“Lovely,” Nora whispered.
“Poor Gus Goucher never killed nobody. It was the beast done it all.” She thumped her cane twice on the porch floor. “Let’s go in.”
As she turned away, Tyler looked up at Abe. He shook his head as if he found the situation grimly amusing.
“Barbie Doll was right,” Nora whispered. “Tacky tacky.”
Climbing the porch stairs, Tyler released Abe’s hand long enough to rub her sweaty palm on her corduroys. She had a leaden, sickish feeling in her stomach.
The group halted in the foyer. After the sunlight outside, the house seemed dark and cool. Tyler scanned the gloom, half expecting to spot Dan, in uniform, standing guard.
“Yuck,” said a girl near the front.
Smiling, Maggie pointed her cane at a stuffed monkey. It stood beside a wall, mouth frozen wide, teeth bared. “Umbrella stand,” she said, and dropped her cane through the circle of its shaggy arms. “Lilly was partial to monkeys.” She snatched up her cane and thumped the creature’s head, bringing up a puff of dust.
“The first attack,” she said, “came in the parlor. Right this way.”
Gorman jostled Tyler. “Excuse me, dear,” he said, and made his way forward, pressing through the small group of people. He reached the door ahead of the rest, and followed Maggie through.
“A real go-getter,” Abe muttered.
“A creep,” Tyler said.
They entered the parlor. The group spread out along the length of a plush cordon. Just beyond the barrier bright red curtains hung from the ceiling to the floor, closed to conceal most of the room. Maggie, on the other side of the cordon, waited by a wall and caressed a fold of the velvety curtain. “These are new,” she said. “We just put ‘em in. Gives a touch of class, don’t you think?” She gripped a cord.
“Ethel Hughes, Lilly’s sister, was in this room the night of August second, 1903. She’d come down for Lilly’s wedding, which would’ve been the next week if tragedy hadn’t struck and put an end to it all. The beast come in through there.” She nodded toward the door behind Tyler. “It took Ethel unawares.”
She gave the cord a yank. The curtains skidded open. Tyler heard a few gasps. A girl in front of her backed up quickly, stepping on her toes. A red-haired woman turned her face away. A boy in a cowboy suit leaned over the cordon for a closer look. Gorman raised his camera. Maggie bounced her cane off the floor. “No pictures,” she warned. “Anybody wants a memento of the tour, he can pick up one of our souvenir guidebooks in the gift shop for six ninety-five.” Gorman lowered the camera and shook his head as if disgusted.
“Sure did a number on that babe,” whispered a man to Tyler’s left.
Reluctantly, Tyler lowered her eyes to the form of Ethel Hughes. The wax body was sprawled on the floor, one leg up and resting on the cushion of a couch. Its wide eyes gazed toward the ceiling. Its face was contorted with pain and horror. Its shredded gown, a white that had gone yellow like old paper, was blotched with rust-colored stains. The tatters covered little more than the breasts and pubic area. The exposed flesh, from neck to thighs, was punctured and striped with raw wounds. Bright crimson sheathed the body.
“The beast sprang over the back of the couch, taking Ethel by surprise while she was reading the Saturday Evening Post.” Maggie stepped past the body and pointed her cane at an open magazine spread out beyond the figure’s outstretched right arm. “This is the very issue she was reading when it got her.” She swept her cane around. “Everything you see here is just the same as it was that night. Except for the body, of course.” She smiled. “We couldn’t have that, now could we? But we’ve got us the next best thing. I had this exact replica done up in wax by Monsieur Claude Dubois of Nice, France, way back in ‘36. Every detail is guaranteed, right down to each wound. Got my hands on the morgue photos.
“Like I say, it’s all authentic. This is the very nightgown Ethel wore the night of the killing. Those brown spots are her actual blood.”
“Gross,” muttered the girl who’d stepped on Tyler’s foot.
Maggie ignored her. “When the beast finished with Ethel, it rampaged around the parlor. That bust of Caesar there on the mantel?” She indicated it with her cane. “See how the nose is off? That’s the work of the beast. It hurled that bust to the floor. It flung half a dozen porcelain figurines into the fireplace. It broke that chair. This beautiful rosewood table”—she tapped it with her cane—was thrown through this window. All the ruckus, of course, woke up everyone in the house. Lilly’s room was right up there.” She poked her cane toward the ceiling. “The beast must’ve heard her up and about. It went for the stairs.”
Maggie closed the curtains. She limped around the cordon, and led the group out of the parlor. Gorman stayed close to her. In a loud voice he said, “May I ask how you can be certain of the order of events? As you mentioned earlier, there were no witnesses.”
“Police reports and photos,” she explained, starting up the stairway. “Newspaper stories. It was pretty clear the way it all happened. The cops just followed the blood.”
“Had the beast been injured?”
She cast Gorman an amused glance. “Ethel’s blood,” she said. “It dripped off the beast all the way up here to Lilly’s room.” At the top of the stairs, she turned to the left.
Tyler, reaching the top, looked to the right. Red curtains surrounded an area in the center of the corridor near its far end, leaving only a narrow passageway on either side. Another exhibit. How many are there? she wondered. And how many could she stomach?
Abe gave her hand a reassuring squeeze, and they entered the bedroom of Lilly Thorn. Again, the group spread out facing a cordon and a wall of red curtains. Maggie, at the far end, tugged the pullcord. The curtains flew apart. A wax figure in a pink nightgown was sitting upright on the bed, a hand to its open mouth, frightened eyes gazing past the brass scrollwork at her feet.
“We’re right above the parlor, now,” Maggie said. “When all the commotion woke Lilly up, she dragged that dressing table over to the door for a barricade, and climbed out her window. She dropped to the roof of the bay window just a ways down, and jumped from there to the ground.”
Gorman made a disdainful snort.
Maggie glanced at him sharply. “Something wrong with you?”
“No, no.” He shook his head. “My mind just wandered there for…” His voice trailed off. “Please continue.”
“I’ve always found it curious,” she said, “that Lilly didn’t try to save her children.”
“Panic,” suggested a man beside the redhead.
“Maybe that’s it.” Maggie shut the curtains. The group followed her into the corridor. “When the beast couldn’t get into Lilly’s room, he went down the hall.”
He, Tyler thought. Suddenly the beast had become a he instead of an it.
They passed the top of the stairway. As they neared the curtained enclosure, the group formed a single file line. Tyler let go of Abe’s hand. He gestured her forward, and she walked ahead of him into the gap between the curtains and the wall. Her forearm brushed one of the folds. She flinched away from its touch, and felt goosebumps scurry up her skin. Then the corridor was clear, bright from a window at its end.
“The beast,” Maggie said, “found this door open.” She entered a room on the left. They followed her inside, and Tyler was careful not to stand behind the girl who’d stepped on her. “This is where the children slept, though I ‘spect they were awake when the beast came—maybe hiding under their covers, froze up with fear. Earl was ten, his brother Sam just eight.”