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

light
switch, picked up the instrument. "Call for you, sir," the desk said,
and
then there was a click, and Gerald Beaumont's voice said, "Professor
Tolley?"
"Sure." It was half past six in the morning. Tolley's teeth felt as if
they had been rubbed in ashes; there was a burning edge to his stomach.
"Look, Professor, I didn't want to ring you, but there's no one else I
can
turn to. And you're involved after all, you understand.
"It's Marjory. She left the hospital."
"She's been discharged. Isn't it kind of early -- "
"Not discharged. When the nurse brought her breakfast half an hour ago,
she found that Marjory was gone. She's taken her clothes, too. I think
I
know where she's gone, Professor, and so do you."
Tolley was abruptly clearheaded. "Shouldn't you call the police?"
"And tell them she's possessed by a ghost? They'd put me away. But I
might
have to tell them something, if I don't get any help, and I still have
those photographs of Steeple Heyston. You've got to live up to your
responsibility in this, do you see?"
"I understand what you're trying to tell me, Mr Beaumont."
Beaumont's voice said, "I'm sure that when I find her, she'll come out
of
it. It needs someone familiar, that's all."
"If you really think that's where she is, I wouldn't like you going to
look for her alone."
"I'm going over there now. I'll hope to see you."
"I said I'll come, Goddamnit!" But there was only the buzz of the
disconnected line.

More than Beaumont's feeble threats, it was the residue of the past
evening's binge that got Tolley down to his rental car and onto the
road
north out of Oxford. By the time he was bumping down the rough lane
towards Steeple Heyston, fear was beginning to cloud his light-headed
recklessness, but it was too late to turn back.
There was already a car, a little hatchback, parked in the space at the
end of the track; in it, and beyond it the gate in the hedge stood
open.
Tolley called out to Beaumont. The darkness took his voice: swallowed
it.
His skin prickling, he picked his way over the ground, frost crackling
under his shoes. It was bitterly cold, dawn a curdled gray limning the
railway embankment.
Tolley quartered the hummocky ground where the village had once stood,
but
there was no sign of Gerald Beaumont. He was about to turn back when he
glimpsed movement amongst the trees ahead, the trees around the ruins