A Deadly Shaker Spring (23 page)

After several pages of reports on how the crops were doing, despite the lack of rain, Rose came to an intriguing reference:

Rose chuckled as she placed the journal on her desk. Disciplining the “carnally inclined” seemed to be her own assignment as eldress as well. She tiptoed into the hallway and to Sarah's room again, but nothing was amiss. Perhaps she had overreacted. Perhaps Caleb was too drunk to report coherently to his apostate “friends.” Back in her own room, she checked her bedside clock. It was 2:30
A.M
.. Rose sat on her tightly made bed and longed to snuggle under the coverlet.
Nay
, she thought,
I mustn't. If anything happens to Sarah . . 
. She couldn't take the risk of being so close to her enticing bed. She picked up her clock and took it with her back to her sitting room.

Settling again under the cozy blanket, she leaned back in her rocking chair. Placing the clock on the desk where she could easily see it, she allowed her head to roll back against the wooden slats and closed her eyes. Just for a moment, she told herself.

A scraping sound intruded into her deep, dreamless sleep. At first she didn't realize she was asleep and wove the sound into an instant dream image of the brethren scraping mud from their feet before entering the dining room. She clicked her tongue at the sight of so much mud caked on the outside stoop, and the sound she made in her throat brought her closer to wakefulness.

The scent of lavender brushed her nose. Something soft touched her face, pressed against it, then tightened. She no longer smelled lavender because the soft object smashed against her nose and mouth, cutting off her breath. It pulled her backward in her chair, but the chair itself did not fall. Fully alert now, Rose understood why. Someone stood behind her. She felt her
chair stop, braced against her attacker. Something downy covered her face. She was being smothered with the pillow from her own bed. The lavender scent came from the final rinse used in the Laundry.

Rose was caught by surprise, but she had the strength and agility typical of young Shaker sisters, who worked as hard as the brethren. She flung her arms upward and clutched at the top of the pillow, but it didn't budge. She was losing time. She squirmed to pull herself down under the soft weapon, but she couldn't escape the suffocating pressure. Finally her fingers touched the wrists holding the pillow. Her fingernails were blunt but strong. As bright spots began to appear on the insides of her eyelids, she dug her nails into flesh and scraped. A moment before she blacked out, she heard a gasp of pain, and the pillow bounced away from her face.

A blast of cold water splashed on her face returned Rose to the light. She was carried a short distance and placed on a bed. A sea of worried faces with disheveled hair bent over her. The roundest face belonged to Josie, who cried out in relief as Rose coughed and opened her eyes.

“Ah, thank the Lord, you are back with us,” Josie said. “I was a bit worried there when the smelling salts didn't work. We could see you were breathing, but you seemed determined to stay unconscious.”

“What . . . How did you . . .” Rose's voice sounded faint and hoarse. She was regaining her focus, though. She saw she was in her own room on her own bed.

“Don't try to talk too much, dear. Just lie back and rest, and we'll tell you what we know first.” Josie
looked around at the other faces. “Gretchen, you found her. Tell her everything you saw.”

Gretchen was a no-nonsense young woman, already Laundry deaconess at twenty-eight, but this turn of events brought an excited sparkle to her eyes. Now that Rose was all right, Gretchen seemed ready to enjoy herself.

“Well, I'm a very light sleeper, you know,” she said with a touch of pride. “I hear all sorts of sounds at night, but usually it doesn't bother me because I know what it is, like if a sister needs to make a nighttime visit to—” She paused as Josie raised her eyebrows to quell any further digression. “Anyway, tonight I stayed awake for hours because there seemed to be an awful lot going on in the hallway. Once I peeked out and saw you, Rose, going into Sarah's room, and then you came out again and went back to your own room.”

“Sarah!” Rose croaked. “Is she all right?”

“I'm right here, Rose.” Sarah's soft eyes appeared near Rose's face. “I didn't know you were that worried about me.” She sounded guarded, as if she thought Rose might not have trusted her. Rose did not reassure her. She nodded and relaxed again against the pillow that had so recently been used to attack her.

She looked toward Gretchen to encourage her to continue.

“Well, I was getting tired, as you can imagine,” Gretchen said. “I was just drifting off when I heard an awful clatter. At least it sounded awful to me. I got all twisted up in my coverlet, so it took a while for me to run into the hallway. I didn't see anyone;
they must have gotten away. But your door was wide open, Rose, so I ran here, and there you were, out cold on the floor, and your rocking chair was turned on its side. Your pillow was off to the side on the floor, and at first I wondered if you'd been napping in your chair and it tipped over. Then I got really frightened—you looked dead! I thought you weren't breathing at all, but then you sort of gasped, and I could see you were just unconscious. I tried to bring you to but I couldn't, so I called Josie from the hall telephone, and she came right over,” Gretchen finished, breathless.

Rose had been recovering rapidly while Gretchen spoke. She pulled herself to a sitting position, waving aside Josie's murmured objections.

“I must get up,” Rose insisted, tossing off her blanket.

“Nay, my dear, the only thing you must do is rest,” Josie said, gently pushing Rose's shoulders back toward the bed. But Rose had regained much of her strength.

“Josie, I insist,” she said. “I know you are concerned for me, but this is important.” She did not wish to alarm the others. Josie saw the intensity in her eyes, though, and understood.

“How can I help?”

“Stay with me for a bit,” Rose said. “And the rest of you, I'm fine now, so run along and get ready for breakfast. I'm afraid we'll all be short on sleep today, but it can't be helped. There's no harm done; don't tire yourselves more with worry.”

Reluctantly, the sisters left Rose's retiring room and scattered to their own. With Josie hovering, Rose
slid off her bed and tried her legs. They were shaky but serviceable. She led the way to her sitting room and stopped so suddenly that Josie nearly ran into her. She stared at her desk, then scanned the room. The door of her built-in cupboard hung open. Agatha's journals were gone, every one of them. Rose yanked open her desk drawer. At least her attacker had not found Fee's journals and the anonymous journal pages Sarah had given her. She moved them to the back of a recessed dresser drawer in her bedroom, while Josie watched, silent and wide-eyed.

Taking Josie's hand, she hurried into the hallway and down the staircase to her office. The door was ajar. They entered the room. Both sisters stood in silence as they surveyed the devastation. Cabinets and drawers were open and the contents strewn around the floor, as if the intruders had tossed over their shoulders anything they didn't want. Ledger books were pulled off the shelves and scattered around the desk, some open with pages ripped or smeared with spilled ink.

“Oh, Rose,” Josie whispered. “What is happening to us?”

Rose quickly closed the office door and switched on the light. “We must keep this as quiet as possible,” she said. “I'll have to tell Wilhelm, of course, but I'll want to find out what is going on without spreading panic among Believers.” She reached down and rescued a bent copy of Mother Ann's sayings that lay at her feet. “The intruders must have been very quiet,” she said, “to have done all this without being heard upstairs, especially with Gretchen so wakeful.
They must have come up to my room when they didn't find what they wanted here.”

“What
is
going on? Do you have any idea at all?”

Rose nodded. “I have some idea, or maybe part of an idea, but too many pieces are missing. Someone tried to smother me with the pillow you all saw on the floor. I never saw who it was, but I did scratch them before I blacked out.” Rose inched among the scattered papers and books, now and then lifting one and piling it on her desk. Josie had a faraway look on her face.

“Josie? What is it?”

“I was just thinking. When someone has been smothered, the death can look very much like a heart attack.”

The papers in Rose's hand drifted to the floor again. “So Faithfull could have been smothered,” she said. “And Samuel, too. It would have taken some effort, some planning, but even someone smaller than Samuel could have done it, coming from behind. Maybe Samuel had fallen asleep. It would explain why he was still sitting in the rocking chair, and why there were no signs of a struggle. The cookies, though; I wonder . . .” Rose sank into her desk chair, and Josie lifted a chair from a wall peg and sat at the other side of the double desk.

“If someone wanted it to look like a natural death,” Rose mused, “they might have placed the cookies there, taking a bite to make it look more real. That would explain why there were no crumbs around Samuel.”

“Then surely it could not have been a Believer,” Josie said, her eyes bright with hope. “Not everyone
knew of his vow to avoid sweets—you didn't, certainly—but everyone had noticed that he never ate them. He was so thin, too. No one would think he sneaked into the kitchen at night to snack on cookies! Only someone from the world would set up such a ruse.”

“I'm afraid I can think of at least one other explanation for the cookies,” Rose said. “I doubt they were poisoned, or they wouldn't have been left just so. But a Believer who hated Samuel might have placed the cookies there to shame him, even in death, with evidence of his broken vows.”

“But is there anyone who would have hated Samuel that much?”

“That is what we must find out,” Rose said.

A
FTER SENDING
J
OSIE BACK TO THE
I
NFIRMARY TO
sip chamomile tea and rest, Rose decided to contact Deputy Grady O'Neal, rather than clean up her office immediately. She placed a call to the Languor County Sheriff's Office, and luck was with her; Grady was in his office and promised to drive right over to North Homage.

With a sigh of reluctance, Rose then placed a call to the Ministry House. Keeping the news from Wilhelm would only further impair their ability to work together as elder and eldress.

“I want to be there when you speak with that deputy,” Wilhelm said, when she had filled him in. To her surprise, he had not criticized her decision to call in the police. “He is very much of the world, and I don't trust him.”

“Well, I do,” Rose said. “He has been sympathetic to us before. He is certainly a better choice than Sheriff Brock, who has never been our friend.” She had come to trust Grady during a previous investigation of a young drifter's murder. Unlike Sheriff Brock, Grady had been open-minded and fair with the Shakers.

Wilhelm grunted but did not object further. “I'll be right over.”

Grady must have flown over the rutted road from Languor, because he and Wilhelm arrived at the same time, to Rose's relief. She had dreaded having to argue with Wilhelm about what to tell Grady.

They scanned the office silently for a few moments, as Grady made notes in his small notebook, and Wilhelm glowered.

“The world has a vicious heart,” Wilhelm said, running his hand over a section of Rose's desk where the pine, aged to an orange glow, was dotted with splashes of ink. “What will the police do about this outrage?” he asked the room at large. “Nothing, probably. What do they care if we Believers are persecuted?”

Grady glanced at him but wisely said nothing. Rose relaxed. Grady was a self-possessed young man, unlikely to be drawn into a quarrel that would give Wilhelm an excuse to become even more self-righteous.

“Did you notice any pattern to the damage?” Grady asked Rose. “Did it seem to you that they were trying to destroy anything in particular?