Vile Bodies

Adam wakes up hungover. Lottie informs him that the police have been by, investigating the death of the young dancer who died swinging on a chandelier in Judge Skrimp’s hotel room. Adam can hardly finish his breakfast.

Nina calls, reminding Adam that they planned to go see her father, Colonel Blount, to ask him for money. Though they planned to go together, Nina says she is too hungover to go. Adam is nervous about the trip, especially as he must borrow money from Lottie Crump for a train and a taxi to take him several towns away to Doubting Hall, the Blount family estate. On the train, Adam reads about himself in the morning paper. He overhears a pair of women worrying about the state of the nation’s morality. The taxi drive takes him miles down a country road.

When Adam arrives, Doubting Hall is large and dilapidated, and it takes him some time to locate the living quarters, where he finds Colonel Blount living with an aging staff. The Colonel is senile and mistakes Adam for a vacuum cleaner salesman, only faintly recognizing Adam’s attempts to describe himself as Blount’s future son-in-law. The Colonel expresses his obsession with movies.