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toward herself, the senior officer. He addressed all his replies to DC Bhattacharya, irrespective of who had made the inquiry. She could see quite clearly that he was torn between racism and male chauvinism but finally decided that talking to an Asian man was preferable to talking to a white woman. When she asked him what time he had gone to bed the previous night he treated her question as if it had sexual undertones, made a sour face, and spoke to Bal. “You want to know what time I went to bed?”
    â€œThat’s right, Mr. Nash.”
    â€œI don’t know what it’s got to do with you, but it was ten o’clock. I always go to bed at ten. On the dot.”
    Bal said that the elderly were well known to be light sleepers (“Who are you calling elderly?”) and asked him if he had heard anything in the night. Though looking at least eighty, Mr. Nash said he wasn’t old enough to have broken nights. His neighbor John Brooks sometimes disturbed him, slamming his car door and starting the engine at six-thirty, but not this morning. He had slept, had heard nothing and seen nothing until he looked out of the window just before eight and saw “a crowd of folks trampling down” the grass verge opposite. He didn’t know Amber Marshalson to speak to or her parents and didn’t want to.
    â€œShe’s that little chit who had an illegitimate baby. She wouldn’t have dared show her face outside in my young days. And is anyone saying that was worse than what we’ve got now?”
    Hannah was but she knew better than to say it out loud. She, who could hear of any perversion—incest, bestiality, extreme sadism—with equanimity, was deeply shocked by hearing the word “illegitimate” on anyone’s lips. Even more, perhaps, on these wrinkled lips, surrounded by white stubble. Illegitimate! It was unbelievable.
    Bal’s telling this appalling old man Amber had been murdered seemed to cause him no shame or embarrassment at what he had said. He merely nodded, as if the slaughter of a young girl was commonplace or only what should be expected by someone who sinned as she had done. Hannah put very little in her report about him and not much more about John and Gwenda Brooks at number two.
    Gwenda was a young woman of about Hannah’s own age but otherwise very different. Her mid-calf-length skirt was a brown and beige check and her blouse beige with a brooch at the neck. Hannah thought she had seen the last of permed hair when her grandmother died, but Gwenda Brooks had a perm and one that was “growing out.” In her rather querulous voice, she said how she had seen her husband off in his car at six-thirty. Apparently, she had no job herself and she had no children. It mystified Hannah what she did all day. But that was far from the matter in hand. Mrs. Brooks had slept all night until her alarm sounded at six A.M . She announced with pride that she was a very sound sleeper, nothing woke her. One piece of information interested Hannah because it was unexpected and would need further looking into.
    â€œMy husband was sleeping in the spare room,” Gwenda Brooks said. “It’s—well, it’s on account of his snoring. He’s not yet thirty but he snores like a…” She was unable to find any animal whose vocal emissions were comparable to John Brooks’s snoring. “Well, I don’t know, but I can’t sleep through it.”
    â€œWe’d like to speak to your husband,” Bal said. “When does he get home?”
    Not till seven-thirty, it seemed. John Brooks’s days were long. His wife knew the Marshalsons only “to pass the time of day.” She had once spoken to Amber when she was out with the baby because Brand was “so sweet, always smiling and happy.” She loved babies and longed to have one of her own. Her husband had once or twice been to Clifton to teach Amber something to do with a