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

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
railway a little past the ruins. That's the old Oxford-to-Birmingham
line,
and it was about a hundred years ago that the tragedy happened."
"A hundred and six," Gerald Beaumont said.
His wife ignored him. "There was a passenger train on its way to
Birmingham, and a goods train going towards Oxford. Well, one of the
wagons of the goods train jumped the tracks and pulled others across
the
line just as the passenger train was about to pass it. They used to say
that you could hear the shriek of brakes in Oxford, that the sparks
from
its wheels set fire to a quarter mile of the embankment. Well, the
passenger train couldn't stop in time, and hit the goods train. The
first
major railway accident that was, it killed over forty people. But not
so
many would have died if the people of Steeple Heyston had been allowed
to
help them. The squire there wouldn't let them, you see. He had been
against the railway from the start, because it came so close to his
house.