Fred Hoyle - Element 79

“Now listen to me, you bastard,” roared Hadley, “I’m going to thrash you within an inch of your life.” Hadley picked up a bedside lamp and crashed it down on the young man’s head. There was quite an amount of glass in the lamp. It shattered violently against the wall, but the young man neither heard the noise nor felt the blow. He began to caress the woman into wakefulness. “Not again, Mike!” she murmured. The two moved closer and closer; meanwhile, Hadley flung down on their heads a veritable cascade of bedroom articles. Not a jot or a tittle of difference did it make. The love-making went ahead without letup or hindrance. Jonathan Adams, being a shy man, moved out of the bedroom. Then his duty as a professional philosopher asserted itself, for how could he forsake the singular situation now developing to its climax? If ever he came to write his Principia, this must surely find a scholarly place within its cover.

At the end, the woman stretched herself luxuriously and said, “How much more delectable than my old goat of a husband can provide.”

Hadley was now screaming and raging like a maniac. To Jonathan Adams’ view, the bedroom was littered with wreckage. Yet the two in the bed noticed nothing at all. Apparently weary but sublimely contented, they fell asleep again. Adams too was sleepy now. He found his way to another bedroom and laid himself down. His last sensation before sleep claimed him was of a distant rumbling, as Hadley still sought vainly to attract the attention of his errant wife and of her young lover, Mike Johnson.

Blanche White woke with the first light. She had passed a disturbed night in the big bed, weeping from time to time into the linen pillowslips, and stubbing her toes against the incongruous eighteenth-century furniture when she had made an expedition to the bathroom. As the girl dressed slowly, a new resolution came to her. It had no great determination at the back of it, but at least it was a moment of firmness, more than Blanche White had ever shown before. She decided to go and have it out with Arthur’s wife. The woman was said to be a snooty piece, but she’d stand up for her rights now, Blanche decided, even if it meant a first-class bust-up. Her ideas were all confused as to what her rights were and of exactly where the wife came into it. The one thing clear to the girl was that she couldn’t be treated in quite this casual style. If Arthur hadn’t taken her back to the big bed for a second time last night, she might have felt like putting up with it all. But it couldn’t be right, for him always to be treating her the way he wanted to do, as if her feelings didn’t matter at all.

So Blanche White walked the two miles to the main road. There she caught an early workman’s bus into the city. It was coming up to eight a.m. by the time she reached The Gables. She found Mrs. Hadley just coming down to breakfast. To her intense surprise, she found a young man there as well.

Jennifer, Mike Johnson, and Blanche White sat around the breakfast table and talked. Unseen and unheard, Arthur Hadley and Jonathan Adams sat there beside them, listening to the excited conversation. “We’ve got him good and proper this time, a clean, straightforward divorce, a big settlement and custody of the children.”

Johnson turned to Blanche White. “It all depends on you, Blanche. Stand firm and we’ve got him by the short hairs. This is the way to fix the old bastard.”

“That’s just where you’re bloody well wrong,” bellowed Hadley. “What I’ll give her will make your lousy money look like a penny piece compared to a five-pound note. I’ll buy her, lock, stock, and barrel. It’s you who’ll be in the divorce box, not me. By God, I’ll roast the vitals out of you, Jenny.”

Not a word did they hear. The plans went forward step by step, detail by detail, until there was a loud knock on the hall door. Johnson was upstairs in a flash. Blanche answered the door. It was a police sergeant to see Mrs. Hadley.

Blanche showed the sergeant into the large, spacious lounge.

A moment later, after a whispered conversation, Jennifer joined the sergeant. Hadley and Adams also went into the lounge, quite unseen.

“Mrs. Hadley?”

“Yes. I’m Mrs. Hadley.”

“I’m afraid I’ve got bad news, Mrs. Hadley.”

Jennifer waited, and the sergeant went on, “It’s your husband. His car was involved in an accident last night, at approximately one in the morning.”

“But what happened to him? I’m not interested in the car.”

The sergeant shifted uneasily, “We don’t really know. That’s why I’m here. You see, two cars were involved in a collision. But only one of the drivers was found there when an ambulance got to the spot. We think the other driver must have taken a blow on the head and must have gone wandering off somewhere. It sometimes happens in these accident cases.”

“Yes, I understand that. But who is it that was injured?”

“Dead, I’m afraid, Mrs. Hadley. We don’t know. That’s just the point. We’d like you to come down and make an identification. That is to say, if it is Mr. Hadley. We’ve got someone else coming in to check on the other party.”

“Surely you can tell from the position where the body was found? You know which was my husband’s car.”

“We know that. But the cars came together, so that they sort of stuck together. It wasn’t clear just what had happened.”

Shortly after, the sergeant took his leave.

The three, Jennifer, Mike Johnson, and Blanche White discussed this new turn of events. Then Jennifer said, “How soon d’you think we ought to go?”

“Right away. There’s no point in delay, best to get it over with.”

“Mike, I’d rather like to have one of Arthur’s business partners there. So we can talk to him afterwards, in case it happens to be Arthur. I think I’ll call Tony. Suppose you get the car ready.”

Jennifer went off to make the telephone call.

Jonathan Adams walked out of the spacious lounge and out of the front door of The Gables. Hadley ran after him shouting, “Where the hell are you going?”

“The morgue. This will give us a chance to find out what’s really under that sheet. We’ll have to hurry if we’re to get there in time. Maybe you don’t want to come?”

But Hadley decided he would come. Then he wanted to know why they must walk, why they couldn’t ride in the car “Try it if you like, but I think you’ll find there’s no contact.”

On the way into the city, Adams remarked, “I believe I’ve got it straight at last. One of us is going to be under that sheet, dead. The other is going to be found wandering around the countryside, alive.”

“I don’t bloody well understand.”

“I think it isn’t decided yet, whether it’s to be you or me.”

How d’you mean?”

“It’s going to depend on what they want.”

“Who?”

“All of them, of course, when they get there, to the morgue.”

The walk into the city went by very quickly, faster than Hadley could ever remember it. Hadley wasn’t quite sure of exactly which building the morgue was in. But he knew the right street, so they simply waited for Jennifer, Mike Johnson and Blanche White to arrive and followed after them. A police constable escorted the party into a waiting room, where they found the sergeant again. Another man, whom Adams recognized as Jerome Renfrew, was also there. The sergeant made the introductions and then said, “I’ve had a telephone message from Sir Anthony Brown. He says he’ll be here in a few moments. We’ll wait for him if you’re agreeable.”

True to his word, Sir Anthony appeared at about nine-thirty a.m. He was well-tailored, spruce, very nearly in complete contrast to Hadley in every respect.