A Simple Shaker Murder Read online

  Mairin’s gaze shifted to the paper, and she reached out a hand for the crayons. She picked them up, then dropped them again, as if she expected to be punished.

  “Draw all you want,” Rose said. “I’ll crawl back into bed and not bother you. Keep the light on. If you need me, just call out. Good night, now.” She slid back into her own bed and turned on her side, so her back would be to Mairin. She waited, trying to stay alert and failing. Just as she was relaxing into sleep, she heard the faint rat-scratches that told her Mairin was drawing. She pushed herself to stay awake, in case Mairin was so upset she might sneak out; but in the end, sleep took her.

  When she awakened again, gray light streaked in her window, and the room was silent—too silent. Ignoring the warning twinge in her knee, Rose twisted around to find Mairin’s bed tousled and empty. She tossed off her covers and leaped out of bed, but then she wasn’t sure what to do. Get dressed. If Mairin had taken off again, Rose couldn’t mount a search in her nightclothes. She grabbed the same work dress she’d worn the day before, carefully hung on a wall peg by Josie, and slipped it over her head.

  As she went toward her built-in drawers to find a fresh kerchief to crisscross over her bodice, she passed close to Mairin’s bed and saw several sheets of paper crumpled along with the bedsheets and the girl’s nightgown. She turned one over and smoothed it out. Mairin had drawn another tree. This one was even more disturbing than her first. The deep hues were broken by lightning slashes of red and orange, and the headless snake coiled its way up the violet trunk.

  Rose turned over two more rumpled pages. The first was a lovely bird with green eyes and bejeweled wings spreading forward as if to surround whoever held the drawing. The image did not strike Rose as frightening, but she supposed it might have a different effect on a child.

  The third drawing looked like Mairin’s attempt to impose order on the terrifying chaos of her imagination. A checkerboard, each square outlined with precision in black crayon, covered the page. Perhaps this drawing had been her last, because she hadn’t filled in any colors. Or perhaps she hadn’t needed colors, just order.

  Aware of a sense of urgency, Rose rolled up the drawings and stowed them in a small cupboard built into the wall of her retiring room. If she could, she wanted to keep both Wilhelm and Gilbert from learning about the sketches. They would only encourage the two leaders to keep using Mairin as a pawn in their struggle for power. She’d been tossed about all her life. Perhaps that was the reason she’d drawn a checkerboard, though it seemed a sophisticated image for a child who lived in the trees.

  Rose had just shut the drawings in the cupboard when a click told her the retiring room door had opened. She whirled around. Mairin stood in the doorway, fully dressed and holding her doll.

  “Mairin! I thought . . . I got very worried when I woke up and saw your bed empty.”

  “I’m sorry. I just went to the bathroom.”

  “Well, I noticed you’d dressed, so I was afraid you’d left.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mairin repeated. But she neither cowered nor ran away. Instead, she stepped inside and closed the door behind her. It doesn’t matter where she’s been, Rose thought It only matters that she’s come back.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” Rose said. “Let’s leave your doll on your bed during school time, shall we? That way the other children won’t feel left out.”

  Mairin nodded and placed her doll on her pillow.

  “It’ll be breakfast time soon. Are you hungry?”

  This time Mairin’s nod was more vigorous. “Can we eat with Agatha again?” she asked.

  “I’m sure she would love it,” Rose said.

  Mairin had slipped easily into her role as Agatha’s helper. As soon as Polly brought a tray from the kitchen, Mairin pulled a chair near Agatha’s and sat on the edge. She always fed Agatha a bite first before eating anything herself. When she did eat, Mairin copied Agatha’s slow chewing, almost down to the second. She was rewarded by a warm smile from Agatha. The former eldress was perfectly capable of feeding herself with her left hand, but it was like her to choose a child’s growth over her own fierce independence.

  Rose remembered, from her own childhood, Agatha’s easy ways with young people. When Agatha had listened to her endless prattle, she’d felt like the most important person on earth, and certainly the most interesting. Now she felt just a twinge of jealousy as she watched Mairin unfold in Agatha’s sunshine. But she was glad for Mairin, too.

  “Mairin, may I tell Agatha about your drawings?”

  After Mairin’s brief nod, Rose described the three new drawings to Agatha. “Could they truly be spirit gifts, do you think?”

  Agatha’s cloudy eyes traveled to her small desk. “Rose, dear, look in the drawer. You should find a drawing.”

  Rose wasn’t alone in her curiosity—Mairin hurried to stand next to her as she pulled out a yellowed sheet of paper. The drawing—done in spidery black, blue, and red ink—depicted a garden filled with exquisite and unearthly flowers. Each was drawn with intricacy and precision, and none looked like anything Rose had ever seen. She handed the drawing to Agatha.

  “You did drawings, too?” Mairin gazed at Agatha with hope.

  Agatha handed the paper to the girl and said, “This is very precious to me. I was about your age when I drew it. I regret it was the only gift drawing I was ever given, but I will always feel blessed for having received it. Tell me, child, when did your own pictures come to you—were you awake, or asleep?”

  “Asleep.”

  “You dreamed the pictures?”

  “I guess so. I don’t remember dreams, but something woke me up, and I just knew what to draw.”

  Rose marveled at the ease with which Agatha drew a response from Mairin. However, she also noticed another jealous pang. Clearly a thorough confession was called for, but Rose wasn’t sure how she’d explain to Agatha, her confessor, how she, a pampered adult, could feel envy because of the friendship budding between Agatha and Mairin. Could it be that Rose wanted, for herself alone, the privilege of being Agatha’s “daughter” and Mairin’s “mother”? This was just the sort of thing she had vowed to forsake—these jealous, exclusive ties. Yea, a confession was in order, and the sooner, the better.

  By the time Rose stopped castigating herself, Agatha was explaining her own drawing to Mairin.

  “You see, what we want, we Believers, is to create a heaven on earth, a home as pure and glorious as the celestial home we will journey to someday. But we don’t always understand how to do that. The celestial world is a paradise beyond our imagining. So sometimes angels, heavenly spirits, come in dreams or when we worship to show us the way. Do you understand that, Mairin?”

  The copper in Mairin’s eyes had taken on a sheen. “Yes,” she said. “I think so. It sounds beautiful.”

  “Yea, indeed, it is beautiful. That’s what I was trying to draw—in my own poor way—the astonishing beauty of the heavens, like exquisite flowers we have never seen on earth.”

  Agatha’s thin face relaxed in a smile, and her tightly stretched skin seemed to loosen. “When I drew this, we were getting fewer and fewer gifts. I think everyone was ready to settle down a bit.” Agatha chuckled, and Mairin giggled in response, though she couldn’t have known Agatha was remembering a period of Shaker history that went somewhat out of control.

  “We weren’t dancing so much anymore, which disappointed me, so I was dancing all by myself in some woods. I must admit I sneaked off now and then, but I never stayed away long. This time I twirled and shook and jumped, the way I’d seen the sisters do it, and I felt like I was being taken into another world, an unutterably lovely world. Then suddenly Mother Ann appeared to me, dressed all in white with sparkling jewels sewn into her robe. Hundreds of angels swirled around her.”

  Agatha leaned her head back on her rocker and closed her eyes. “Mother Ann spoke to me. She said, ‘Child, go home and draw flowers, glorious flowers, and look at them whenever you need to remember
your true home.’ Then she blessed me and was gone.”

  Agatha opened her eyes. “You never saw a girl run so fast as I did to get home to the Children’s Dwelling House. I had red and blue and black ink because I was helping Sister Iris mark the lessons of the younger girls. It took weeks of work, but I never forgot the vision Mother Ann had blessed me with, and I did as she bade me—whenever my faith wavered, I looked at my gift drawing and remembered my true home.”

  Both Mairin and Rose sat spellbound as Agatha finished her story. Rose had never seen or heard about Agatha’s drawing before, perhaps because Rose herself had always been of a more practical bent; she had never received a direct message from Mother Ann, though she knew such experiences were possible. She simply—and to her disappointment—had never been chosen as an instrument.

  Agatha leaned toward Mairin and covered the girl’s light brown hand with her own thin blue-veined one. “Think, Mairin. Try to remember your dream. How did you know what to draw?”

  Mairin’s face puckered in concentration. Rose remembered her own childhood and suspected that Mairin wanted desperately to please Agatha. But the girl took her time and seemed to be focusing on her dream. Finally she opened her eyes and frowned.

  “I’m not sure,” she said, “but I don’t remember seeing a beautiful lady and lots of angels. It was scarier than that. The things I drew, I just saw them in my dream, and I knew to draw them. Only I don’t remember if Mother Ann told me to draw them.” Mairin’s pupils widened with fear.

  Though her own eyesight was probably too poor to see the anguish in Mairin’s eyes, Agatha responded to the tone in her voice. “The visits of Mother Ann are different for everyone,” she said. “You have not lived with us for long, so perhaps she came to you in hidden form. Nevertheless, it is very like her to give you pictures to draw.”

  Agatha sank back in her rocker, spent.

  “It is past time to get Mairin to the Schoolhouse,” Rose said, planting a light kiss on Agatha’s cool forehead. “And time for you to rest.”

  Agatha clutched Rose’s wrist. “Stay just a moment,” she said. “Mairin, dear, would you take this tray back to the kitchen? Thank you.”

  She waited for a moment after the door closed behind Mairin before motioning Rose to sit again.

  “I know our experiences were very different,” Agatha said, “but my heart tells me that Mairin was visited by Mother Ann.”

  “You surprise me,” Rose said. “I was sure you’d say it was just a bad dream. Why would Mother send such odd messages?”

  “Mother does not always send bright and beautiful messages, after all. Remember that she lost all her own children. I truly believe she has come to Mairin’s aid because she is a child, and a needy one. Mother Ann has appeared in disguise because the child might not understand—but appear she has. I believe her message is as much for us as it is for Mairin, perhaps even more so. Mairin is in grave danger, I feel it, and those drawings are messages from Mother Ann to warn us. We must listen. We are all she has. We must not fail her.”

  SIXTEEN

  WHEN ROSE HAD TOO MUCH TO THINK ABOUT, WORKING IN the Herb House always seemed to help. So, after depositing Mairin at the Schoolhouse, she assigned herself to a morning of packing herbs for sale to the world. The harvest was in, and the Herb House would be bursting with bound bunches of herbs hanging from every possible hook, peg, and rack. Many of them were dry and ready to be crumbled and stuffed into round tins. Maybe she’d allow herself to work on the dried buds collected from the lavender plants during their second flowering in the late summer. It was tedious work, but Rose found the fresh fragrance helped clear her mind.

  She swung open the Herb House door to an explosion of heady scents—pungent, sweet, and grassy. But her joy was short-lived. The building was filled not just with herbs, but with people. On the ground floor, a brother repaired a large herb press, while a group of sisters, laughing and chattering, worked at a long table. At one end, two sisters were tying up the last of the harvest for drying, while several other sisters used the remaining space to extract essential oils from several piles of herbs. Rose recognized long stalks of valerian. So some of this work was being done for the medicinal herb industry, which Andrew directed.

  Waving a greeting, Rose made for the stairs to the second-floor drying room. The smell of pickles told her that dill seeds were being packed even before she entered the room. Once again, the lifting of her spirits was only momentary. More sisters and a couple of New-Owenite women bustled about the room, asking and answering questions. The Herb House was not a quiet, tranquil place. She would have to do her thinking elsewhere.

  She descended the staircase to find Andrew at the worktable, consulting with the sisters extracting herb oils. He made a notation in a journal, closed it and hitched it under his arm, and looked up to see Rose. Though his lips barely moved, Rose felt his smile. They never made any effort to run into one another—that would feel tantamount to breaking their vows—but their friendship grew, and they allowed themselves to enjoy working together, when the task called for them to do so.

  “Rose, I’m glad to find you,” Andrew said. His expression grew serious. A wave of brown hair, an inch longer than Wilhelm preferred, fell across his forehead. He ignored it. “Have you time to come back to the Trustees’ Office with me? I want to show you something.”

  Rose noticed a sidelong glance or two from the sisters, but assured herself she had no reason for guilt. Nor did Andrew, though his habit of direct speaking sometimes triggered suspicions.

  “Is there a problem with the books?”

  “It seems so,” Andrew said. “It seems that . . . well, it’s better if I show you.”

  Rose followed him from the Herb House, her anxiety increasing with each step. Normally Andrew would have consulted with her immediately, unconcerned that others might hear. Something must be very wrong.

  “Gilbert says that Wilhelm approved these expenditures,” Andrew said, holding the ledger book out for Rose to examine. She laid it on the desk and bent over it, one hand supporting her chin, the other tracing the columns of numbers. By the time she’d finished, she needed both hands to hold up her head. Her eyes met Andrew’s troubled brown ones, and neither of them cared at that moment that they were too close together, seated at the pine double desk that Rose had once occupied.

  “We can’t go on this way,” she said. “Have you spoken with Wilhelm? What does he say?”

  “He won’t even discuss it. He says it’s worth the investment. I thought, with your authority . . .”

  Rose stared again at the ledger and shook her head. “Two hundred dollars for furniture? I thought Matthew and Archibald were spending all their time repairing furniture for the South Family Dwelling House. How much furniture can a group of seven visitors need?”

  “I asked Gilbert the same question, and he was vague, so I called Si at the Languor Furniture Store and asked him for a list. It seems they bought items such as full-length mirrors and new mattresses. Gilbert told Si he had authorization from Wilhelm to charge what they needed to the Society. Si said they put in an order for a couple of double beds, too. He said he wondered about that, what with our being Shakers and all. I took it upon myself to cancel the order. I haven’t told Gilbert or Wilhelm.”

  “Nor do you need to, Andrew. I will take care of this myself.” Anxiety had turned to anger, a more familiar emotion for Rose, and a more welcome one at the moment. “You may call Si, and these other merchants as well, and tell them all not to extend any more credit to any non-Believer. Wilhelm should never have authorized this without consulting with me first. He frequently forgets that I am now eldress.”

  “Wilhelm has little use for women,” Andrew said.

  “Wilhelm has little use for me, in particular,” Rose said, with a bitter laugh.

  “Then he is a fool.”

  Both sensed danger at this point and scraped their chairs farther apart.

  “I’m afraid there’s even more bad news,
” Andrew said, a shade too quickly. “I got worried and began checking around the rest of the village. I borrowed a few journals from the deacons and deaconesses, and this is what I discovered.”

  He pulled a sheet of paper from his desk drawer and handed it to Rose. It contained two columns—on the left, a list of the village’s food and nonfood stores, as recorded by the Shaker deacons and deaconesses in their journals, and on the right, an inventory of those same stores, dated the day before.

  “Our stores are disappearing,” Rose said. “Don’t tell me the New-Owenites have just been helping themselves and not even telling us. I thought surely Wilhelm would have rationed an amount for them, as we would with any guests.”

  “The deacons and deaconesses were as shocked as we are, though they had noticed that items seemed to be disappearing. They thought they were at fault for not recording accurately.”

  “But how can this be? We put locks on the storeroom doors. Even Wilhelm agreed we had to do so, given the times.” It had been one of Rose’s easier victories, once she’d reminded Wilhelm that the Millennial Laws had once called for locking up the stores. “Do you suppose . . . ?”

  “Yea, I’m fairly certain,” Andrew said. “Somehow the New-Owenites have gotten keys to our storerooms, most probably from Wilhelm. They are draining our reserves. At this rate, we won’t have food through the winter, even without guests.”

  Andrew’s long bones seemed to melt against his chair with weariness. “I’m afraid,” he said, “this is a battle we will need you to fight. I will do whatever I can to help.”

  Rose leaned back, as well. In silence, she let her gaze run over the neatly organized cubbyholes stacked on her side of the desk, and their twins on Andrew’s side. Andrew was lax about some Society customs, such as hair length and authentic clothing, but his organizing skills were above reproach, as was his devotion to his faith. She could trust him. The seeds of a plan germinated in her mind.