"Christopher Priest - The Prestige" - читать интересную книгу автора (Priest Christopher)

7
get back to London for this evening."
"It's Friday," I said. "I thought I'd visit my parents tonight."
Wickham replied by putting down his receiver.




3


I was greeted at the main door of the wing by a woman in late middle age, whom I addressed
as "Mrs Angier", but she merely took my name, looked intently at my press card, then showed me
into a side room and asked me to wait. The stately scale of the room, simply but attractively
furnished with Indian carpets, antique chairs and a polished table, made me feel scruffy in my
travel-creased and rain-dampened suit. After about five minutes the woman returned, and uttered
words that put a chill through me.
"Lady Katherine will see you now," she said.
She led me upstairs to a large, pleasant living room that looked out across the valley floor
towards a high rocky escarpment, at present only dimly visible.
A young woman was standing by the open fireplace, where logs blazed and smoked, and she
held out her hand to greet me as I went across to her. I had been thrown off guard by the
unexpected news that I was visiting a member of the aristocracy, but her manner was cordial. I
was struck, and favourably so, by several features about her physical appearance. She was tall,
dark-haired and had a broad face with a strong jaw. Her hair was arranged so that it softened the
sharper lines of her face. Her eyes were wide. She had a nervous intentness about her face, as if
she were worried about what I might say or think.
She greeted me formally, but the moment the other woman had left the room her manner
changed. She introduced herself as Kate, not Katherine, Angier, and told me to disregard the title
as she rarely used it herself. She asked me to confirm if I was Andrew Westley. I said that I was.
"I assume you've just been to the main part of the house?"
"The Rapturous Church? I hardly got past the door."
"I think that was my fault. I warned them you might be coming, but Mrs Holloway wasn't too
pleased."
"I suppose it was you who sent the message to my paper?"
"I wanted to meet you."
"So I gathered. Why on earth should you know about me?"
"I plan to tell you. But I haven't had lunch yet. What about you?"
I told her I had stopped earlier in the village, but otherwise had not eaten since breakfast. I
followed her downstairs to the ground floor where the woman who had opened the door to me,
addressed by Lady Katherine as Mrs Makin, was preparing a simple lunch of cold meats and
cheeses, with salad. As we sat down, I asked Kate Angier why she had brought me all the way
up here from London, on what now seemed a wild-goose-chase.
"I don't think it's that," she said.
"I have to file a story this evening."
"Well, maybe that might be difficult. Do you eat meat, Mr Westley?"
She passed me the plate of cold cuts. While we ate, a polite conversation went on, in which
she asked me questions about the newspaper, my career, where I lived and so on. I was still
conscious of her title, and felt inhibited by this, but the longer we spoke the easier it became. She