A Killer Among Us

by Ushasi Sen Basu

  She found the door ajar at 603. Ira rang the bell nevertheless.

  Half a minute and two more pushes of the bell later Ira put her mouth near the gap and cried, ‘Mrs Ghoshal?’ There was no response. Oh no, not another one?

  And was she to be the person to find the crumpled body of the old lady, or worse, be discovered standing over her by a third person? Ira almost turned away, but she remembered that she had been summoned, so she pushed the door open and entered. ‘Aunty?’ She called out.

  ‘Yes, yes, I’m here. Come in, I’ve been telling you for the last five minutes!’ a cracked, muffled voice cried out, adding, ‘There’s really no need to shout.’

  Ira followed the voice to the kitchen where she stopped short in astonishment. Mrs Ghoshal sat on the floor with her legs bent at uncomfortable angles, with what seemed like the entire contents of the kitchen on the floor. There were innumerable little jars, bottles and boxes, of every size, material and use; all over the black and white speckled kitchen floor.

  Ira wondered what she was seeing here, had the old lady fallen? Taking the contents of her cabinets with her? No, they looked arranged rather too tidily for that and the empty cabinets appeared to still have a firm grip on the walls.

  Or had she embarked upon an ambitious spring-cleaning project and invited her, as the female who was in the most obvious need of domestic skills-building, to help her out?

  She looked at Mrs Ghoshal in a mute request for an explanation.

  Mrs Ghoshal cast an anxious eye over all the receptacles of mysterious spices and condiments before her.

  Then her head snapped up and she asked, ‘Did you close the door behind you?’

  ‘Ah,’ Ira said, glad that the silence had been broken, ‘Shall I go check?’

  But Mrs Ghoshal was back to ranging her eyes over the bottles. Her usual air of smiling tranquillity had given way to a tense, hunted expression.

  Ira shut the door with a click and went back to the kitchen. ‘Mrs Ghoshal, what are you doing? Had you called me or did your maid make a mistake?’

  ‘It must have got mixed up here with the other jars,’ she said, dolefully. ‘Oh, Kedar!’

  Ira squatted down. Mrs Ghoshal tried to shift to a more comfortable position. ‘I used to be able to sit cross-legged on the floor for hours, cutting vegetables with my boti; or squatting over a low stove to cook in the earlier days. Look at me now, arthritis in every joint!’

  ‘Aunty,’ Ira said again, gently. ‘What’s wrong? Would you like me to call Kedar-da for you? Has he left for work?’

  ‘He’s in hospital,’ Mrs Ghoshal blurted out, and then, almost as an afterthought, she burst into a storm of tears. ‘I think it might be because of me. I keep forgetting and getting confused nowadays, this would never have happened in the old days.’

  ‘Hospital? What happened?’

  ‘He has, that…friend of his who came to see me a while ago, what’s his name, said he had eaten something bad.’ Mrs Ghoshal’s eyes flicked at the girl and back to the jars. ‘Very bad.’

  ‘Oh, food poisoning?’ Ira was relieved. Finally, everything was making sense. ‘So you made him something in the morning and it might have gone bad and now he’s taken ill? That’s okay, Aunty, his doctor will prescribe him a few pills and he’ll be right as rain by evening. Monsoons are bad for the tummy. It happens!’

  Since when had she become the resident hand holder and shoulder to cry on for elderly ladies? ‘Meanwhile,’ Ira continued, ‘let me help you up―you look uncomfortable. Don’t beat yourself up, it might well be something he ate on the way or at work. One can never be too careful in this season. Even water can give you a dodgy stomach….’

  ‘He’s been in hospital since yesterday afternoon! And that man, that man who visited an hour ago…Shiben…’ Ira noticed that Mrs Ghoshal had great distaste for him, despite the fact that he seemed to be helping out with her son. ‘He said the doctors can’t treat him as well as they would like until they know what poisoned him; the blood tests are taking too long!

  And all the while I―I know very well what it is, it’s in one of these little yellow jars but they’ve all got mixed up! I didn’t realise I had collected so many identical yellow jars… I don’t know how I got so careless! It would never have happened in the old days,’ Mrs Ghoshal repeated.

  Gooseflesh stood to attention on Ira’s arms . ‘You know what poisoned him?’

  ‘Yes,’ the old lady snuffled into her anchal. ‘I know exactly.’

  ‘Okay, first things first,’ Ira drew a big breath. ‘Did you let the doctors know?’

  ‘I…I…they would ask me why I had it, and why I was so careless, they would make all sorts of accusations….’

  ‘What poison is it?’ Ira asked, urgently, ‘And which hospital is he in?’

  ‘Cerbera odollam,’ Mrs Ghoshal whispered, her lower lip trembling.

  Ira’s skin felt like it would creep off her body entirely. But this would keep. ‘Hospital?’

  ‘I …’ Mrs. Ghoshal looked up from her anchal. Her eyes looked enormous behind her powerful glasses. ‘I can’t remember. Can you check if that man,’ she spat the word out like it tasted rotten, ‘wrote it down in my notebook in the living room? I often get people to write things down that I can’t remember.’

  Ira flew to the centre table in the living room. She found the diary nestled among the TV remote, newspapers, and a variety of other neatly folded slips of paper.

  ‘Yes, he’s kept it folded open to this page: Daffodil Hospital. And he’s left a number as well.’

  ‘Is this it?’ Ira went back to where Mrs Ghoshal sat on the kitchen floor and flipped the pad over for her to see.

  ‘Yes, exactly, that’s the hospital.’

  Ira was already punching the numbers into her cell phone.

  ‘Hello? Is that Daffodil Hospital? I’m calling about a patient―Kedarnath Ghoshal. Yes, no, I’m speaking on behalf of his mother, yes, she’s right here with me, oh for goodness’ sake this is important! Just listen!

  We know what he has ingested. A poison, can you please connect me to his doctor?

  Why? It’s urgent. I assure you this is not a prank….’

  Ira listened to the woman for a moment, sighed, and said, ‘Achha, I understand.’

  She disconnected and ran back to the kitchen.

  ******

  ‘Okay, Mrs Ghoshal, we have to go down there. The telephone operator refuses to act upon any information from “unverified sources”. Come on, get your umbrella and keys and whatnot. I do hope you’re right or we might derail the treatment further.’

  ‘Oh no, it’s Cerbera odollam alright. From what I hear the symptoms all match up.’

  Ira stared hard at the older woman. ‘Come on!’

  Mrs Ghoshal made no attempt to move. ‘I have to find the jar. It’ll help them more if I can give it to them, right?’

  Ira couldn’t believe what she was hearing, but she also knew she had to hurry. ‘What will I do if they refuse to believe me? I’m not even remotely a relation or friend.’

  Mrs Ghoshal chose to ignore the question and began to sift through her bottles again. ‘Just, please hurry and save Kedar…he of all people, doesn’t deserve this.’

  ‘We shall talk more when I get back.’ Ira hoped she had managed to inject some menace in the promise. She noticed it had started pelting outside and absently rummaged about in her backpack for her umbrella.

  Mrs Ghoshal began to pick each jar up and peer into it before putting it aside. ‘In the meantime, I will find the right jar, I know what it looks like. Perhaps you can help when you return?’

  Her voice sounded oddly normal, distant.

  Ira went wordlessly to the door and let herself out with a shudder. Not if I can help it.

  ******

  At the hospital forty-five minutes later, the doctors were, to Ira’s relief, receptive to what she had to say. They had begun to suspect the same poison independently, from Kedarnath’s textbook symptoms. Yet,
they hesitated, because it was quite impossible to ingest it by accident. What Ira had told them confirmed it. A quick call to the registered number got Mrs Ghoshal on the phone, and the doctors decided that, ludicrous as it sounded, an old woman had poisoned her son inadvertently, with her mislaid stash of poison.

  The police had to be brought into it of course, and Ira returned to Mrs Ghoshal’s house to find the, by now familiar, pair in white talking in soothing tones to Mrs Ghoshal.

  ‘Ah, there you are,’ called out Inspector Bose. ‘We were about to locate you next. Please have a seat. We are listening to Mrs Ghoshal’s account of the matter.’

  Alarm bells rang in Ira’s head. The same team who were investigating the lift murder, here? Did they think the two were related? And guess who the common link was, walking into every damn situation? Me!

  Mrs Ghoshal in the meantime had found her ‘poison jar’, as she was cheerfully calling it, and brandished it for all to see.

  ‘Mayonnaise bottle, you see. I was going through a continental cooking phase, hmm… about fifteen years or so ago. Bought a few jars of readymade mayonnaise until I figured out how to make it from scratch. I never throw things away, especially not useful things like bottles. So, unfortunately, I have several of these jars around the house. But of course, this one was never meant to be mixed up with the others.’

  She picked up another yellow plastic bottle, and presented it like a prop in a magic trick. ‘This one has saffron and this one,’ picking up another identical bottle, ‘has the ajinomoto. From my Chinese phase. Never thought in my wildest dreams they’d get mixed up.’

  ‘You should throw out any bottles older than a few years,’ Inspector Lodh said, ‘plastic degrades, you know, it’s toxic.’

  Especially if it holds deadly poison for a zillion years. Ira pinched herself at the surreal observation.

  Inspector Bose seemed to have had the same thought.

  ‘Speaking of toxic things, why do you have…,’ he consulted his ubiquitous notebook, ‘Cerbera odollam in your possession?’

  They were being benign and indulgent, Ira thought with annoyance. Mrs Ghoshal could confess to killing a whole bunch of people, and they would still sit there, cooing at her.

  Mrs Ghoshal was also playing up the helpless old woman role, ‘Oh, I don’t know what it is called,’ her face shone with confused innocence, ‘I was given this by a friend many decades ago to exterminate the garden rats in my previous home.’

  Ira was leaning against the wall, her arms crossed against her chest and her eyes resolutely on the floor in the classic ‘don’t drag me into this’ pose. At Mrs Ghoshal’s last comment she looked up and caught her eye.

  Mrs Ghoshal’s magnified, milky eyes looked back in challenge until Ira’s eyes slid back to the ground. Scary old bat.

  The police finally left muttering about foolish old women messing with dangerous substances they knew nothing about. They took the dabba with them for testing. Inspector Bose said to his colleague in a confidential tone that didn’t quite succeed, ‘I doubt Mrs Ghoshal has actually laid her hands on poison. Her friend was playing a little prank on her. Let us see. Whatever the case may be, if it has hospitalised a man it is best not left lying around.’ They folded their hands in a namaskar and took their leave of Mrs Ghoshal, giving Ira some hard stares as they went.

  Ira left the flat with alacrity after them. She would miss her time with Ayan and her ride today. Crazy biddy had to mix me up in this one as well. Out of one fix, headlong into another. I’ll be in jail by the end of this week, if I’m not careful, Ira thought, morosely.

  ******

  15

  Monday, 17th September 2014

  Nandana was in a hurry. She had lost track of time and would have to scramble to get to the bus stop before the bus arrived. The school staff made all sorts of trouble if someone wasn’t there to receive the kids, which meant they were serious about security, so she could hardly complain. That said, it was daunting to walk up to a waiting bus full of impatient passengers as your children shot daggers at you with their eyes for being late.

  She pressed the lift button and got in. Old Mrs Ghoshal (an increasingly rare sight nowadays―she wondered what had drawn her out of her seclusion) from the sixth floor was standing very close to the door while the resident of 501 (Nandana didn’t know her name yet), stood like a squat, human pillar in the middle of the lift. Nandana smiled at the older lady but gave the latter a miss. She had made neighbourly overtures when this lady had moved in a few months ago, but had been rebuffed. Now she had begun to avert her eyes and silently submit herself to inspections so minute she would have been complaining of harassment under different circumstances. The one minute or so in the lift passed like an hour when this lady was in there with her, and she would tumble out feeling oddly violated by the end of it.

  Nandana wondered if she did the same with men. Most resoundingly not, she guessed. It never did to be thought forward by the men!

  Yup, there she went.

  The woman began a lingering examination of her feet, which made Nandana’s toes curl, especially because she was wearing sandals and hadn’t had a pedicure in a while. She then graduated to a closer inspection of her salwar kameez. Mrs Ghoshal shuffled further into the lift to give herself more space, and leaned heavily on her cane. She clicked her tongue in irritation when the woman made no move to make way for her. ‘Can’t you move? There’s plenty of space!’

  The lady jumped like a nervy chicken and shifted a few steps into a corner. She began an inspection of the tips of Mrs Ghoshal’s toes, the only part of her feet that protruded from under the grey border of her white sari.

  Mrs Ghoshal thumped her cane into the floor to make her look up. ‘What do you look at? Perhaps checking to see if I have my feet on backwards, like a witch, eh?’

  The starer cowered and looked away into a corner. ‘Learn some manners, girl, it’s never too late.’ Mrs Ghoshal said, not unkindly, and disembarked on the second floor.

  Nandana exited thirty seconds after her on the ground floor grinning from ear to ear. She looked back at the woman’s stricken face and ran to pick up the children, quite cheered up.

  How wonderful it would be to just speak your mind, phatak! Like that! Instead she enacted incessant confrontations in her head and left it at that. A recipe for ulcers, she had heard.

  She bet Mrs Ghoshal had never internalised anything in her life. Just didn’t seem the sort.

  ******

  The morning had been peaceful so far and Ira began to hope she could just go back to her usual routine without people banging on doors and neighbours murdering each other.

  Mrs Ghoshal’s ability to surprise was apparently limitless, and she proved Ira wrong this time too.

  There was a knock on the door just as she had finished her breakfast of cornflakes and milk in front of the TV. Friends reruns relaxed her and salved her homesickness. She opened the door to find the little old lady peering up into her face, her eyes massive behind her glasses.

  The better to see you with, my dear. The words rose unbidden into her mind.

  Ira clutched at the door for support. ‘Mrs Ghoshal! What brings you here?’ The old lady leant on her walking stick and smiled with a martyred air. ‘How is Kedar-da now?’ Ira asked.

  ‘He is getting better they say. He should be able to come home in a day or two.’

  ‘That’s good news.’

  ‘He is most grateful for your quick response to the situation.’

  ‘Ye-es, well anyone would have done it.’ As she said it, Ira couldn’t help remembering how Mrs Ghoshal hadn’t. The octagenarian smiled benignly up at her. ‘Er…I’m afraid I have nothing to offer you.’ Ira said, as she opened her door wider.

  ‘Never mind that. I just wanted to continue that day’s conversation. You said you’d come back,’ Mrs Ghoshal reproached her. She hobbled over uninvited and sat down with a creak on the cane sofa.

  Ira hesitated just a beat and seated herself opp
osite her on the mora. The less known the better! Ira’s brain screamed but she found herself leaning forward, alight with curiosity. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Let me get straight to the point. Too many interruptions nowadays talking with young people….’

  Ira nodded vigorously.

  Mrs Ghoshal took a breath and said, ‘After the last time I used it, I was most careless and must have left it on the kitchen counter, thinking I’ll put it away in its rightful place later; but subsequent events drove it straight from my mind. Yes, I admit I have grown forgetful….’

  Ira’s heart sank. The last time she used it? That bottle of poison had a rightful place?

  ‘And then Kedar, now forever tidying up after me―how I wish he wouldn’t or such mix ups wouldn’t happen―put it away in one of the cupboards and essentially, poisoned himself.’ Mrs Ghoshal tsk-tsked. ‘Anyhow, I won’t dwell on his role in this whole fiasco, he’s been punished enough, poor boy. I do miss him.’

  Ira gulped. ‘What do you mean “last time”?’

  ‘Eh?’ Mrs Ghoshal looked like she was trying to remember.

  ‘You just said “last time you used it”. When was that?’

  ‘Oh yes, that’s actually why I came. Slipped my mind entirely. Since everyone’s been whispering behind their hands―and one or two people to your face as well, I daresay!―saying you’ve done it, it’s only right that I tell you. Now do what you will with this information. The last time I used it was on the 5th.’

  ‘5th September…the man in the lift?’

  ‘Er…yes, only he wasn’t in the lift, of course, when I gave him the poison.’

  Ira laughed finally. Mrs Ghoshal was senile. That wasn’t even poison in the dabba. Kedar-da had eaten a bad double deemer maamlette on the way to work and got severe salmonella poisoning.

  Mrs Ghoshal tittered a little as well. Ira wasn’t sure she liked it much.

  ‘Aunty,’ she explained, gently. ‘The man didn’t die of poisoning. He was hit on the back of his head…with, with something heavy.’ She pointedly looked at Mrs Ghoshal’s stick arms with the crepe-like skin hanging off them. ‘You are mistaken.’