A Simple Shaker Murder (12 page)

Mairin hung her head as if she'd been caught in a lie. Rose released the girl's shoulders with a frustrated sigh. She searched her mind for other words, other phrases that Mairin might understand better. Her mind went blank.

She began to back away from the girl, then changed her mind and slid her arm around the small shoulders. She pulled Mairin close and whispered in her ear. “You will surely be an angel someday. You are good, I promise you.” She made a silent prayer to Holy Mother Wisdom to help Mairin believe and trust her before it was too late.

“R
OSE, CAN
I
TELL YOU SOMETHTNG IN SECRET
?” N
ORA
glanced sidelong at her retiring room door, through which Mairin had just left.

“Of course you can, Nora. It will take Mairin a few minutes to freshen up for the evening meal. Go ahead.”

Nora closed the door and seemed to relax a little. She settled herself cross-legged on her bed, and Rose perched on the side, next to her.

“What's the problem?”

“It's Mairin. I'm worried about her.” Though two years younger, Nora had appointed herself Mairin's guardian. “She has terrible, awful nightmares. Last night she woke me up twice.”

“Did you ask her what the dreams were about?” Rose tried not to appear too eager.

“Well . . . first I listened for a while, but all she said was, ‘No, no, no!' So I shook her and she woke up, but she said she didn't remember what she was dreaming, which didn't make sense to me, 'cause I always remember my dreams when I first wake up, 'specially the bad ones, but Mairin said she didn't remember a thing.” Nora cocked her head to one side. “She seems awfully sad a lot, doesn't she? She hardly ever wants to play. I wish I could get her to play more.”

Rose laughed and tousled Nora's short-cropped blond hair. “You're doing just fine, Mother Nora. You did right to tell me
this. I'll see what I can do to help her. Meanwhile, keep an eye on her, okay?”

It had been dark for hours when Rose slipped out of the Ministry House. Wilhelm's ground floor retiring room was far enough back that she hoped she wouldn't waken him. She'd rather not have to explain her actions to Wilhelm, who already viewed her as lost to the world.

Her long wool cloak and heavy palm bonnet felt good against the damp chill. All other Believers were in bed by now, exhausted by long hours of work, so the buildings housing them were dark and quiet, as was the path through the middle of the village. Times being what they were, North Homage didn't waste money on outdoor lamps. Shakers weren't expected to be out after dark, anyway.

Rose couldn't help a twinge of guilt, but it didn't stop her. Up ahead, to the left of the central path, stood the South Family Dwelling House, its entire ground floor ablaze with light. The New-Owenites clearly weren't worried about the Shakers' electricity costs.

As she walked the path to the women's entrance, Rose whispered a less-than-wholehearted prayer for patience. She was keyed up for a fight. It was one thing to provide succor for visitors from the world, but quite another to sit back and let them stir up trouble as they ate up your stores and drained your cash.

Rose entered the building without knocking. After all, the dwelling house belonged to the Shakers. Her plan was to corner Celia for a private talk about Mairin. The hallway was empty and so was the parlor. A rumble came from behind the closed doors of the family meeting room.

An eruption of angry voices interrupting each other drew Rose a few steps closer to the meeting room doors. She struggled with herself. Listening outside closed doors was appalling behavior for any Shaker, and hardly a good example for an eldress to set. Yet, if these visitors were up to something that
might involve her village—and it seemed as if they were—Rose needed to know.

She headed for a rear staircase as her mind flashed back more than two decades to her early adolescence. She was fourteen, had just finished her Shaker schooling, and was ready to begin work rotations, helping the sisters. Agatha wanted her to try everything at least once, so she'd worked several times with the South Family, spending one of the rotations in this very building.

The South Family Dwelling House had a special feature, the brainstorm of a South Family kitchen sister. She'd known of the Laundry, where steam from the boiler was piped upstairs to racks so clothes could be dried indoors during foul weather. The sister had wondered if the same principle could be used to direct excess heat generated in the kitchen, located in the basement level, up to the room above—the family meeting room. Her idea had worked beautifully to keep the meeting room toasty during winter evening union meetings and family worship services.

One night, Rose and one kitchen sister had worked late because the kitchen needed more cleaning. Since work was a form of worship for Believers, they'd decided to skip the service. That's when they discovered that the heating pipes went both ways—heat drifted upstairs, and sound came downstairs. The kitchen crew was able to sing along with the service and even fit in a few dance steps.

Rose was fairly certain no one was around to hear as she hurried down the old wooden stairs to the basement, but she trod quietly anyway. A door at the bottom, slightly ajar, led into the dim kitchen. One light had been left on, and Rose saw why—for the casual snackers who must be frequent visitors. The kitchen was a shambles, by Shaker standards. A stained, filthy cloth hung over the worktable, which was piled with dirty crockery and utensils, dried hunks of cheese, bread crumbs, and several open jars of Shaker preserves. Pans caked with grease spilled over the edges of the sink, rather than hanging, clean and shiny, from the wall pegs. In fact, only one
item still hung, unused, from a wall peg—the flat broom.

Rose couldn't stifle a grunt of disgust as she picked her way across the sticky floor to the heat pipes. She would deal with this mess later, since Wilhelm obviously did not concern himself with his guests' living habits.

By now, Rose's anger had bubbled near its boiling point. She felt that Mother Ann and every last angel would forgive her eavesdropping, and if they didn't, she would just have to pay the price. She would not allow her community to be tromped on by these strangers. If she had to defy Wilhelm, she would do so. But first she needed to know what was happening in this dwelling house.

She brushed some crumbs off a chair and pulled it close to the heating pipes. The voices were clear enough, and she hoped to identify speakers, if she could. The more she knew about each of them, the better.

“No!” A familiar male voice shouted. Despite the emotion, Rose recognized Earl Weston's deep tones. “I say we confront Gil as soon as he returns. We need to act fast. If they haven't already found us, they probably will soon. Lord knows we haven't kept very quiet.”

“Look, it was Hugh's problem, not ours, and he's gone,” said another male voice, higher and more nasal than the first.

“A lot you care!” Rose recognized Celia's strident voice. “I was unlucky enough to be married to that fool. You can bet that his problems will somehow get dumped on my shoulders.”

“Come on, Cel, we'll stand by you, you know that. We won't let anything happen to you,” Earl said.

“Yeah, so long as you get the money,” Celia retorted.

“We
need
that money,” said Earl. “It's the only way to make all this happen. But we can't hang around indefinitely, biding our time. We've got Wilhelm with us, at least for now, but once that eldress came back, the situation changed. She's a suspicious witch. We can't keep her off the scent forever.”

“Try harder, dear boy,” Celia said, in silky tones. “We all know you can do it.”

There was general snickering, and then the discussion became
unintelligible, the voices fainter.
They must be too far away from the pipes
. The singing had been so easy to hear, Rose realized, because it had been done by six strong voices located near the pipes. She leaned in and bent forward, intent on catching even a word.

A scraping sound came from the opposite corner of the kitchen. Or was it closer? Rose scanned the room, alert to the slightest movement. The meeting room voices, even her own breathing, now distracted her, so she stood up and held her breath as her eyes darted from corner to corner. Despite the poor light, surely she would have seen another person enter the room.

Nothing moved. She released her breath. Perhaps the sound had come from the meeting room, after all. Unless. Her stomach flip-flopped as she surveyed the piles of refuse outlined in the dimness. Unless all this filth had attracted rats. She would not be surprised.

The thought that the sloth of worldly visitors had triggered a rat infestation fueled Rose's simmering rage. She was mad enough to catch the rat bare-handed, and then present it to the inhabitants of the meeting room.

She had left the kitchen as she had found it, dimly lit to avoid attracting attention at the top of the stairs. Now she switched on every lamp in sight, while she kept an eye out for scurrying creatures. To her surprise, nothing scooted toward the walls or under the furniture. She didn't see so much as an insect.

The voices from upstairs were coming through clearer again. Rose could hear them from across the room. She gave up on hunting rats and started back, her eyes on her chair, when she stepped right on a half-eaten hunk of bread covered with raspberry preserves. Her right foot slipped out from under her, and she landed sharply on her left knee.

Rose slid off the injured knee and sat on the filthy floor, breathing in shallow bursts as the throbbing subsided to barely tolerable. She touched the area gingerly. Hot pain stabbed through her leg. She cried out and squeezed her eyes shut.

Again she waited, biting her lip to keep from screaming. Slowly she relaxed her muscles and allowed her eyelids to open. She was looking directly into a worried pair of coppery green eyes.

“You are hurt,” Mairin said.

Rose started and jerked her leg. She groaned. Mairin's hand hovered over the injured knee as if to soothe without a painful touch.

Rose drew in a ragged breath. “Mairin, what . . . what are you doing here? You should never, ever wander around alone after dark, no matter where you are. I'm very upset with you.” She might have spoken more gently had her knee not been on fire.

Mairin shrank away as if she'd been struck, and Rose almost forgot her pain. She reached her own hand out toward the girl, palm upward. “Forgive me, Mairin. It was wrong of me to raise my voice to you. I know I sounded angry, but I'm just startled and hurt—and very, very worried. Come back over here, and let's talk.”

Mairin inched back toward her. Rose opened her mouth to speak, and in that moment she realized that something had changed. Except for their breathing, the kitchen was silent. Voices no longer murmured through the heat pipes. Then Rose remembered a tidbit she had discovered with the kitchen sisters all those years ago—if they'd sung along with too much gusto, they could be heard in the meeting room above them. It hadn't been much of a disturbance because there had been enough noise upstairs to drown out their contributions, but now and then a worshiper who had sat near the pipes had later teased the kitchen sisters, so they had learned to participate discreetly.

Rose's recent cries of pain and her outburst at Mairin had been far from discreet. Had the New-Owenites heard her and realized they were not alone in the dwelling house? Or perhaps the meeting had ended—in which case, judging by the well-used condition of the kitchen, hungry New-Owenites might soon wander down for a snack.

“We have to get out of here,” Rose whispered. Her urgency sent Mairin scooting back under the table. “It's all right, you needn't hide,” Rose said, reaching her arm toward the girl. “Neither of us is supposed to be here, you know, but nothing bad will happen if we are found. Only it would be so much simpler, wouldn't it, if we left before anyone came down here?” The last thing she wanted to do was frighten Mairin into even deeper reticence.

“I'm afraid I'm going to need your help getting out of here, because of my knee. I don't think it's broken,” she whispered, with more hope than conviction, “but I'm a bit wobbly.” She rolled onto her good knee and winced as the swollen left knee moved. An inch at a time, she bent the damaged joint until, though she was whimpering with pain, she was relatively certain it was only bruised, not cracked. She stretched it out again. She slid over to the sturdy table leg, sat on her good knee, and pulled herself up on her right foot. Mairin clung to another table leg and watched, expressionless, as Rose straightened.

Holding her breath to stifle a scream, Rose eased some weight onto her injured leg. It wasn't as bad as she'd feared, but it was bad. As she winced in pain, she noticed Mairin flinch, and she rejoiced at yet another sign that the girl's heart could be touched. Hope for Mairin gave Rose the strength to endure her own pain.