Inspector Ghote Hunts the Peacock

by H. R. F. Keating

  They continued to do so until he decided that, before embarking on a full-scale rehearsal, he ought just to flip through the whole paper to familiarise himself again with the main outlines of its argument.

  And having managed in this way to get to the end, if not exactly to absorb every turn of the superintendent’s train of thought, he hastily pushed the stiff folder back in his case and hurried off to the Carlton Tower with feelings almost of pleasure.

  Pausing only to arrange at the newspaper shop a couple of doors away from the restaurant to collect the following day copies of all the papers in which the story of the Smith brothers and the Judge in Chambers was likely to have appeared, he made his way rapidly to the bus stop and stood waiting for a Number 137 bus.

  So it was still only a few minutes after ten o’clock when he rang once more at the richly discreet, stainless steel bell-push on Johnny Bull’s front door. And this time there was no long period of waiting.

  The door in fact opened so promptly that his carefully prepared opening sentence totally deserted him and he stood blinking and silent.

  It was Sandra who had been so quick to open the door. Dressed in a glowing purple trouser-suit, which made her pale, podgy face look even paler and more featureless than Ghote had remembered it, she looked up at him now with an expression of rapidly growing petulance.

  “You,” she said. “What the hell are you doing here? I thought it was Freddy.”

  “Who is Freddy?” Ghote asked.

  Evidently his question, which he would have been the first to admit was not strictly relevant to the business he had come on, served only to redouble the girl’s minute rage.

  “Freddy’s Johnny’s publicist, of course,” she snapped. “He’s due any minute to take him to the studios.”

  “Oh, dear,” Ghote said. “I had hoped to have a few words with Mr. Bull. But perhaps there will be time still. I would not keep him very long.”

  A look of shocked amazement contrived to imprint itself on Sandra’s pale featureless face.

  “No, you will not keep him,” she said. “And, no, you will not see him. Not now, or ever.”

  She began to swing the door closed.

  Ghote, ready for this, slid his foot forward. And, just at the moment when the sharp edge of the door banged hard on to the inside of his instep, there came a roar of sound from the flat.

  “Where is it? What the bloody hell have you done with it?”

  It was Johnny Bull himself. Sandra whipped round as if somebody behind her had shouted “Stick ’em up.”

  “Never mind about it,” she yelled. “You’ve got a bloody long day ahead of you, and I mean to see you get to those studios on time.”

  Over her shoulder, at the far end of the broad, white-carpeted, record-hung corridor Ghote could just see Johnny. He was wearing nothing but a pair of black-and-white pyjama trousers. The thick fuzz of dark hair on his chest impressed itself on Ghote’s mind.

  “Studios,” Johnny shouted back at plump little Sandra. “Bloody studios. Bloody, bloody Regent Studios. I’m not going there to-day.”

  “Oh yes you are,” Sandra screamed back, with a violence Ghote would not have thought her capable of.

  And then something must have reminded her that she was under observation still, because she swung round again, gave Ghote a look of passionate dislike, and, putting hands to the back of the door, brought it crashing towards him with all the strength of her whole body.

  He judged it best to whip his foot out of the way.

  In any case, he thought, I know all I need to now.

  As he walked over to the black-and-gold lift he heard her yelling a final message to him through the smooth and inscrutable surface of the heavy door.

  “And don’t come back, because he’s not going to see you. Ever.”

  FIFTEEN

  Most of the morning still lay ahead of Ghote when he left the Carlton Tower, hugging to himself the knowledge that Johnny Bull was due to spend “a long day” at the Regent Studios. It should not be difficult to find out where these were, and the day’s activities at the Drugs Conference were certain to be over before Johnny’s day’s work.

  He knew that what he ought to do in the time he had to spare was to go back to his little room at the Tagore House, take out Superintendent Ketkar’s typescript, open it at Page One and start reading aloud in a clear, ringing voice. But he could not force himself to take the plunge. The distance between what he ought to achieve and what he knew with despondent certainty he could actually manage was simply too great. He had had to address small bodies of men every now and again in the course of his career, and he was aware that, although he did not do it particularly well, he could at least make a reasonable showing. But this business of being Superintendent Ketkar, and in front of a distinguished and critical audience, was altogether different. It was an Everest: he was equipped with only light summer clothing.

  Then a comforting thought swam into his head: it was his duty to get Protima her present. The task had been put off too long.

  Of course he could have indulged himself, he could have gone on his postponed visit to the Tower. There was just nice time for it. But, no, he would tackle this urgent duty first.

  He took out his guide book with the look of someone resolutely shunning delights and facing the sound of gunfire. He looked for the quickest way to Oxford Street.

  Emerging from the Tube, he made his way along the broad pavement with its strongly moving crowd of shoppers, buying, buying, buying as they moved. Their crammed, bright and gaily patterned shopping-bags bumped and banged him and their strident yammering voices battered at his ears. “Well, as I say, they’re only kids once, get ’em the best, I say” … “must have some marrons glacés for Auntie May, though what she sees in ’em I don’t know” … “can’t think what to get our Dad, never seems to want anything” … “Yes, I bought her some nice perfume, paid a bit more than I expected though, but I must get her something to last too.”

  He began to feel the need to creep quietly away from it all—the stately matrons with their elaborate hair-styles, the mothers with their petulant children forging their way along to the accompaniment of a perpetual jagged whine of meaningless rebukes, the plump little teenagers with their inevitable mini-skirts.

  But these last he suddenly excepted from his bile-black condemnation. His original feelings of dismayed disapproval had, he found, melted away. Perhaps his encounter with Patsy and Renee in their high tower block had given him a new outlook. After all, he reasoned, the girls did breathe an air of half-innocent enjoyment of the gifts nature had given them. They were no doubt much the same as young girls anywhere else, only with more confidence.

  Then he found he was reassessing another belief. He noticed beside a fur-coated, stiffly-hatted, triumphant, full-fleshed grandmother—talking incessantly of what she had just purchased and what else she was about to purchase—an oldish man, probably her husband, walking quietly along smoking his pipe. He looked thoroughly comfortable in green pork-pie hat and brown herring-bone overcoat and in his eyes there was a mildly amused twinkle.

  He reminded Ghote abruptly of Superintendent Smart.

  And with the reminder he saw all the strenuous shoppers suddenly in another light. After all, they had got to do something with the money they found they had, and what more simply natural than to spend it? That at least spread it out. The sight of a shop selling goods from India—saris, bangles, brass coffee pots, jewellery, carved elephants—made him realise where in fact some of this disbursed wealth was ending up.

  He looked round more cheerfully. And at once he saw what looked like the very place he wanted for his present-getting. It was a shop with its windows crammed full of every sort and kind of chinaware. If he could not find something splendidly English and within his means here, he never would.

  He went in. Everywhere there were long tables stacked with gleaming china. He made up his mind to concentrate on tea-services.

  But it was not l
ong before he was feeling more than a little bewildered by the sheer variety even of these. He wondered about what he really wanted and of having to admit how little he could actually afford deterred him. The thought of his first attempt to make his purchase at the big department store had not faded from his mind.

  “Can I help you, sir?”

  The quiet voice had come from just behind him. He wheeled guiltily round.

  The person who had spoken was very different from the proud goddess of the department store. She was motherly-looking, short, very plump and with a faint but distinct moustache on her upper lip.

  The contrast between what she looked like and what he had been expecting was so strong that, before he knew what he was doing, he burst out with the thought buried deep in his mind.

  “The Royal Worcester you have,” he said, “is it highly expensive also?”

  The assistant smiled.

  “Well now, sir,” she said, “let’s not make too many bones about it: it is expensive, yes. But that doesn’t mean we haven’t heaps of other lovely things which wouldn’t cost half as much.”

  “Yes,” said Ghote doubtfully. “I have seen some.”

  Again he received a smile.

  “I did notice you looking here and there, sir,” the assistant said. “Something in the line of a tea-service, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Ghote conceded, “I was looking for a tea-service.”

  He declined absolutely to expand on this further.

  “Well now,” the assistant said with motherly briskness, “and who is this tea-service to be for? I always say it makes a lot of difference to know.”

  “Yes,” said Ghote.

  “Now, is it a present?”

  “It is for my wife.”

  The assistant gave him a warm smile.

  “Your wife,” she said. “But you must tell me a little bit more about her than that, you know. Otherwise I might give you quite the wrong advice.”

  “She is in India,” Ghote admitted. “I want to take her back a gift.”

  He found himself strongly reluctant to explain any of the circumstances of his stay in England, let alone to expand on what the present meant to him.

  “Oh, yes,” the assistant replied, in a rush of friendliness that altogether swamped his meagre response.

  She looked at him warmly.

  “I always think it’s so nice when a gentleman goes abroad and doesn’t fail to come back with something for the lady at home.”

  “Yes,” said Ghote.

  “And I’m sure, if we look about a bit, we’ll hit on just the very thing.”

  She gave him another look, carefully considering.

  “But,” she added, “we must be careful not to go spending too much, mustn’t we? I know what it is when you go to other countries: everything seems so expensive.”

  “But I do not want to take back a present that is cheap,” Ghote said in alarm.

  Again he was given a smile of deep understanding.

  “Oh no, of course not. We’ll find something good, but reasonable. I’m sure you’ll be very pleased with it. And the lady need never know just what you paid, need she?”

  “But I want it to be something of the best there is in England,” Ghote said.

  He had begun to feel suspiciously that things were slipping out of his control, and he spoke with some vehemence.

  “Ah, I quite understand,” the assistant replied, unruffled. “Something that, how shall I put it, something that sums up all our old English delight in beautiful things well made.”

  This was exactly what Ghote had had in mind. But, perversely, he did not feel pleased to hear it said.

  He made no reply.

  A look of sudden recollection appeared on the assistant’s motherly, moustached face.

  “Ah,” she said, “how about this?”

  Taking Ghote firmly by the sleeve of his heavy, green-and-yellow coat, she began guiding him through the aisles between the long china-laden tables. She stopped at last in front of a large display near the shop-windows.

  It consisted of nothing but teapots, noble teapots, purest white, gold-edged, sproutingly decorated with clumps of bright painted flowers, a mass of full-bellied, gleaming teapots, redolent each one of the old Britain Ghote loved. Or had certainly loved at the moment when he had first set foot on its soil.

  A neat, discreet little folded card in the middle of the display indicated a price that Ghote could certainly afford.

  And yet a dark unwillingness to concede that here was the end of his search grew up in him.

  “Why is it, please,” he demanded, “that they are so cheap?”

  The assistant smiled.

  “More reasonable than cheap,” she corrected him gently.

  “But why is it?” Ghote persisted mulishly.

  Again there came a warm smile from the dark brown eyes.

  “Well, don’t mistake my meaning, but they’re actually what we call, well, export rejects.”

  And, with an inner knowledge that he was not behaving sensibly or gratefully in the least, Ghote let a look of chilling coldness sweep up into his face and spark icily off. He turned on his heel and set off for the door.

  “There is nothing I require here,” he said. “Nothing.”

  Even when Ghote, early that afternoon, had settled himself in his place in the handsome conference hall at Wood Street police-station and had his note-book ready open on his knee, he could not calm the inner disturbance his attempt to buy Protima her present had caused him. The ordered dignity of the proceedings in the hall served in fact only to irritate him yet more.

  Up on the platform in front of the great sweep of rust-coloured curtaining, Superintendent Smart stood and tapped with his knuckles on the small table in front of him. At once a hush fell. It sent a jet of anger shooting up inside Ghote’s head: why could not one delegate, just one, make the mistake of going on talking? Why did every one of them have to be so competent about everything.

  “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” Smart of the Yard said, in a quiet voice which was still just loud enough to reach to every part of the hall. “I trust you all had a pleasant week-end.”

  No, thought Ghote with redoubled sourness, I for one did not have a pleasant week-end. I had a most unpleasant week-end. As if it mattered to anybody.

  But from the remainder of the delegates there came a subdued acquiescent murmur.

  “Before we begin our proceedings again,” Superintendent Smart went on, “I should just like to say that this is the last occasion we shall meet in these most comfortable surroundings.”

  Uncomfortable surroundings, Ghote thought contrarily, looking round at the lofty ceiling, sparkling chandeliers, tall, deeply recessed windows and magnificent swathes of curtaining.

  “Owing to the short time we had to make our arrangements,” Superintendent Smart continued, “we shall have to hold our remaining session elsewhere. But I am happy to be able to tell you that we have secured the auditorium at the Commonwealth Institute in Kensington. Police cadets will hand you on your way out folders giving all the necessary directions.”

  He paused and glanced down at the sheet of paper on the table in front of him.

  “Now we come to to-day’s business,” he resumed. “And it is perhaps appropriate that, as we are on the verge of moving over to the Commonwealth Institute, our last two speakers should be from the Commonwealth. To-day we have Superintendent Mahommed Jaffer from West Pakistan, and to-morrow we have someone I might call his near neighbour, Inspector Ghote of Bombay, deputising at very short notice for the renowned figure of Superintendent Rakesh Ketkar, whose work all of you will be well acquainted with.”

  And at once the delegates broke into an appreciative patter of applause.

  Ghote’s heart sank. To have this build-up, and then to hear his own halting version of Superintendent Ketkar’s forceful and vigorous words. It could not but be disastrous.

  But in the next few minutes his heart went even further into h
is boots. For Superintendent Jaffer, of Karachi—the tall, bearded Pakistani whom he had just failed to talk to when he had first come, diffident and uneasy, into this very room—turned out to be a speaker almost as forceful and humorous as Superintendent Ketkar himself. His trenchant analysis of the drug smuggling situation in his particular part of the world, with a few mischievous asides about matters farther down the west coast of the Indian sub-continent, plainly delighted all the other delegates. There were quick bursts of laughter, appreciative murmurs, a continuing run of deep chuckles and everywhere the rapid scribbling in notepads and on the backs of envelopes which denoted real success.

  Scribbling of notes everywhere, except at one place. It was only as, with a final triumphant sally Superintendent Jaffer brought his study to a conclusion, that Ghote realised that so acute had been his mortification, with this paper in particular and everything that had happened to him since he first set foot in England in general, that he had completely and utterly failed to take a single word down. Total misery descended.

  Ghote got away from Wood Street police-station as soon as he could, but he found he had little heart for going to get hold of Johnny Bull at the Regent Studios. Before the conference session had begun he had looked them up in a telephone directory. He had found the entry without difficulty: the Regent Recording Studios, a street name and a number. And it had been easy enough to locate the street, in the middle of Marylebone, in his guide book.

  More because doing anything else seemed utterly distasteful than out of any positive willingness, he followed out the route he had marked down. It brought him at just after five o’clock to a small blank iron door set deep into a long featureless brick wall in a quiet back street. Beside the door, embedded into the concrete surround, was a small notice in engraved brown plastic saying “Regent Recording Studios.” There was no bell.

  When he put his hand to the iron door itself it began to swing open at his touch. There was nothing to prevent him entering, looking quietly around, finding Johnny Bull, waiting patiently till the right moment came and then tackling him once more.