Killing Gifts Page 6

  Gennie smiled and didn’t offer the information that she’d slept peacefully in a berth, with Rose just above her. It would sound as if she had more resources than she’d led them to believe.

  “Have you been here long?” Gennie asked Helen.

  “Oh, no, dear, just arrived myself, though not from so far away as you, I suppose.” Helen sipped her sherry and sighed with appreciation. With disconcerting suddenness, she turned her bright gaze back to Gennie. “Tell me, do you have family back—where did you say you were from? The South? Tennessee, perhaps?” She raised her eyebrows and paused. Gennie chose to taste her own sherry again, and said not a word.

  “Your family must be quite worried about you, traveling all alone like this. You must let me look after you while you’re settling in.”

  “That’s most kind of you,” Gennie said, “but I’m sure I’ll be fine. This isn’t Boston, after all.”

  “I should say not!” said Mrs. Alexander. “A young lady is quite safe here in Pittsfield. Why, we have Shakers nearby, after all.”

  A snore from the snoozing Mr. Bing distracted them long enough for Gennie to decide that now was as good a chance as any to begin her questioning, despite the intrusive presence of Mrs. Helen Butterfield.

  “Oh, I’ve heard of the Shakers,” Gennie said. “I’ve heard they are very generous and kind. Do you suppose I might get a job with the Shakers here? Do they need any extra hands, do you know?”

  In the awkward silence that followed, Gennie turned her innocent gaze on each person in turn. Mr. Bing had opened his eyes partway and watched her with drowsy curiosity. Helen Butterfield’s eyes were a shade too bright, and Mrs. Alexander was trying to hide her obvious excitement with a veneer of sadness.

  “Oh dear,” said Mrs. Alexander, “I suppose you’ll hear about it sooner or later, so I might as well tell you.” She slid to the edge of her seat and leaned forward. “Hancock Village is what our Shakers call their home, and I’ve been there many a time, buying eggs and butter. Never had the least trouble with them, not since I’ve been living here, which is my whole sixty years. Well, no trouble until recently, that is.”

  Mr. Bing’s head lolled back against his chair again, but the women all leaned in toward one another. Mrs. Alexander took a large gulp of sherry. “You see,” she said, “there’s been a murder in Hancock Village. A pretty young girl it was, no older than you,” she said, nodding to Gennie, “though not so ladylike, of course.”

  Gennie feigned shock. “Do they know who did it?” she asked.

  “Well, as I said, a lady, she wasn’t,” Mrs. Alexander said, raising her eyebrows.

  “Celibates!” said Mr. Bing. He unfolded his long body from his seat, poured himself another sherry, and downed it in one gulp.

  “I beg your pardon, Mr. Bing?” asked Gennie.

  “Celibates,” he repeated, “pure and simple. In more ways than one.” He guffawed and poured another sherry. “It’s unnatural, that’s what it is. Leads to all kinds of evil doings.” He drained his glass. “My father was celibate. See what it got him.” He slid back into his chair and closed his eyes.

  Gennie’s mouth twitched. She tried to maintain her composure, but she lost the struggle when Helen caught her eye. Mrs. Alexander looked on in confusion as they laughed themselves to tears. Luckily, the sherry had sent Mr. Bing to sleep, and the unladylike behavior failed to rouse him.

  “He was, you know,” Mrs. Alexander said. The drawn skin of her cheeks had turned a dull red, but she poured herself another glass of sherry.

  “Who was what?” asked Helen.

  “Mr. Bing’s father. He was a Shaker. An orphan, he was, brought to the Shakers when he was just a baby.” Mrs. Alexander sipped twice. “He left at twenty-one or so. Word around town was he’d had a . . . well, you know, something going with one of the young sisters. He never would say, though. He was a closemouthed sort of man.” She drowned her regret in more sherry. “Not like the young ones nowadays.”

  “Has anyone left the Shakers recently?” Gennie asked.

  Mrs. Alexander cackled, and a few drops of amber liquid sloshed on her hand. She seemed not to notice. “There’s hardly anyone left to leave,” she said. “and most of them older than me. I like the old sisters, though. It’s those new ones . . . I s’pose the Shakers know what they’re doing, and beggars can’t be . . .” Her eyes blinked lazily and she frowned, apparently searching for her lost train of thought. “When I was a little tyke,” she said, “my mother used to take me along to visit the sisters for tea. Ooh, what a big, lovely place it was in those days.”

  “These ‘new ones,’ ” Gennie prodded. “Do you think they’re just bread-and-butter Shakers?” When Mrs. Alexander squinted at her, Gennie realized she’d revealed more inside knowledge of the Shakers than she’d wanted to. “I mean, do you think they’re just using the Shakers to get a bed and meals?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t put it past that lot,” Mrs. Alexander said. “Poor Honora.” She shook her head sadly.

  “I beg your pardon?” Gennie asked.

  “Oh, you wouldn’t know her, dear. Poor Honora had such a wonderful life once. She did love being a clergyman’s wife, and she was very good at it, even though sometimes she had to look the other way when her husband’s eyes started roving.”

  Gennie had no idea what to say, or even if Poor Honora had anything to do with Hancock Shaker Village.

  “Is Honora a Shaker now?” Helen Butterfield asked.

  “Oh, dear me, no. It’s that husband of hers, Aldon. He’s the one went to the Shakers. Poor Honora never got over it. The shame, you know. I mean, it’s one thing if your husband chooses to keep company with other women, that happens, but when he chooses—well, you know, celibacy.” Mrs. Alexander looked at her empty glass.

  “Here, let me get you some more sherry,” Gennie said. She grabbed the glass from Mrs. Alexander’s shaky hand, but she made no move toward the decanter. She wanted all the information she could get before Mrs. Alexander drifted off to the same land as Mr. Bing. Gennie was vaguely aware that Helen had settled back and was listening quietly.

  “Do you know them well—the new lot?” Gennie asked.

  “I most certainly do. My late husband, bless his soul, used to own the greengrocer’s in town, and those children were such a nuisance.” She frowned at her own empty glass in Gennie’s hand, then snuggled back in her armchair, apparently content to gossip.

  “What children do you mean?” Gennie was losing hope that she’d get anything sensible from Mrs. Alexander, but it was worth a try.

  “Oh, I don’t remember all their names, it was so long ago. I can tell you, those children were nothing but little thieves, and they should be ashamed to set foot on Shaker land. Of course, they didn’t come from good families, so I suppose they couldn’t help themselves.”

  “Are you talking about the novitiates?” Gennie could hear the frustration in her own voice. What good was a gossip if she couldn’t follow her own storyline?

  Mrs. Alexander squinted again; the term “novitiate” clearly meant nothing to her.

  “Are these the same folks . . . ?” But Gennie could see it was no use. Mrs. Alexander had slipped sideways against the side of her wing-backed chair. Her face had softened into blissful peace. She and Mr. Bing snored in harmony.

  “Perhaps we should let them rest, my dear,” Helen Butterfield said. “I’m sure you can find out more in the morning.”

  “I wasn’t trying to find out anything.”

  “No, of course not.” Helen patted her shoulder, which for some reason irritated Gennie.

  “You haven’t mentioned what your business here is,” Gennie said.

  “I guess we didn’t get around to me.” Helen gathered up the empty sherry glasses and arranged them on a tray. She laughed lightly. “Well, I’m a collector, my dear, that’s all. I collect Shaker furniture and whatnot. In fact, I’m planning a trip out to Hancock bright and early tomorrow morning. I have an idea—why don’t we go tog
ether? We can go right to the Fancy Goods Store, and you can get that job you said you were looking for. I’m quite sure they’ll welcome you. Good night, now.” She moved quickly for a large woman, and she was halfway up the staircase before Gennie could form her next question.

  Rose tossed off her covers and shivered. Six A.M. seemed to arrive earlier in the East than it had in Kentucky, where it hadn’t seemed so frigid outside of one’s toasty bed linens. Her hands shook as she pulled on her wool work dress. Folks here must be tolerant of the cold, so they kept their buildings cooler than she was used to. Or perhaps Hancock had suffered even more than North Homage from this endless Depression, and they were cutting expenses wherever possible. Rose guessed the washroom might be even colder, so she wrapped her long outdoor cloak around her.

  When she returned, she quickly tidied her retiring room, praying silently as she did so. She had arrived late the night before, and she’d chosen sleep in a real bed—one that wasn’t moving—over unpacking her satchel. She folded her few belongings into the drawers built into the wall. She shook out her spare work dress and a winter Sabbathday dress and hung them on hangers, which she hooked over pegs lining the wall.

  Rose looked around her temporary home. She’d barely glanced at it before falling into bed. The room was so like hers back at North Homage, yet different in ways that Elder Wilhelm would never have tolerated. On one wall peg hung a framed photo, probably dating back several decades, of horses in a pasture. An empty vase on her simple pine desk was, she knew from her previous visit, filled with flowers during warmer weather.

  Rose started at the sight of her own thin frame and her pale, freckled face looking back at her from a large mirror hanging from several wall pegs. In North Homage, only a small, and usually cloudy, mirror was allowed in each retiring room, so Believers would not be tempted to admire their own appearances. It was one of Rose’s duties, as eldress, to tidy Elder Wilhelm’s room and mend his clothing, so she knew that he shaved with only a small pocket mirror.

  The bell rang for breakfast, and Rose reluctantly slipped off her cloak and rehung it on a peg hanger. She would not be leaving the building until after the meal, so she had no good excuse to take it along.

  She closed her retiring room door and found herself alone in a wide hallway, punctuated by numerous doors. Weak winter sunlight from two large windows did its best to brighten the hallway, but it also reflected off a thin layer of dust along the edges of the floor. Rose was torn between sadness and an ingrained desire to clean. She knew that the sisters did their best, but they were so few now, and growing older. They couldn’t sweep every corner, every day—not in buildings that once had housed at least two hundred and fifty hard-working Believers. So much of the work was hired out these days, and cleanliness didn’t have the same meaning for folks from the world. Rose vowed that, if she could find the time, she would help out wherever she could. In fact, it would be a good way to get to know everyone involved in the tragedy.

  The hallway was silent. Everyone else had gathered for breakfast, so Rose hurried down the women’s staircase and entered a small room outside the dining room, where the other sisters were praying before their silent entrance. Several women from the world waited also, though they did not pray. At least they were quiet.

  Rose located the eldress, Sister Fannie, a small, vibrant woman in her late sixties. At a signal from Fannie, the sisters filed into the dining room and took their seats. Fannie led Rose into an adjoining, much smaller dining room. Rose was pleased. When she had visited Hancock before, she and Fannie had always eaten with the others, rather than sequester themselves in the cheery Ministry dining room.

  “Rose, I am so glad you are here,” Fannie said, when they’d settled across from each other at the small trestle table. A kitchen sister brought them white serving dishes holding steamed brown bread, hotcakes, and a small amount of precious maple syrup.

  “I know I said at least three times last evening how glad I was to see you, but you were half dead with exhaustion. It’s a long trip to make, especially in winter, and it’s hard to be away from your own Family so close to Mother Ann’s Birthday, but I am so very relieved that you have come.” Fannie pushed the serving plates closer to Rose. “You must be famished, as well. I know they fed you on the train, but it wasn’t good Shaker food, after all.”

  Rose, for whom the train meals had been far too generous, said nothing. In fact, a Shaker breakfast looked delightful to her, especially the maple syrup, which they almost never had in Kentucky. She took a healthy serving of everything.

  Fannie, on the other hand, fixed her empty plate with a frown. “I’m afraid things are not as they were when you visited last,” she said finally. “And I feel responsible.”

  “Fannie, you mustn’t blame yourself. You could not possibly have controlled the actions of someone depraved enough to kill another human being.” Rose took the liberty of sliding a hotcake onto Fannie’s plate. “First, eat something,” she said, pouring a dollop of syrup on the hotcake. “Then tell me everything, and let me handle the situation from now on. You have your hands full already, getting ready for Mother Ann’s Birthday.”

  Fannie managed a wan smile and a bite of hotcake. “I am so glad you are here, Rose. I know you’ll get to the bottom of this horrible killing, but I do bear some responsibility. Now don’t argue with me. Let me explain.” She cut another bite and pushed it around with her fork. “As you well know, times have been very lean for us here. Oh, I know it has been the same for you, in the West, but somehow you’ve held on to more Believers. We are mostly sisters left, and we are no longer young.”

  Fannie stared out the large dining room window, where the weak morning sunlight brightened as it flashed off the snow. “Our faith is as strong as ever, but otherwise our heaven on earth is shrinking. We live almost entirely within these walls. We no longer use our Meetinghouse or our Schoolhouse. Our lovely Round Stone Barn is empty and cracked. We’ve had to sell a great deal of our land. To do any farming at all nowadays, we must hire men from the world. We hire women to help in the Fancy Goods Store and in the kitchen. We buy our goods from town, instead of supporting ourselves, as we used to. We tried to be more welcoming to the world, hoping to attract more Believers, but if anything, it seems to be backfiring.”

  Rose said nothing. On her last visit, she had seen everything Fannie described. North Homage was suffering, as well, but they’d been lucky enough to gather some fine, young Believers in recent years. Elder Wilhelm’s insistence that they wear old-fashioned dress, hold dancing worship, and keep as separate from the world as possible might, Rose admitted, actually have something to do with their slight advantage. It wasn’t a thought she cared to explore just then.

  Fannie chewed slowly on a corner of her slice of brown bread. “In my eagerness to accept new Believers, I may have been too trusting.”

  Rose put down her fork. “Are you saying that you suspect one of your novitiates of being a killer?”

  Fannie met her eyes. “I pray not, of course. But these novitiates are not like those I remember from times past. Certainly we had our share of Winter Shakers, and I could usually tell which they were in short order.” She shook her head. “These new ones are . . . hard.”

  “Their natures, do you mean?”

  Fannie nodded. “In part, it is pride. They seem unwilling to put aside their own petty desires, for the good of the Society. At times, they act as though driven by greed. I have spent untold hours laboring with them in confession, and they profess to understand, but then one of the hired hands will complain of being harshly treated by a novitiate, or one novitiate will come to me with stories putting one of the others in a bad light. Their hubris seems unconquerable. I had thought of sending them all back to the world.”

  “Yet you did not.”

  Fannie shook her head sadly. “I did not. I told myself they had been sent to us, that Holy Mother Wisdom wanted us to show them a better way. And I suppose . . .” Fannie poked at her remaining
piece of hotcake until it turned to a sticky pulp. “I suppose I was feeling downhearted about our dwindling numbers, and these novitiates have brought such wonderful skills with them.”

  “And you hoped they would give you new life? There is no shame in that, Fannie. Some of the most devoted Believers had great wills to conquer before they could truly serve God and others.”

  Fannie looked unconvinced. Still shaking her head, she consumed the rest of her breakfast, as Rose had hoped she would, rather than throw it away.

  “Tell me what you know about each of the novitiates—and the hired help, too,” Rose said, once Fannie had crossed her cutlery over her plate and laid her cloth napkin on top. A pot brimming with spearmint tea had been steeping at her elbow, so she poured a cup for each of them and settled back against the curved slats of her chair.

  Fannie held her cup close to her lips and breathed deeply before taking a sip. “You are right, of course. The sooner we get to work, the sooner this nightmare will be over. I’ll begin with the hired help. I know very little about them, except that they all come from Pittsfield, and I believe they have known one another for many years.” Fannie took another sip and frowned. “Now that I think of it, the novitiates all come from Pittsfield, as well, so everyone might know everyone.”

  “Don’t worry,” Rose said. “I’ll sort it out.”

  “Of course. Well, Julia Masters, the girl who was killed, worked sometimes in the Fancy Goods Store. She was pretty and poor and, I’m afraid, not quite honest. Little items used to disappear whenever she worked.”

  “You didn’t confront her about it?”

  “I was planning to do so, of course. In fact, I was ready to let her go, but Sister Abigail is so kind-hearted, she asked me to give the girl another chance. She promised she would speak to Julia and watch her very carefully. You can find out quite a lot about Julia, I’m sure, by speaking with her sister, Dulcie. She helps out in the kitchen. Dulcie is a good worker, a very honest girl, though the kitchen sisters tell me she’s been ill of late. She was destitute when she came to us. She probably wouldn’t have enough to eat without this job, so we keep her on all the time, even when the sisters could easily handle the kitchen work themselves.”