A Circle of Dead Girls

by Eleanor Kuhns

  ‘I told the truth,’ he said. ‘I just didn’t tell everything.’ He wiped his lips with his napkin. ‘I came upon Brother Daniel and several of his Brethren when I was coming home. They were searching for one of the children.’ Although Lydia didn’t speak, the hands folded on the table tightened until the knuckles went white. ‘We found her.’ He looked up to meet his wife’s gaze. ‘She’d been strangled, Lydia. And she-she …’ Rees’s voice broke and he took a few seconds to compose himself. ‘I’ll drive Jerusha to school tomorrow and pick her up after.’

  ‘I can take her in the cart if you think it necessary,’ Lydia said. Rees had bought a mule to help with the plowing, but he spent more time hitched to Lydia’s cart. ‘She should be safe enough.’ Jerusha and her siblings – all but Simon who now lived with David in Dugard – went to a dame school several miles distant. Most of Jerusha’s peers had been taken out of school to help at home but Lydia refused to consider that. She wanted Jerusha to finish. That wouldn’t be long; she already spent more time helping the younger children than studying herself. ‘Do they know – do they have any idea …?’ Her voice ran down.

  Rees shook his head. ‘No. The constable suspects someone in the circus.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he said at last. ‘I mean, it could be someone in the circus but not necessarily the trick rider.’ He brought his plate to the sink and put it in the dishpan. ‘I’ll speak to Rouge and Dr Smith tomorrow. Maybe they’ll have news.’ Whistling, he turned toward the stairs. ‘I’m going to take a look at the loom. I’m almost finished with the cloth on it. Soon I’ll be taking it off and packing up the loom to put in the wagon.’

  ‘What? Wait. Where are you going?’

  Rees looked at his wife in surprise. ‘To visit the farm wives of course.’

  ‘But I need you here,’ she objected.

  Rees turned around to face her. ‘But spring is the best time to travel from farm to farm and weave the winter spinning. You know that.’

  ‘Our fields have to be planted.’ Her voice took on an edge.

  ‘I can do that between trips,’ he said, speaking as reasonably as he could. He could see the treat he’d promised himself, a short trip away from the demands of the farm, receding.

  ‘The buckwheat needs to go in now,’ she said. ‘It can’t wait.’

  Rees blew out his breath in annoyance. ‘I’ll do one of the fields before I go,’ he suggested.

  ‘That’s not enough to feed us.’

  ‘The Shakers promised to help.’

  ‘Really, Will,’ Lydia said reproachfully, ‘you can’t expect them to do your work for you.’

  ‘Why not?’ Rees’s voice began to rise. He stopped and took a breath. ‘They’ll be taking possession of this farm eventually.’

  ‘The children will be out of school soon and I—’

  ‘They can help too,’ Rees said, snapping with temper. He’d been looking forward to taking a few trips around, just to escape the farm for a few days, ever since the weather began improving. ‘The farm wives and their daughters will have been spinning all winter. This is the time to make some cash money.’

  ‘Unless you’re planning to buy a lot of our food, we need to plant first,’ Lydia said.

  ‘We’ll need money for seeds and more,’ Rees said stubbornly. Lydia sighed but didn’t continue arguing. Rees started for the hall.

  As he passed through the door, she said, ‘Can you wait a few weeks at least?’

  ‘And quarrel over this again?’ He turned around, the urge to shout at her almost overwhelming. ‘Look,’ he said, struggling to master his irritation, ‘I am too tired to discuss this now. We can talk again tomorrow.’ Taking one of Lydia’s fine beeswax candles, he put it in a candlestick. He lit it from the fire and started up the stairs. He almost expected her to call him back but this time she didn’t.

  Although he knew it was too dark to weave, he went to the weaving room anyway. He was too angry and upset to go to bed and pretend nothing had happened. He would not sleep if he did not calm down. Weaving relaxed him and besides, he told himself, he was not threading the loom but only passing the shuttle back and forth across the warp. Surely he could accomplish that even in the flickering light of one candle.

  Bending over, he peered at the cloth already wrapped around the beam. He was very careful to hold the candle away; a drop of wax would ruin the cloth more than a weaving mistake. The yarn had been given to him by one of the local farmer’s wives and it varied widely in thickness. She had six daughters, the youngest was only just learning to spin, and some of the skeins went from thick to thin and back again within a few inches. The cloth woven from such irregular yarn was not smooth but dotted with slubs and knots and other imperfections. Usually Rees kept a portion of cloth but this time he would take his entire payment in money.

  He sat down, putting the candlestick on the windowsill. The light was dim but he could see well enough. He picked up the shuttle and stepped on the rightmost treadle. At first his mind was entirely occupied with the rejoinders he should have made to Lydia. Then, when he tried to put his anger from him, he recalled Leah and the events after the discovery of her body. But as he caught his rhythm and the faint clacking filled the room, Rees’s thoughts drifted away from the horrors of the last few hours. And for a space he thought of nothing at all but the shuttle flying from hand to hand and the pumping of his legs.

  He did not realize how much time had passed until Lydia came to the door and asked him if he was coming to bed. He jumped, almost falling off the bench, and turned. She was already in her night robe, her long red hair plaited and lying over her shoulder. ‘In a minute,’ he said.

  ‘You’ve been up here for hours,’ Lydia said. She still sounded cross. When he looked at his candle he saw it had burned down to a stub.

  ‘I lost track of time,’ he said, rising stiffly from the bench.

  ‘I’m sorry we quarreled,’ Lydia said. ‘I did not mean to argue.’

  ‘I know.’ Dropping an apologetic kiss on her forehead, Rees said, ‘I’ll leave the trips to later if you wish it.’ It was a tremendous sacrifice.

  She smiled at him. ‘Perhaps, in a few weeks, it will be a better time for you to be away. Besides,’ she added teasingly, ‘you will surely want to be here to help the constable with the murder.’

  ‘That’s true,’ he said, adding with a grin, ‘I’m going to assist Rouge whether he wants me to or not.’

  ‘I expect no less,’ Lydia said. Taking his hand, she urged him to the bedchamber across the hall. ‘Now, come to bed.’

  Rees realized he wasn’t ready to sleep after all.

  SIX

  Rees arrived at Dr Smith’s surgery shortly after eight the following morning. He found the coroner in the back room. Although a sheet covered the slight form on the table so the face could not be seen, Rees assumed that it was Leah. ‘What have you found?’ he asked.

  ‘She’s been strangled and, as I supposed,’ Smith said in a self-important tone, ‘she was interfered with.’

  ‘I guessed that,’ Rees said with some impatience. Smith scowled at Rees and with slow deliberation took a long draft from the mug on a nearby table. Hard cider, by the smell. ‘Do you have anything else?’

  Smith turned to a pile of clothing and rummaged through it with careless indifference. ‘Here,’ he said, pulling out the navy cape all Shaker women wore around their shoulders and tossing it to Rees. ‘Take a whiff of that.’

  Rees held the dark shawl to his nose. ‘Wine?’

  ‘Not any wine. That there is Madeira, and expensive Madeira too. I think the man plied her with wine, poor little hen.’ He sounded sorry and Rees liked him the better for it. ‘She put up quite a fight though.’ He reached under the sheet and pulled out Leah’s battered hand. It was so small. Rees swallowed.

  ‘She was just a child,’ he muttered. He imagined her terror and fury swept over him. He would find her murderer and bring him to justice.
r />   ‘Look at the nails,’ Smith said, holding up the waxy extremity. ‘There’s blood under them. She scratched her attacker. And I found blood on her teeth. I think she bit him as well.’

  ‘So, I’m looking for someone with scratches and bite marks. If she cut his face we’ll be able to identify him that way.’

  ‘Look for someone with scratched and bitten hands,’ Smith advised.

  Rees nodded sharply, annoyed. ‘That’s what I plan to do. Did the constable see this?’ The doctor nodded with a knowing smile. ‘What?’ Rees said.

  ‘One more thing,’ Smith said, choosing not to answer Rees’s query. This time he pulled the sheet down to the top of Leah’s small budding breasts. ‘Look at her shoulders. Do you see the bruises?’

  Rees bent over the purple marks. He could clearly see handprints: the blotchy marks of four fingers on the tender flesh just above her armpits. At the tops of each bruise was the indent of a fingernail; Leah’s attacker had held her down with great force.

  ‘He overpowered her,’ Smith said. Rees nodded. It would not take much strength to subdue a small girl like Leah.

  ‘Then, when he was done …’ Smith gestured to the circlet of bruises around the girl’s neck. Rees stared at the large purple ovals, both thumbprints clearly defined on the slender white throat.

  ‘They didn’t look that bad yesterday,’ he said to himself. ‘Why are the marks so large?’

  Smith looked at Rees. ‘The villain who did this had unusually large hands. Look: the fingers met all the way around at the back of her neck,’ he said scornfully.

  ‘But why kill her?’ Rees asked. ‘He’d already had his way with her. What was the need?’

  ‘That I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t want her to identify him,’ Smith said.

  ‘But that means she knew him,’ Rees said. ‘Or that she might see and recognize him.’

  Smith nodded slowly. ‘That follows. Not that murdering this poor child saved him.’

  A second or two passed before Rees, who had focused all his attention upon the body, understood what Smith had just said. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked, turning to the coroner. ‘Who is “him”?’

  Now Smith grinned. ‘Rouge arrested one of the circus performers after I showed him this.’

  ‘One of the performers?’ Rees asked. A terrible suspicion began to spread through him. ‘Which one?’

  ‘I don’t know. A groom, I think. What does it matter? The point is the murder has been solved.’

  Rees stared at the coroner. ‘Solved?’

  ‘Yes. Solved. So, you can climb back into that wagon of yours and go home.’

  Rees barely heard the insulting tone in Smith’s last comment. Instead he stared blindly at the sheet covering the body. Did he trust Rouge’s investigative skills? No, he did not. Rouge always tended to settle on the easiest explanation, not necessarily the correct one. And he never asked enough questions.

  Without a word Rees turned and left the surgery. He went to his wagon all right but he had no intention of going home. Smith’s office was but two blocks from the tavern. Rees needed to speak to Rouge immediately.

  ‘Come to congratulate me?’ Rouge asked Rees, halting the movement of his rag on the counter before him. ‘I bested you this time.’

  ‘Dr Smith told me you arrested one of the circus performers.’ Rees wished Rouge did not view these tragedies as contests to be won or lost. ‘Which one?’

  ‘Groom. The Reynard boy saw him riding down the road.’

  ‘Ah. He told me that too,’ Rees said with a nod. ‘But that doesn’t mean the trick rider is guilty.’ He paused. He had not asked the farmer’s boy when he had seen the rider, a mistake he now regretted. ‘And what time did the boy say it was when he saw the groom?’ Rees asked.

  Rouge shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t ask. But it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Yes, it does. Leah left Zion after the noon meal, between one and one thirty,’ Rees said, leaning forward and speaking emphatically. ‘At the earliest. She could not have reached Durham until two o’clock or after. I saw that groom preparing for the performance about four thirty. And the Shaker boy said he spent some time talking to that groom before that. So, yes, the timing does matter. It may make the difference between hanging an innocent man or a guilty one.’

  ‘So Boudreaux – that’s his name – rides one of the circus nags down the road and sees the girl. When he returns to the camp the kids are waiting. After a few minutes of chat the girl leaves. Boudreaux sends the boy out and jumps back on the horse. So he had plenty of time to work his will, at least an hour.’

  ‘Did you at least question the groom?’ Rees asked.

  ‘Of course,’ Rouge said. ‘Not that it made any difference.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘That he was innocent, of course.’ Rouge smirked at Rees. ‘But I’m confident we have our murderer.’

  Rees stared at the constable for several seconds. ‘I see,’ he said at last. He wanted to shake the tavern keeper and shout at him. Didn’t he realize how slipshod his investigation had been? ‘I’ll feel more comfortable if I speak to him myself,’ Rees said.

  Rouge grinned, revealing his stained teeth. ‘Are you fluent in French? I am and Monsieur Boudreaux does not speak English.’ He burst out laughing when Rees gaped at him in surprise. Although Rees had some French – most residents in the District of Maine did – he was by no means fluent.

  ‘I daresay you are,’ he said, really wishing he could wipe the constable’s insolent smile off his face.

  ‘My mother’s tongue. And my father’s.’ Rouge grinned. ‘This time I have the better of you.’

  ‘I think I’d like to see Boudreaux anyway,’ Rees said through clenched teeth. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘In jail. What do you think?’ Rouge took his knife from his belt and used the point to delicately pick at his teeth. Rees looked away.

  ‘I want to see him.’

  ‘Nobody’s stopping you. But you won’t understand him.’

  With Rouge’s challenge ringing in his ears, Rees left the inn.

  SEVEN

  Like most jails, this was a small brick structure with one barred window and a small screened opening in the door. With the spring warmth and the number of inmates who had vomited in the small area over the last few months, the smell penetrated every corner of this square. Rees put his shirttail over his nose as he approached.

  Two people were already standing in front of the door: a stocky gentleman garbed in a riding costume and a girl dressed in a light-colored cotton frock with a modest ruffle at the hem. As the man passed food and a small jug of wine through the barred door to the inmate, he spoke rapidly in a mixture of English, French and some other language Rees did not recognize. Rees could not see the girl’s face under the large straw hat but as he approached, she clutched at her companion’s sleeve and they both turned. He immediately recognized them as circus folk. The fellow in riding garb was the man with the large mustaches. About Rees’s age, he guessed. And the young woman was the ropedancer; Bambola. With those large, liquid, dark-brown eyes and fine black hair curling around her face, she was even more beautiful in person.

  ‘I came to speak to the prisoner,’ Rees said, gesturing at the jail door.

  ‘Why?’ asked the gentleman. ‘What do you want with him?’ His buff breeches, leather gloves and scarlet jacket were clearly made by an English tailor and his speech confirmed England as his country of origin. But the young woman? Now with an excuse to really look at her, Rees inspected her carefully. Her hat with its burden of artificial flowers and the curled dark hair all gave off a subtle foreign aura and her pale-pink, silk frock with its straight lines looked both fashionable and exotic.

  ‘I–I want …’ Realizing he was stammering, Rees stopped and took a breath. ‘I’m not sure he’s guilty.’ As he spoke, the man inside the jail pressed his face against the bars and Rees recognized the trick rider who had so delighted him with his horsemanship the pre
vious day.

  ‘And who are you?’ asked the older man. Rees glanced from him to the girl, wondering if they were family.

  ‘I’ve assisted Mr Rouge previously in these types of … tragedies in the past,’ Rees said, carefully selecting his words. ‘He sometimes requests my help.’ He doubted the constable would welcome him into this investigation but chose not to say so. ‘My name is William Rees.’

  ‘Mr John Asher. This is Miss Lucia Mazza,’ Asher said with a slight bow in the woman’s direction. She directed an almost flirtatious glance at Rees from under her long lashes.

  ‘Why do you think Mr Boudreaux might be innocent?’ the ringmaster asked.

  ‘Well, I can’t know he’s innocent; at least, I don’t know yet. But more investigation needs to be done before his innocence or guilt is determined. And the first step is speaking to him and hearing his story.’ Mr Asher nodded slightly.

  ‘Do you think you might free our poor Pip?’ Miss Mazza leaned forward, her lips parted.

  Rees, captivated by Bambola’s accent, took a moment to reply. ‘I was here yesterday, between four and four thirty, and Mr Boudreaux was in the ring. So, I know that for certain,’ Rees said.

  ‘That is so,’ Mr Boudreaux said in heavily accented English. A speech defect thickened his words, slurring them together and making them hard to understand. ‘I’m innocent.’

  ‘Hmm. Your constable,’ Mr Asher said to Rees, ‘seems to feel Pip could have murdered the girl before he returned to the ring.’

  ‘He does think that,’ Rees agreed. ‘That doesn’t mean he is correct.’ He felt the warmth of Bambola’s smile as she nodded at him approvingly. ‘I’m curious to know if Mr Boudreaux saw anyone while riding on the road. And what time was he there?’

  Mr Asher looked at the sunburned face behind the bars and loosed a flood of words. Rees recognized the English words and some of the French. But although the third language Asher employed sounded similar to French, Rees did not understand a word. Still, as far as he could tell, his questions were being asked exactly. Mr Boudreaux replied in such a passionate and rapid speech that Rees could barely grasp the few English terms scattered among the rest. Boudreaux spoke for some time. Mr Asher responded, speaking just as passionately at certain points and finally turned to Rees.