Inspector Ghote, His Life and Crimes

by H. R. F. Keating

  ‘Yes,’ Ghote said. ‘I believe he has vanished for ever.’

  The DSP was adamant still. ‘He has not.’

  ‘Yes, you are right,’ the River Man answered him. ‘I remember it, remember it all, just as it was. So he must be here still, inside me. The Beast. In here.’

  Ghote turned to the DSP.

  ‘Are … are we going to take him away now?’

  ‘Dr Walsingham,’ the DSP said, his voice less harsh. ‘You understand we must ask you to accompany us to Bombay?’

  ‘Yes. I understand.’

  ‘We had better secure some help,’ the DSP said. ‘Dr Walsing— the River Man had better be carried to the boat.’

  ‘Yes, sir, I will go at once, sir.’

  ‘No. In his condition … No, Inspector, you had better stay here. I will go.’

  When the DSP had left, almost at a trot, Ghote turned to the old man on the charpoy again.

  ‘You are not well, Dr Walsingham,’ he said. ‘We would see that it is to a hospital you are taken. I – I am sure …’

  ‘Yes. Not well. Tired. Sleep a little.’

  But the old man had hardly closed his eyes when he gave a startled cry.

  ‘Dr Walsingham, what … DSP sahib! Sir! Come back. Sir, he is most serious. Dr Walsingham, lie back. Lie down. What is it? You have something more you are wanting to say?’

  ‘Tell you.’

  ‘Yes, yes. I am listening. Take your time. I am here.’

  ‘Help.’

  ‘Yes, yes. You are needing help. It is coming. Soon. Most soon.’

  ‘Not that.’

  ‘Not?’

  ‘Listen.’

  ‘Yes, I am listening.’

  ‘Did – I – tell – you?’

  ‘That you were the Beast? About the girl and the Turkish Delight? Yes, you have told all.’

  ‘Yes. Thought – I – had.’

  ‘Dr Walsingham, was it not true after all?’

  ‘Fell asleep. Couldn’t remember if said.’

  ‘Yes, yes. You have told us. Do not worry any more.’

  ‘So it wasn’t dream?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But what if …’

  Behind him Ghote was aware that the DSP had returned.

  ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘he is going fast.’

  ‘But what if – imagined?’ the man on the bed said with a sudden access of vigour. ‘What if I imagined it all? ’Magination run riot. Believe it was all ’magination. Self- … Self-delusion.’

  He gave a sort of laugh, appalling to hear.

  ‘Had even convinced myself,’ he said, quite clearly. ‘Even convinced myself I was the—’

  Then a tremendous cough broke out of him.

  And ceased.

  ‘What are you saying, man?’ the DSP banged out. ‘Are you telling us now that you invented the fact that you were the Beast of the Beaches? Are you? Are you?’

  ‘Sir,’ Ghote said. ‘It is of no use to ask.’

  ‘But he cannot go back on it now. He must give us the truth. He must.’

  ‘Sir, death has taken place. We will never find out anything more now.’

  But that was not to be the case. It was after a clergyman had intoned the words of burial at the funeral of the man Ghote had been reduced to thinking of only as the River Man that, standing talking to Dr Abrahams and Dr Doctor among the mournful, leaning tombs and rank undergrowth of Bombay’s European Cemetery, the DSP produced his bombshell.

  ‘Madam,’ Ghote had said to Dr Abrahams, ‘are you knowing what were his last words only?’

  ‘You were there, Inspector?’

  ‘Yes, yes. And DSP sahib also. And we are able to tell you that Dr Walsingham died stating that he had invented the fact that he was the Beast of the Beaches. One hundred per cent invention.’

  ‘Then, after all—’

  ‘No, madam,’ the DSP had interrupted then. ‘No, it is not a question of after all. I can prove now just who he was.’

  ‘But, sir—’

  ‘No, Inspector.’

  He turned to Dr Abrahams.

  ‘Do you understand fingerprints, Doctor?’

  ‘Of course, of course. That they are unique to each individual.’

  ‘But there cannot be any prints for the Beast,’ Ghote broke in. ‘When it was all so long ago.’

  ‘That is where you are wrong, Inspector. You forget that the system was first used in India. And it so happens that the Beast’s prints were taken from the soft tar of the rowing boat he made his escape in and were transferred to plaster casts. They are in our museum. I looked at them this morning.’

  ‘But – But – Dr Walsingham’s prints? You cannot have taken them from his corpse.’

  ‘No need, Inspector. There was a very fine set on a certain packet of Garibaldi biscuits you yourself were thrusting into the man’s hands.’

  Ghote gave a great sigh.

  ‘So, sir, you have proved your case after all. Fingerprints cannot be lying. Dr Walsingham and Jack Curtin were one and the same individual.’

  ‘I think so. I think so. No hard feelings, eh? I shall give you some credit when I publish my account in Asian Crime Digest. And I will see that you get a copy, Doctor.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Dr Abrahams said solemnly. ‘But I prefer not.’

  And then it was that it came to Ghote.

  ‘Madam, no,’ he burst out. ‘No, kindly do not sound so down in the dumps. Listen, please. A thought has come to me, and it is this. If Dr Walsingham, if the River Man was dying believing that he had invented that whole part of his life, why then at the moment of his death he himself was not the Beast of the Beaches and never had been such. And that is what can never be taken away from him, not now or ever. When he died he was Dr James Walsingham and no one else whatsoever. No one else whatsoever.’

  1974

  FIVE

  Inspector Ghote and the Noted British Author

  Perched up on a creaking wobbly chair in the office of the Deputy Commissioner (Crime), the peon put one broken-nailed finger against Inspector Ghote’s name on the painted board behind the DCC’s desk. He swayed topplingly to one side, scraped hold of the fat white pin which indicated ‘Bandobast Duties’, brought it back across in one swooping rush and pressed it firmly into place.

  Watching him, Ghote gave an inward sigh. Bandobast duties. Someone, of course, had to deal with the thousand and one matters necessary for the smooth running of Crime Branch, but nevertheless bandobast duty was not tracking down breakers of the law and it did seem to fall to him more often than to other officers. Yet, after all, it would be absurd to waste a man of the calibre of, say, Inspector Dandekar on mere administration.

  ‘Yes? Dandekar, yes?’

  The DCC had been interrupted by his internal telephone and there on the other end, as if conjured up by merely having been thought of, was Dandekar himself.

  ‘Yes, yes, of course,’ the DCC said in answer to the forcefully plaintive sound that had been just audible from the other end. ‘Certainly you must. I’ll see what I can do, ek dum.’

  He replaced the receiver and turned back to Ghote, the eyes in his sharply commanding face still considering whatever it was that he had promised Dandekar.

  And then, as if a god-given solution to his problem had appeared in front of him, his expression changed in an instant to happy alertness. He swung round to the peon, who was carefully carrying away his aged chair.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Put the bandobast pin against – er – Inspector Sawant. I have a task I need Inspector Ghote for.’

  The peon wearily turned back with his chair to the big painted hierarchy of crime-fighters ranging from the Deputy Commissioner himself down to the branch’s three dogs Akbar, Moti and Caesar. Ghote, in front of the DCC’s wide baize-covered desk, glowed now with pure joy.

  ‘It’s this Shivaji Park case,’ the DCC said.

  ‘Oh yes, DCC. Multiple-stabbing double murder, isn’t it? Discovered this morning by that fellow who was i
n the papers when he came to Bombay, that noted British author.’

  Ghote, hoping his grasp both of departmental problems and of the flux of current affairs would earn him some hint of appreciation was surprised instead to receive a look of almost suspicious surmise. But he got no time to wonder why.

  ‘Yes, quite right,’ the DCC said briskly. ‘Dandekar is handling the case, of course. With an influential fellow like this Englishman involved we must have a really quick result. But there is something he needs help with. Get down to his cabin straight away, will you?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Yes, DCC.’

  Clicking his heels together by way of salute, Ghote hurried out.

  What would Dandekar have asked for assistance over? There would be a good many different lines to pursue in an affair of this sort. The murdered couple, an ice-cream manufacturer and his wife, had been, so office gup went, attacked in the middle of the night. The assailants had tied up their teenage son and only when he had at last roused the nearest neighbour, this visiting British author – of crime books, the paper had said, well-known crime books – had it been discovered that the two older people had been hacked to death. Goondas of that sort did not, of course, choose just any location. They sniffed around first. And left a trail. Which meant dozens of inquiries in the neighbourhood, usually by sub-inspectors from the local station. But with this influential fellow involved …

  Emerging into the sunlight, Ghote made his way along to Dandekar’s office which gave directly on the tree-shaded compound. He pushed open one half of its bat-wing doors. And there, looking just like his photograph, large as life or even larger, was the Noted British Author. He was crouching on a small chair in front of Dandekar’s green leather-covered desk, covering it much like a big fluffed-up hen on one small precious egg. His hips, clad in trousers already the worse for the dust and stains of Bombay life, drooped on either side while a considerable belly projected equally far forward. Above was a beard, big and sprawling as the body beneath, and above the beard was hair, plentiful and inclined to shoot in all directions. Somewhere between beard and hair a pale British face wore a look of acute curiosity.

  ‘Ah, Ghote, thank God,’ Dandekar, stocky, muscular, hook-nosed, greeted him immediately in sharp, T-spitting Marathi. ‘Listen, take this curd-face out of my sight. Fast.’

  Ghote felt a terrible abrupt inward sinking. So this was how he was to assist Dandekar, by keeping from under his feet a no doubt notable British nuisance. Even bandobast duties would be better.

  But Dandekar could hardly produce that expected rapid result with such a burden.

  Ghote squared his bony shoulders.

  Dandekar had jumped up.

  ‘Mr Peduncle,’ he said, in English now, ‘I would like you to—’

  ‘It’s not Peduncle actually,’ the Noted Author broke in. ‘Important to get the little details right, you know. That’s what the old shell collector in my books – he’s Mr Peduncle – is always telling his friend, Inspector Sugden. No, my name’s Reymond, Henry Reymond, author of the Peduncle books.’

  The multitudinous beard split with a wide, clamorously ingratiating grin.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Dandekar briskly. ‘But this is Inspector Ghote. He will be assisting me. Ghote, the domestic servant of the place has disappeared, a Goan known as John Louzado. They had no address at his native-place, but we might get it from a former employer. Will you see to that? And Mr Ped—Mr Reymond, who is expressing most keen interest in our methods, can attach himself to you while I talk with the young man who was tied up, the son, or rather adopted son. I think somehow he could tell a good deal more.’

  Ghote put out his hand for Mr Reymond to shake. He did not look forward to dealing with the numerous questions likely to arise from that keen interest in Bombay CID methods.

  As Ghote drove the Noted British Author in one of the branch’s big battered cars down Dr D. N. Road towards Colaba, the area where the fleeing servant’s former employee lived, he found his worst forebodings justified. His companion wanted to know everything: what was that building, what this, was that man happy lying on the pavement, where else could he go?

  Jockeying for place in the traffic, swerving for cyclists, nipping past great lumbering red articulated buses, Ghote did his best to provide pleasing answers. But the fellow was never content. Nothing seemed to delight him more than hitting on some small discrepancy and relentlessly pursuing it, comparing himself all the while to his Mr Peduncle and his motto ‘The significant variation: in that lies all secrets’. If Ghote heard the phrase once in the course of their twenty-minute drive, he seemed to hear it a dozen times.

  At last when they were waiting at the lights to get into Colaba Causeway, he was reduced to putting a question of his own. How did it come about, he interrupted, that Mr Reymond was living in a flat up at Shivaji Park? Would not the Taj Hotel just down there be more suitable for a distinguished visitor?

  ‘Ah yes, I know what you mean,’ the author answered with an enthusiasm that gave Ghote considerable inward pleasure. ‘But, you see, I am here by courtesy of Air India, on their new Swap-a-Country Plan. They match various people with their Indian equivalents and exchange homes. Most far-sighted. So I am at Shivaji Park and the writer who lives there – well, he has written some short stories, though I gather he’s actually a Deputy Inspector of Smoke Nuisances and a relation of your State Minister for Police Affairs and the Arts, as it happens – well, he at the present moment is installed in my cottage in Wiltshire and no doubt getting as much out of going down to the pub as I get from being in a flat here lucky enough to have a telephone. People are always popping in to use it and while they’re looking up a number in the little book, they talk away like one o’clock.’

  The Noted British Author’s eyes shone.

  ‘Yes,’ Ghote said.

  Certain queries had occurred to him. Could there, for instance, be an exchange between a police inspector in Bombay and one in, say New York? But somehow he could not see himself getting several months Casual Leave, and he doubted whether many other similar law-enforcing Bombayites would find it easy.

  But he felt that to voice such doubts aloud would be impolite. And his hesitation was fatal.

  ‘Tell me,’ Mr Reymond said, ‘that sign saying “De Luxe Ding Dong Nylon Suiting” …’ And, in a moment, they had struck full on another ‘significant variation’.

  Desperately Ghote pulled one more question out of the small stock he had put together.

  ‘Please, what is your opinion of the books of Mr Erle Stanley Gardner? To me Perry Mason is seeming an extremely clever individual altogether.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the Noted British Author, and he was silent right until they reached their destination in Second Pasta Lane.

  Mrs Patel, wife of a civil servant and former employer of John Louzado, was a lady of forty or so dressed in a cotton sari of a reddish pattern, at once assertive and entirely without grace.

  ‘You are lucky to find me, Inspector,’ she said when Ghote had explained their business. ‘At the Family Planning office where I undertake voluntary work, Clinic begins at ten sharp.’

  Ghote could not stop himself glancing at his watch though he well knew it was at least half-past ten already.

  ‘Well, well,’ Mrs Patel said sharply, seeing him. ‘Already I am behind schedule. But there is so much to be done. So much to be done.’

  She darted across the sitting-room, a place almost as littered with piles of paper as any office at Crime Branch, and plumped up a cushion.

  ‘Just if you have the address of John’s native-place,’ Ghote said.

  ‘Of course, of course. I am bound to have it. I always inquire most particularly after a servant’s personal affairs. You are getting an altogether better loyalty factor then. Don’t you find that, Mr— I am afraid I am not hearing your name?’

  She had turned her by no means negligible gaze full on the Noted British Author. Ghote, who had hoped not to explain his companion, introduced him with a br
ief ‘Mr Reymond, from UK.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mrs Patel. ‘Well, don’t you find … ah, but you are the Mr Reymond, the noted British author, isn’t it? Most pleased to meet you, my dear sir. Most pleased. What I always find with criminological works is the basic fact emerging, common to many sociological studies, a pattern of fundamental human carelessness, isn’t it? You see—’

  But river-spate rapid though she was, she had met her match.

  ‘One moment – I am sorry to interrupt – but there is a slight discrepancy here. You see, there are two different sorts of crime books involved. You are talking about sociological works, but what I write are more crime novels. Indeed, it’s just the sort of mistake my detective, Mr Peduncle the old collector of sea-shells, is always pointing out. “The significant variation: in that lies all secrets.”’

  ‘Ah, most interesting,’ Mrs Patel came back, recovering fast. ‘Of course I have read a good deal of Erle Stanley Gardner and so forth, and I must say …’

  She gave them her views at such length that Ghote at last, politeness or not, felt forced to break in.

  ‘Madam, madam. If you will excuse. There is the matter of John’s native-place address.’

  ‘Yes, yes. I am getting it.’

  Mrs Patel plunged towards a bureau and opened its flap-down front. A considerable confusion of documents was revealed, together with what looked like the wrappings for a present bought but never handed to its intended recipient.

  Prolonged searching located first an unhelpful address-book, then ‘a list of things like this which I jot down’ and finally a notebook devoted to household hints clipped from magazines. But no address.

  ‘Madam,’ Ghote ventured at last, ‘is it possible you did not in fact take it down?’

  ‘Well, well, one cannot make a note of everything. That is one of my principles: keep the paperwork down to a minimum.’

  She gave the British author some examples of Indian bureaucracy. Once or twice Ghote tried to edge him away, but even a tug at the distinguished shirtsleeve was unsuccessful. Only when in return he himself began explaining how British bureaucracy was a crutch that fatally hampered people like Inspector Sugden in his own books did Ghote act.