Part 16 (2/2)
Another pained look. ”With an ax.”
”He axed his own wife to death, when she was pregnant?”
”Yes, and he did so in the very room she'd committed all of her infidelities. She had a special room for these trysts. It was kept locked for her-by the family maid, a slave named Jessa. I shudder to think of how many other secrets Jessa went to her grave with-though I don't suppose she ever really had a grave, not a proper one. See, Gast murdered her, too, when he became apprised of her collusions with his wife.”
Collier peeped over his beer. ”I almost hate to ask.”
”She was...well, she was left out in the fields for the buzzards and the crows.”
Sute's pause irked Collier. ”Left? You mean Gast killed her and then left her body somewhere?”
Sute finished his martini, ordered another, and stolidly replied, ”Gast had her raped to death, by twenty of his most loyal rail workers. Then her body was discarded in the fields behind the house. The ma.s.s rape, by the way, took place in the same room that Mrs. Gast would be murdered in later that day-”
Raped to death. Yeah, it's hard to get grimmer than that.
”-and I might add, since you insist on some of the more morbid details, that Mrs. Gast received similar attentions from Gast's roughriders, while he watched, of course.”
”I don't get it. Mrs. Gast was gang-raped to death, too? I thought you said she was killed with an-”
”She wasn't quite raped to the point of death-this by Gast's particular order. After a few hours, and when she was just about to give up the ghost, that's when Gast put the ax to her.”
”Then she was dumped in the field, like the maid?”
”No. He left her body to rot in the bed. Ironic that she should die by such means in the very room whose purpose she kept hidden from Mr. Gast. No doubt those four previous pregnancies by men other than her husband germinated in that room as well, and I suspect much else.”
”You keep mentioning this room-I wonder which room it is exactly...”
”It's on the main stair hall. Mrs. Butler doesn't even rent that one out. Room two.” Sute looked at him. ”Which room are you in, Mr. Collier?”
Collier winced at a twinge. ”Room three.”
”You're in an interesting spot, then. To your left is the room where both Jessa and Penelope Gast were murdered. And to your right, the original commode closet and bathing room.”
”What...happened there?”
”He drowned one of his foremen there, a track inspector named Taylor Cutton. Cutton had the bad luck of being one of Mrs. Gast's secret suitors. Somehow Gast discovered this and drowned Cutton in the hip bath, among other things.”
Eew, Collier thought. I hope it wasn't the same hip bath I saw Mrs. Butler was.h.i.+ng herself in last night...
The topic was at last getting the best of him. When the food arrived, it smelled delicious but he only picked at it. Several more pints of Cusher's Civil War Lager took some of the edge off the nefarious story that he'd essentially forced Sute to relate. But he did ask, ”And this ma.n.u.script you wrote, the one too harsh for publishers-do you still have it?”
Sute's face was pinkening a bit, from a third martini. ”Oh, yes. It's gathering dust on my shelf.”
”And that's the entire story of Harwood Gast-the entire legend of the man?”
Sute nodded. ”And I think a lot of it's probably quite accurate. Most of the sources are very authentic. Whether you believe the supernatural angle or not, Mr. Collier, you can believe this: Harwood Gast was purely and simply an evil man.”
”Mrs. Butler said the same thing.”
”And she's well advised. Some of her ancestors lived in this town when all these things were happening, and mine, too. I appreciate your interest, though. It's quite flattering, I must say. Here's my card.” He slipped one across the table. ”If you'd like to borrow the ma.n.u.script, or browse through it, don't hesitate to ask. But-please-call first.”
”Thanks,” Collier said. ”I might take you up on that.”
”I can also show you some of the original daguerreotypes that I didn't elect to put in any of my published books. There are a few nudes of Mrs. Gast, if you're...interested in seeing that sort of thing.”
Collier's brows jiggled, but then he thought, Nudes? ”Oh, come on, don't tell me she did p.o.r.nography, too. They must not have even had it back then.”
”No, nothing like that, but just as aristocrats of earlier eras would have their wives painted in the nude, the same went when photography was invented. Daguerreotypes and other early forms of photography were very expensive, and reserved only for the very rich. Well, Harwood Gast may have been the richest private citizen in Tennessee back then. He had several nudes taken of his wife, for his own viewing. She's quite a comely woman.”
Collier continued to be astounded by his interest in this. And now...Nude pix of Penelope Gast. I've GOT to see those.
It took another moment for the next question to click in his head. ”Mr. Sute...Was anyone murdered in my room?”
”I'm quite happy to say...no, Mr. Collier.”
Collier-even though he wasn't sure he believed any of this-was relieved.
”And there you have it, the short version anyway.” Sute's distraction continued. He seemed to keep peering over Collier's shoulder, out the restaurant's plate-gla.s.s window. ”I won't bore you with certain other testimony-things said to have been witnessed in the house.”
”Finally. Ghosts.”
”Yes, Mr. Collier. Ghosts, apparitions, and every conceivable b.u.mp in the night. Footsteps, voices, dogs barking-”
”What?” Collier snapped.
Sute smiled. ”Yes, as well as regressive nightmares, hallucinations-”
”What do you mean, regressive nightmares?” Collier snapped.
”-and even demons,” Sute finished.
Collier plowed his next beer. He didn't like to be taken for a fool. Was this bizarre fat man a master storyteller? Or...
He hadn't heard any dogs barking exactly, but he had seen one, or so he'd thought. He'd found his own s.e.xual responses exploding...something Sute claimed to have happened to others. And the nightmare he'd had? It had regressed him back in time, all right, to a mindboggling atrocity that involved a railroad during the Civil War.
And he'd heard voices, too, hadn't he? Children, a woman, a man.
Now this.
”Demons?” Collier asked.
”I'm afraid so.”
”Let me take a stab at it,” Collier tried to mock. ”Harwood Gast was really a demon, I'll bet. To do the devil's bidding on earth.”
Sute chuckled at the attempt. ”No, Mr. Collier. It's actually something even more contrived than that.”
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