Inspector Ghote Plays a Joker

by H. R. F. Keating

  “I am sorry, sahib. There must be some mistake. No one has called at all this evening. I answer the door always.” Ghote swung round and gave him a hard look. He seemed confident enough. Was he brazen? It did not look like it.

  From behind him a voice spoke.

  “It is Mr. Ghote, is it not?”

  He shot round. Sir Rustomjee Currimbhoy was standing at the head of the stairs, looking down over the heavily carved banisters. He was wearing a dark blue silk dressing-gown which came down to his ankles. From behind him faintly there came the strains of music, European music of some sort, sonorous and majestic.

  Ghote felt the heat leaving him.

  “Good evening, Sir Rustomjee,” he said, feeling his way. “I am afraid I am being a trouble.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  The old man was as distantly polite as ever. Could he, not an hour before, have shot down Sgt. Desai, father and husband?

  “Have you had a visit from a sergeant of mine, please?” Ghote asked.

  “This evening?”

  “Yes. He was making some inquiries about-”

  Ghote felt suddenly unwilling to say more. But he plunged on.

  “He was making inquiries about a sporting rifle which has been stolen from the Rajah of Bhedwar.”

  Sir Rustomjee pursed his lips.

  “That young man has gone to pieces in the last year or two,” he said. “One ought not to allow guns to be stolen. It’s one’s simple duty.”

  Bluff or truth? There was no telling. But in face of such a calm declaration of ignorance from such a respected figure as Sir Rustomjee there was no staying in the house either.

  Ghote thanked the old scientist, refused refreshment, muttered more politenesses and left.

  He found Desai under the next lamp-post down the quiet street. He saw him from a distance of about twenty yards. He was crouching in the circle of soft yellow light from the lamp playing cards with an old man. Approaching softly, Ghote reckoned that Desai’s opponent must be the chowki-dar from the big house opposite. Perhaps the very fellow who was meant to have been on watch when the Rajah of Bhedwar had quietly unscrewed the padlock on Sir Rustomjee’s laboratory hut.

  “Sergeant Desai,” Ghote shouted, breaking the silence of the quiet night.

  Desai leapt a mile.

  But as soon as he saw Ghote he grinned.

  “You know, Inspector,” he said, “I have been having a run of luck like I never had before. I made up all my losses on that water walk fellow. Imagine that.”

  : : : :

  It was more than an hour later when Ghote got back home again. He felt terribly tired and had a thundering headache.

  “You are to ring Headquarters at once,” Protima said to him the moment he appeared in the doorway.

  For an instant he vowed he would not. How were they to know he had not for some reason stayed away from home all night?

  He went over to the telephone. For once he got a connection without trouble.

  “Inspector Ghote?”

  It was a different duty sergeant now.

  “Inspector, I have a message, Number One priority from D.S.P. Naik.”

  What now? Surely the D.S.P. was not going to try another joke?

  “Yes?”

  “The Rajah of Bhedwar had been killed. Shot. With a .22 bullet. Out at his shack at Juhu Beach. The D.S.P. says you are to report there immediately and take full charge of investigation.”

  It was only when the police truck from Headquarters had pulled up with a shriek of brakes outside Ghote’s house, effectively waking all the neighbours, and had started off again with a satisfying roar of its engine that he realised that he no longer owed Bunny Baindur two thousand rupees.

  He sat in the front seat beside the driver, a speed maniac who thought of nothing but what fun it was to overtake every other vehicle in sight, and as far as the bucketing of the truck would allow thought over the implications.

  Of one thing he was sure: he would make no attempt to pay the debt of honour to whoever the Rajah’s heirs were. The Rajah had forced him into the bargain: the only person who could force him to pay up was the Rajah himself. And besides nobody knew. That fearsome Sikh servant had been out of the way, and the whole wretched game had taken less than ten minutes.

  But had he himself not got a motive for murdering the Rajah? He shook his head to clear the nonsense out of it. Of course he had a motive. But as he had not actually committed the murder, motive did not come into it. And in the meanwhile he was better qualified to find the killer than anyone else. And that was the thing that mattered, he reflected fiercely as the truck took the narrow sandy lane down to the Rajah’s shack at about fifty miles an hour. That was what mattered: to get the murderer into the dock.

  The door of the bungalow opened in an abrupt patch of white light. A figure issued from it and progressed across towards them at a fast trot. In the headlights Ghote made out after a second or two that it was an inspector of police in uniform. No doubt the man from the local force, M Division.

  “C.I.D.? C.I.D.?” the newcomer called out sharply in a yapping voice as soon as he was at all near enough to be heard.

  Ghote dropped down on to the yielding sand beside the truck.

  “Ghote here,” he called back. “Inspector from C.I.D. Headquarters.”

  The uniformed inspector came trotting to a halt in front of him, tucking a swagger-stick under his arm.

  “Ah, yes, Ghote,” he said briskly. “Quite right.”

  He had a small moustache, not stretching the full width of his upper lip and all brushed severely downwards.

  “Inspector Gadgil,” he said. “I came down as soon as we heard. I think you will find I have taken every precaution, and the chap is locked up in the lavatory. Man on guard, of course.”

  “Chap? Lavatory? What chap?”

  Ghote had thought his mind had cleared on the way out. He had done his best to shake off his tiredness and prepare himself to tackle the business in a logical way.

  “The murderer, of course,” Inspector Gadgil said. “Thought it best to await your arrival before taking him along to the chowkey here, and the lavatory seemed the most suitable place. Certain problems might have arisen, of course. But you came reasonably quickly.”

  Ghote drew in a deep breath. He could smell the salt of the sea in the cool darkness.

  “Shall we go back to the house?” he said.

  “Certainly, certainly. And I flatter myself you will find everything in order there. The chappie was making a damnable din to begin with. But he has quietened himself down now. Knows we have him, I dare say.”

  They took a few silent paces through the soft sand together. Then Ghote ventured another question.

  “You caught him red-handed then?”

  “Pretty well, pretty well,” Inspector Gadgil answered.

  Ghote saw the flash of his teeth under the little moustache as he turned towards him. Had he smiled?

  “How was that?" Ghote asked.

  “The fatality was reported by the Rajah's servant, you know. I myself came back with him here. Great deal to be done in cases of this sort, no use trusting subordinates. And there he was.”

  ‘There? Where?”

  “Sitting in an arm-chair looking at the body. Drunk, of course.”

  “And the weapon?”

  “No trace of that, no trace of that. I put three men on to it at once. Most important to locate the weapon. But no trace at all.”

  “But you know it was a .22 bullet?”

  In a moment he would have to ask this fellow who his capture was. But perhaps he would come out with it. If he did not, then he would really be in a good position. He seemed to be not at all the sort of person to let have any advantage, this Inspector Gadgil.

  “Yes, yes,” he replied briskly as before. “The bullet penetrated the heart and passed through the rib cage at the rear. I located it myself on the floor, I did not make the mistake of handling it, of course, but you can take
it from me it is a .22.”

  “I see. But your man is there on the spot and yet the weapon missing? You are going to be able to connect them?”

  “Connect them? Connect them? Naturally. After all when you have the former Palace Officer at Bhedwar who has been dismissed for inefficiency come creeping back and you find the master dead, there is hardly any other conclusion.”

  Ghote took this in and rapidly considered it. But it was too much to handle.

  “The former Palace Officer?” he asked, throwing away whatever advantage he had had.

  Inspector Gadgil stopped on the threshold of the big bungalow.

  “Yes,” he said. “That only came to light after I had rung Headquarters. This fellow Captain Harbaksh Singh was Palace Officer out at Bhedwar in the old days. In the former Rajah’s time.”

  “I see,” said Ghote.

  He smiled to himself. By chance the authority of the C.I.D. man had been preserved. Then he frowned. What Gadgil had told him did not sound as if it altogether added up. And if it did not . . . Gadgil did not look like a man who would happily surrender a pet theory.

  “Shall we go in then?” he said.

  “I will lead the way,” Inspector Gadgil said. “I have a pretty accurate idea of the scene.”

  He went, short, important steps, in ahead of Ghote, through the hall and into the room where that terrible game of gin rummy had been played.

  The card-table was no longer there. Doubtless it had been folded up and put away somewhere. Ghote was glad of it. But otherwise the room was as he remembered it. Large heavy pieces of teak furniture everywhere, the side-table with the same array of bottles, the golden air conditioner humming away still, cool though it was.

  The french windows on to the veranda were open, and just inside them lay the body of Bunny Baindur, Rajah of Bhedwar. He was lying on his back, with his arms extended as if he had been flung down. In his chest the entrance wound of the bullet had ploughed a wide hole. Ghote recognised the aperture at once: he had seen almost the identical wound not three days earlier. In the body of a red flamingo.

  “Now your man Harbaksh Singh was sitting just here,” Inspector Gadgil said, pointing with his swagger-stick to one of the heavy arm-chairs which was turned to face the open windows.

  He gave his little moustache a twitch of satisfaction.

  “I do not think he counted on us getting to the scene quite as quickly as we did,” he said. ‘“But I know how to move snappily when the need arises. Yes, indeed.”

  “And when you found him?” Ghote asked, proceeding fatedly step by step to a conclusion that loomed larger and larger.

  “Asked him what he was doing,” Inspector Gadgil replied sharply. “Saw what condition he was in, and asked him pretty damn’ quick to account for himself.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Nothing that made any sense. So I put two and two together and had him locked up in that lavatory inside two minutes.”

  “Inspector,” Ghote said, “I would like to question him now. Would you be so good as to have him brought in?”

  “Certainly, certainly. Though I hardly think you are going to get anything out of him. Nerves all gone to pieces, you know.”

  “I see,” Ghote said.

  Gadgil trotted over and began to bark orders at his men on guard over the locked lavatory. He appeared to have to bark quite a lot of orders, but at last he came back in.

  “On his way,” he said. “On his way. Now we will see what we can get out of him.”

  He took up a stance in front of the drinks table, his swagger-stick clasped firmly at either end across his stomach.

  Ghote went over to him.

  “Inspector,” he said, “I must request that you do not intervene during-my interrogation.”

  Inspector Gadgil gave one single twitch to his little brush of a moustache.

  “I think you can rely on me, Inspector,” he said. “Yes, I think you will not find I commit any breaches of etiquette.”

  The door opened and Captain Harbaksh Singh was marched in by two constables.

  He was a man of sixty or more. This was the fact that stood out about him, all the more because he so evidently attempted to look a young forty. He held himself militarily upright, but with effort. His moustache was youthfully rakish, but well sprinkled with grey hairs. There was nothing he could do about his paunch of a belly or the heavy mottled flush on his cheeks.

  “Captain Harbaksh Singh?” Ghote said. “My name is Ghote. I am an inspector of the Bombay C.I.D.”

  Captain Harbaksh Singh’s bloodshot eyes fastened on him.

  “Ah,” he said. “Then you’re just the chappie I want to see. What I want to know is : what the hell do your fellows mean by locking me up in that lavatory?”

  “Please be seated, Captain Singh,” Ghote said, with a coldness designed both to pull the ground from under this aggressive figure and to reassure Inspector Gadgil and thus keep him happily quiet.

  For a moment it looked as if his tactics were going to fail. Gadgil had clutched at his swagger-stick in open fury at the invitation to the captain and the captain himself made no immediate attempt to sit. But the crisis evaporated. Gadgil slowly took notice of the chill in Ghote’s tone, and the captain quite suddenly subsided with an audible groan into one of the arm-chairs.

  “I understand," Ghote said to him, “that you were on the scene of the crime when my colleague here arrived.” A prim little flick of a smile appeared on Gadgil’s face. Captain Singh slowly raised his eyes to Ghote.

  “Yes,” he said. “I was. Want to make anything of it?” “It is not a question of what I want to make out of it,” Ghote said sharply. “It is a question of what a magistrate may make out of it in due course.”

  Captain Singh shook his grizzled head under its neat white turban.

  “Won’t wash,” he said. “Won’t wash at all. I’d only just got here a couple of minutes before all those policemen of yours came rushing in, and young Bunny had been shot half an hour or more earlier.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  Ghote cracked in with the question with all the speed of a courtroom drama merchant. But he failed to discompose the young-old figure slumped in the heavy chair.

  “How do you think I knew? When I saw the young fool lying there, what do you think I did? I looked to see what was wrong with him. Thought he might be drunk, though he could hold a phenomenal amount of liquor.” “And you found he was dead?”

  “He was dead. And he had been dead some time. I fought in a war once, you know.”

  “Ah, an experienced witness,” Ghote said, infusing a sudden pleasure into his voice. “You could be most helpful. Tell me, did you form any opinion about how close the killer was when the shot was fired?”

  Captain Singh looked over at the flung-down form of the Rajah of Bhedwar.

  “I should say he was shot with a rifle, from a fair distance.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  It was Inspector Gadgil. Ghote’s move to soften up his witness had produced an unexpected side-effect.

  He swung round from Captain Singh and gave his uniformed colleague a long, cold look. It took a second or two to make its effect, but then it penetrated.

  “Oh, your pigeon, Inspector, your pigeon,” Gadgil muttered.

  Ghote turned to Captain Singh again.

  “Yes,” he said. “As far as we know the Rajah was shot with a rifle from a distance. Where were you earlier this evening, Captain Singh?”

  Captain Singh’s bloodshot eyes brightened considerably.

  “Until ten minutes before I got here I was at the Sunny Sands Hotel a little way along the beach here,” he said. “And I was surrounded by good friends every minute of the evening.”

  Ghote swung round and looked Inspector Gadgil full in the face. The tightly clutched swagger-stick actually dropped from his hands.

  Ghote went and sat on the neighbouring massive teak arm-chair to Captain Singh’s.

&nbs
p; “So much for the immediate circumstances,” he said. “But I have an idea you could be most helpful to my inquiries in other directions.”

  He blatantly stressed the “my” and saw from the glare Captain Singh promptly gave the still very disconcerted Gadgil that the point was taken.

  “Of course, old boy. Anything I can do to clear up this messy business,” the Rajah’s former Palace Officer said.

  “It so happens,” Ghote said, “that I have recently had certain dealings with the Rajah.”

  Out of the corner of his eye he noticed a further degeneration in the collapsed state of Inspector Gadgil.

  “From what I saw of the Rajah," he went on to Captain Singh, “I would say he was a man who would have had many enemies. But I would be grateful if you, who knew him well, could tell me without prejudice who might have wanted to kill him.”

  Captain Singh had been staring at the spreadeagled body as Ghote had been speaking. Now he turned his bloodshot eyes full on him.

  “Nobody I can think of could have possibly wanted to kill Bunny Baindur," he said.

  CHAPTER X

  In the spacious, heavily furnished room in the Rajah of Bhedwar’s Juhu Beach “shack” with the wide open french windows letting in the quiet sound of the sea running up the wide stretch of the sands and with the body of the Rajah lying knocked flat by the bullet which had killed him, Inspector Ghote found his mouth had positively opened wide with surprise.

  He looked at the paunchy figure of the Rajah’s former Palace Officer, Captain Harbaksh Singh, sitting in a slumped attitude in the big teak chair opposite him.

  “Nobody?” he repeated stupidly. “You are saying that nobody would want to kill the Rajah?”

  “Nobody I know,” Captain Singh said. “And I knew his set well enough. Inside out you might say.”

  “But-”

  Captain Singh shook his grizzled young man’s head. “Nobody would want to kill Bunny Baindur,” he said. “And I’ll tell you why.”

  Ghote leant forward.

  “Nobody would want to kill him because Bunny had never cared a damn about anybody.”

  “Yes,” Ghote said, “I know he felt like that about people. But surely if he treated them as dirt there must be a lot of people who would have wanted perhaps to kill him?” “No,” answered Captain Singh with complete assurance. “No. You see, he cared for people less than that. He did not care for them enough to want to hurt them even. He cared for nobody, not at all.”