Physics Can Be Fatal (7 page)

     The New World Tavern had been a fixture on the main thoroughfare in New Guilford since colonial times––part bar, part restaurant, part hotel, part stable––faithfully serving travelers and locals. The stable building out back was no longer there, but other original features remained, like the fireplace.  Ten feet wide at its opening, the brick fireplace still had its small oven on the back wall, and a Dutch oven and toasting rack on the hearth floor. And the “cranes”––iron bars that held cooking pots from hooks and swung to and fro––were still in tact.  The original taproom where cider and beer would have been served, as well as the small parlor where female travelers would have rested, had since been incorporated into the main dining room. 

     There had, of course, been other changes.  In the 1940s a local artist and friend of the then proprietor painted murals on the inside walls.  Toward the end of the artist’s life his work started showing up in museums. Subsequently, the murals themselves had become a tourist destination and accordingly, were very well looked after.  The insurance company had insisted on protective glass partitions in front of the murals.  No longer an inn, the upstairs rooms were rented out as office space.

     Edwina chose a booth with a good view of the murals.  Her dinner companion instantly recognized the dab hand responsible for the bucolic scenes of farms and meadows.

     “Do you know,” he said, pointing toward an image in the foreground of a farmhouse and garden,” when I was a boy I had a puss called ‘Pudding’.  She died from eating some of those purple flowers in the herbaceous border, there.  They’re deadly poisonous––the root, sap, stems, leaves, seeds––everything. We called them ‘fairy fingers’ when we were children.”

    Edwina studied the professor.  His face reminded her of a Rembrandt self-portrait in a book––a beautiful and complicated map in light and shadow of the human spirit, showing all its strengths and vulnerabilities.

      Alan Sidebottom looked at Edwina with a wry smile.

     “Are you married, Edwina?” he asked.

     “No.  I don’t think I’ve quite figured out how marriage and work fit together.   “I did have a boyfriend for a while in grad school,” she said.

     “Serious?”

     Edwina thought for a moment.

     “Serious-ish,” she answered. ”He said I was ‘prematurely absent-minded’, because sometimes when he’d be talking, my mind would wander. I’d start turning over a mathematical problem in my head, and forget we were in the middle of a conversation.  I’m sure it was incredibly annoying.  He was actually a very nice guy.  A geologist.”

     Professor Sidebottom chuckled.

     “What about you? Are you married?” Edwina asked.

     A deep chortle rumbled somewhere in his chest and came out as a sort of wheezy laugh.

     “Well, let’s see––I’ve been married for twenty-nine years, altogether.  My first marriage lasted a year.  She was a French girl I met on holiday––a lovely girl, named Marie-Laure. When I brought her back to England my brother seduced her.  She fell in love with him, and they got married,” Professor Sidebottom said.

     “Did they stay together?” Edwina asked.

     “Sickeningly, yes; they have four children and are madly devoted to each other,” he said casually.

     “A happy ending, then,” Edwina said.

     “Good lord, what do you people teach at Cushing?  You must know by now that happy endings are a physical impossibility?  There is simply no equation for it,” the professor bantered.

     “And after Marie-Laure?” Edwina said.

     “Three more marriages.  All failed.”

     “Why do you study physics?” he asked, starting on a second glass of scotch.

     “Why not study physics?” she said.  “It’s the most interesting thing in the world.  I often wonder why more people don’t take it up, I really do.  Once when I was a kid I visited an aquarium and spent the whole day staring at the air bubbles rising through a column of water.  It was the liquid dynamics that interested me, not the fish.  My parents had to drag me away.”

     Alan Sidebottom laughed.

     “And another thing,” Edwina continued.  “Theoretical physicists make the best philosophers, don’t you think so?  I mean, who is better qualified to talk about the fundamental nature of reality than the people who know what the universe actually looks like?”

     Professor Sidebottom beamed at her.

     “Quite right!” he exclaimed, gulping down his third scotch.

      After they ordered dinner the professor entreated Edwina to play a game of darts in the adjacent bar area.   Edwina managed to persuade him that darts and drinking were a bad mix, and that someone could get hurt.  He became immediately contrite, blushing deeply and begging her forgiveness for even suggesting it.   He burst into a heartfelt recitation of a love poem by Robert Burns, in perfect Scottish brogue.

     “Ye flowery bands o’ bonnie Doon,

     How can ye blume sae fair!

     How can ye chant, ye little birds,

     And I sae fu’ o’ care!

     Thou’ll break my heart, thou bonnie bird,

     That sings upon the bough;

     Thou minds me o’ the happy days

     When my fause luve was true.”

     Professor Sidebottom had brought himself to tears with this recitation.  He ordered a bottle of
prosecco
to quell his nerves.

     “Do you know the stuff?” he said to Edwina.  “No?  We can’t have that; you must try it! 
Vino frizzante––
elixir to the gods, and all civilized people.  You’ll love it.”

     Anticipating another drunken scene Edwina wanted to go home, but she felt responsible for his safe return to campus.  Forbearance and duty got the better of her until an hour later when Alan Sidebottom had finished the bottle
prosecco
by himself, and still hadn’t touched his food.   Edwina had had enough. 

     “I should probably get going,” she said.  “I have a pile of student papers to get through tonight.”

      Professor Sidebottom had recovered his high spirits.  He paid the bill and left a large tip for their server, a college student who was clearly unnerved by Professor Sidebottom’s antics. Edwina guided her unsteady charge out of the restaurant, and they started back toward campus.  She walked her bike with one hand and held onto Sidebottom’s arm with the other.   

     He was grinning and muttering to himself.  His dithering garble became intensified.

     “Time I got the Barnet Fair hack toff!” he shouted.

    Suddenly he broke away from Edwina and raced across the street, where he quickly disappeared down an alleyway.

     Edwina grew instantly impatient and exasperated.

    
Fuck it,
she thought.  “
I’m not chasing after him
.”

     She stood on the spot and waited for him to return.  Streetlights illuminated a pool of darkness around her, and reflected the marcasite chips in the pavement, making the sidewalk sparkle like glitter.  The streets of New Guilford were mostly quiet.

     Five minutes passed.  Edwina got on her bicycle and headed home, feeling uneasy. 

     As she rode past the New Guilford Inn, a stylish country hotel and restaurant, the yellow incandescence from candlelit tables glowed invitingly and caught her eye. Glancing over, she peripherally glimpsed a woman who looked very much like Sheila Dubin, sitting at a corner table.  The wide, canvas awning prevented a fuller view.

    
That’s funny,
she thought. 
 Seth said Sheila was out of town.  Probably wasn’t even her. 

    
Edwina considered circling back to see if it was Sheila or not, but she thought better of it and rode her bike toward home.

    
Enough drama for one night.

     A few minutes later she changed her mind, curiosity getting the upper hand once again.  With no cars in sight she made a U-turn in the quiet street, and pedaled back into town.  Edwina stopped in the shadows, across the street from the New Guilford Inn, where she would not be visible.  She stood straddling her bike, squinting to see the woman who resembled Sheila, but she could not find a good, clear angle.  The corner table was obscured from her sight line.

     The New Guilford Inn was situated in the middle of the block, sandwiched between buildings on either side.  Edwina gingerly approached the Inn, walking her bike slowly alongside her through the shadows, trying to avoid stepping in the light from the streetlamp.  She stopped at the end of the bank building, and peeked around the corner toward the Inn, which was set farther back from the sidewalk.   Edwina rounded the corner of the bank and slowly inched along the sidewall of the bank, toward the Inn.  Finally the corner table of the Inn’s restaurant came into her field of vision.  Edwina stood absolutely still in the shadows.  She could now see the woman in question.

     Sheila Dubin looked unusually glamorous.  Shamelessly embracing the clichés of femininity she was dressed in a tight-fitting, red satin dress with a Mandarin collar and capped sleeves.  The kind of tight-fitting that let people know she wasn’t wearing undergarments.  Her hair was fashioned into an up-do, and the candlelight glinted off her dangling earrings.  The other side of the table was obscured from Edwina’s view, and she dared not inch any closer, or she might be seen.

     Edwina stood frozen, overcome by the naughty exhilaration of voyeurism.  She noticed Sheila Dubin’s lipstick matched the color of her dress, as did the polish on her fingernails.  Sheila was glowing.  After some minutes, her dinner companion reached across the table to refill her wine glass.

     Donald Gaylord!

     Edwina felt sick. 

   
Poor Seth
!

    
Edwina couldn’t retreat quickly enough.  She trotted her bike back up to the corner, where she crossed the street and sped off.

     By the time she got home she was filled with feelings of doubt and anxiety.

Chapter 4

     When Edwina arrived at Sanborn House the following day the whole place seemed to be at sixes and sevens.  Staff and students were joined in hushed conversations on the stairway, in the library, in hallways. Librarian Charlotte Cadell was the first person Edwina saw.

     “What’s going on?” Edwina said with concern in her voice.

     “Alan Sidebottom didn’t show up for his seminar this morning!” Charlotte replied.

     “Professor Mann called him but there was no answer, so she went over to the Carriage House.  She could see him through the window, lying in bed, and she knocked on the door, thinking maybe he was sick or something, but Professor Sidebottom didn’t respond.  She called 9-1-1 and the paramedics came right away.  Edwina, he was stone.  Cold.  Dead!” Charlotte pronounced dramatically.

     Edwina struggled to take all of this in.

     “But, I had dinner with him last night!” Edwina heard herself say.  “What happened to him?”

     “I don’t know––I don’t think they know, yet,” Charlotte said, her eyes big with excitement.  Fueled by adrenaline, her words tumbled out breathlessly, as if she felt titillated by the news.  

     Charlotte’s demeanor struck Edwina as ghoulish.

     Classes were cancelled for the day, but hardly anyone went home.  Members of the teaching staff wandered aimlessly around the gloomy atmosphere of Sanborn House the rest of the day, drifting in and out of each other’s offices, nosing around for more information.  A bunch of whispering students spent the afternoon in the library, opting for gossip over study.  There was a definite frisson in the air caused by the adventure of a death in their midst and the suspense of what might have caused it.

      A text went around the Department after lunch inviting everyone to gather that evening at The New World.  Surely the Department should band together in the wake of such tragedy.

*

     At six o’clock students and staff from the Physics and Astronomy Department began trickling into The New World.  The first few arrivals commandeered the only seating big enough to comfortably accommodate the group, a large, oval table in the front window bay.