“To me she told everything.”
The long, ugly face with its squashed-on spectacles and its jutting unlovely jaw looked back at him in serene triumph.
Ghote saw that, whatever the actual truth, she was not going to be convinced easily that the bright, gay creature through whom she had lived her missed youth could possibly not have given to her her total confidence.
Yet he made the attempt.
“Come,” he said sharply, “young girls do not tell everything to older people. That is well known.”
Mrs. Datta drew herself up like a tiger.
“But I am not the girl’s mother,” she retorted. “To a mother a girl is afraid of speaking, yes. But to a favourite aunt, to one who understands, she tells everything.”
But the look of overpowering confidence had seeped away. A strain showed in the set of the ugly, heavy, jutting jaw.
“Do you think,” she demanded abruptly, “that to those silly giggling girls she told the truth? Her friends they were. Oh, yes. But she was the leader of them. To them she would not tell everything. No.”
A glimmer of an idea entered Ghote’s head.
“These friends,” he said cautiously, “what are their names?”
But Mrs. Datta was not so easily to be caught.
“Is it to them you are thinking of going?” she replied. “Oh, yes, you would not find them difficult to talk. Talk they will and plenty, if it is idle nonsense you want to hear. But it is to Johnny Bull that you should be going. To him only.”
Ghote made a concession.
“No doubt it will be necessary to interview Mr. Johnny Bull before too long,” he said. “But first it is necessary to make a thorough examination here.”
Mrs. Datta shrugged her bony shoulders under the glaring green sari she was wearing this evening.
“That woman policeman came in here,” she said. “At all my Peacock’s things she looked. For half an hour she was here.”
Ghote smiled.
“Then shall we see what two or three hours’ really thorough investigation will do?” he said.
“And all that time this Johnny Bull has my girl in his hands.”
She stared at him implacably.
He said nothing. But at the bottom of his mind he nurtured a small, hard gem of determination. He was not going to be pushed into seeing Johnny Bull one moment before he was ready.
He looked at the gaping door of the cheap wardrobe and at the close packed row of bright cotton dresses, skirts and blouses. What he ought to do was calmly to continue inspecting them, taking out each garment in turn, methodically examining it, entering its description in his notebook and replacing it.
But the thought of doing all this to an accompaniment of Mrs. Datta persistently telling him it was time he went to see Johnny Bull was more than he could face.
A compromise came to him.
He turned to Mrs. Datta.
“Perhaps on second thoughts,” he said, “this would be the most convenient time to visit the local police and hear from them full details of the matter.”
“But what is it you will hear?” Mrs. Datta replied contemptuously. “That they are satisfied that Johnny Bull is the best of men only.”
“It may turn out that they have not been able to make all the inquiries they would have wished,” Ghote said mildly. “I know all the police here are considerably below establishment. No doubt that accounts for the short time the policewoman spent examining these clothes.”
“But if they were not properly thorough, you should go at once to Johnny Bull,” Mrs. Datta replied.
The glimmer of logic in her reply touched off Ghote’s fury once more.
“I am going to the police-station,” he snapped.
“It is to Johnny Bull you should go.”
“Will you kindly inform which police-station it is that you went to?”
“Johnny Bull’s address I know well. Often my Peacock told me it. It is Suite B, Carlton Tower, S.W.1.”
“Thank you,” Ghote said, with swingeing irony, “that will be most useful in due course. And now the address of the police-station?”
“You will not be needing.”
Ghote retained his calm.
“Very well,” he replied, “I will go and find your husband. I am sure he will be good enough to tell me.”
Mrs. Datta produced, in face of this, an equal calm.
“My husband is making puja. He is never allowed to be disturbed.”
“Then perhaps you will tell me yourself?”
“The Carlton Tower is in Sloane Street. You can go by Number 137 bus.”
Ghote assumed a tone of greatly wondering surprise.
“You do not wish to tell me where is the police-station?”
“You do not need to know.”
“I consider that I do. And I shall make the request to your husband, wherever he is.”
Ghote had noticed on his way up the threadbare stairs that the door of Cousin Vidur’s prayer-room, open wide in the morning, had been firmly shut. He had felt relieved. There was something decidedly daunting in the prospect of being asked to join his host in the almost completely bare room with its solitary picture of Sri Ramakrishna surrounded by a garland of dusty dried flowers with only a flimsy-looking card-table set in front of it bearing a few saucers of strong-smelling incense and offerings.
But, however sacrosanct to the master of the house the room was, the gem of hard determination at the bottom of his mind was glowing too fiercely now to be checked.
He marched across the Peacock’s little bedroom.
“I am going down now,” he said, giving Mrs. Datta a hard look almost nose-to-nose.
She said nothing.
He went past her out of the door. He was conscious of the fact that Vidur Datta, the tyrant of the home, would be an awkward person to beard in his holy of holies.
At a dignified pace he set off down the narrow, grimily carpeted stairs. Mrs. Datta moved to the small landing outside the Peacock’s room and watched him.
He reached the foot of the first flight of stairs. As he turned to go down the next flight, he forced himself not to look back up.
And then through the half-open door of the living-room immediately in front of him he heard a curious noise. It was a deep, burbling humming-sound.
In a moment he realised what it was. Rapidly he completed his descent of the stairs and entered the over-Indian room.
There, standing by the bottle-crowded mantelpiece with the little orange gas fire popping merrily away beneath, was Vidur Datta. His face wore an expression of benign cheerfulness and he was humming away at his little song in a deep baritone voice.
“Good evening, Cousin,” Ghote said.
“Ah, Cousin, it is you. Good. Good.”
Prayer had apparently mellowed him. Ghote struck while the iron was hot.
“I am thinking of calling to see the police here,” he said. “To find out exactly what they have done about your niece, you know.”
Vidur looked at him solemnly.
“An excellent plan,” he replied. “Excellent. Not that you will learn anything. They had no interest in the matter. But you must see for yourself.”
So, keeping a wary eye on the door in case Mrs. Datta made a sudden rush down, Ghote asked casually which police-station it was that he should go to. And Vidur immediately gave him the address.
He even went to the length of writing it carefully down for him, clearing away some of the bottles on the mantelpiece to do so. Ghote came and stood beside him.
He saw with some awe that every single one of the medicines ranged there was a laxative.
But, for all the ease with which obstacles had been overcome, Ghote did not find, when he entered the police-station some thirty minutes later, that his troubles were over.
He walked into the old-fashioned, much-scrubbed, high-ceilinged room across which ran a broad, dented, notched and shiny public counter with a fair degree of confidence. This might be unknown, awe-inspiring London, but
it was also familiar territory.
But the solitary occupant of the room, a sergeant on the far side of the counter, sitting at a large, cluttered table, typing away with two battering fingers at an aged, clacketty machine, simply gave him the briefest of glances and returned to his work.
Ghote waited for a little. But nothing happened. So he coughed. But still nothing happened. At last, with a disconcerting feeling that things were not going to go to plan, he rapped loudly on the shiny top of the counter.
The broad-backed sergeant turned slowly round. Ghote saw that he had a long, florid face and that his teeth, which sprawled out of his mouth in every direction, were as yellow as a horse’s.
He got up, swung his way heavily across and leant on the counter opposite Ghote.
“Yes?” he said. “Sir?”
Ghote could not help thinking that this was not his image of the true British police-sergeant. But appearances could be deceiving.
“Good evening,” he said politely.
The sergeant, leaning on his elbows, said nothing.
Ghote drew a long breath.
“It is rather an awkward matter,” he ventured.
The sergeant shot him a look from under tangled hairy eyebrows.
“Girl, is it? Got her into trouble, have you?”
“No, no, no, no. It is nothing like that.”
The sergeant did not look as if he believed this.
Ghote frowned at himself and began again.
“I am as a matter of fact a police officer also.”
“Oh, yes?”
The sergeant took his elbows off the battered counter and stood back the more easily to give Ghote a look radiating pure disbelief.
He seemed to Ghote a far cry from the blue-uniformed figure which he had observed with feelings of almost holy joy at London Airport some twenty-four hours before. The conclusion was inescapable.
He plunged his hand into the heavy depths of his overcoat.
“Look,” he said, “let me show you.”
He made contact with his passport, pulled it out and opened it on the counter.
The sergeant gave it a glance.
“Inspector, eh?” he said without enthusiasm. “Bombay police.”
“I am here for the Conference on the Smuggling of Dangerous Drugs,” Ghote said. “And as a matter of fact I am staying with some distant relations of my wife’s.”
“Oh, yes? Very nice.”
“It is not.”
The thought of how far from nice it was stung Ghote to a sharpness he had not dreamt of producing in these surroundings. The sergeant now looked at him with genuine curiosity.
“It is not nice,” Ghote went on firmly. “It is extremely unpleasant for me because three weeks ago a young girl disappeared from the house.”
The sergeant sighed. He turned back to the table and picked up a big leather-bound register.
“Name?” he said.
Inwardly Ghote groaned. The whole business seemed doomed to a series of misunderstandings.
“The matter has already been reported,” he said.
The sergeant banged the register closed.
“However,” Ghote said, stung into acidity again, “my relatives are by no means happy with the action taken by your department.”
Silently the sergeant lowered his elbows on to the counter directly in front of Ghote. He leant towards him.
“Not happy?” he said menacingly.
But such blatant opposition, even from someone he had been prepared to honour, could have only one effect on Ghote.
“No, they are not happy,” he said, with considerable sharpness now. “And I have come to satisfy myself that in fact the fullest inquiries have been made.”
The sergeant stood up, looking offended to the very last of his sprawling yellow teeth.
“I think you can trust us to carry out our own business, sir.”
“I hope so,” Ghote replied remorselessly. “But I must still ask to see the woman police constable who came to the house.”
“That depends on whether she’s available,” the sergeant said.
Ghote looked at him steadily.
“I have preferred to come here myself,” he said, “rather than put the matter in the hands of my colleague at the conference, Detective Superintendent Smart.”
The sergeant’s mouth shut like a trap over his sprawling teeth.
“What date did this alleged offence occur upon, sir?” he said grumpily.
“Upon October the twenty-first last.”
With maddening deliberation, the sergeant undid the silver button on the chest pocket of his uniform. He pulled out a clumsy-looking bright red diary and began flicking through its pages, occasionally pausing to lick his thumb.
“Ah,” he said at last, “Oct, twenty one. Trafalgar Day. It’ll be W.P.C. Mackintosh you’ll be wanting.”
“Please,” said Ghote, still implacable.
“I’ll see if she’s in,” the sergeant said.
He turned and lumbered across the room to a tall, well-scrubbed door.
Ghote waited.
Trafalgar Day, he thought. He saw the proud British men-o’-war, which Anglo-Indian Mr. Merrywether had once described in such glowing terms, using his cane with a zeal well above and beyond the line of duty when anyone appeared not to be paying the closest attention. The tall ships came crowding down on the might of Napoleon’s navy, their cannon raking the Frenchmen from stem to stern. “England Expects Every Man To Do His Duty.” There had been a brightly coloured print of H.M.S. Victory flying this signal in the school corridor, inviting long hours painstakingly translating the code of its gay little flags.
It would be on that day of all days that the Peacock had chosen to cut and run.
The well-scrubbed door opened and the sergeant came in followed by a tall policewoman wearing her smart uniform with dash.
Ghote saw at once that she was the ideal English Rose come to life. Under her blue peaked cap her hair was crisply golden. Her complexion was a vigorous pink and white. She held herself trimly and her eyes were the brightest blue.
“This is him,” the sergeant said to her.
He jerked his head in Ghote’s direction, went over to the cluttered table and busied himself battering away once more at the keys of the old typewriter.
The English Rose came over to Ghote.
“Do I understand you wish to make a complaint?” she said, with unmistakable cold hostility.
“No, no,” Ghote answered hastily. “No complaint. Perhaps the sergeant told you the circumstances?”
“You’re staying at a place where a girl went missing and I made some inquiries,” Policewoman Mackintosh said.
She made it sound as if Ghote was about to accuse her of criminal activities of the worst sort.
“It was at the Tagore House Restaurant,” he said.
“I remember the case.”
Her blue, blue eyes were icily challenging.
“Please do not think that I am in any way accusing you in this matter,” Ghote said. “I would simply be most grateful for any information you have.”
But the blue eyes stayed sapphire-hard.
“Any information was passed back to the original informants,” she intoned.
“I know. I know. But my relatives expect me to do something.”
“Well, there’s nothing you can do,” the English Rose said tersely. “The girl’s gone off with some boy-friend or other and they just won’t believe it. I remember the details: it’s as clear a case as you’ll get.”
She turned away, smartly as a soldier on parade. Her squared shoulders and the crisp line of golden curls under her cap all said one thing: that’s the way to treat fussing foreigners, be absolutely firm.
Ghote saw that if he was going to get anything out of her he had to act fast.
“Oh, yes,” he said, in as hearty, rollicking, man-to-man tone as he could contrive. “Came to the same conclusion myself as soon as I had time to look about a bit.
I can see you size up a case pretty damn’ quickly.”
And, a little to his surprise, the blatant flattery worked. Policewoman Mackintosh turned round again. Her blue eyes were beginning to glint with pleasure.
“You get a feel for these things,” she said.
Ghote leant on the counter with comradely carelessness.
“Not every one does,” he said. “Believe you me.”
Policewoman Mackintosh actually smiled.
“Well, perhaps not.”
“No,” Ghote said, “I dare say you see what my trouble is now?”
Policewoman Mackintosh gave him a sympathetic grin.
“Yes,” he said, “it is a question of bloody well convincing the old people that what we know happened has happened.”
“Yes,” said Policewoman Mackintosh thoughtfully, “you’ve got a problem there all right.”
She stood pondering. Ghote adopted a face of rueful despair.
“Tell you what,” she said after a little, “you could try ’em with the old A4 Index.”
“The A4 Index? We do not use anything called that in Bombay.”
“No, it’s a thing they run at the Yard. Pretty useful at times. It’s a list of any girl under twenty-one who’s ever come to the notice of the police. Doesn’t matter whether she’s got a conviction, just if she’s come to our notice.”
“And this girl Ranee, the Peacock as they call her, she was on it?”
Policewoman Mackintosh gave a sudden sort of a laugh.
“The Peacock,” she said. “That’s right. I went and saw a couple of her friends from school and they called her that. What a name.”
“You saw her friends?” Ghote asked with some eagerness. “Did you learn anything from them?”
“Well,” Policewoman Mackintosh said, leaning in a friendly way on the other side of the broad, pock-marked counter, “I thought I’d better do a bit of checking up. It’s always tricky knowing how much truth you’re being told dealing with foreigners.”
She registered Ghote’s brown face not a yard from her own.
“If you don’t mind my saying so,” she added.
“Not at all, not at all,” Ghote answered. “I have the same problem myself with Englishmen in Bombay.”
“Oh. Yes. I suppose so.”
Policewoman Mackintosh looked thoughtful.
“But did you find anything useful from those girls?” Ghote said.
Inspector Ghote Hunts the Peacock Page 6