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light blue, with snow-white dabs of gloves, purse, shoes, and hat. Nurselike she supported her husband’s forearm. He was dazzling, in an every-color seersucker jacket, red slacks, a pink bow tie, and a gray fedora with a pink band. He was seventy-five or older; she was sixty-eight or-nine. They came closer with expressions of young alertness, with friendly quizzical smiles. The policeman stepped forward to meet them and their smiles faltered and fell away. Mrs. Castevet said something worryingly; Mr. Castevet frowned and shook his head. His wide, thin-lipped mouth was rosy-pink, as if lipsticked; his cheeks were chalky, his eyes small and bright in deep sockets. She was big-nosed, with a sullen fleshy underlip. She wore pinkrimmed eyeglasses on a neckchain that dipped down from behind plain pearl earrings.
    The policeman said, “Are you folks the Castevets on the seventh floor?”
    “We are,” Mr. Castevet said in a dry voice that had to be listened for.
    “You have a young woman named Theresa Gionoffrio living with you?”
    “We do,” Mr. Castevet said. “What’s wrong? Has there been an accident?”
    “You’d better brace yourselves for some bad news,” the policeman said. He waited, looking at each of them in turn, and then he said, “She’s dead. She killed herself.” He raised a hand, the thumb pointing back over his shoulder. “She jumped out of the window.”
    They looked at him with no change of expression at all, as if he hadn’t spoken yet; then Mrs. Castevet leaned sideways, glanced beyond him at the red-stained blanket, and stood straight again and looked him in the eyes. “That’s not possible,” she said in her loud midwestern Roman-bring-me-some-root-beer voice. “It’s a mistake. Somebody else is under there.”
    The policeman, not turning from her, said, “Artie, would you let these people take a look, please?”
    Mrs. Castevet marched past him, her jaw set.
    Mr. Castevet stayed where he was. “I knew this would happen,” he said. “She got deeply depressed every three weeks or so. I noticed it and told my wife, but she pooh-poohed me. She’s an optimist who refuses to admit that everything doesn’t always turn out the way she wants it to.”
    Mrs. Castevet came back. “That doesn’t mean that she killed herself,” she said. “She was a very happy girl with no reason for self-destruction. It must have been an accident. She must have been cleaning the windows and lost her hold. She was always surprising us by cleaning things and doing things for us.”
    “She wasn’t cleaning windows at midnight,” Mr. Castevet said.
    “Why not?” Mrs. Castevet said angrily. “Maybe she was!”
    The policeman held out the pale yellow paper, having taken it from his pad holder.
    Mrs. Castevet hesitated, then took it and turned it around and read it. Mr. Castevet tipped his head in over her arm and read it too, his thin vivid lips moving.
    “Is that her handwriting?” the policeman asked.
    Mrs. Castevet nodded. Mr. Castevet said, “Definitely. Absolutely.”
    The policeman held out his hand and Mrs. Castevet gave him the paper. He said, “Thank you. I’ll see you get it back when we’re done with it.”
    She took off her glasses, dropped them on their neckchain, and covered both her eyes with white-gloved fingertips. “I don’t believe it,” she said. “I just don’t believe it. She was so happy. All her troubles were in the past.” Mr. Castevet put his hand on her shoulder and looked at the ground and shook his head.
    “Do you know the name of her next-of-kin?” the policeman asked.
    “She didn’t have any,” Mrs. Castevet said. “She was all alone. She didn’t have anyone, only us.”
    “Didn’t she have a brother?” Rosemary asked.
    Mrs. Castevet put on her glasses and looked at her. Mr. Castevet looked up from the ground, his deep-socketed eyes glinting under his hat brim.
    “Did she?” the policeman asked.
    “She said she did,” Rosemary said. “In the