They were late. When they arrived, school had already started. Rose took Mairin around to the back entrance, so she could slip in through the storeroom and into the classroom without drawing attention to herself. On impulse, she gave Mairin a quick hug around the shoulders before sending her inside.
“Stay close to Sister Charlotte and Nora, okay?”
To Rose’s surprise, Mairin’s eyes glistened for a moment, as if tears threatened. Then she lowered her gaze and closed the door behind her.
Rose stood just outside the women’s entrance to the South Family Dwelling House, considering her options. Protecting Mairin from the evening service had been essential, but it had also left Rose with even fewer sources of information. By now, Gilbert would have surely ordered all the New-Owenites to avoid talking with her. Celia might not obey him, especially if she saw a chance to get rid of Mairin forever. And Earl seemed to waver in whichever direction Celia was going.
Hugh’s alleged suicide note bothered her. If she could throw its authenticity into doubt, maybe she could get some help resolving this mess—and perhaps even get the police on her side before Gilbert made good his threat to call them.
While walking back from the Schoolhouse, Rose had watched Gilbert leave the South Family Dwelling House and head back toward the Ministry House, probably for another go-round with Wilhelm. Celia and Gilbert were not with him, and the white Buick was parked beside the dwelling house. Rose felt certain that they would not observe the Sabbath with either work or worship, so they’d most likely be back in the dwelling house, relaxing.
She entered the dwelling house, purposely making noise to make it clear she had a right to be there. She needn’t have bothered; the raucous laughter coming from the parlor drowned out her gesture. Celia cackled, apparently at something Earl had said, and other voices joined in. Rose stood quiet and tall in the parlor doorway. It was her second grand entrance in as many days—Agatha would enjoy hearing the story, assuming Rose survived to tell it.
Earl and Celia, along with another man and woman, sat around a table, playing a card game and smoking cigarettes. Their baggy brown work clothes had been replaced by elegant evening wear—at least, that was what it looked like to Rose, though she was ignorant of the world’s rules regarding acceptable dress during the day. Celia was especially stunning. An emerald-studded comb held back her glistening hair on one side, and a satin gown of the same shade draped low beneath her neck and skimmed over her narrow hips. A flowery scent blended with the smell of cigarette smoke. The worldly scene, right here in a dwelling house, sent a stabbing pain through Rose’s heart as she envisioned a day when the Shakers would no longer be strong enough to hold their community together, and their buildings would be sold off to the world.
The laughter and chattering trailed off as the New-Owenites became aware of Rose’s presence. All but Celia hurried to stub out their cigarettes in white teacups. The second couple glanced nervously at each other and at Earl and Celia, then excused themselves. Rose barely had time to step farther into the room before they rushed for the doorway. Celia watched them disappear, took one last drag on her cigarette, then stubbed it out.
Earl wore a pearl gray suit that flowed into place as he stood to greet Rose. “I apologize,” he said. “I’m afraid it just slipped our minds that you’d asked us not to smoke in the building. However, there’s really little danger of fire when we’re just relaxing with a game of cards, so no harm done. Have you information about the meeting tonight?”
Rose made a quick decision. She would waste no more time in subterfuge. “I’m the one who wants information,” she said. “Did Hugh ever print, instead of writing in script?”
“I beg your pardon?” Earl glanced at Celia, whose porcelain face had tightened in a frown. “Why do you ask?”
“Was Hugh’s handwriting clear and legible? Do you have a sample of it around, Celia?”
Celia reached for another cigarette but didn’t light it. “I suppose I might,” she said.
“Samples of Hugh’s handwriting used to be all over the place,” Earl said. “He was always jotting down notes on little bits of paper. We all do.”
“I need a smoke,” Celia said. “I’m going outside.”
“First, as far as you know, did your husband make a habit of printing his notes?”
“I suppose it’s possible. I didn’t pay much attention.”
“Actually,” Earl said, “I believe he printed pamphlets and so forth. Our typist kept making mistakes trying to read his script. Isn’t that right, Celia?”
“I have a vague memory of that,” Celia said, clearly bored.
“I’d like to see a sample of your husband’s handwriting.” Rose edged toward the doorway, hoping Celia would not just barrel through her.
“Oh, honestly. Earl, would you be a dear and get one from my room? I think I kept one or two of his letters and put them somewhere in my dresser. I simply must have a smoke.” She glided from the parlor, and Rose let her.
“I’ll just be a few minutes,” Earl said. “Although now that I think of it, if you’re interested in how legible his handwriting was, love letters are probably not the best test.”
Rose had to confess she hadn’t thought of that.
“Tell you what, I’ll look around and see if any of Hugh’s notes were overlooked when we packed up his things and sent them back.”
“You sent everything back?”
“Of course. When one of our community dies, we distribute his belongings to the poorest of our members, as a way of creating more equality. Don’t you?”
“Those people are impossible,” Rose muttered as she left the South Family Dwelling House. She’d get nothing from them, and without Wilhelm’s cooperation, she couldn’t get rid of them. She flung open the Ministry House door and headed straight for Wilhelm’s workshop, where she found him pacing, as he usually did on Sunday mornings, while thinking through his homily.
Rose burst into the room without knocking, which so startled Wilhelm that he was speechless.
“I want Mairin’s three drawings back,” she said. “I want them right now. Where are they? I’ll get them myself.”
“Nay, those drawings belong to the Society!”
“And I am just as much the Society as you are, Wilhelm. I haven’t time to waste. I want those drawings.”
Wilhelm was uncharacteristically calm, which gave Rose her first moment of doubt.
“If I allow thee to see the gift drawings,” he said, “then in return, I want thee to bring Mairin to the worship service tonight.”
“I will not. Mairin is not a possession, to be exchanged for a favor.”
Rose crossed her arms and stood her ground, ready for escalation. However, Wilhelm must have recognized he’d never get back to his homily if he continued to protest.
“How do I know I will get the drawings back in time for the worship service this evening?”
“If you do not give them to me, I will not allow the sisters to attend the service.”
Wilhelm’s bushy eyebrows flew up. “Mother Ann would—”
“Mother Ann disrupted church services when her conscience told her to. I am quite willing to prevent a service from happening.”
Without another word, he opened his built-in cupboard, extracted Mairin’s drawings, and handed them to Rose.
TWENTY-ONE
“MOTHER ANN HAD A HAND IN THESE DRAWINGS,” AGATHA said. “I have no doubt.”
“If she did, then there must be a message,” Rose said. “A coherent message. You are my only hope for deciphering it.” She rearranged the six drawings on Agatha’s desk, putting the two trees next to each other, followed by the headless serpent, the red-and-white checkerboard, the bejeweled bird, and the luscious foods.
“These last two don’t seem to fit,” Rose said.
Agatha leaned close to them, then sat back and closed her eyes. “The angels have often given gifts of celestial food,” she said. “This may have been their way of showing Ma
irin how much richer her life would become as she learned to follow Holy Mother Wisdom. What better picture of heaven could there be for a starved child than inexhaustible, wonderful foods?”
“That makes sense,” Rose said. “But what about the bird? I can’t imagine that would say anything meaningful to Mairin. She has lived a lot in trees, so she’s probably seen lots of birds, but why would she be directed to draw one like this?”
Agatha picked up the bird drawing and studied it. “You truly don’t know what this is?” she asked, with a gentle smile.
“Nay.”
“This lovely green-eyed bird is you, Rose. You have spread your protective wings around the child, and she feels safe with you. You are her guardian angel.”
“Oh.” Rose took the bird drawing. “Agatha, you know these things better than I, but . . . it would be helpful if I were a real angel. I have difficulty understanding her. I hope I don’t let her down.”
“You’ve been given the tools, Rose. You have only to use them.”
Rose pointed to the remaining four pictures. “What about these, then? What do they tell us?”
“What do you think they tell us, Rose?”
Agatha had always been her guide to the world of spirit, and it sounded as if she might be retiring. Rose had not felt so uncertain since she’d first become eldress. With trepidation, she picked up the checkerboard. “Well, I believe we’ve been shown that this is Mairin’s memory of the chair found in the orchard, which was broken and scuffed, either during Hugh’s suicide, or by a killer. It tells us only that she probably saw the event.”
Rose pulled the two trees and the serpent toward her and studied them together. She changed the order of the drawings, then changed them again.
“There’s a sequence here—look.” She moved the drawings closer to Agatha’s dim eyes. “The tree and the snake combine in the third drawing. They were separate and then somehow together. And the snake lost its head before climbing the tree, not after.” Rose frowned at the yellow-and-orange serpent. “We don’t have snakes of that color around here, do we? I didn’t think so. I wonder . . .” She traced back from the hacked neck to the end. “This isn’t a snake,” she said. “I’m sure of it Look at the end—neat but blunt, not tapering off, as a snake’s tail would. Now this looks more like a piece of hemp rope, like the one Hugh was hanging from.”
Agatha sat back in her rocker and was silent.
“One end has been hacked off crudely, while the other is neatly sliced, just as the brethren would cut it” She shook her head. “But what does that tell us, really? Either Hugh or the killer could have cut the rope, or somebody else could have done it earlier.”
“Rose,” Agatha said, “the drawings were sent by Mother Ann, if not by Holy Mother Wisdom. They would not send a meaningless gift.”
Rose slid back her chair and began to pace the room. She longed to open the window to air out the stuffy room and clear her head, but Agatha’s frail body could not tolerate the November chill.
“Quiet will serve better than agitation,” Agatha said, barely above a whisper.
Rose forced herself to sit and be still. She closed her eyes and envisioned the scene she had come upon Tuesday morning—Hugh’s lifeless body hanging from a branch of a plum tree.
“Something is puzzling me,” Rose said, opening her eyes and picking up the drawing of the rope. “It took very little rope to hang Hugh from such a low branch, yet this looks like quite a long rope. So what’s pictured climbing the tree must have been cut from a longer length.” She jumped from her chair in excitement. “Where’s the rest of that rope? If Hugh hacked it off, he would have done it in the orchard, once he saw how much would be needed. So whatever he cut with would have been found in the orchard. Also, the rest of the rope would have been there, too.”
She flung herself on Agatha’s bed. “I think this is just confusing me more,” she said, rubbing her hands over her face. “However,” she said, staring at the ceiling, “the rope used on Hugh is with the Sheriff. If I can locate the longer length of hacked rope, it might help convince the police that Hugh was murdered, either in the orchard or somewhere else and then moved to the orchard. Agatha, where do we keep most of our rope—in the barn?”
“We always used to,” Agatha said.
“Then I’m off to the barn.”
To avoid delay, Rose decided to cut through the medic garden behind the Infirmary. One of these days, someone would notice how often she trod through the grass instead of following the neatly maintained paths. If she was very unlucky, that someone would be Elsa, who would delight in telling Wilhelm what a bad example Rose was setting.
As a reflex, she glanced to her right, toward the central path, and saw three brethren leaving the South Family Dwelling House. They were so engrossed in conversation that they did not look up. Rose’s impulse was to slip out of sight behind the Infirmary and go on with her task, but some instinct stronger than curiosity kept her rooted in place until they came close enough for her to be certain of their identity.
The men reached the path and stopped. They seemed wrapped up in their topic, sometimes all talking at once. Rose was certain that the tallest figure was Matthew and the shorter, plumper one was Archibald. The third man kept his back to her, but she guessed it was Benjamin, Andrew’s assistant in the Medicinal Herb Shop. Now her instincts were screaming at her. Benjamin had been disgruntled since the day he’d arrived. If those three had gone together to visit the New-Owenites, it did not bode well for village harmony.
Rose longed to hear their conversation. Their intensity was escalating, and it looked as if Benjamin and Matthew were arguing with Archibald. Matthew poked an angry finger in Archibald’s chest, pushing him backward a step. It was more than Rose could tolerate—Believers nearly coming to blows with each other. So much for their vow of nonviolence.
She began to walk toward them. She’d gone no more than a few steps when the door to the men’s entrance opened a crack and a sleek black head appeared. Celia called something that Rose couldn’t make out, and Matthew sprinted back to her. They conferred briefly—with their heads much too close together—and Matthew spun around. Rose realized he was looking directly at her. The other two men turned, as well. The dwelling house door closed. Rose stood her ground, refusing to sneak away as if this were not her village.
Something distracted her, perhaps a slight movement above the brethren’s heads, and Rose glanced up at the second-floor windows. She had only a moment, before the light curtain fell back into place, to see someone’s face behind the wavery glass. She hadn’t been able to make out the features, but whoever it was had been watching her. With a shiver, she wondered how many times before she’d been observed as she’d gone about her search for the truth.
Since it was Sabbathday morning, only one of the brethren was in the barn, doing some long-delayed tidying. The others were probably using the extra time to catch up on projects elsewhere. The barn wasn’t one of Rose’s usual haunts, so the brother started in surprise at seeing her. Without questioning her, he showed her where they kept the spare rope, then went back to his cleaning.
The ropes had not yet been straightened, so they were tangled in a pile. Rose set about disentangling them, one by one. She was used to a certain amount of manual labor, since the Ministry was expected to work alongside other Believers, as an act of humility; however, her hands began to blister after twenty minutes or so of sliding them over ropes, searching for the ends. So far, each end was neatly sliced. Just as she reached the bottom of the pile, she found it—a long length of rope with one neat end and one frayed, as if it had been hacked off with a dull blade. She rolled it up and hung it over her shoulder. Sheriff Brock might criticize her for taking it, but she feared that if she left it, the rope wouldn’t be there the next time she came to look.
She walked a little too fast toward the barn door and caught her left foot on the edge of a rut in the hard dirt floor. Once she’d righted herself and waited for her knee to
calm down, she noticed the ruts ran deep from the side of the barn to a spot near the middle, in full view of the door. Puzzled, she called the brother away from his work and asked what might have caused the gouges.
“Sorry we haven’t had a chance to fill those in,” he said. “We noticed them, too. Looked like they might’ve come from a wooden box that was stored over against the wall there, but none of us remembers moving it, and it’s not something we’d forget easy.”
Rose looked above her head at the rafters. A person could certainly hang himself—or someone else—from those rafters, she thought, but why here? And if here, why move the body and hang it in the orchard? Her head was beginning to spin again.
“Rose?” Charlotte peeked inside the barn door. “I’m so glad I found you. The children are having a play break, so I thought I’d seek you out. Agatha said you might be here.”
Charlotte seemed calm, but Rose’s stomach tightened. Something wasn’t right.
“I was just wondering,” Charlotte said, “if you were planning to bring Mairin in for the lessons this morning—the ones to make up for Tuesday, do you remember?”
Rose stared at her, hoping she wasn’t hearing correctly.
“Rose?” Charlotte’s eyes widened.
“I brought her this morning,” Rose said, her voice husky with fear. “We were just a bit late, so I sent her in the back way. I watched her close the back door behind her.”
“She never made it to the classroom,” Charlotte said.
TWENTY-TWO
MAIRIN HAD NOT SOUGHT COMFORT EITHER IN AGATHA’S RETIRING room or in Rose’s. From the Ministry House, Rose called all the other buildings and managed to catch everyone just before they left for the noon meal. No one had seen the little girl. The Believers promised to watch for her, while the New-Owenites in the South Family Dwelling House showed no surprise and no concern.
A Simple Shaker Murder Page 18