Death of a Winter Shaker by Deborah Woodworth

about the fire which had destroyed their barn. No one offered information about the fire, but several had a great deal to say about Johann and who he’d had dealings with.
    She had arisen at 4:00, an hour early for a Saturday, and padded in slippered feet downstairs to her office to complete her task. Rather than add scarce wood to the stove, merely for her own comfort, she had wrapped herself in her thick wool cloak and kept her chilled feet under its long folds. She longed for a steaming pot of rose hip and lemon balm tea, but she hadn’t wanted to clatter crockery in the kitchen at such an early hour.
    Rose yawned and stretched her arms, then shivered as the cloak slid from her lap. She replaced it quickly. Her eyes fell on the sheet of paper before her, but still she resisted reading it. A glance around the dimly lit room filled her with sadness and rare loneliness. A hundred years ago, the Trustees’ Office, the building in which Rose lived and worked, would have been filled with people. She would have been one of four trustees,two men and two women, who met daily with the world’s folk in this very room.
    Though small by Shaker standards, the building contained retiring rooms for fifty Believers, sisters housed on the west side, brethren on the east, each with their own staircase. The staircases had a simple elegance, though they were not as exquisite as the curved ones Rose had seen as a child on a visit to the Trustees’ Office in the Pleasant Hill Shaker village, before it closed in 1910.
    Now Rose shared the building with only two others, young novitiates who had not yet signed the covenant to become full members of the Society. They were good girls, eager and hardworking, but they couldn’t fill the large house with the bustle and cheerful noise of fifty Believers.
    Since Sister Fiona’s death last spring, Rose was the last remaining trustee, working alone to direct the business affairs of North Homage. She reached out and smoothed her hand across Fee’s half of the double desk, then drew back into the warmth of her cape. The pigeonholes still held Fee’s old accounts books and postal supplies, as though she would pop in at any moment to fill out invoices for herb orders.
    What would Fee have to say about her list of potential Shaker murderers? Something plainspoken, no doubt, she thought, smiling. Fee’s parents had brought her from Ireland almost directly to North Homage when she was a small child. Some of Fee’s first memories had been of the Civil War, when both Union and Confederate soldiers marched through North Homage demanding food and horses. Rose remembered the stories as though Fee sat beside her now telling them, her small body ramrod-straight and her eyes bright.
    â€œThey were starving, the poor lads,” Fee had reminisced more than once, “and we fed them good Shakermeals, with cheese, applesauce, brown bread and butter, lemon pie, even roasted chickens if we had them. We went without to feed them. But when they wanted our brethren to come and fight, we stood firm. We Shakers do not fight. We do not kill. Even when our neighbors stole our horses to punish us for not fighting, we showed them no anger in return. Remember that, Rose, take no revenge on those who would be your enemies.” Then with a wink, “Not so easy for an Irish lass, is it?”
    Shakers do not kill. Rose pulled her list toward her. Fourteen Believers remained to be questioned. She eliminated seven Believers who were too elderly or ill even to leave their retiring rooms. Another two were traveling from town to town in northern Kentucky, selling Shaker products. That left Eldress Agatha and the four names that popped up over and over. Those four she planned to question this morning.
    Nearly everyone she had questioned so far knew who Johann was, and most swore that they’d avoided contact with him. But several had witnessed extended, sometimes angry, interchanges between