A Simple Shaker Murder (23 page)

“No kidding.” Grady took the paper from Rose's hand and studied it again. “If someone had delivered this note to me, I'd've been mighty suspicious. You said it was the leader who found it?”

“Gilbert Griffiths, right. But retiring rooms are never locked. Anyone could have put the note in Hugh's room.”

“Still, you'd think he would know the deceased's handwriting. I'd expect to see some notes attached to this, something written by Harry saying that the deceased usually printed, and Gilbert vouched for the authenticity, and so on. But there's nothing. Harry just stuffed this in the drawer, and in the middle of the stack, too . . . almost like he didn't want it to come to light easily.” Grady shook his head. “No, I just can't believe it. Harry and I don't see eye-to-eye most of the time, but he usually makes a stab at following procedure.”

“Maybe he's getting ready to retire,” Rose suggested, not without a hint of hopefulness.

“Yeah, maybe. I don't know, I'll have to think about this for a while.”

“Will you ask him why he handled this the way he did?”

Grady folded the note and stashed it in his pocket. “I don't know yet.”

“I can at least try to find out something about Hugh's handwriting, whether he ever printed,” Rose said.

“That would help,” Grady said. “Keep me informed.”

Rose stopped briefly in her retiring room to pick up the drawings before arriving at Agatha's room. She felt a surge of warmth and hope as she entered to find Mairin standing at Agatha's side, feeding her with care. Mairin responded inconsistently to affection; sometimes she emerged from behind her mask, and other times she withdrew further into her silent world. This was one of the good times.

“Good evening, dear,” Agatha said. “Mairin has finished
eating, and I'm almost done, but I asked Gertrude to bring you some soup, in case you returned hungry.”

Mairin put down Agatha's spoon and lifted a brimming white bowl from the desk. As she carried it to Rose, she bit her lower lip in concentration, trying not to spill a drop. Rose took it from her with a thank-you.

Rose was very hungry indeed, and the creamy chowder was still warm enough to send its rich fragrance spiraling up as she stirred it. She ate faster than she'd intended and was finished almost the same time as Agatha.

“Now,” said Agatha, easing back in her rocker, “tell us about your day, Rose. You've been running about at top speed, which usually means you're trying to work out a puzzle.”

Rose looked from Agatha to Mairin and hesitated. Mairin watched her with bright, coppery eyes, but how much could the girl really handle?

“While you were gone,” Agatha said, “Mairin and I had a nice talk—didn't we, child?—about lots of things, such as what she remembers about her younger years and about her bad dreams.”

She's telling me the time is right
, Rose thought. It was like Agatha to have read her mind and paved the way. She pulled Mairin's drawings from her pocket and unfolded them, watching the girl's face. Mairin's eyes widened but did not dim as she recognized her pictures. Rose took the checkerboard design and held it out to her.

“What is this a picture of, Mairin, can you remember from your dream?” Rose avoided any direct reference to Hugh's death for fear Mairin would withdraw again.

Mairin took the drawing and stared at it, her full lips parted, showing badly stained teeth. Rose silently promised that as soon as she had the right, she would take Mairin on a visit to the dentist.

“Take your time,” Rose said. “Close your eyes and let your mind wander.” She wrapped a soft blanket around Mairin's shoulders and settled her into a corner of Agatha's bed. Mairin
curled into a ball and closed her eyes. Rose returned to her chair and waited.

Minutes passed, and Rose began to wonder if Mairin had fallen asleep. Agatha seemed to be dozing off, as well. Rose's knee began to ache, and she shifted her position. The room grew chilly. Rose was considering finding a blanket for herself when Mairin whimpered. Agatha jolted awake. She struggled out of her rocker, and Rose hurried to help her. Mairin cried out and curled more tightly. With Rose's support, Agatha sat on her bed and began stroking Mairin's forehead with her steadier left hand. She crooned to the child, an old Shaker song, “Love, Oh Love Is Sweetly Flowing.” Mairin's body relaxed. But instead of falling into a deep sleep, her eyes opened and focused on the rocking chair Agatha had vacated. Rose moved her own ladder-back chair so that Mairin could see it, too.

Mairin sat up. Rose had lain the drawings and crayons on the bed, within reach. Mairin took the checkerboard drawing and a red crayon and began coloring every other square.

“So it
was
a ladder-back chair,” Rose said.

Mairin glanced at her with a puzzled expression.

“Was this what you saw in your dream? Red-and-white checks?”

Mairin nodded.

Rose prepared to take it slowly. So far, she had only confirmation of her guess—that Mairin had been dreaming about Hugh's death scene, where an old red-and-white Shaker chair had lain as if kicked aside. Rose needed more, much more. She touched Mairin's shoulder.

“I know your dreams have been very scary, and that you don't want to have them anymore,” she said. “Agatha and I can help you be free of those dreams. Would you like us to try?”

Mairin nodded.

“I used to have bad dreams sometimes when I was your age,” Rose said, “and Agatha taught me how to make them go away. She used to hold my hand and let me tell her the
entire dream. Whenever I got to a really frightening part, she told me to stop and remind myself that I was not alone and that Mother Ann was watching over me. And do you know what I found out? That even if the dreams didn't stop right away, they got less and less scary the more I talked about them.”

Agatha took one of Mairin's hands, and Rose took the other. “You have all three of us to protect you, because I know Mother Ann is here. So would you try to tell us your dream?”

Mairin looked at her hands, securely held. “When I had bad dreams before,” she said, “everybody laughed at me. They told me I was just trying to be important.”

“You are a child of God,” Agatha said. “We will never laugh at you.”

“I have the same dream over and over. A snake climbs up a tree and onto a limb, and then its head falls off, and there isn't any blood. But then I look on the ground, and all the blood fell like this.” Mairin nodded at the checkerboard drawing.

Rose bit her tongue to keep from leaping in with more direct questions.

“That is a very frightening dream,” Agatha said. “I understand why you've been afraid to talk about it. Does it seem as scary now?”

Mairin paused a moment and her pinched features relaxed. “No. It's better. Will it go away now?”

Rose and Agatha exchanged a glance. “Sometimes, with really bad dreams like this one,” Rose said, “it helps if we talk about where it came from. Once I had a dream that terrified me, about a monster with huge teeth that was about to chomp on me, and Agatha helped me remember that I'd seen one of the brethren get hurt by a threshing machine. Once we talked about what I'd seen, I stopped having the dream. Perhaps we could think about where your dream is coming from.”

To Rose's relief, Mairin seemed to be considering her suggestion.

“Close your eyes again,” Agatha said, in a low, soothing
voice. ‘Think about what the dream reminds you of, and remember that we are here with you. We won't let anything happen to you.”

Mairin closed her eyes briefly. Rose expected a severe reaction, but when the girl opened her eyes again, they were dull with misery. “I don't have to think about it,” Mairin said. “I remember. But I can't tell.”

“Why can't you tell?” Rose asked.

“I just can't,” Mairin said. “Are you mad at me?”

“Nay, of course not,” Rose said. “Only I don't understand . . . did someone order you not to tell?”

Mairin's mouth tightened in a stubborn pucker, and she said nothing.

In frustration, Rose took a risk. “Mairin, do your pictures bring back the day I first met you? The day Hugh died?”

Mairin pulled her hands back and scooted away from the women.

“That's what your drawings and your dream are about, aren't they?” Rose pressed, despite a warning glance from Agatha.

Mairin pulled her knees up to her chin, and her eyes flashed.

“Mairin, do you understand how important this is? Was someone else there when Hugh died? Did you see someone with him? Please, Mairin, I need to know in order to protect you, to protect all of us.”

“Leave me alone! I can't tell!”

R
OSE BROUGHT A SILENT
M
AIRIN BACK TO THE
M
INISTRY
House for the night. As they ascended the stairs to her retiring room, Rose heard a murmur of voices coming from behind the closed doors of the Ministry library. Mairin seemed not to notice, so Rose decided to give the girl a cup of chamomile tea and put her to bed early. Once Mairin was asleep, Rose would make a quick foray down to the library to find out what was going on.

Mairin was settling into bed before she realized her doll wasn't in its usual place. Her sullen silence dissolved into tears of rage. Rose tried to hold the girl, but she squirmed away and crawled under her bed, then under Rose's, looking for the doll. When she couldn't find it, she curled up in a corner, on the cold floor, her small chest heaving.

Rose had no idea what to do. She considered calling Agatha or Josie from the hall phone, but she didn't want to leave the child alone just then. She sat cross-legged on the floor in front of Mairin.

“We will find your doll,” she said. “We got clean sheets today, so I bet your doll just became tangled up in the old ones. Gretchen will find her when she shakes out the sheets before washing them. I know you're worried about her, but first thing tomorrow we'll call over to the Laundry and warn them to watch for her.” She reached over and pried loose one
of Mairin's hands. ‘This has been a hard day. You'll feel better if you get some sleep.”

Mairin sniffled.

“The sooner you go to sleep, the sooner morning will come, and we can call the Laundry about your doll. How about it?”

Mairin allowed herself to be carried to bed, tucked in, and sung to until she slipped into sleep.

Rose was exhausted and cast a longing look at her own crisp, clean sheets, but she had to find out what was happening downstairs in the Ministry library. Assured that Marin was deeply asleep, she went down to investigate. She couldn't mistake the voices. Wilhelm and Gilbert were firing volleys at each other, barely pausing for breath. She thought she heard other voices, too, underneath the verbal battle.

So Wilhelm was holding an evening meeting with the New-Owenites and without her. Her temper flared, and for once she didn't care. She was tired of the subterfuge and especially tired of eavesdropping in her own village. She swung open the door with more force than necessary and stood framed in the doorway. Wilhelm, Gilbert, Earl, and Celia all turned to stare at her.

Without a word, Rose swung down a ladder-back chair and joined the group. She crossed her right hand over her left, as if she were settling down to a Union Meeting, and looked from face to face.

“Do continue,” she said. “I'm sure I'll be able to catch up.”

Rose ignored the exchanged glances and waited.

“We were just discussing ideas for a joint meeting on Sunday evening,” Gilbert said.

“Joint worship,” Wilhelm said.

“We understood you were busy with your duties,” Gilbert said, “or naturally we would have included you, Rose.”

“Naturally,” Rose said. “So what are the plans so far?”

“Well, you see, we all believe this is a very important time for both our communities—a time of testing, if you will. We feel the need of a guidance that is, shall we say, beyond
our poor human understanding. Naturally, as Mairin is so linked—”

“Absolutely not!”

“Rose, just hear us out,” Gilbert said. “The girl will come to no harm.”

“I won't allow that child to be the rope in your tug of war. She has been through too much already, and she needs to live a normal, quiet life.”

“It is not thy decision to make,” Wilhelm said. “She is a chosen instrument. It isn't our place to question Mother Ann's Work. She has sent her gifts through this child, and it is up to us to accept them with praise and gratitude.”

Celia crossed one slim leg over the other and began to swing it. “Personally,” she said, “I don't care if Mairin ever draws another picture. I think you're all making her into something much more important than she really is. You act as if she's some sort of chosen creature, when she's really just an uncivilized runt, impossible to deal with, and I can't believe that Robert Owen or this Mother Ann person of yours would pick her to speak through.”