A Circle of Dead Girls Read online

  ‘Pip – ah – Monsieur Boudreaux says he only rode along that road once, out to the junction with the Surry Road and then back. He left the circus camp after one. It took him maybe forty-five minutes each way.’

  ‘He’s sure about the time?’ Rees asked. If that was accurate Boudreaux could have seen Shem and Leah. Another rapid dialogue followed and then Asher turned back to Rees.

  ‘Yes, he is sure. There were some carriages on the road as well as some people on horseback. Not many. That’s why he allowed his mare her head.’

  ‘There would have been a boy and a girl,’ Rees said. ‘Walking, probably on the lane. Mr Boudreaux might have seen them across the fields.’ He made a note to ask Shem which way he and Leah had walked into Durham. He thought the Shakers would most likely choose the lane instead of the main road; it was both closer and not heavily traveled by vehicles, but just because he thought so did not mean the children had taken that route.

  ‘Oui, oui,’ Boudreaux said. ‘Une jeune fille.’ Another spate of rapid French followed.

  ‘Yes, one was a young girl,’ Asher translated. ‘And a boy was with her, the same one who talked to Pip about the circus horses. They were almost into town by then. And there was an older man following.’ All of Rees’s attention focused upon that statement in an instant.

  ‘An older man? A laborer?’ Rees asked. Asher put the question to Boudreaux.

  ‘Non. He wore stout boots. Good clothes.’

  Rees considered the geography of the lane. Except for Zion, and the farm across the lane from the Reynard property, there was no location nearby from which a man could walk. Could the man who had followed Leah been a Shaker Brother? ‘Did he wear dark trousers and a flat-brimmed, straw hat with a black ribbon?’ Rees asked. Boudreaux’s head began bobbing up and down with vehemence.

  ‘White shirt also.’

  Rees turned his eyes up and stared blindly at the blue sky for a long moment. Without knowing the identity of the old man he couldn’t be sure he was a Shaker but his nerves began twitching with an almost supernatural faith it was so. Did the Elders know of this other Brother’s journey into Durham? Rees would bet his life they did not. What was more, he could clearly imagine how easily this unidentified older man could have overtaken Leah and soothed away her fears.

  Returning his gaze to the man behind the grille, Rees asked in his poor French, ‘Did you tell Monsieur Rouge?’

  ‘Non, non,’ said Boudreaux. ‘He didn’t ask.’

  Of course he didn’t, Rees thought.

  ‘So, Mr Rees, what do you think?’ asked Mr Asher. ‘We know our Pip could never harm anyone. But you are not as familiar with him as we are.’

  Wishing to hear Miss Mazza’s deliciously accented voice again, Rees turned to her and asked, ‘Have you known Monsieur Boudreaux long?’

  ‘Many years,’ she replied with a smile. ‘I know he is not the cleverest of men but he is a kind one. Why, an injury to one of the circus horses brings tears to his eyes.’

  Rees nodded although he did not find that a compelling argument. He’d known men who would treat their dogs with gentleness and beat their wives and children bloody. But he smiled at her and said, ‘That is certainly one reason to defend Monsieur Boudreaux.’

  ‘Why do you care who was on the road?’ Asher asked, drawing Rees’s attention away from the ropedancer.

  ‘That older gentleman he described may have seen something,’ Rees replied. Or worse. ‘I’d like to question him as well as Monsieur Boudreaux. But that means I must find him first.’

  ‘I see.’ Asher threw a glance at the prisoner. ‘Will Pip be free by tomorrow?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Rees said. ‘But probably not.’

  ‘By the next day then?’ Asher’s forehead furrowed. ‘We are due in another town.’

  Rees recalled the poster with its list of crossed-off village names. ‘Perhaps,’ he said doubtfully. ‘I shall do my utmost. Let me discuss it with the constable.’ As he turned Asher caught at Rees’s arm.

  ‘Wait, Mr Rees. Have you seen the performance?’

  ‘No. Not yet. Just a little bit of Mr Boudreaux exercising his horse.’

  ‘Please come. We are scheduled for a show tonight and, if Pip is not freed, tomorrow night as well. I will arrange for you to be let in without paying so much as a tray saulty.’

  ‘He means three pence,’ Bambola put in with a smile, seeing Rees’s expression. ‘It’s circus talk.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Rees said in surprise.

  Asher smiled, his lip curling up with a hint of bitterness. ‘You must understand how grateful we are that you do not immediately assume one of our number is guilty, simply because he is circus folk. I am a good judge of character and I see you will pursue the investigation until you have found the right man.’ He did not point to Rouge as an example of someone unwilling to look beyond the travelers but his meaning was clear. ‘That is all I ask; that you do that. I am confident Pip will be cleared. We have no money to offer you, but we can share our show. I hope you will attend.’

  Rees inclined his head, embarrassed by the praise but touched as well. ‘I will. Thank you.’

  EIGHT

  With Rouge now in the forefront of his mind, Rees walked the short distance from the jail to the tavern so deep in thought he was barely aware of his surroundings. He was having second thoughts about the advisability of confiding all he’d learned to the constable. Although he knew he should tell Rouge that Boudreaux had seen not only the children but also an older man following them, Rees was afraid of Rouge’s reactions. Either he would point to Leah and say ‘of course Boudreaux attacked her; they were in the same area at the same time’ or he would mount a hunt through Zion for the Shaker Brother Boudreaux had spotted. And no doubt the constable would pull in the first old man he saw and claim the murder successfully solved.

  ‘Rees. Will Rees.’ Brother Daniel’s familiar voice penetrated Rees’s thoughts. When he looked around he saw both Daniel and Aaron approaching. ‘Your wife said you were here,’ Daniel said. Rees stopped walking and waited for the two men to approach. ‘Rouge told us the murder has been solved and the guilty party arrested.’

  ‘Someone has been arrested,’ Rees said, involuntarily recalling Boudreaux’s description of the man following Leah. Could it be one of these men? Not Daniel. Despite his graying hair he could not be mistaken for an old man. Aaron? He was older. Rees turned to look at him. Although he was within a few years of Rees’s age, Aaron’s hair was streaked with gray and his lined face made him seem much older still. ‘Is that why you’re here?’ Rees asked. ‘To see who was arrested?’

  ‘We came to fetch Sister Leah from the coroner,’ Aaron said.

  ‘And we came looking for you,’ Daniel added. ‘The Elders wish to speak with you.’

  For a moment Rees wondered if they knew one of their members had followed Leah and Shem into town but dismissed it. He had only just learned that himself.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They want to ask if you’ll look into this … this tragedy,’ Daniel said.

  ‘We are familiar with Constable Rouge’s methods,’ Aaron added, smiling sourly when Rees inclined his head in agreement.

  ‘If, by some chance, his first suspect is freed, Rouge will cast around for another,’ Daniel said. ‘We fear he will look to Zion. Leah belonged to our community so Rouge will not hesitate to blame one of us.’

  Rees nodded involuntarily. Although he wished he could argue the point, he knew better. This community was, because of its many differences, frequently suspect and occasionally persecuted. In this case, however, he planned to do exactly as Rouge would and look for Leah’s murderer among them.

  ‘One of your community might be guilty,’ Rees pointed out.

  ‘Surely none of our number—’ Daniel began.

  Aaron turned a look of disbelief upon his fellow Shaker and interrupted. ‘Even among the godly the wicked are with us,’ Aaron said. ‘Just last year we witnessed the evidence of
that.’

  ‘Yes, I remember,’ Daniel said. In a non-Shaker his abruptness would have signified anger. Rees was not sure that was true of Daniel but Aaron took it as such. He frowned at his Brother and backed away, putting several feet of distance between them.

  ‘Of course, I’ll look into this,’ Rees said. He’d planned to do so in any case. ‘I’ll stop over on my way home, if that is acceptable. I wanted to examine the body again anyway before Leah is put to rest.’

  ‘We will stow her in the icehouse until Esther …’ Daniel stopped, swallowing hard. ‘We won’t send her home to Mother Ann until tomorrow.’

  Rees nodded, his throat closing up. He pitied Daniel. A young man, and sheltered, he was struggling to make sense of the murder. Rees, whose daughter Jerusha was but a year or two shy of Leah’s age, could only function by walling off his horror and grief. The barrier did not always hold.

  ‘Very well,’ he said, the trembling in his voice betraying his emotion. He inhaled and held his breath for a few seconds until he was sure he could speak in a steady voice. ‘I’ll see you in Zion shortly.’

  The three men walked back to the tavern and Rees watched the Shakers climb into their cart and drive toward Dr Smith’s house. He almost – almost – walked back to his own wagon. Why should he tell Rouge anything? As usual the constable had rushed to judgment without a thorough examination of all the facts. But ultimately Rees couldn’t keep this secret, not from the only officer of the law in this town. He went up the steps and into the tavern.

  He could not predict the effect of the new information – the man following Leah into town – upon the constable. He guessed that Rouge would either hurry to the jail to question Boudreaux himself or hare off to Zion to harass the Brothers. He did neither. Instead, when Rees finished speaking, Rouge burst into a loud guffaw. ‘You are determined to solve another murder and show me up as the fool,’ he said. ‘This time I caught the murderer without your help.’

  ‘Aren’t you even going to speak to Boudreaux again?’ Rees asked in surprised dismay.

  ‘Why? Why would I trust him? He didn’t tell me about the man,’ Rouge said.

  ‘Maybe you should at least verify the story by asking the Reynard boy—’ Rees began.

  Rouge cut him off. ‘I don’t have to do anything. I have the murderer in my jail.’

  Rees looked at Rouge, and at the few men in the tavern who had been openly listening. All of them were grinning.

  ‘A damn circus groom,’ said one of them as he spat on the floor.

  ‘And a Frenchman to boot,’ added another. ‘You can’t trust a Frenchman.’

  Rees darted a glance at Rouge, also a Frenchman, but although he grimaced he did not speak. ‘I see,’ said Rees. He understood: Boudreaux was an outsider on two counts and a circus performer besides. Hanging him for the crime made a quick and tidy ending. As a traveler himself, Rees had been accused of crimes more times than he could count, simply from the accident of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Even in Dugard, the town where he’d grown up, he’d been a target. Although he thought it was possible and maybe even likely that Boudreaux was the killer, all of his sympathy went to the groom now that he’d been assigned the blame. ‘Very well,’ he said to Rouge, ‘I won’t trouble you any further.’ He spun on his heel and stalked to the door.

  ‘And don’t meddle,’ Rouge shouted after him. ‘This investigation is over.’

  Rees did not acknowledge the command. Of course, he would not stay out of this. Although this rapid solution absolved Rouge from any further inquiry, Rees feared that an innocent man might be rushed to the gallows and a guilty man go free.

  The drive to Zion did little to calm Rees’s fury. When he finally pulled up in front of the stable, he sat for a moment in the seat trying to settle.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Brother Daniel asked as he crossed the street. Taking a deep breath, Rees turned with a nod. Daniel eyed him doubtfully but said only, ‘I’ll take care of your horse. Once you inspect Leah’s earthly shell you will meet with the Elders.’

  ‘Very well,’ Rees said. After living here last year, and visiting many times before that, he was familiar with the office at the top of the stairs.

  ‘You know where the icehouse is,’ Daniel continued, taking hold of Hannibal’s bridle. ‘I–I can’t accompany you. I just can’t.’ He shook his head, keeping his face averted from Rees.

  ‘I understand,’ he said. He didn’t want to see the body either. But he had to; he did not want to chance missing something.

  He walked to the southern end of the village and crossed the bridge over the stream. As he entered the copse of fir trees that shaded the springhouse all summer, he realized he could not smell the laundry. Of course, the Sisters would not be washing the body linens today; it was Friday. Rees guessed the Sisters were still in the laundry house, however, engaged in other tasks connected with that laborious chore.

  He paused outside the springhouse for a few seconds, steeling himself for what he was about to see. Someone had vomited in the grass outside. If Rees had to guess he would bet on Daniel as the culprit. He opened the weathered, wooden door, propped it open with a stone, and went inside.

  It was very cold. The movement of the stream underneath and the sawdust-coated ice blocks ensured a low temperature. Rees began to shiver. He felt almost as if he were in a dream, so similar was this to his first visit to Zion. That time too he had spent some time in this building examining the body of a young Shaker Sister.

  Rees hesitated by the door. The warm sunshine outside beckoned him and for a few seconds he considered leaving the icehouse. Who would know? He would. And he would think less of himself for abandoning this unpleasant task.

  He approached the body. First, he removed the cape all Shaker Sisters wore around their shoulders. Then he spent several frustrating minutes struggling with the buttons down the back of the dress – how did women manage with so many buttons! – before wrestling the bodice down to the tops of her breasts.

  Although he had examined the bruises by candlelight in Dr Smith’s dead room, the livid marks looked different in the daylight streaming through the open door. Longer, more oval. Huh, Rees thought. Why do they look like that? As he had noticed previously, the marks near Leah’s armpits were edged with tiny half-moon cuts. Rees hoisted the body to a sitting position and examined the tiny gashes. The murderer had held Leah down with such force his nails had drawn blood.

  There were more bruises on her shoulders. Rees inspected them too. These round contusions looked like blotchy palm prints. When he shifted her forward and looked at her back he found some slight bruising at the top, by the shoulders. Leah must have fought back; the murderer had been forced to change his position. Until he had strangled the girl, Rees thought, staring at the round discolorations. The well-defined bruises left by the thumbs looked as big as plums. He needed to look for a man with unusually large hands and long nails.

  Because he had felt uncomfortable examining Leah’s backside while under Dr Smith’s scrutiny, Rees had not done so. But he turned the body over now and lifted her skirt. Although he expected to see scrapes and cuts on her back and buttocks, he did not. Instead he saw red marks that looked more like burns.

  The sound of a footfall outside and the clank of a bucket caught his attention. He turned. Esther stood just outside and was peering through the door. She had maintained the toughness required to flee Georgia and walk all the way to Maine, so she was usually the Sister who dealt with the less savory aspects of living. Rees and Lydia had found her a reliable ally and ultimately, albeit surprisingly, a good friend.

  ‘Come and look at this,’ Rees said. ‘Tell me what you think these marks are from.’

  She came inside. When she saw Leah’s body with the skirts raised she cast Rees a startled glance. But then, as she bent over the red scrapes, she concentrated.

  ‘I thought she would have bruises and other injuries consistent with being thrown from a horse,’ Rees said. ‘Bu
t these look more like—’

  ‘Burns,’ Esther said. ‘I think these are from fabric. Like a rug.’ She raised her head and met Rees’s gaze. ‘She was inside when she was violated.’

  ‘So, someone took her home, violated her and then dumped her in the field?’ Rees asked, his voice rising in surprise.

  ‘Or something like that,’ Esther said.

  ‘But how would he have had the time?’ Rees wondered, mystified. Except for Reynard’s farm there were no houses on the main road. Could Leah have been violated in town? But he could not see how there would have been time. And her murderer would have had to put her body in a wagon and bring her to the field. Rees would have to ask the Reynard boy if he had seen a suspicious wagon leaving town.

  His thoughts then returned to the circus and its vehicles. ‘But all of them are clearly marked with a gold horse,’ he muttered.

  ‘Have you seen everything you needed to see?’ Esther asked him, breaking into his thoughts.

  ‘I think so,’ he said. ‘More questions than answers though.’

  ‘Well, go along then. I’ll prepare this poor little chick so she can go home to Mother.’ She began rearranging Leah’s skirts.

  Rees stepped outside into the warmth of spring. Only then did he allow the tension and the focus that allowed him to examine a body to drain away. He began shivering and gulping in the fresh pine-scented air.

  NINE

  Daniel was waiting for Rees outside the stable. Unaccustomed to idleness, he shuffled his feet and looked around impatiently. But his nervous movements ceased when he saw Rees approaching. ‘Let’s go to the office,’ he said, gesturing to the Dwelling House across the street. Rees thought the Shaker Brother still looked pale and the dark shadows under his eyes betrayed his sleepless night.