“I will if you will,” Andrew said, still grinning.
This was a game Rose did not intend to play. “Andrew,” she said, a quiet chiding in her voice.
He nodded, understanding that he had received a correction from his eldress. “I was not telling a complete untruth,” he said. “I did notice a plant while we were waiting to hear about Patience. I saw it from a distance and thought I’d come back to investigate. If it is what it looked like, I’ll be pleased to know it is growing wild around here. I haven’t seen it except in the medic garden, and there isn’t enough of it for our purposes.”
“And the plant is . . . ?”
“Foxglove.”
“Foxglove? Growing wild? It can, of course, but I’d be surprised that someone hasn’t already harvested it into extinction. We actually use very little of it, since it is so powerful. Until you came, we had only Josie, and she isn’t comfortable working with the more dangerous herbs.”
“Shall we see?” Andrew led the way through a small wooded area into a glen that somehow had escaped the decades of encroaching undergrowth. Slivers of sunlight warmed the few tall plants in the area.
Rose gazed around in confusion. “I don’t see any foxglove,” she said, looking for the stalks of bell-shaped pink flowers with spotted throats.
Andrew walked over to a clump of green leaves growing in a rosette shape. He knelt over it and rubbed the leaves. “Come feel this,” he said. When he did not move a safe distance away, Rose went around to the opposite side of the plant and lowered to her knees. Andrew ripped off a leaf and held it out to her. The tip of his finger brushed her hand as she took the leaf. He seemed not to notice. She decided to do the same, though her rising discomfort forced her to stand quickly. The leaf felt fuzzy.
“You see, I’m quite sure this is a first-year foxglove plant,” Andrew said. His dark eyebrows nearly joined as he scanned the area around the plant. “The only thing that confuses me, though, is that foxglove is a biennial. It doesn’t bloom until the second year, if you see what I mean.”
Rose saw. “In other words,” she said, “it is July, so why aren’t there any second-year plants nearby, in full bloom?”
“Precisely,” Andrew said, with a broad smile. “Where did the seeds come from, if not from an older plant?”
Rose felt an unwelcome flush of pleasure at Andrew’s delighted reaction to her quickness of mind. It wasn’t until later, after they had heard the dinner bell and settled into their silent places in the Center Family dining room, that it occurred to her to wonder how Andrew, milling around with the others on the northeast side of the holy hill, could possibly have recognized a first-year foxglove hidden halfway around the hill and beyond a clump of trees.
EIGHTEEN
ROSE SAT AT THE DESK IN THE SMALL LIBRARY OF THE MINISTRY House, leafing through an old journal she’d pulled from the shelf. For the most part, journals were stored in spare rooms these days, but this one was special. Wilhelm’s predecessor as elder, Obadiah, had been a medicinal herb enthusiast and amateur artist. The medicinal herb industry had been booming in his day. He had kept a close and interested eye on it and had recorded his many observations in his journals, along with drawings. During the year he had written the journal Rose held, he had made a study of each medicinal plant grown by the North Homage Society, recording where it had been planted, its growing patterns, and how it was used.
Not far into the book, she found what she sought—several pages devoted to foxglove. He had drawn the plant at several stages of development and carefully printed a description next to the picture. The first-year plant looked very close to what Andrew had shown her at the holy hill. Obadiah described a low mound of fuzzy leaves; Rose recalled lightly rubbing a leaf between her fingers and feeling the fuzz. She was irritated with herself for not recognizing the plant immediately.
Rose read through the rest of Obadiah’s description. Foxglove had been planted in both the medic garden and in one field north of the Herb House, so he could keep an eye on it and keep the children away from it. The children. Could this be what Nora and Betsy had gotten into? Gretchen had found the girls between the Trustees’ Office and the Center Family house, which were very close to the holy hill. She would ask Josie for more information about the symptoms of foxglove poisoning.
Questions nagged at her, though. Why would the girls be attracted to a first-year plant, without those tantalizing bell-shaped flowers? Were there more mature plants somewhere else in that same area, perhaps reseeds from decades-earlier plantings? She skimmed through the journal entry one more time. Nay, she had remembered correctly: Besides the medic garden, north of the Infirmary, the only planting Obadiah reported was in the far northeast corner of town. The holy hill was at the other end of the village. If they had simply grown wild, which was possible, surely she and Andrew would have seen a colony of mature plants nearby.
Rose leaned back in her chair. There was one more possibility, and she was not eager to consider it. Someone could have planted the foxglove in the spring, right about the time the Mount Lebanon Believers arrived. So it was also possible that Rose had just now interrupted Andrew as he checked the progress of his secret planting of a highly toxic plant. The thought caused a stabbing sensation in her heart. She slammed the journal shut and held it to her chest as she closed the room and climbed the stairs to her retiring room.
After placing Obadiah’s journal with her own on the corner of her retiring room desk, she headed for the hall telephone. She was increasingly certain that Grady did not believe his own theory about Patience’s death. It simply did not make sense to her that a sheriff’s deputy with his skill and intelligence would dismiss so quickly the notion that the death might have been made to look like an accident. Was he investigating on his own? If he had a plan, she wanted to be aware of it.
“Rose, I’m sorry, I’m rather busy right now . . .” Grady said, after the operator had connected them.
Such distance was unusual from Grady, and Rose’s suspicions deepened. “Merely a quick question,” she said. “Did you take a careful look at Patience’s wound?”
“Uh . . . What do you mean?”
“Well, I was wondering what you concluded from the depth of the wound, whether you still think she simply fell on a rock.”
“I don’t think we should be discussing—”
“Oh? I was under the impression that, since you believed the death to be accidental, there would be no investigation, so why can’t we discuss anything we please?”
The line wasn’t clear enough for her to hear it, but she was certain that Grady sighed. “Rose, listen to me. I want you and Gennie to stay out of this. Yeah, it could just be an accident, and it could be something else, but I don’t want folks around here to get riled up, like they seem to do when anything happens in North Homage.”
“So you do think—”
“Rose, are you listening to me?” Exasperation drove his normally gentle voice into a higher, more strident range. “Let me do the investigating. Y’all just go on with your lives like nothing’s out of the ordinary. Understand?”
This time it was Rose who sighed. “I can’t.”
“Rose—”
“Nay, Grady, it isn’t possible. You know that. There are undercurrents in this village that only I can bring to the surface, and my instincts tell me they are directly related to Patience’s death. You are not one of us.”
“That might be for the best, you know,” Grady said, in a more reasonable tone. “I’m not so personally involved.”
“Exactly.” Rose was suddenly tired and wished she could simply turn the problem over to Grady. He would be able to seek out the truth with single-mindedness. His heart would not be weighted down with the fear that the killer might turn out to be a Believer.
Grady must have heard the inevitability in her voice. “All right,” he said. “Let’s keep in touch. Just be careful, Rose, okay? I can’t control Gennie any better than I can control you, so keep her safe.”
“I’ll do my best,” Rose said, with feeling.
“We have a flock of hungry stomachs arriving for breakfast in just over an hour, and not a sign of a Kitchen Deaconess. What are we supposed to do?” The aggrieved voice on the other end of Rose’s telephone belonged to Polly, one of the kitchen sisters, though she hadn’t thought to say so. Rose leaned against the hallway wall, not yet awake enough to handle yet another crisis.
“Have you checked her retiring room?”
“Of course, did it myself first thing.” Polly’s tone implied that her eldress was none too bright.
Polly was no more than twenty-one, and Rose was inclined to forgive her, at least this once. “Did you try calling Josie at the Infirmary?”
“What on earth for?”
“In case Gertrude became ill during the night, Polly.” Rose’s understanding was stretching thin. “Never mind,” she said. “I’ll try to find her. You get on back to fixing breakfast, and I’ll send Gennie Malone over to help you.”
The sun hadn’t yet made its entrance, but the air drifting in Rose’s open window brushed over her skin like steam from a kettle. She splashed her face with lukewarm water. As she pulled a fresh work dress over her head, the bell over the Center Family house rang to awaken the village. She tidied her room quickly, giving Gennie a few minutes to crawl out of bed and dress before calling her to the phone.
“Oh, Rose, this is just like old times, being sent to work in the kitchen,” Gennie said, her voice slow and sleepy. “And you know how I hate it.”
“It’s good to have you back, Gennie.”
“Uh-huh. Why do they need me, anyway?”
“Gertrude didn’t show up this morning, and she isn’t in her retiring room. You didn’t by any chance see or hear her leave, did you?”
“No—I mean, nay, I didn’t, but I’ll ask around before I go to the kitchen. Rose, do you think this is related to . . . You aren’t going to find another body on the holy hill, are you?”
“Dear Lord, I hope not.”
Rose decided against calling Josie; the fewer calls she made from the Ministry House, the better, since Wilhelm might hear her. Best to keep him uninformed as long as possible. For once skipping her morning routine of cleaning and prayer, Rose raced across the central path to the Infirmary.
Josie slept at the Infirmary to watch over her patients, which meant that sometimes she didn’t sleep at all. But she always seemed cheerful. This morning she was already scurrying around the waiting room, dusting the dozens of apothecary jars and tins she used to mix her tonics and teas. She looked up in surprise when Rose rushed in the door, breathless and already sprouting dots of perspiration around the edge of her white cap.
“Is Gertrude here?”
Josie shook her head.
“Has she checked in with you at all since yesterday?”
“Nay. Rose, what is this about?”
“I’ll explain later.”
Rose turned to leave, and Josie called her back.
“That doctor Grady sent came in very early this morning to examine Patience,” Josie said.
“What did he say?”
“Nothing. He said absolutely nothing. Just as if I wouldn’t understand.” Josie pursed her lips in disapproval.
Rose wondered if there had been a different reason for the doctor’s silence—such as orders from Grady—as she raced through the medic and kitchen gardens to the outside door of the dwelling house kitchen. She poked her head inside, and Polly squeaked and jumped backward.
“Rose, you startled—”
“Is Gennie here yet?” A sense of urgency consumed Rose. She feared there was no time to waste.
“She just arrived. Is this about Gertrude?”
Rose stepped inside, spotted Gennie lifting a copper pan from a wall peg, and called out to her. When Gennie turned, she seemed to understand instantly. Not bothering to deliver the pan, she ran to Rose. To avoid the now curious eyes of the kitchen sisters, they stepped outside and closed the door.
“Here’s all I found out,” Gennie said. “Sister Theresa said she thought she heard Gertrude’s door open early this morning, before the wake-up bell. She didn’t think anything of it, of course. Gertrude might just have been visiting the bathroom, but Theresa couldn’t go back to sleep, and she didn’t hear Gertrude’s door close again. That’s all.”
“No sounds of illness?”
“No sounds at all except a little moving about in her room and then the door opening. No one saw her at all when everyone started to tidy up the dwelling house and do the brethren’s mending. That’s when I left. Does that tell you anything?”
“It tells me she chose to leave, which is a relief in some ways.”
“And puzzling,” Gennie said. “I gather she wasn’t at the Infirmary?”
“Nay.” But there had to be a reasonable explanation. Rose wished her heart would ease up so she could hear herself think. “Go ahead back to work, Gennie. I’ll find Gertrude.”
“Two of us could look twice as fast.”
“You can’t get out of kitchen work that easily. Put your hands to work, my friend.”
Gertrude could be anywhere in or out of the village. Sisters and brethren had been known to desert the Society in the dead of night, sometimes with one another. But Gertrude? Nay, not possible. Clearly she had been struggling with some burden during the worship service, but for her to desert her kitchen responsibilities was almost unthinkable. She would put aside a mere personal problem until her duties had been completed.
Rose found herself walking west on the central path. Toward the holy mount. Try as she might, the best explanation she could think of for Gertrude’s behavior was that she knew something about Patience’s death.
When she had nearly reached the village entrance, she veered off to the right, found the creek, and followed it to the holy hill. She hadn’t entered from the south before. A dense cluster of sugar maples led to a sunny clearing, then more trees at the base of the hill. The atmosphere was peaceful, idyllic. In calmer times the clearing would be a lovely place for a picnic, with clumps of woodland flowers dotting the landscape. She had no time for such thoughts now, though. If she did not find Gertrude here—and it was only a guess that she would—she’d have to comb the village as quickly as possible.
Rose split off from the creek and circled around the hill to the side where Patience had been found. As soon as she rounded the curve, she knew her hunch was correct. Two feet appeared, wearing the black cloth shoes of a Shaker sister. They lay on the ground, soles up. Rose’s breath caught in her throat, and she ran toward the figure lying prone, arms splayed outward, facedown on the grass.
“Gertrude!” Rose cried, falling to her knees beside the sister. She reached out to touch Gertrude’s cheek, and her hand was knocked aside. She sat abruptly on her side as Gertrude screamed and rolled over. It took several moments for Rose to comprehend that Gertrude was very much alive and terrified. They stared at one another, wide-eyed and openmouthed.
Rose recovered first. She grabbed Gertrude’s wrists and pulled her to a sitting position, then threw her arms around the startled woman. “Dear Gertrude, when I saw you lying on the ground, just like Patience, I was so frightened,” she said, choking on her tears. She sat back and held Gertrude at arm’s length. “What on earth are you doing here at this time of morning?”
Gertrude’s shoulders slumped and her face crumpled. “Oh, Rose, I’ve been such a fool,” she said. “Honestly, it would be better if I had been dead.”
“Nonsense.” Rose took a large hand in her own and squeezed it. “Tell me everything.”
“Could we consider this confession?”
“Of course.”
“My back hurts,” Gertrude said, wincing. “I’m not as young as I once was.”
“Nor I. Let’s walk while we talk.”
Rose stood and helped the older woman. They walked in silence until they reached the shade of some oaks and maples. Decades of fallen leaves
had matted some areas into the semblance of a path, which they wandered slowly.
“I was praying when you found me,” Gertrude said finally. “I have broken my vow.”
“Which one?”
“My sacred vow never to do violence to another human being.” Gertrude’s already prominent chin jutted out even farther; she was ready and willing to take her punishment.
“Gertrude, are you saying that you had something to do with Patience’s death? I simply can’t believe that. Why? How?”
“Well, I must have killed her, that’s all.”
Rose blinked, thinking she hadn’t heard right. “Why must you have killed her? What are you talking about? Did you or didn’t you?” She resisted the impulse to shake Gertrude by the shoulders; she seemed confused enough.
“I feel so terrible, Rose. I can’t eat or sleep or work, and when I tried to pray, I just fell on the ground like Patience. It’s all my fault. Even if I didn’t mean for it to happen—and I didn’t, Rose, you have to believe me. Even so, it’s my fault, and I have to take responsibility.”
Rose sucked on her bottom lip to keep herself from shouting in frustration. Gertrude needed to approach confession at her own pace; that was clear. Pressuring her would only increase her anxiety and slow the process.
They had reached the creek. Rose led the way, so they would not leave the privacy of the holy hill too quickly. Gertrude halted suddenly and stared into the water. “Patience was quite horrible to me,” she said. “You have no idea. No one does. When Hugo got sick, she said it was my fault!”
“Gertrude, surely you can’t believe you are responsible for Hugo’s death. He had been failing for a long time; you know that.”
“She said it was my cooking.”
“Your cooking?” Rose said, forcing herself not to laugh. “And you believed her? What, in the name of Mother Ann and all the angels, could your cooking possibly have had to do with Hugo’s illness?”
Gertrude frowned as if the question had not occurred to her before. “Well, I don’t know, truly I don’t. I mean, everyone eats my cooking, don’t they? Except you and Wilhelm, of course, when you eat at the Ministry House. And none of you gets sick from it, do you?” She searched Rose’s face with red-rimmed eyes.
Sins of a Shaker Summer Page 15