Mortimer Gaskell

Mortimer Gaskell is 67 and has lived on Maple Street for thirty-one years. Born in Scranton, the son of a barber, he worked four decades as a draftsman at a train parts factory and retired with his pension and the certainty that the world has gotten worse every year. He has watched every house on the street change hands and thinks nobody knows their neighbor anymore, only their lawn.

His house is white clapboard, with a pine-paneled study where he keeps the photographs he takes in the early morning and a shelf of gardening trophies, five in a row, all polished on Sundays. He eats fried eggs at six, waters the garden at seven and spends his afternoons on the gardening forum, where he posts only small versions of his photos, so no one steals them. He talks about hydrangeashydrangea A shrub with large round clusters of flowers. The soil's acidity decides whether the blooms come out pink or blue. the way others talk about grandchildren.

He is tall and slightly stooped, with a long face wrinkled by the sun, thin white hair combed back and thick eyebrows that move when he disapproves of something, which is almost always. He wears a short-sleeved plaid shirt tucked into khaki trousers held up by suspenders, and keeps an unlit pipe in his shirt pocket. He is grumpy, proud and speaks of the neighbors with disdain.

About Monday's dinner, his account is curt: the doctor drank too much wine, talked about the bomb paperwork at the table and the whole table heard, even the children. About the photo, he says it is his, taken in May in the seven o'clock light, and that the big original went to one person only. He barely knows how to use a computer, he says, and photographs flowers, not bombs.

Mortimer knows a grumpy old man, owner of the photo that carried the secret, is the most obvious answer for anyone who doesn't want to think too hard. When the detective accuses him of sending the photo abroad, his voice rises, his eyebrows drop and he asks the other man to lower his tone in other people's house. It could be the indignation of a man of old habits. It could be someone who keeps a small embarrassment to avoid admitting it. The detective will have to decide which.