Element 79 (16 page)

A man came up to him and said, “What the bloody hell d’you mean by coming along at that speed?”

“Did you see the collision?”

“Did I see it, of course I saw it. I’m the driver of the other bloody car.”

“Then we’d better exchange insurance companies.”

“You’re damn right we’d better. That was a valuable car of mine. Not much but scrap there now.”

“You did come out of the side road, you know.”

Adams knew it was better not to argue. Leave things for the police to judge. The reply convinced him of this. “Don’t give me that story. There was plenty of time to get out into the road, if you hadn’t been driving like a flaming maniac. Right into the back of my car, bloody well into the bloody backside, right up its arse. You’ll see what they do to you for that.” Adams also knew he really should have slowed down a bit. After all, nobody was better aware than he of how full the world was with fools. Even so, it was hard luck to have picked such a prize specimen.

“Better give me your insurance card, or your name. Here’s mine,” he said, handing over the insurance certificate he always carried in his wallet.

“Think you’re going to get mine, do you?”

“Unless I do, the police will know exactly what to think.”

“You poor fish, you poor, bloody fish. What makes you think I haven’t got the police
and
the magistrates all sewn up around here?”

“You may have them sewn up, but I can assure you Counsel from London will very soon unsew them.”

At this Hadley realized he’d been unlucky. He’d drawn an educated man who wouldn’t be put down. It didn’t really matter, of course, only the no-claim bonus. It was just that he didn’t like to be beaten, to be shown up to be in the wrong. He would have paid out a hundred no-claim bonuses just to be able to fix this little bugger. However, he realized he’d better turn over his name and address: Arthur Hadley, “The Gables,” Arntree Road, Nottingham.

The flashing blue light of a police car could be seen approaching from the direction of Nottingham. Behind the police car was an ambulance. Both vehicles drew to a halt by the side of the road. Out of one came two policemen, out of the other two attendants with a stretcher. Adams was at first surprised. Then he remembered his impression of somebody peering into his car, a passing motorist who had obviously called the police. He walked toward the attendants. It would be best to get them to drive him to the Renfrew household—at least now he would have a good excuse for being late. The Hadley man, he knew, would be tackling the police. Let the fool talk to them as much as he wanted. God, what a bore the fellow was. The police would come to him for his story all in good time, better when he was rested than now. The thing to do was to get to bed as soon as possible. There was certain to be some delayed shock.

Adams stepped up to the nearest ambulance man and said, “Luckily neither of us is badly hurt, a few bruises, perhaps. I wonder if you’d be kind enough to take me into Nottingham?”

The man was walking toward him, his companion behind, as they carried the stretcher. Neither of them paused in the slightest degree. The rear man came so close that Adams felt the fellow must surely brush against him. Yet he felt not the slightest contact. Hadley came rushing up, “Can’t make the buggers hear. Not a bloody word. What’s going on?”

“I don’t know, but why don’t you shut up? Stop the verbal diarrhea just for a couple of minutes.”

This kept Hadley quiet, more or less, for a little while.

The policemen and the attendants conferred together. Adams heard one of them say, “Looks bad,” then another added, “This sort of thing always gets me in the pit of the stomach.” Then the four men busied themselves in the wreckage. Adams watched as something was lifted, presumably a body, into the ambulance. “Funny, there’s only one corpse,” he heard an attendant say to one of the policemen, “where’s the other one gone?”

Hadley could take it no longer. He strode up to the four men and shouted, “Stop this fooling, you silly buggers. Can’t you see we’re here. We’re all right. There’s nothing wrong with us. What you need is your bloody lugs cleaning out.”

This outburst produced not the slightest response. Hysterically desperate now, Hadley rushed at the nearest man. There was no effect, no contact. Then Hadley broke down. Alternately, he whined and roared and jabbered, nothing but gibberish. Then he stopped and began to shiver violently.

The ambulance men searched around again and then drove away. There was nothing Jonathan Adams could do to stop them. The policemen stayed around for quite a while longer, making extensive notes. When they drove off there was nothing that could be done to stop them either.

“You’d think they were a lot of muckering ghosts, the way they’re going on,” said Hadley.

“When you say ghosts, I think you’re not very wide of the mark. Except it’s exactly the other way round.”

“You mean we’re ghosts?”

“Yes. Doesn’t it strike you as queer we’re both of us pretty well unhurt? I hardly seem to be bruised.”

Hadley became much calmer.

“What’s to be bloody well done about it?”

“I don’t know. The strange thing is they seemed to have one body in the ambulance. Did you have a passenger in your car?”

Hadley wondered if by any chance Blanche White had sneaked into his car. Then he realized she couldn’t have. He’d left her in a state of undress, as the newspapers put it, in the big bed out at his place. “No, I didn’t. What about you?”

“I’d hardly have asked the question if I’d had a passenger, would I?”

The two of them began to walk along the road toward Nottingham. A number of cars passed by. They walked on for half an hour or so when Hadley asked, “Did you see that body?”

“No. I tried to, but somehow the light was never right.”

“Whose body d’you think it was?”

“One of us.”

“How the hell could it be?”

“I don’t know. If it wasn’t one of us, who else was it?”

“There should have been two bodies.”

“You’d certainty think so.”

“Could the other one have got minced up, into pieces?”

“I doubt it. That’s what they were looking for.”

“Where were you going to in Nottingham?”

“To stay with an acquaintance.”

“He’s not going to put out the bloody welcome mat now, is he?”

“Hardly. You know, the curious thing to me is the road is just as hard as it always was and the wind is just as cold. Quite nippy, in fact. I suppose I’d better go to a hotel. At least there shouldn’t be any difficulty about getting in, not if they can’t hear me or see me.”

“Hell to that. You’d better come home with me. See if we can stir up the wife. Told her I’d be away tonight. Actually, I was intending to spend it with a douce.”

“A what?”

“A douce, a bird, a female. Out at a little shack I’ve got in the country.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No, something cropped up. Anyway, we’ll see what the little wifie’s got to say.”

It was about two-thirty a.m. when the two men arrived at “The Gables.” Hadley let them in with his key. To his surprise, the lights were all on, everywhere.

“Funny, I didn’t notice the lights when we were outside.”

“Nor did I.”

They went out again, and sure enough the house was in darkness. Inside again, the lights were on. Hadley tried flicking the switches. It made no difference, the lights stayed on.

Hadley went off upstairs to see if he could get any response from Jennifer. Within seconds, Adams heard him roaring and ranting. It went on for a couple of minutes or so. Then Hadley appeared at the top of the stairs and shouted down, “Hey, come up here a minute.”

Adams trotted up the two flights. At the top Hadley took him by the arm and literally ran into a large bedroom. Like everywhere else, the light was burning. In the bed was a brunette with a fair-haired young man, both sound asleep. “Look at that, just look at that, look at the bloody bitch,” shrieked Hadley.

Adams surmised this must be the “wifie.” She had a bare arm out across the bedclothes. Her hair was streaming over the pillow. It was impossible to mistake the languid, satisfied expression on the woman’s face, even in sleep. Hadley rushed furiously at the bed, snatching at the blankets, with the evident intention of ripping the covers off the pair of them. Once again, there was no contact. Further roaring and ranting was of no avail.

Adams began to get sleepy, which meant he was getting bored. But then the woman turned in her sleep. The hair moved and tickled the young man into wakefulness.

“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.