BARBARA
BARBARAFor the next few days reading was pure pretense. I used the opened book to mask my privacy while I trembled not so much with fear as with horror. I had been brought up in a harsh enough world and murder was no novelty in New York; I had seen slain men before, but this was the first time I had been confronted with n***d, merciless savagery. Though I believed Sprovis would have had no qualms about despatching an inconvenient witness if I had stayed on the van, I had no particular fear for my own safety, for my knowledge of what had happened became less dangerous daily. The terror of the deed itself however remained constant.
I was not concerned solely with revulsion. Inquisitiveness looked out under loathing to make me wonder what lay behind the night’s events. What had real
