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

could say that I'm the last of the line," he said, and saw the woman touch
her throat again. "I'm on sabbatical now," he added, "just touring
around."
"Oh, you must be at a university too," the woman said. "Our son is a
professor of biology."
"My field is history. The Italian Renaissance, specifically."
"That must be difficult, you in America and all."
"Oh, UCLA has plenty of documents, and the Getty Museum even more." Tolley
smiled. "I'm afraid we've bought up a lot of your past. We don't have too
much of our own, I guess."
"Tell you what," the man said. "When you've done at Steeple Heyston, you
come back and have tea with us."
"Why, that's very kind of you."
"No trouble. We live in South Heyston, just two miles along this road
here. Glebe Cottage, two doors down from the pub. You can't miss it. Come
and see us when you've done at Steeple Heyston, and we'll tell you about
it."
"You're interested in local history?"
The woman said unexpectedly, "It's a terribly sad place, Professor Tolley,
terribly sad. The saddest place I know."
"She thinks she's sensitive, does our Marjory," her husband said, with a
smile that indicated that he certainly didn't believe such nonsense.
"It's true enough," the woman said proudly. "The seventh daughter of a
seventh daughter."
"Well," Tolley said, amused. Surely, here was a fine example of that
famous English eccentricity. "It's kind of you to invite me to your home.
But I didn't catch your name?"
"Beaumont. Gregory and Marjory." The man stuck out his hand, and Tolley
shook it. "You best be getting on," Gerald Beaumont told him.
"It's not a good place to stay after dark," his wife added.
They watched as Tolley fitted himself into his rental car and awkwardly
turned it in the narrow road, stalling once, because he wasn't used to the
stick shift, before he was off, the pair and their dog dwindling down the
perspective of hedgerows in the rearview mirror. "Not a good place to be
after dark," Tolley said to himself, smiling: superstition and religion
had no place in his world. After all, he'd done his thesis work, and
subsequently published a book (which had gotten him his tenure) on the
influence of the Renaissance philosopher Pietro Pomponazzi, who believed
that all phenomena could be attributed to natural causes, admitting no
miracles, no demons or angels. Of course, Pomponazzi hadn't dared take the
next logical step, which was to eliminate God, but it seemed to Tolley
that the light of science had penetrated every corner of the Universe,
right down to the buzzing wavicles of fundamental particles, without any
evidence of an Epicurean creator overseeing all. And as for ghosts . . .
well, Steven Spielberg was welcome to make millions from films about them,
but that was as far as their reality went.
Tolley found the turn and steered the car, its springs complaining, down
the rough, unsurfaced track, which ended in a space of long grass with
trees on one side and an unkempt hedge on the other. Tolley switched off
the motor and clambered out. He could hear water running somewhere in the