But I thought you liked the necrophilia version. Pay attention, only girls die so far. Could the killer be sexually motivated?
"An interesting thought... that is, a long tongue is just an excuse... a Killer is more important than long legs, high Breasts, anything else...
Rosenthal's a brute, though. Such a woman was ... would have Killed the bastard. Need to his find and become Ivanov.
– And why is it? Anyone could have killed him. What it all indicates is rather an argument in its defense. What is he, the fool, himself set up?
"Maybe he's crazy." He couldn't help himself.
"That's possible, too... Except for the nasty things everyone says about him, we don't really know anything about Rosenthal." You've seen him once from a distance, and you've never met him at all... he could be anyone.
- Sveta told, that he nice has changed after pogrom. When he the lid of the coffin on the head I stopped – anything could happen.
"Well, Yes. I'd like to see him.
– Consonant.
– To go to him in General, and nowhere to go... so he's Probably in a country house. When are you gonna risk driving?
"Well ... let's try it tomorrow." Today we need to rest.
"Well, tomorrow is tomorrow... But don't wait too long. So many people are interested in Rosenthal that he won't live long.
* * *
The former estate of the Prince was in a deep forest.
- We were going to inspect the house without the owner's permission, and it would be a shame to frighten Rosenthal off, so we left late in the afternoon. Yellowed trees, ravines littered with fallen trunks, and black patches of burned peat floated through the car Windows. There was no wind, but dry leaves fell slowly from above, casting batlike shadows in the headlights.
- It seemed strange to me that a place in which some of the stone buildings were well preserved, as I had heard, should have been of no interest to anyone for so long. The country estate agent we hired as a guide told us on the way that the land and everything on it had come to Rosenthal almost for nothing.
- – Okay, what you all think. We when began to work with this site, thought, it will leave at once. Painted in the catalog: "the former noble estate, with fragments of the original buildings of the eighteenth-early nineteenth centuries."From the city, however, far away, but okay, and not this took. Now it is fashionable to buy land with old buildings, they spend a lot of money, demolish everything except the facade and fireplaces, and rebuild. Option seemed very promising.
- I, truth,, too, first wondered, why there so long no one lived. It was a gloomy place, but I thought the house had been forgotten. And then get uncomfortable – the road through the woods was almost overgrown; to conduct electricity is expensive – twenty five miles have posts to put... But it turns out it's not just that.
- As soon as we began to show the place to buyers, there were some strange conversations. At first I did not understand how they began. Then I thought about the historian – I took there a guy a couple of years ago, he seems to have written a book about the former owners. The Professor with the beard, the glasses, the goat. He then days three there was digging, found any old cellars.
- Sharoiko?
"Oh, you know him?"
"No, it's just that. And that he, the gossip began to dissolve?
– No. He wrote an article, I think, and there were legends associated with the place. Someone read it in the wrong place.…
There were also some crazy old ladies who used to live nearby. Five kilometers from the ruins of the earlier village was, twenty years ago it burnt down. These old women had heard a lot of nonsense in their youth, and when there was talk after Sharoiko's article, some journalist, his mother in the ass, found the old women and wrote down the fruits of their senility... or maybe he invented everything himself. After that the price of a site began to fall quickly, a little more-it would be necessary to pay extra that took.
– Sadly. What did the money say?
- Yes brad full. Better would series watched, prostitutes old.
"And yet?" You sold the land, now you can talk.
- Sold... I on gasoline while buyers carried, spent more, than from the transaction received.
"Tell me, I wonder."
"Well, at first there was a rumor that this place was once a cemetery.
They did find something strange there, but it was a long, long time ago. Back in the nineteenth century, I think, the owner, Rosenthal, was murdered. With his death began a kind of hell.
Although he had heirs, relatives, they did not live here. At first I did not understand why the house was strong, it is even seen that from him now were.
In General, after the death of the Prince in the village began to go rumors about some lights at night in the estate, noise incomprehensible... it was strange-there is no one lived. A couple of nights people went there to see what was going on and never came back. Some were found near the house in the morning, some in the house,and the rest disappeared.
In principle, all this nonsense can still be explained somehow-you never know, climb all sorts of abandoned house, looking for something to steal. Who'll get caught – killed. Worse, the next morning in the estate appeared fresh pits, some were not clear where the corpses have taken... they were Dead for a long time, but preserved quite well.
Part 11