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

isn't Orlando a man's name?"
"I suppose. These are deep waters, Professor Tolley." Gerald Beaumont
looked across the top of Tolley's rental car. The lines on his thin
face
were accentuated by orange glow, deep vertical creases seeming to pull
his
mouth downward, his eyes shadowy pits. He said, "I don't suppose by any
chance you're Catholic."
"I'm not anything. What are you thinking, exorcism? Come on, the Pope
banned all that, didn't he? The best thing to do is forget this."
"How can I now, with my wife in the hospital? It's all very well for
you
-- you can just run away. We have to live with whatever it is you've
disturbed."
"Me? I didn't do anything but come here."
"Aye, well," the man said truculently.
"Look, if you go to a priest and tell him your wife was attacked by a
ghost, do you really think that he is going to believe you, in this day
and age? Let it go, Mr Beaumont," Tolley said, and unlocked the car.
During the fifteen-minute drive back to South Heyston, the two men
hardly
exchanged a dozen words. Gerald Beaumont's silence was downright
accusatory, but rather than guilt, Tolley felt a growing anger. Why
should
it have anything to do with him? He didn't choose his ancestors.
Marjory
Beaumont was the believer, not he: why should he be blamed? Still,
outside
the cottage, he was moved to ask, "Will you be all right?"
"Leave it be," Beaumont said shortly, and got out of the car, then
dipped
his head and added, "Maybe without you, things will calm down." Then he
shut the door firmly, before Tolley could reply.

One wants rest, the other worse. It ran through Tolley's head like
maddening jingle as he drove back to Oxford. Worse, presumably, meant
revenge. It had torn up his room, let him know its name through Marjory
Beaumont . . . and next? The best thing to do would be to leave for
London
a day early; surely he would not be followed there.
But at the hotel Tolley was unwilling to return to the menacing
disorder
of his room. He took an early supper in the dining room, lingered over
a
couple of scotches at the bar. But at last he could put it off no
longer;
he had to pack, and if he didn't make a move he wouldn't find a room in
London in time. The noise of the key turning in the lock of the door to
his room was loud in the deserted corridor. He waited half a minute,
then