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

hollow roar, sounding a two-note horn. Tolley glanced up, then took his
photograph. But the figure, if it had ever been there, was gone.

A tumbledown farm, a string of concrete-block council houses, and then a
cluster of picturesque cottages around a tiny village green, a church
steeple rising against the evening sky behind them. Tolley found Glebe
Cottage easily enough. He would have preferred a stiff drink to the tea
the Beaumonts had offered, but the pub was closed, and Tolley hadn't yet
mastered the arcane English licensing laws to know when it would open.
Gerald Beaumont didn't seem surprised to see Tolley, and showed him into
what he called the lounge, turning down, but not off, the big colour
television that was showing some old B-movie. All the strange conversation
that followed, the television flickered and mumbled in its corner like
some idiot child.
Seated in an overstuffed armchair, Tolley began to relax, feeling like a
fledgling cuckoo as the Beaumonts fluttered about, plying him with hot,
milky tea and a stack of biscuits and small, buttery cakes. They were
eagerly attentive to his descriptions of the States and, in particular, of
Boston, as if he could somehow evoke their lost son. Gerald Beaumont was a
mining engineer who had taken early retirement, and they had moved to be
near their only child when he had been working at Oxford University; but
then he had become another statistic in the Brain Drain and had left them
stranded and alone in the soft Oxfordshire countryside. To hear them talk,
it was as if they were exiles in a foreign land.
"Well now," Gerald Beaumont said at last. "What did you think of Steeple
Heyston?"
Tolley licked his buttery fingers; he'd eaten all the cakes and most of
the cookies (no, he remembered, biscuits). "You were right when you said
there isn't much to see. Or at least, not in twilight. I must go back and
look at it properly, take some more photographs."
He had forgotten until that moment the glimpsed, foreboding figure --
perhaps it had been nothing more than a figment of his imagination,
conjured out of shadow and suggestion, but he still felt a shiver, an
undeniable frisson, at the recollection.
Gerald Beaumont said, "It's a good place for photography. Wait a minute."
"Oh Gerald," his wife said, as he rooted in a cupboard. He drew out a
large, loose-leafed book and passed it to Tolley.
Large eight-by-ten prints, black-and-white, one to a page. The church. Its
serried ranks of gravestones, all sunlight and shadow. Weeds thrust up
against a lichened stone. The rough scape of a frosty field, with the
chimney of the ruined house standing against a bleak sky.
"Very professional."
"My wife doesn't approve," Gerald Beaumont said, shyly pleased.
"You know how I feel about that place," Marjory Beaumont said firmly. A
lavender cardigan was draped over her shoulders like a matador's cape, a
big Victorian brooch pinned to its lapel. The paste jewel flickered in the
light of the open fire.
Tolley said, "You were going to tell me the story of Steeple Heyston."
Marjory Beaumont looked at her husband, who nodded fractionally. "Well,"
she said, leaning forward as if delivering a confidence, "you saw the