He came back after about ten minutes, holding half a dozen tuberoses against his chest, cradling them with one arm; a boy was running after him. “Babu, should I wipe the car, should I wipe the car…,” he was saying, and Mr. Mitra looked intent, like a man who has an appointment. He didn’t acknowledge the boy; inside the car, Mrs. Mitra, who was used to these inescapable periods of waiting, moved a little. He placed the tuberoses in the front, next to Abdul, where they smeared the seat with their moisture. Mr. Mitra had wasted some time bargaining, bringing down the price from sixteen to fourteen rupees, after which the vendor had expertly tied a thread round the lower half of the flowers.

“Why did she do it?” he asked in an offhand way, as the car proceeded once more on its way. Going down Ashutosh Mukherjee Road, they turned left into Southern Avenue.

Naturally, they didn’t have the answer. They passed an apartment building they knew, Shanti Nivas, its windows open but dark and remote. Probably they’d been a little harsh with her, her parents. Her marriage, sixteen years ago, had been seen to be appropriate. Usually, it’s said, Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, and Saraswati, of learning, two sisters, don’t bless the same house; but certainly that wasn’t true of the Poddars, who had two bars-at-law in the generation preceding this one, and a social reformer in the lineage, and also a white four-storeyed mansion on a property near Salt Lake where they used to have garden parties. Anjali had married Gautam Poddar very soon after taking her M.A. in history from Calcutta University.

As they passed a petrol pump, Mr. Mitra wondered what view traditional theology took of this matter, and how the rites accommodated an event such as this—she had jumped from a third-floor balcony—which couldn’t, after all, be altogether uncommon. Perhaps there was no ceremony. In his mind’s eye, when he tried to imagine the priest, or the long rows of tables at which people were fed, he saw a blank. But Abdul couldn’t identify the lane.

“Bhai, is this Rai Bahadur R.C. Mullick Road?” he asked a loiterer somewhat contemptuously.

The man leaned into a window and looked with interest at the couple in the back, as if unwilling to forgo this opportunity to view Mr. and Mrs. Mitra. Then, examining the driver’s face again, he pointed to a lane before them, going off to the right, next to a sari shop that was closed.

“That one there.”