GENNIE DEVOURED HER CHEESE SANDWICH AND LINGERED over the pot of peppermint tea Carlotta had brought her from the kitchen. She was alone in the Fancy Goods Shop, since Sister Abigail had invited Mrs. Butterfield to join her in the dining room. Gennie was plotting the hour she’d have to herself, after Abigail’s return. If she could escape Mrs. Butterfield and find other transportation back to the boardinghouse, maybe she could extend her investigations after store hours.
Helen Butterfield was becoming a problem, but not one that couldn’t be solved with a little cleverness, an alteration in Rose’s plans for her, and maybe a tiny white lie. Gennie had decided to plead poverty and see if she could wangle a room in the Brick Dwelling House, where she knew other hired girls lived. Rose wouldn’t like it and would probably worry endlessly about her, but Gennie was determined. She would surely go crazy if she could have only one hour of excitement a day. Right after her time off, she’d talk to Abigail about moving in that evening. She’d offer a cut in her wages. She didn’t really need the money, after all; Grady had given her plenty.
Grady. She frowned at the soggy bits of peppermint leaf in the bottom of her cup. He’d find out about the plan as soon as she called him that evening, as she’d promised to do, and he wouldn’t like it any better than Rose. On the other hand, if she were to spend one more night in the boardinghouse, she could sort of forget to mention to him that she was moving the next day. They’d agreed she would call every other day. That would give her two whole days living in Hancock before she had to deal with Grady, and maybe she’d have gotten Rose on her side by then. Honestly, those two. She loved them both deeply, but they just wouldn’t let her grow up. She was nearly twenty, and she’d been out in the world for almost two years. It was time they understood that she was a modern woman. She could take care of herself.
With the noon meal finished, Rose put aside her worries about Dulcie and planned her afternoon. Arranging a car to take Dulcie to a doctor later in the afternoon had turned out to be easy. Brother Ricardo hadn’t questioned her purpose or even asked whether she felt comfortable driving on snowy Massachusetts roads. Rose wasn’t entirely confident of her ability and almost wished he had insisted upon driving her, though it would have made Dulcie anxious. On the other hand, a nice, private chat with the young woman could prove helpful.
With the noon meal just finished, Rose set out to see the place where Julia Masters had died—the Sisters’ Summerhouse. Rose wrapped herself in her cloak and pulled a pair of galoshes over her shoes, so she could wander around in the snow without catching her death. She knew the Summerhouse was unheated, so she expected to suffer even inside.
As she walked around outside the small building, it struck her that the killer had been bold to the point of recklessness. The Summerhouse was so near the Brick Dwelling House. Though it was largely ignored during the winter months, the thought that someone had strangled Julia so close to the living quarters of all the Hancock Shakers chilled her far more than the snow drifting over the tops of her galoshes.
The body had been found at a small old table where the sisters often sat on warm summer evenings to share a pot of tea. The windows of the nearby dwelling house were usually kept closed during the winter, and the other buildings surrounding the Summerhouse would have been empty at night, so it was understandable that no one heard a scream or a struggle. However, it surprised her that no one could determine how long Julia had sat at the table, her dead hands seeming to reach for some unknown item. Fannie had said only that the village was so distracted by the plans for Mother Ann’s Birthday celebration that no one had even glanced into the Summerhouse.
Rose tried the front door. It was unlocked, open to the world even after such a betrayal. She stepped inside. The building was tiny, especially compared with the huge Brick Dwelling House. Unlike many of the other buildings, it was still used. Yet, to Rose, it had the forlorn look of an abandoned home. It held one nicked old table and a ladder-back chair badly in need of repair and a new finish. Dust gathered in ridges across the floor. For Rose, the smell of death still lingered.
There wasn’t much more to be learned from the lonely building; it raised more questions than it answered. How could a girl in a summer dancing gown be enticed to a nighttime rendezvous in such a place? Had Julia been positioned after death to look as if she were reaching for something? Food? A gift? Was she meeting with a blackmailer, who had something she wanted back? Surely a blackmailer would be unlikely to kill his source of illicit income. Was Julia the blackmailer, killed by her victim? Were her outstretched arms meant to symbolize a greedy, grasping nature?
A gust of wind from the open door swirled snow around her feet, and Rose shivered, more with horror than with cold. She believed, along with her brethren, that all killing was evil, but there was something especially malevolent about this murder. The frigid air in the Summerhouse befitted the cold-blooded nature of the act. This killer was surely no jilted lover, driven by anguish to destroy the thing he loved most. The murder must have been planned with precision, or it would never have happened.
Rose was more than ready to leave and begin her search for answers. She closed the door behind her and felt her soul lighten just to be out of the building. She wondered if the Hancock sisters might consider a cleansing ritual, to purify their Summerhouse before they used it again. A few years earlier, Rose would never have seen the value of such an old-fashioned service, but she’d found herself changing recently. Those century-old rituals, used so frequently during Mother Ann’s Work, were now almost unknown. The dancing and the singing and the mimed actions bound Believers together and connected them to Heaven, their spiritual home. She’d come to see how valuable this could be—though perhaps she wouldn’t admit it to Wilhelm just yet.
“Well, sweet Nellie, have you missed me?” A man the size and shape of a leprechaun slapped the rump of a Holstein, which mooed in response. “I thought you might, so I’ve come to visit you.” The man’s short, scrawny body curved backward as he stretched and yawned. “Time for a nap,” he said. “Try not to make a racket, there’s a good girl.”
Rose’s galoshes made little noise on the wood floor of the Barn Complex as she approached the sound of the hired man’s voice. She caught sight of his head, covered with tight sandy curls, just before he slipped down to the hay-coated ground beside the passive animal, presumably to begin the promised nap. This has to be Otis, she thought. No Shaker brother would be so lazy as to nap during work hours.
Otis Friddle had, according to Fannie, found Julia’s lifeless body as he’d headed past the Summerhouse on his way to the Barn Complex, which was east of the abandoned Round Stone Barn. It was astonishing that such a lazy man would even bother to look into the Summerhouse—but then, since he was walking the long way around, he was probably trying to slow down his journey to work.
“Are you Otis?” Rose asked loudly, as she peered into the stall.
His sandy head, with hay woven into the curls, popped up over the Holstein’s black-and-white back. “Lord Almighty, you scared the life out of me! Sister, I mean. I mean, you startled me, Sister. Yep, that’s me—Otis Friddle, rhymes with griddle.”
Otis’s head ducked down again and reappeared at Nellie’s rump. He flashed a smile full of crooked, tobacco-stained teeth.
Rose had visited Hancock before, but hired folk came and went, and Otis had not been among the ones she’d met. Nor, she suspected, would he stay long.
“I believe Fannie explained that she asked me here to help solve the tragic death of Julia Masters.”
“Ah, yes, I remember now. Your name’s Violet, right?”
“Rose,” she said. “Sister Rose.”
“Right. Rose.” He smiled again and backed up, as if he considered the conversation over.
“I was told I’d find you here,” Rose said. She tried to sound friendly, though she was growing impatient. “I was also told that you were the one who discovered Julia’s body.” Otis had wizened, weather-worn features that made it difficult to determine his age. He could have been anywhere from thirty to fifty years old.
“Poor Julia. Yeah, I’m the one found her. Gave me a terrible shock, I don’t mind telling you.”
“Would you be willing to interrupt your work and talk with me about it?” Rose asked.
“Sure,” Otis said. Her sarcasm was lost on him.
“I need to know everything you remember, no matter how inconsequential it might seem.”
“I already talked to the police.”
“I know, but Fannie has asked me to look into this, so I’d appreciate hearing your observations firsthand.”
Otis ducked around the cow’s rump and let himself out of the stall. “Glad to help, of course,” he said. Rose suspected his willingness had much to do with avoiding work, but she had to admit he was also giving up his nap to talk to her.
“This floor’s cold on the feet,” Otis said.
Rose controlled her irritation as Otis sauntered through the long, chilly main section of the Barn complex looking for a place to sit. If he’d move a little faster, she thought, maybe his feet wouldn’t get so cold. Rose sighed at her own impatience. She certainly did have a penchant for uncharitable thoughts, and a confession to the eldress might be a good idea.
Otis led her to some hay bales piled crookedly against the wall and climbed on top of one, crossing his legs underneath him. Rose was grateful he knew enough not to offer to help her up—though his motivation was more likely sheer laziness than good manners. Never mind, she just wanted to get on with the task at hand. Luckily, she was tall and strong, since she did some physical labor every day, as did all the able-bodied Believers in North Homage. She hoisted herself onto a hay bale next to Otis’s.
“What time did you find Julia?” she asked.
Otis pulled out a piece of hay and began chewing on it. “Way before dawn,” he said. “I was on my way to do the milking.”
The sun rose about six-thirty this time of year, but it was likely that Otis was not quite as prompt as he’d implied.
“Did you see anyone else around? Anyone at all?”
“Nope, not a soul. Not after I got past the Barn Complex, that is.”
“Who did you see near the barn?”
Otis scrunched up his face and multiplied his wrinkles. “Just the usual folk. Hired men.”
“Who, exactly?”
“Well, Theodore, but he’s our boss, so of course he’d be up and about. Then just as I was passing the barn, Theodore met up with Aldon and then Sewell, those two baby Shakers. They didn’t see me.”
Probably because you stayed out of sight to avoid getting hauled in to work, Rose thought. “If you were on your way to milk the cows, what took you to the area of the Summerhouse? Surely it was out of your way?”
Otis spit a hunk of pulverized hay on the stone floor, then selected another. “Had to pick something up at the Brethren’s Workshop,” he said.
“So you left the Brick Dwelling House, walked past the Barn Complex, then headed northwest to the Brethren’s Workshop?”
Otis nodded and chewed.
Rose had an excellent geographical memory, and she could see the arrangement of Hancock Village in her mind. “I’m still puzzled,” she said. “To return to the barn, you should have headed southeast, but instead you went west and rounded the Summerhouse. Why was that?”
Otis stiffened. “Didn’t know I was going to get the third degree about it,” he said. “I just wanted a walk, was all. It was snowing. I like snow.”
Perhaps it was not out of the question for an Easterner to do such a thing, Rose reasoned, though it made little sense to her. The pleasures of wandering around in the snow escaped her.
“All right, so you walked past the Summerhouse and looked inside, where you saw—would you describe what you saw, in your own words?”
Otis chewed, spit, then began the ritual again. Rose felt her appetite dwindling.
“I looked in through the window and saw the table and the chair, with Julia in it. Damn shame. Pretty girl.”
“Tell me everything you did after that.” Rose was hoping to get him to say more than a sentence or two at a time. At this rate, the questioning would take all afternoon.
Otis shrugged. “I ran inside, of course, to see if I could help her. She was too far gone, though. Cold as ice. So I left and went to the big house and called for help.”
“Did you move Julia?”
“Are you kidding? The whole thing was too spooky for me. I just wanted the hell out. There she was, leaning on the table with her arms out like she was reaching for food or something, and she was wearing that frilly dress with no sleeves. I thought maybe she’d had a spell and then froze to death, but I couldn’t figure why she’d be there in the first place.”
“Could you tell she’d been strangled?”
Otis looked sheepish. “Well, I guessed it, on account of that long piece of her dress was still wrapped around her neck. Didn’t look decent, so I unwound it. The cops gave me hell for that.”
“I can imagine,” Rose said. If Julia had been strangled with her own dress, the killer could be either a man or a woman. It wouldn’t take an inordinate amount of strength to strangle someone from behind with a long length of fabric.
“After you called for help, did you go back with the others to the Summerhouse?”
“Well, yeah, I did. I mean, I was spooked and all, but this is a pretty boring place most of the time. I didn’t want to miss anything. Besides, I figured these Shakers would be too shocked to be worth much, so I went back inside with Sister Fannie. She was the only one brave enough to look. Besides Dulcie, of course.”
“Dulcie? She saw her sister’s body?”
“Yeah, she was there first, before me and Sister Fannie. She must have run right over. She was Julia’s sister, after all. When we got there, she was fussing over Julia’s body like she was trying to figure out how she died. She even lifted up the skirt. Don’t know why.” Otis’s face broadened in a ghoulish grin. “I didn’t mind seeing Julia’s legs one last time, I can tell you.” He watched Rose closely, as if hoping for signs of embarrassment. She did not oblige.
“What happened next?”
“Nothing much. Sister Fannie chased us out and made one of those baby Shakers—Johnny Jenkins, it was—guard the door until the police arrived.”
“Fannie said the police suspect that Sewell Yates had something to do with Julia’s death. Do you have any idea why they might think such a thing?”
Otis’s eyebrows lifted and turned his forehead into a maze of crevices. “No one told you about Sewell?” He chuckled. “That Sewell, if he ever makes it to grown-up Shaker, that might be enough to make me believe in miracles. Sewell’s got an eye for the girls, he has. I’ve seen him flirt with every girl in this place, even the old biddies. Just can’t help himself. He had his eye on Julia and Dulcie both. Can’t blame him. They’re both pretty things, though Dulcie’s looking more and more like a Shaker these days. No wonder Theodore’s been so cranky lately. Anyway, I wouldn’t be surprised if Sewell had something going with Julia, and I’m not the only one who thinks so.”
“Did you observe anyone else being very friendly with Julia?” Rose asked.
“Too friendly, you mean?” Otis grinned. “I’d have a hard time naming a man who wasn’t. Eyed her myself, a bit—but she wasn’t interested in the likes of me.” There was no obvious bitterness in his voice. “Well, let me think. Julia had set her sights on Johnny, that’s for sure. She’d get all slinky and bat her eyelashes when he was around.”
“How did Johnny respond?”
“Never saw him do anything he shouldn’t, if you know what I mean. Which doesn’t mean nothing happened. Johnny, he’s not above using a person to get what he wants.” This time there was an edge to his voice.
“What do you mean?”
Otis shrugged. “Just that he’s got himself most in mind.”
“How did Theodore get along with Julia?”
“She flirted with him, too, of course. She always liked a man better if he already had a girl. Theodore, he didn’t really mind. He’d say how bad she was, but I’d see him eyeing her when he figured no one was watching.”
“What about Aldon?”
Otis’s genial expression hardened. “Don’t like that man. Thinks he’s got a telephone line to God’s house. I never saw him so much as glance at Julia,” he said, with obvious regret, “but he sure is a strange sort.”
“In what way?”
“Well, I was wandering around one night—just looking at the snow, you know—and when I got near the old Stone Barn, I heard these sounds coming through the cracks in the wall. Sounded like an animal in mortal pain, but I knew there hadn’t been animals in that barn for ages. I got real curious, so I peeked in a window. It was Aldon, and damned if he wasn’t kneeling on the ground, with his shirt off, whipping himself with a bit of rope. He was putting some muscle into it, too. His back was all red, and he kept mumbling to himself. Gave me the creeps, I can tell you. I hightailed it on back to my room, and you can bet I stay away from him, if I can. He’s not right in the head.”
“Did you mention this incident to Fannie—or to anyone else?”
Otis shook his head. “Not till now. I figured it must be one of those weird things Shakers do in private, you know?”
Rose neither confirmed nor denied his belief. Certainly, during Mother Ann’s Work, a century earlier, some Believers had tried to purify their souls by denying themselves food and sleep. Sometimes they danced or prayed for days on end. Aldon, who sounded overzealous, probably thought that by punishing his flesh, he was emulating early Shakers. In time, he would surely learn that confession served to purify without destroying the body.
“You did the right thing,” Rose told Otis. It was the best way she could think of to keep him from spreading the story to the police. Maybe he would be superstitious enough to think evil would befall him if he opened his mouth. She had enough to handle without worrying about the world whispering rumors about odd, secret Shaker practices.
She’d certainly gotten Otis to loosen his tongue, but she had run out of questions. Best to stop and move on. He seemed to enjoy talking to her now; she could always seek him out again.
“I won’t take you away from your work any longer,” she said, favoring him with a smile. “Thank you for your insights.” She slid off the hay bale and headed for the barn door, aware that Otis hadn’t moved. No doubt he intended to take his belated nap right where he was.
Rose hiked toward the Brethren’s Workshop, trying to remain grateful for her galoshes, even though her feet were soaked from the snow that had sneaked over the rims and inside. The time spent questioning Otis had felt longer than it actually was, and she was eager to find out as much as possible before the evening meal. Questioning one of the novitiates seemed like the logical next step, and she had settled on Aldon Stearn. She knew he’d been a Congregationalist minister, and she hoped that meant he was honest and forthright. She was also curious to judge for herself whether he was “right in the head.”
The Brethren’s Workshop was a plain building two and a half stories high. Rose noted at once that it was badly in need of new paint, especially along the windows. When Rose first entered the building, she thought it was empty. Then she heard the gentle swish of straw and realized that someone in the far corner of the building was making flat brooms. She followed the sound and came upon Brother Ricardo, bent over a winder, his back to her. She cleared her throat, and he turned instantly.
“I’m sorry to disturb your work, but I was told I could find Aldon here.”
Ricardo smiled and pointed upward, which Rose interpreted to mean that Aldon was upstairs, not that he had achieved Heaven. She thanked the brother, who was back at his work before she’d turned around.
She’d first seen Aldon Stearn when he had filed into the dining room with the other men. He was tall and distinguished, with well-groomed gray hair and a prominent chin. He held his head high, perhaps just a shade higher than humility demanded, but there was time for him to shake off pride before signing the Covenant.
Rose climbed the stairs to the second floor. The afternoon had grown cloudy, and the lights were off, leaving the large room dim and gray. She walked a few steps into the cluttered work area and located Aldon, seated close to a window, which gave him barely enough light to work. He was struggling with a thin strip of wood with swallowtail shapes cut on one end. Rose recognized the beginnings of an oval box.
Aldon wasn’t aware of her presence. With mild guilt, she watched him work, hoping for clues to his character. He seemed to be learning how to make Shaker boxes, a task requiring considerable skill. The wood had been soaked in a bucket of water to make it pliable, but it was also slippery. Aldon forced it into an oval shape over a form, only to have it slide through his fingers and pop out again. He grabbed the ends and tried again, his face contorted in frustration.
Rose’s guilt overcame her curiosity. She cleared her throat. Aldon started, dropping the strip of wood, which bounced off his lap and onto the floor. He did not bend down to retrieve it. His dark blue eyes stared at her with fierce intensity. Rose began to wonder if she had made the wisest choice for her first interview of a novitiate.
“Forgive me for ruining your concentration,” Rose said. “We haven’t met. I’m Rose, and I’m—”
“I know who you are,” Aldon said. His rich baritone voice must have held his congregation spellbound. “You are that eldress from North Homage, and you are here to help us with our current dilemma. I must tell you that I find it ridiculous for Fannie to have called you all the way up here for something our police are far better equipped to handle.”
Rose dusted some shavings off a ladder-back chair and sat down. “I have had some success with such problems before,” she said. “Fannie felt that, as a Believer myself, I might possess knowledge and understanding that the police lack.”
“I can’t imagine what that might be,” Aldon said.
Rose forced her mouth into a faint smile. “Can’t you? How interesting.”
The two stared at each other for several moments. Rose used the time to pray for a calmness of spirit that she often had trouble attaining. Aldon’s face gave little away. Finally, he shifted his eyes away from Rose.
“If Fannie wants you to investigate this tragedy, then of course I will cooperate in any way I can. For the sake of our village, I want this cleared up as soon as possible.”
“Thank you. I am told that the police suspect one of your fellow novitiates, Sewell Yates. Does this seem a reasonable suspicion to you?”
Aldon leaned over and retrieved the piece of maple at his feet. He laid it on the workbench, dusted it slowly with a rag, and replaced it in the bucket of water. As he straightened again, he smoothed his thick gray hair back in place with a quick movement.
“Sewell has far to go before he knows the joys of salvation,” he said, “but I can’t believe he would stoop to killing.”
“What would you say are his spiritual weaknesses?”
“He does not fear the wrath of our Father enough.”
Rose hadn’t planned to argue theology with Aldon, but the harshness of his words disturbed her. “Perhaps Sewell is feeling the light and love of Holy Mother Wisdom,” she said.
“That is the argument of a woman.”
Though the Shaker way of life placed men and women on an equal plane, Rose was undisturbed by Aldon’s patronizing attitude. She had dealt with Wilhelm long enough to know that, while Believers strove for perfection, they did not always achieve it.
“In your estimation, then, why should Sewell become more fearful of God’s wrath?” she asked.
“He is weak and undisciplined. He has goodness in him, but his behavior is an abomination, always has been.”
“You knew him before you both became novitiates?”
“He was one of my parishioners,” Aldon said, avoiding her gaze. “He came to Hancock shortly after I’d settled in, and I was surprised to see him. He had often failed as a Congregationalist, and I’m afraid he will fail as a Shaker. I doubt he’ll stay past spring. The life is too demanding for him.”
“What did Sewell do to make himself so unworthy in your eyes?”
Aldon fixed her with a bright stare that sent an involuntary shiver down her spine. “He lived loose and fast,” he said, in an intense whisper. “He drank and smoked and fornicated, and what little remorse he showed was no more than playacting. I wasted untold energy trying to win him to the ways of the Father, to show him how his behavior pained and angered his God, but Sewell’s soul is without strength. He cannot change, and he lures others to follow him. It would be better if he were to leave here and drink himself to death in the world, where he belongs. Then, perhaps, he will understand the depth of God’s fury.”
Rose digested his words for a few silent moments. Wilhelm at his most inspired could almost shake the Meetinghouse roof, and the evil of carnality was one of his favorite homily topics. Aldon, she guessed, was destined to be an elder, though she hoped he would absorb something more of the Shaker theology beyond the blessedness of celibacy.
“Do you know, has Sewell continued his bad habits after coming to Hancock and proclaiming his intention to become a Believer?”
Rose thought she saw a faint wince cross his face as he nodded.
“Was he involved with Julia Masters?”
“Do you mean, did I catch them fornicating together? Never. However, I observed them many times in deep conversation, apparently thinking they were hidden from view. Knowing Sewell’s character, I drew my own conclusions. The girl was a temptress, no better than a whore, and Sewell is weak enough to fall into the flesh.”
“Did you know Julia?”
Aldon’s jaw tightened. “She, too, was a parishioner, as was her family. Her parents were God-fearing, for all the good it did them; their children were cut from coarser cloth.”
“Dulcie, as well?”
“Both of them.”
“Did you have occasion to see anyone else paying attention to Julia?”
“More than I can remember, since she was fifteen. She led astray many of the more promising young men in my congregation.”
“And since she began working here in Hancock?”
“All the hired men, certainly, including Theodore.”
“Theodore Geist, the man Dulcie’s is engaged to?”
Aldon raised his face to the ceiling and smiled, as if sharing a private joke with the Heavens. “Their engagement is nothing but a sham.”
“Are you suggesting that Theodore is unfaithful to Dulcie? Have you seen this for yourself?”
Aldon did not answer. Rose decided not to press him until she could hear what others had to say. “I’d like to speak with you again later, if you are willing.”
Aldon inclined his head in a gesture of noblesse oblige.
Though it would cost her a thorough confession, Rose gave a silent prayer of thanks for those who were obsessed with their own holiness—they watched their “inferiors” so carefully, and they made such willing gossips.