"Guy N. Smith - Blood Circuit" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Guy N)

'How could it have happened?' Suddenly she felt calmer, more logical. 'Daddy wasn't driving the baler.
He wouldn't want to, anyway.'

'I don't know, but accidents happen when you least expect them.' It sounded trite but if anybody
mentioned suicide then it had to be the police. 'I guess you father must have gone on a tour of inspection
of his farms, maybe wondering how the harvest had gone, and he got curious and tinkered with the baler
when there was nobody around.'

They fell into an uneasy silence. This was one night when they didn't want to be alone out here in the
fields, a late summer night that no longer smelted of honeysuckle and wild flowers. Just death. A chill
breeze had sprung up and Kilby felt his flesh goosepimpling. Maybe it had been just an accident; he
couldn't think of any reason why Craig Hammerton would want to kill himself, not with all his millions. He
felt embarrassed, too, because he couldn't think of anything to say to Lee and maybe she was expecting
him to say something. After all, he was her lover. Or was he? There were rumours, stories of other men
in her life, that he'd shut his ears to. She was in the driving seat right now; she only had to snap her fingers
and she could have what she wanted. John Clyde would write out the cheques and Lee Hammerton
would sign them. She didn't need money, only what it bought.

The baler shuddered suddenly and cut out. A faint whirring noise, a propeller gradually losing its
momentum. Then silence. She clung to him tightly so that he could feel her breasts heaving, small firm
mounds of flesh that he had once fondled and kissed. Hallowed Hammerton breasts that money couldn't
buy.

'It's . . . it's the . . . the curse again, isn't it, Steve? The Hammerton Curse!' Her voice was a cracked
whisper that he scarcely recognised.

That's silly talk. A legend that has been embroidered over the years and . . . '

'No, it isn't.' She looked up at him and he read the fear in her expression, a terror that was eating deep
into her. 'My ancester, Jasper Hammerton, was killed in an almost identical accident two hundred years
ago . . . beheaded by a careless farmworker scything corn. And in the same month his son was killed
when his horse threw him and trampled him! And his daughter Edwina . . . ' She began to sob.

'Don't think about them.'' He kissed her forehead. 'They're dead and gone centuries ago and there's no
way of knowing how they really died.'

'Oh yes, there is! It's all written down in the parish records. You can read it for yourself in the church if
you don't believe me.'

'And what about Edwina?' Kilby wished in the same second that he hadn't asked.
'Edwina got herself pregnant by the groom.' There was no mistaking the note of contempt in her voice.
'And that was when mongrel blood infiltrated the Hammerton line. She died in childbirth but in her death
throes she cursed the Hammertons, that future generations should experience the tragedies that they went
through. And my God, Steve, she was right. Just look what's happened to us now.'

Kilby thought she was on the verge of hysteria, wondered whether he ought to slap her, and drag her
forcibly from this field of violent death. But even as he hesitated twin shafts of brilliant white light swung
across the landscape, focused on them like the principal actors in the final act of a tragic play, held them
for the audience to dwell upon their trauma. Kilby turned his head, saw the close-set headlights of the old