Inspector Ghote Plays a Joker

by H. R. F. Keating

  “You would want the manager, Superintendent sahib?” the doorman asked, inclining from his great height towards Ghote.

  “I wish to see Mr. Anil Bedekar,” Ghote said. “I am Inspector Ganesh Ghote.”

  “Very well, sahib. If you would be so good as to wait.”

  The hall porter cast a swift glance round over the heads of the people coming and going, as if first to spot somewhere he could tuck this unwelcome visitor away, and second to find a bearer to get hold of Anil Bedekar as quickly as possible.

  He found the bearer first, summoned him to his side with a glance of fire, issued him with instructions in a voice so low that Ghote himself, standing just beside them, could not hear, and sent him on his way at full, discreet speed.

  The instructions must have been very terse. In less than a minute and a half the bearer was back. A whispered word to the porter. The porter leant towards Ghote again.

  “Mr. Bedekar is out on the terrace, Inspector sahib. He is alone. He would see you there.”

  The way in which he dropped his voice on the word “Inspector” while still actually pronouncing it was eloquent testimony to the qualities which kept him in the job.

  Ghote took pleasure in not offering him a tip at the public expense. He followed the bearer, marching through the great dining-room with its tables covered in dense white cloths and heavy silvery cutlery, with its army of alert waiters ready to dart forward at the least behest of any of the remaining later diners, and out into the soft darkness of the broad terrace.

  Out here too there were tables, and at some of them people were sitting, the white glimmer of coffee cups in front of them and the translucent glint of glasses. Beyond, the harbour spread out into the night with the Dolphin Light breaking out intermittently away towards the right and other smaller lights flicking here and there or progressing at infinitely slow speed across the faintly glinting black surface of the calm water.

  The bearer led him to a small table at the far end of the wide terrace where Anil Bedekar sat alone at a little distance from the nearest other diners. In front of him, too, there was the luxurious apparatus of coffee-drinking in these surroundings, of which the little white cup on the edge of the round table seemed the least significant part.

  He looked up at the soft-footed approach of the bearer.

  “Inspector, Inspector,” he said bonhomously as he saw Ghote. “What is it I can do for you? You will drink some coffee? Bearer, another cup.”

  “No. No coffee,” Ghote said sharply.

  Anil Bedekar waved the order for the cup away. He was smoking a fat cigar and its deep-red glowing point described a lazy circle in the night air as he made the gesture. The bearer disappeared in well-trained silence.

  Anil Bedekar looked at Ghote, standing stiffly above him.

  “Come, sit, sit, Inspector," he said.

  Ghote pulled the second chair away from the table, placed it exactly at right angles to Anil Bedekar’s and sat down on it. At attention.

  The racehorse-owner stretched both arms high above his head, the fiery-tipped cigar standing out like a beacon.

  “This is the end of a good day for me,” he said.

  He flicked his head round and gave Ghote a shrewd glance.

  “You know nothing about horseracing, Inspector ?” he said, both statement and question.

  “I know very little," Ghote conceded, with grudgingness.

  “Then you would find it hard to tell how I am feeling now.”

  Slowly and luxuriatingly Anil Bedekar brought his two arms down from their outstretched position. Ghote was unable to prevent a little pulling-down, disapproving motion at the corners of his mouth.

  “Yes," he answered. “I imagine I would find it very difficult.”

  A crooked grin creased Bedekar’s monkey-face like a streak of forked lightning.

  “You disapprove of the racing game, my Inspector,” he said. “You think it is all a waste and a wicked way to spend your life.”

  Ghote made no reply. Which was in fact pointedly to omit the necessary denial.

  “And yet,” Anil Bedekar went on, blowing out the cigar smoke now in a long funnel of aromatic greyness. “And yet my useless hobby is not such a bad thing, you know.”

  Suddenly he crouched forward across the table and looked straight into Ghote’s eyes.

  “If five other poor boys in Bombay had wanted to win the Indian Derby as much as I did,” he said, “then there would be five hundred fewer people sleeping on the pavements of the city now. Five hundred and five.”

  Ghote thought about it. Perhaps it was true. The energy this man had shown in his single-minded pursuit of the intangible thing that was a winning horse in the Indian Derby was after all what India needed, so they said. Five times that energy would have added a good deal to the wealth of this city, have seeped down to those pavement sleepers.

  His train of acquiescence must have shown itself a little on his features: Anil Bedekar laughed again, a laugh of rich enjoyment.

  “Now, tell me, Inspector," he said with abrupt briskness, “what is it you have come for?”

  Ghote straightened his back in the woven cane chair. “Mr. Bedekar,” he said with formality, “I am inquiring into the death of the Rajah of Bhedwar.”

  Anil Bedekar tapped the ash from his cigar into the big, round ash-tray.

  “A sad business,” he said, “a sad business.”

  But he did not sound sad. He sounded as if he was enjoying life so much that a littie wise nodding over someone else's misfortune was merely an added pleasure. Even if that misfortune was being shot through the heart.

  “Mr. Bedekar, when I put certain questions to you early this morning, you told you had no suspicions that the late Rajah was responsible for a series of practical jokes of which one was the substituting for your horse Roadside Romeo of a donkey shortly before the said horse was due to run in the Indian Derby.”

  “Yes, yes, I told.”

  A long deep inhalation from the cigar.

  “And do you now repeat that you never suspected this?” Anil Bedekar’s eyes above the glowing point of the cigar were narrowed and shrewd. But he showed no sign of anxiety.

  “Yes, yes,” he said, mumblingly round the cigar end, “no suspicions I had. But you still say he did those things?”

  “Most certainly I do,” Ghote said, picking his words with double care. “He was responsible for a series of major practical jokes, and because of them he was murdered. He had not ties. He had no one to hate him, except for those people in the last few months he had chosen to play his jokes upon.”

  The big cigar waved lazily again.

  “If you say, if you say.”

  “And you were one of his victims/’

  “You seem to be very certain, Inspector. I suppose you are right.”

  “But you never suspected him?”

  “I have told. I never suspected.”

  An edge of irritation now.

  Ghote pounced.

  “Then why did you have the late Rajah followed?” Anil Bedekar leant back in his chair and laughed. “Oh, Inspector.”

  But he could not go on, he was laughing so much. “Oh, Inspector,” he gasped out at last. “And because of this you suspected me?”

  Ghote held his face rigid.

  “It is a circumstance that must be explained,” he said. “And so far you have offered no explanation.”

  Bedekar wiped tears from his eyes with the hairy back of his hard little hand.

  “Yes, you are right," he said. “It was foolish of me. I should have told. I should have told you I had had this done this morning. Then I thought that, if I mentioned, perhaps you would not understand."

  He leant forward earnestly.

  “This morning," he said, “at first I was not thinking very clearly. I was thinking about other things when you were talking. And that is a mistake."

  Ghote waited in silence for him to continue.

  “Yes," the racehorse-owner said reflect
ively, “I should have told then. Now it is going to sound even less convincing."

  “It will have to be convincing," Ghote said, allowing himself a ration of grimness. “Otherwise I will not remain convinced there is insufficient evidence to arrest you on a charge of murder."

  But the threat simply replaced the twinkle in Anil Bedekar's sharp eyes.

  “Well?" Ghote snapped.

  Anil Bedekar sighed.

  “I had Bunny Baindur followed," he said, “for a simple reason only: suddenly one day he began to ask questions about the running of my stables."

  He gave a grunt of a laugh.

  “Oh," he said, “he thought he was being very clever and that I had noticed nothing. But Anil Bedekar is not so easy to fool. I had noticed, though I did not let him see that I had. And then as soon as he had left me I put on to him a private detective I use sometimes."

  “Yes,' said Ghote. “The Rajah asked questions about your horses. You put a detective on to him. You found he was responsible for that trick that made you the laughing stock of the whole racing world."

  Anil Bedekar waved it all away with the fiery red tip of his plump cigar.

  “I could not have found he had changed Roadside Romeo into a donkey,” he said, “because at that time he had not done anything of the sort. Ask my detective. No, I see now that this is what he was planning to do, but at the time I thought only he was intending to nobble one of my runners.”

  “To nobble?” Ghote said.

  A flash of impatience came into the racehonse-owner’s eyes.

  “I thought he intended to spoil the running of one of my horses so that he could put a big bet on something it would have beaten and made a packet,” he said. “And as soon as I found that he did not need to make any packets I dropped the whole thing.”

  “You found that he was a wealthy man?”

  “Yes, yes. He looked like it always. But you can never tell. That I have learnt. But my man found it was so: he had a big income, though it died with him.”

  “Yes, that is so,” Ghote conceded. “But after the donkey incident had occurred, why did you not realise that that is what his plan had been?”

  He looked hard at the squat little racehorse-owner.

  Anil Bedekar shrugged.

  “At first I was too angry, I suppose,” he said. “I see that my account to you was not one hundred per cent convincing.”

  “All right. At first you were too angry. But then?”

  “Then something happened.”

  A look of intense pleasure, concealed only to make it yet more delightful, crossed Bedekar’s face.

  “What happened?” Ghote asked angrily.

  “You said you did not know much about racehorses?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “Well," Anil Bedekar said lazily, “they are funny animals. Very funny. You know what happens to one of them sometimes, just out of the blue for no reason at all?”

  “No.”

  “Suddenly they change from being an ordinary sort of colt or filly into being a Number One top-notcher. Just like that. For no reason. It does not happen very often. But it can happen. Do not trust me for that. Ask anyone you like. Ask Jack Cooper.”

  “And this has something to do with your explanation?” Ghote asked.

  “Certainly, a lot to do with it. Because, you see, this thing happened to one of my colts, the one you saw this morning, Malvolio. I bought him because he was a fairly good looking horse and a bargain. I expected him to win a race or two, but nothing much. And then this happened. Out at exercise he began to show fantastic form. We made a few quiet tests, ran a few gallops very early in the morning. And then I knew: I had got myself a cert for the Derby again. A real cert.”

  Ghote looked at him levelly.

  “And yet this morning you were a very worried man,” he said.

  Anil Bedekar shrugged.

  “I was a worried man. Yes. Not very worried, but worried. Malvolio had developed some fetlock trouble. It could have turned serious. But you saw how well he exercised this morning, and later the vet came and gave a most thorough examination. There is nothing at all wrong .with that horse, Inspector. He is a champion of champions.”

  “He will win the Indian Derby next year?”

  “It is as certain as anything ever was. I know it. I have known it for months now.”

  He leant forward and stubbed out his half-smoked cigar. “I knew it long before the Rajah was shot, Inspector,” he said.

  CHAPTER XVI

  Leaving the Taj Mahal Hotel, its foyer still full of elegant sari-clad women and well-dressed, paunchy men, and the dazzlingly bright rectangles of its little boutiques still glowing with lavishly displayed jewels, moulded and formed pottery and glitteringly embroidered cloths, Ghote soberly stated to himself that his case was not at an end.

  A promising trail had been abruptly terminated. But things were no worse than that. Indeed Anil Bedekar’s revelation simply meant that the affair had been solved a different way, by the process of elimination. Of the people the Rajah had confessed to hoaxing, there was now only Sir Rustomjee Currimbhoy left.

  And, as soon as the figure of the old Parsi scientist came clearly into the forefront of his mind, Ghote realised something which, he saw, he ought to have noted long before. In his last interview with Sir Rustomjee one passage had stuck awkwardly out: the odd business of Sir Rustomjee’s tiresome explanations about his choosing to spend the evening in his bedroom.

  Ghote saw now, quite suddenly and clearly, why the old man had done this. Simply because this was the sole room in the house where it was reasonably likelv that he would be free from observation by his own servants. A place where he could set himself up an alibi bv pretending that at the time Bunny Baindur was shot his brother Homi had been there with him.

  Ghote stopped in his tracks. He had been about to pav an unexpected visit on Sir Rustomjee. Instead he turned back into the huge hotel and sought out a telephone,

  The phone up at the Currimbhoy house was answered with promptness. Ghote recognised the voice of Felix, the Goan bearer. He asked, not for Sir Rustomjee, but for Mr. Homi Currimbhoy.

  There was a pause. Then Felix came back to the phone.

  “Mr. Homi is not in, Inspector. I understand he is at his club. If you would care to call him there?”

  Ghote said that he would. He asked for and was told the name of the club. He left the telephone and made straight for his truck.

  He had not long to wait at the club before a bearer, in white with a white turban and a broad red sash across one shoulder with his number on it in brass, came to tell him that Mr. Currimbhoy was in the billiard room and would see him there. He followed the man through big, echoing corridors with well-polished woodblock floors, and was left at the opened door of the billiard room with a deferential salaam.

  He looked in. The whole large room was deserted except for the single figure of Homi Currimbhoy. He was leaning over the edge of the farthest of the three big billiard tables, the only one with its long overhanging gold-fringed light-shade lit up. This light was in fact all the illumination the big room had, and Ghote could make out little of it, except that there was certainly no one else there, only dimly-seen racks with dozens of billiard cues of various lengths standing up in them like the bars of small cells, two or three sofas in dark wood with cane seats and a large glass-fronted cupboard high up on one wall inside which there could just be made out the full-bellied shapes of a number of silver cups and trophies.

  From the lit table there came the soft double plock of one of the balls striking the other two.

  “Ah,” said Homi Currimbhoy quietly to himself, “neat, very neat, and that makes three hundred and twelve.”

  Ghote cleared his throat a little. The rasping sound echoed very clearly in the cathedral quiet of the big high-ceilinged room.

  “Just two moments if you don’t mind,” Homi Currimbhoy said, without turning from the great area of lustrous green baize in front of him. “Highly
interesting little situation here.”

  Again there came the soft double plock, and Homi, humming a little to himself, manoeuvred his way round the big table. Ghote watched in silence. He saw the long, dark cue slide slowly backwards and then shoot smoothly forward. Plock.

  And silence. Nothing more.

  “Bother,” said Homi Currimbhoy.

  He straightened from the table and came across.

  They sat down side by side on one of the cane-seated sofas.

  “Well now?” said Homi Currimbhoy.

  “It is a matter concerning the night the Rajah of Bhedwar was shot, the night of the April seventh last.”

  Homi Currimbhoy pulled a long face.

  “Oh,” he said, “but you shouldn’t be asking me about that.”

  “And why not?”

  “Because I don’t know a thing about it, old boy. Not a thing.”

  He chuckled suddenly.

  “Unless you think I killed the poor chap,” he added.

  Ghote looked at him blank-faced.

  “I would like to know,” he said, “where you were on the night of the seventh last between the hours of 8 p.m. and midnight.”

  Homi Currimbhoy blinked.

  “But I say,” he exclaimed. “But really, old man. I mean, why?”

  “In connection with inquiries,” Ghote replied primly. The Parsi looked at him.

  “Well,” he said, “but all the same. I mean, stealing a bit of a cheeky run, aren’t you?”

  “There are questions it is my duty to ask.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  Homi pulled his face into a fittingly serious expression. “Yes,” he said. “Well then, I shall have to think.”

  He fell silent.

  “Not that, if I did get it wrong, it would really matter in the end,” he said. “I mean, I didn’t kill poor old Bunny, you know.”

  “Please,” Ghote said, “would you make every effort to be absolutely correct? What you tell may affect another person.”

  Homi turned aside and resumed his thinking.

  “Yes,” he said after a due interval. “All clear in my mind now.”

  “Well?”

  “Yes. Well, at the time you mention I was- Wait a moment.”