked all around with a soft blanket as if she were a sleeping infant. Rose pulled up a chair and nudged the wooden cradle into a gentle rocking motion. Josie had said the rocking helped prevent bedsores. Rose hoped it would comfort.
“Are you feeling any better?” she asked. She spoke in a conversational voice, even though Agatha lay silent, deep in a coma. Rose wanted to believe that she could hear, even so. She rocked the cradle and gazed around the room. A bed and another cradle were empty, with fresh sheets and blankets pulled tight over them. They were alone. Rose slid her chair closer to Agatha.
“I wish you could tell me what to do, my friend,” she said. “Sheriff Brock has issued a warrant for Molly’s arrest. Gennie is convinced that Molly is innocent and in danger and that we should try to find her before the sheriff does. Perhaps she is right. Molly could have killed Johann, certainly. She was furious with him, and she is such an undisciplined creature. But I am having doubts.” She frowned and leaned in closer.
“Gennie told me that Molly was receiving worldly gifts, lipstick and so forth. That’s what Gennie called them, gifts. But I don’t think that’s what they were. I couldn’t say this to Gennie, she would become even more frightened for Molly, but it makes more sense to me that these so-called gifts were payment for something. Perhaps for carnal favors. Or perhaps for her silence.”
A shaft of sunlight spilled through the window and shone on Agatha’s unseeing eyes. Rose pulled the light curtains together.
“So, if Molly did not do the killing, we are left, I believe, with five people who had reasons to hate or fear Johann. Wilhelm knew him to be a fornicator who preyed on Shaker sisters, and Wilhelm’s love for the Society is boundless. But I suspect there was more. He desperately wants Elsa to be the next eldress. He would then have almost total control over us, and we’d have no choice but to follow him.”
Rose wandered to the window overlooking the medic garden. Too many possibilities bounced around in her mind, and she struggled to arrange them in a logical sequence.
“What if there is something about Elsa, something that could prevent her appointment as eldress,” she said more to herself than to Agatha. “And what if Johann knew what it was? Sheriff Brock hinted that Elsa was unfaithful to her husband. Johann could have heard all sorts of rumors while he stayed on the Pike farm. Maybe there is something in her recent past or even her present that Elsa doesn’t want known.”
She began to pace the length of the cradle bed.
“Gennie said that she encountered Wilhelm in the cemetery the other night when she went out to look for Molly, and Molly’s relationship with Johann could have given her the opportunity to learn what Johann knew. Might Wilhelm have been giving Molly gifts to keep silence about Elsa’s past?”
“Elsa has the same reason to fear Johann. If he revealed what he had learned about her, Elsa might never become eldress. And she does so want to be eldress.” Rose heard the scorn in her own voice and tried to soften her tone. “Who’s to say, maybe she should be.”
Feeling suddenly self-conscious, Rose glanced at the open door of the sickroom. She got up and checked the hallway. It was still and empty, but just to be sure, she closed the door before continuing through her list.
“Charity could be involved, I’m sorry to say. I suspect that she had more of a relationship with Johann than she was willing to admit. She has been deeply troubled about something recently. And she could never risk being sent from North Homage; it might destroy her.
“Then there’s Albert Preston,” she said in a quieter voice. “We know so little about his past, and he was seen arguing angrily with Johann. His clothes were on Johann’s body, remember.
“And finally, Seth Pike. I’ve added Seth to the list, Agatha. I know that won’t surprise you.” Rose laughed softly. “You never liked him, did you? Perhaps you were right. He rode the rails with Johann. They might have had a falling-out that he doesn’t want us to know about. Albert found him hanging around the Herb House after the murder, too.”
A dull pain was forming behind Rose’s eyes. She settled back in her chair and rubbed her temples.
“You know,” she said wearily, “something is eluding me. These five may have strong enough reasons to kill Johann, but why arrange his body in the herb-drying room? It just doesn’t make sense.”
The bell over the Meetinghouse chimed twelve times.
“It’s time for lunch, Agatha,” Rose said, “though even good Shaker food doesn’t appeal to me just now. I’ve sent Gennie on an afternoon picnic with the children, so at least she’ll escape from this for a time.” She leaned over Agatha’s still face to kiss her good-bye. Each time she did so, she wondered if it would be the last.
“Perhaps I should not have told you all this. If you can hear me, it will only upset you, and you can do nothing about it. This time it’s up to me. Rest well, my friend.”
The apple orchard sparkled like a fairyland to Gennie, as the sun peeked through the broken clouds and glittered off the ripening fruit. Much as she loved the Herb House, she was glad to be outside and without work to do. True, she was to help supervise the children, but she didn’t mind that. There weren’t many of them, most went to orphanages these days, and they were mostly good children. Gennie liked children, which made her think about having her own, which made her think about Grady.
She helped Sister Charlotte shoo the children away from the unpicked fruit and toward an area of the orchard that was already harvested. They found a pleasant spot, dappled with the growing sunlight, and spread out blankets. Once they opened the large picnic baskets, the children gathered around, chattering and laughing.
“Ooh, I want some lemon pie!” said a seven-year-old girl who leaned over the basket as Gennie sorted through it.
“Sandwiches first, you know that, Nora,” Gennie said, feeling grown-up.
Nora plunked down cross-legged on the blanket and kept her eyes on the pie pan, which Gennie placed out of reach of eager fingers.
After passing out sandwiches, Gennie leaned back against a tree trunk and gazed across the fields. She would have felt happy if a part of her weren’t always looking for her dark-haired roommate. She slipped off her cloak and felt the warm breeze through her thin wool dress. She even dared to loosen her bonnet when she saw that Sister Charlotte had done so. Charlotte often made known her discontent with Wilhelm’s desire to take Believers back to old-fashioned dress, and Gennie liked her for it.
The fields were harvested and empty for the winter, several tilled into neat rows, ready for spring, while others were still strewn with discarded plants. In the distance, Gennie saw a bundle of hay, which made her smile as she thought about the Halloween party they were planning for the children, with apple bobbing and a hayride. She hoped that they could still have the party, with everything that was going on. It would be good for the children. Rose said she wasn’t sure how the Languor townsfolk would react, since they already thought that the Shakers were witches.
Something moved next to the distant hay bale. Probably one of the bre
thren cleaning up the field. Gennie squinted to see if she could make out a shape.
The figure moved away from the hay bale, and Gennie recognized the long skirt and bonnet of a Shaker sister. The woman staggered in a meandering path toward the picnic area. She tripped and fell to her knees, then struggled again to her feet.
As she drew nearer, Gennie saw that the woman wore a white dress, a Sabbathday outfit. Molly had worn such an outfit when she disappeared. She must be hurt. Maybe the killer had attacked her. Gennie jumped to her feet. But immediately, she saw that the woman was stockier than Molly.
“What is it, Eugenie?” Sister Charlotte sat on the opposite edge of the group of children, farther from the fields.
“I’m not sure.”
Gennie felt a tug on her skirt and looked down at Nora’s serious little face.
“It’s the lady,” Nora said, mumbling through a large mouthful of cheese and bread.
Gennie knelt beside the girl. “What do you mean, Nora? Nay, chew first, then swallow. That’s a good girl.”
“It’s the lady. The lady!”
Gennie exchanged a puzzled glance with Charlotte.
“The lady I saw before.” Nora scrunched her mouth in irritation at Gennie’s slowness.
Snatches of a melody, sung by a powerful voice, reached the orchard. It was Elsa, her bonnet slipping to the side of her radiant face. She raised her hands, as she had in the dancing worship, and twirled joyfully, singing her own dance tune. Her cloth shoes were caked with mud. Her swirling feet kicked up clumps of rich, black dirt that splattered the edge of her once-white dress.
“Charlotte?” The alarm in Gennie’s voice brought the sister to her side. “This is how she was at worship, did you see?”
“Yea, indeed,” Charlotte said with clear disapproval.
“Is it a trance, do you suppose, or something else?”
“Something else, I’d say. Children, move back behind us now,” Charlotte said, as Elsa twirled closer to the group. The children scurried farther back into the orchard, all except Nora.
Death of a Winter Shaker Page 15
