"Mcauley, Paul J - Inheritance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mcauley Paul J)

barked and bounded inside to lick his mistress's hand where it lay
outstretched on the floor.

After Marjory Beaumont had been taken from the hospital's Emergency Room
to a ward, her husband following the porter who wheeled her stretcher
towards the elevators, Tolley asked at the desk whether he could get
something to eat, and was directed through a long hall and up a flight of
stairs to a snack bar set up in the blind end of a corridor. But the
cheese roll sat like a cannonball in his stomach, and the coffee, faintly
greasy and with grains of undissolved powdered milk floating on the
surface, was undrinkable.
He sat for an hour at the little Formica table, listening to the chatter
of the people around him but not taking any of it in. Once, he absently
traced the letters OR in spilled sugar grains, then hastily erased them.
The mark had been all over the kitchen, scraped in pools of flour and salt
on the floor, in drying tomato sauce (they'd first thought it was blood)
on the appliances and on the windows. Whatever had done it seemed to be
single-mindedly trying to communicate something. Someone's initials? Its
own? At any rate, Tolley no longer believed that the Beaumonts had
anything to do with the disordered state of his hotel room. It was
something else.
At last, Beaumont, his face stiff and pinched, pushed through the swing
doors; Tolley stood and met him halfway. "How is she?"
"Sleeping now. They gave her something."
Tolley said, as they walked towards the exit, "Do you know what happened?"

"She said that she thought she glimpsed someone through the kitchen
window, but she can't remember anything after that, next to waking up in
the hospital."
"Who? A man?"
"She can't remember, and I didn't press her. She needs her rest."
"I'm sorry."
"There was something else. Just as she was drifting off, she said
something, a name. Orlando Richards. Mean anything to you?"
"O R!"
"That's what I thought. And then she said, 'One wants rest, the other
worse."
Tolley held the door for Gerald Beaumont before following him into the
parking lot. The air was cold and dark; sodium streetlights dropped pools
of orange light amongst the rows of parked cars. Tolley said, "I remember
your wife saying that the woman is stronger, when it comes to ghosts, but
isn't Orlando a man's name?"
"I suppose. These are deep waters, Professor Tolley." Gerald Beaumont
looked across the top of Tolley's rental car. The lines on his thin face
were accentuated by orange glow, deep vertical creases seeming to pull his
mouth downward, his eyes shadowy pits. He said, "I don't suppose by any
chance you're Catholic."
"I'm not anything. What are you thinking, exorcism? Come on, the Pope
banned all that, didn't he? The best thing to do is forget this."
"How can I now, with my wife in the hospital? It's all very well for you