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

was in her element, while her husband grumbled half seriously about the
bad service, the appalling plumbing, the litter everywhere . . . in short,
the lack of all the comforts any truly civilised country could afford in
this last quarter of the twentieth century. Tolley agreed with all this,
while wistfully eyeing the deep valley visible between the woman's breasts
(thank God that dщcolletage was back in fashion) and thirstily drinking
half a dozen double scotches. At last, dizzy with drink and suppressed
lust, he staggered back to his room, remembering only as he was crawling
into bed that he shouldn't be there. Warmed through with dutch courage, he
even switched off the light.

And woke with the 'phone warbling beside his bed. He groped for the light
switch, picked up the instrument. "Call for you, sir," the desk said, and
then there was a click, and Gerald Beaumont's voice said, "Professor
Tolley?"
"Sure." It was half past six in the morning. Tolley's teeth felt as if
they had been rubbed in ashes; there was a burning edge to his stomach.
"Look, Professor, I didn't want to ring you, but there's no one else I can
turn to. And you're involved after all, you understand.
"It's Marjory. She left the hospital."
"She's been discharged. Isn't it kind of early -- "
"Not discharged. When the nurse brought her breakfast half an hour ago,
she found that Marjory was gone. She's taken her clothes, too. I think I
know where she's gone, Professor, and so do you."
Tolley was abruptly clearheaded. "Shouldn't you call the police?"
"And tell them she's possessed by a ghost? They'd put me away. But I might
have to tell them something, if I don't get any help, and I still have
those photographs of Steeple Heyston. You've got to live up to your
responsibility in this, do you see?"
"I understand what you're trying to tell me, Mr Beaumont."
Beaumont's voice said, "I'm sure that when I find her, she'll come out of
it. It needs someone familiar, that's all."
"If you really think that's where she is, I wouldn't like you going to
look for her alone."
"I'm going over there now. I'll hope to see you."
"I said I'll come, Goddamnit!" But there was only the buzz of the
disconnected line.

More than Beaumont's feeble threats, it was the residue of the past
evening's binge that got Tolley down to his rental car and onto the road
north out of Oxford. By the time he was bumping down the rough lane
towards Steeple Heyston, fear was beginning to cloud his light-headed
recklessness, but it was too late to turn back.
There was already a car, a little hatchback, parked in the space at the
end of the track; in it, and beyond it the gate in the hedge stood open.
Tolley called out to Beaumont. The darkness took his voice: swallowed it.
His skin prickling, he picked his way over the ground, frost crackling
under his shoes. It was bitterly cold, dawn a curdled gray limning the
railway embankment.
Tolley quartered the hummocky ground where the village had once stood, but