The Perfect Murder: the First Inspector Ghote Mystery

by H. R. F. Keating

  ‘You seem to think a great deal about this matter,’ the inspector said tranquilly.

  ‘But you don’t think no one has said anything since you were last here, do you?’ Prem answered. ‘Everybody has been talking about it. There is nothing else but the murder all day long.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  The inspector walked across the room behind Prem and looked out of the window through which the boy had been staring as he had entered.

  ‘Listen,’ Prem said, ‘you must suspect me. I was in my room alone working on my essay on the nature of beauty all evening. I was alone, except when Dilip came in and talked. And I cannot prove that he came in because he has said that he will not see you again, and I refuse even to hint at what it was we talked about.’

  ‘That makes it difficult for us, doesn’t it?’ Inspector Ghote said across the room to the tall Swede who was still standing by the doorway.

  ‘I am not going to tell you,’ Prem said.

  The inspector caught a flutter of movement at the corner of the courtyard. He craned forward to see what it was. Two of the maidservants had come out to sit and pod some peas.

  ‘If my brother tells me something which is family secret,’ Prem said, ‘it is my duty not to tell a policeman who comes poking his nose in where he isn’t wanted.’

  Inspector Ghote moved slightly so that he could see the two girls in the compound without craning. They were both pretty.

  ‘My brother says that he won’t let a filthy policeman bully him,’ said Prem. ‘And I agree.’

  A short silence followed.

  ‘Mind you,’ Prem said, ‘he has had a shock. That’s certain. I don’t think he would always be as rude as that. Though of course he has been away in Delhi for some time and people change. Or, anyhow, some people change. You can divide people into two classes, as a matter of fact. Those who change and those who do not.’

  ‘And which class do you come into yourself?’ Inspector Ghote asked.

  ‘I am not sure,’ Prem said. ‘Sometimes I think one, sometimes the other.’

  ‘I see. And which do you think today?’

  ‘I too have had a shock,’ Prem said. ‘Admittedly, Neena is not my wife, but she is my sister-in-law. And when you learn something like that, even about your sister-in-law, it’s bound to affect you.’

  ‘So you have changed?’ said the inspector.

  Prem glared at him.

  ‘I suppose you think I oughtn’t to have done,’ he shouted. ‘I suppose you wouldn’t turn a single hair of your head if you were told your sister-in-law had been violated?’

  Inspector Ghote did not leave the window. The girls were giggling together over their pea-podding.

  ‘Violated?’ he said.

  ‘Yes. Violated. I suppose you know what that means?’

  The inspector smiled to himself.

  ‘And when did this – this act take place?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know exactly.’

  ‘Not exactly? You mean you don’t know within an hour?’

  ‘No,’ Prem said. ‘I do not know the year even. Perhaps I could work it out. Neena is not all that old now, and she has been married to Dilip for more than two years. It was before then, so it could have happened only during a certain time. Unless she was a victim of child rape, of course.’

  ‘Yes,’ the inspector agreed, ‘it is important to consider all possibilities.’

  ‘But in any case it is no business of yours,’ Prem replied.

  The inspector turned to face him.

  ‘Who is supposed to have violated your sister-in-law?’ he said.

  Prem drew himself up.

  ‘I refuse to say.’

  ‘But you have told so much already. This is why your brother was speaking with you while you were writing your essay, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, as a matter of fact, it is.’

  ‘And you told before that it was something he had learnt only then.’

  ‘I never said.’

  The inspector smiled.

  ‘I am afraid you did,’ he said. ‘So, you see, it is my business. If your brother really had learnt this a few minutes before only, he may have taken certain actions. Now, who was the supposed violator?’

  ‘I refuse to say. Absolutely.’

  ‘I think it would be better if you told.’

  ‘It is none of your business, none of your bloody business.’

  Prem glared at him.

  ‘Don’t you see,’ the inspector said, ‘if your brother heard this just before Mr Perfect was attacked, then it is relevant to inquiries.’

  ‘It is not,’ Prem said. ‘I swear to you that it is not.’

  ‘It would be best if you told.’

  ‘I can’t. It was someone very important. Someone it is better not to talk about. It is a family secret.’

  ‘Then it was not Mr Perfect?’ said the inspector.

  Suddenly Prem laughed.

  ‘Mr Perfect,’ he said, ‘that dry old pea-stick couldn’t have violated a fly.’

  ‘All right. But you still won’t tell me who this person is.’

  ‘It is absolutely family secret.’

  ‘Well,’ answered the inspector, ‘I said a few minutes ago that I would respect your decision to stay silent, and I will.’

  He turned on his heel and left Prem, looking decidedly bewildered and a little apprehensive, standing in the middle of the stuffily furnished room. Axel Svensson, caught on the hop, stood there too for a few seconds and then hurried after the inspector.

  ‘Well, congratulations, my friend,’ he said. ‘You certainly went the right way about getting information out of that young man.’

  ‘Doctor Gross is most emphatic, as you will recall, about the necessity of correctly estimating the character of a witness,’ the inspector replied.

  ‘Ah, yes. Yes, of course,’ said the Swede. ‘But where does what we have just learnt leave us?’

  He spoke quickly, as if he was changing the subject.

  ‘I mean,’ he added, ‘it is difficult to see how what happened to Dilip Varde’s wife two or three years ago can be anything to do with the attack on Mr Perfect which has only just taken place.’

  ‘If anything did happen to her,’ said the inspector.

  ‘If –’

  ‘Doctor Gross has a whole section on the unreliability of young people as witnesses,’ the inspector said.

  He gave the Swede a searching look.

  ‘So,’ the Swede said hastily, ‘you are going to check with Neena Varde herself. An excellent precaution. Shall we call a servant to show us to her?’

  ‘No,’ said the inspector, ‘I think it would be a good idea not to. I think we will just go about the house looking for her. I am very interested in this house.’

  ‘In this house?’

  ‘Yes. In this house where one night quite suddenly an old gate is shut and locked so that the servants’ quarters are cut off, and where a husband learns suddenly two years after his marriage that his wife did not come to him as maiden, and where attempted murder is committed.’

  They walked along in silence for a little. But they were not destined to see much of Lala Arun Varde’s house. Because Lala Arun Varde himself caught them prowling.

  ‘Ho.’

  They heard his enormous shout from somewhere behind them and both wheeled like sneak-thieves caught red-handed.

  ‘Ho, policemen fleecemen,’ Lala Varde shouted. ‘What are you doing creeping about my house like that? Ha, are you seeking out my womenfolk, you never-satisfied ravishers?’

  His advance upon them had brought him within striking range. Like two darting pythons his left hand and right went out, and the pointing forefingers jabbed hard into the ribs of the inspector and the Swede.

  Lala Varde roared with laughter.

  ‘Oh, Inspector detector, forgive me,’ he said, the tears beginning to stream down his generous cheeks, ‘but you really both looked so like a pair of goondas that I had to say someth
ing. Oh, you robbers, you rapers, you ravishers.’

  He rocked forward with laughter.

  And suddenly stopped.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he said.

  ‘We were looking for your daughter-in-law, Lala Varde sahib,’ said Inspector Ghote.

  ‘My Neena Peena. Ah, then I was right. You were seeking out my womenfolk.’

  Lala Varde resumed his laughing. But the inspector and the Swede were unable to efface looks of considerable wariness.

  ‘So,’ Lala Varde said, when he had had his laugh out, ‘so, and what do you want with my Neena?’

  ‘It is necessary to interview all members of the household,’ the inspector said.

  ‘Interview? Yes. But what do you want to interview my Neena about?’

  The inspector jumped in quickly in case his Swedish friend said anything he would prefer kept from Lala Varde.

  ‘It is routine, sahib,’ he said. ‘It is necessary to ask every member of the household certain routine questions about their whereabouts at the time of the attack.’

  ‘Attack? What attack?’ Lala Varde said.

  He looked at the inspector with sharply pig-like eyes.

  ‘Of the attack on – That is, of the Perfect Murder, as they call it,’ the inspector said.

  ‘Ha, so you suspect my little Neena of killing that old long fool of a stick?’ Lala Varde said. ‘Well, you are right. She did it. That’s certain. Certain sure. And look, she has just come into the compound. Now’s your chance. Get her, Inspector sahib. Get her.’

  The inspector darted a look out of the corridor window beside them. Sure enough a third person had joined the two maids and was evidently berating them for the slowness of their pea-podding. This would be Neena Varde. He decided he could leave her be for a few moments. She was obviously enjoying herself at her scolding and would be there for some time to come.

  He turned back to Lala Varde.

  ‘No, sir,’ he said, ‘I know your joking manner. But, really, you must be careful. You should not accuse lightly a member of your own family of such a grave crime.’

  ‘Lightly rightly,’ said Lala Varde. ‘I tell you, Inspector, that woman is dangerous. She is a she-demon. No one is safe from her wiles. When I arranged for her to marry my poor Dilip, though there were good reasons, it was the greatest mistake I ever made in my life.’

  His great cheeks drooped and his whole face took on an expression so woebegone that it looked as if it would never recover.

  ‘The greatest mistake,’ he repeated.

  He sank to the ground where he was and sat cross-legged on the stone floor of the corridor.

  Inspector Ghote coughed delicately.

  ‘What exactly is it that makes you describe her as – Well, as a she-demon?’ he said.

  Lala Varde’s head jerked up.

  ‘Ah, you are poking prying now,’ he said. ‘Into the very heart of my family you go with your prying poking. But you won’t do any good, I can tell you. Oh, no, my Inspector, if you want to find out about Miss Neena you must find out for yourself. But watch out. Watch out.’

  Under his thin uniform Inspector Ghote’s shoulders took on a straight line.

  ‘Very well then, sahib,’ he said. ‘If you will excuse.’

  He turned and walked quickly along to a doorway leading out into the courtyard. Neena Varde had her back to him and was still scolding the two maids, but he gained the impression that she was perfectly aware of his approach.

  Three or four yards away he stopped and took a good look at her. Doctor Gross would have approved his caution.

  Neena Varde was a short slight girl with something oddly elusive at first in the way she stood and in her gestures. Inspector Ghote found her hard to put into any category for all that both in the extravagant way she was lecturing the maids and in the clothes she had chosen to wear – a bright orange blouse with a sari in a red which clashed horribly – she seemed determined to assert her personality.

  Under the lash of her tongue the two maids only giggled spasmodically, though had she meant everything she had said they ought to have been on their knees taking the dust from her feet and heaping it on their heads. And, as if to prove her lightning was without power to burn, in the middle of a towering denunciation she swung suddenly round and addressed the inspector.

  ‘I know what you’re here for,’ she said. ‘And I tell you it’s no use.’

  Inspector Ghote could not prevent himself blinking once at the unexpectedness of the attack. But he blinked once only.

  ‘Good morning,’ he replied. ‘Am I right in thinking I’m addressing Mrs Neena Varde? My name is Ghote, Inspector Ghote, Bombay C.I.D. and this is Mr Axel Svensson, the distinguished criminologist.’

  Neena’s manner changed as suddenly as if a completely different person had been substituted for her in front of their eyes.

  ‘A criminologist,’ she breathed. ‘Oh, how marvellous. Always I have wanted to meet a criminologist.’

  She fluttered her eyelids a little in Svensson’s direction. He licked his lips and found no reply.

  ‘Then I am glad to have gratified your wish,’ Inspector Ghote said. ‘Mr Svensson is helping me with my inquiries into the attack on Mr Perfect, and he would very much like to know how you yourself spent the evening in question.’

  ‘Me?’

  Neena looked up at the tall Swede.

  ‘Yes, if you please,’ he said in an unusually subdued voice.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘think of me interesting a great criminologist.’

  She said no more, but looked modestly down at the ground.

  ‘You would interest him more if you answered the question,’ Inspector Ghote said.

  ‘Oh, you don’t want to know what a creature like myself was doing.’

  ‘We do,’ Inspector Ghote said.

  Neena looked up intensely at the towering Swede.

  ‘Yes, we do,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, but it’s all so perfectly simple,’ Neena said. ‘I was in my room from the moment dinner was over. I had a terrible, terrible headache. I just lay there. On my bed. I was too weak even to move.’

  All this was directed vehemently against Axel Svensson. And he, evidently picturing as vividly as was intended Neena lying helpless on her bed, was unable to prevent a dull blush marring the freshness of his Scandinavian cheek.

  ‘And did you see anyone there?’ Inspector Ghote asked placidly.

  ‘Only my maid. I told her on no account to let a soul come near me,’ said Neena. ‘I just couldn’t have borne it.’

  ‘I see,’ Inspector Ghote said. ‘And now perhaps you could tell us something about Mr Perfect. Did you know him well?’

  ‘That man. That man.’

  Neena’s voice rose abruptly almost to a scream.

  ‘No, no, no, no,’ she said. ‘I cannot bear to think of that man. My head, my head. I must go.’

  And whipping the corner of her sari across the lower half of her face she turned and ran in a series of curious little jabs of speed back into the house.

  12

  ‘Stop. Stop. Stop. I am not finishing.’

  Inspector Ghote, shouting with increasing fury, set off in the direction Neena Varde had taken. He had her in sight for only the short time it took her to run across to the two servant girls sitting on the baked ground with the basin of podded peas between them, brush past them and disappear into a cool, dark doorway beyond.

  As the inspector came up, just restraining himself from breaking into a run, the two maids with squeaky screams of excitement seized basin, peas and discarded pods and vanished in a wriggle of swirling saris the way Neena had gone.

  Inspector Ghote halted, breathing fast, his uniform in disarray.

  ‘But shouldn’t we go after her?’ Axel Svensson inquired, coming up in his wake.

  A look of some embarrassment came over the inspector.

  ‘It is probably the women’s quarter,’ he said.

  He looked at the open doorway, mysterious,
alluring, repelling.

  And found a happy thought in his head.

  ‘I think it would be better not to insist on interview,’ he said.

  With each word his tone grew more assured and thoughtful.

  He looked up at the big Swede.

  ‘No,’ he said with new decisiveness, ‘it would definitely be inadvisable to prolong questioning a person with obviously unreliable qualities like that young woman.

  Axel Svensson nodded energetically.

  ‘A first-class decision, my friend,’ he said.

  Inspector Ghote turned smartly on his heel and set off across the compound for the distant french windows.

  He found himself possessed of a strong impression that his every movement was watched, noted, stored as a subject for gossip. The many windows of all shapes and sizes that here, there and everywhere broke up the glaring white inner walls of the house with patches of soft black inscrutability could well have hidden twenty pairs of watchful eyes and he would have been no wiser. Above him in the sky, now washed of its blueness by the harsh sunlight, he noticed for the first time the monotonous cawing of the inevitable crows wheeling and gliding overhead.

  Definitely, he told himself, the sound was not mocking laughter: it was the noise of stupid scavenging birds only.

  He took a look back at the doorway through which he had allowed Neena to make her escape.

  It was still black and blandly forbidding. He turned away.

  But not before into the dark oblong had stepped the figure of someone he had not yet seen, a stately-looking woman of about sixty, wearing a dark sari of green silk.

  He turned back and began going across the compound towards her. She in her turn advanced on him, walking with stubbornly erect dignity, but without grace. Her hair was sternly grey and the features beneath it, strongly formed and well marked, were set unmovingly.

  She reached the inspector, stopped and made the namaskar with hands placed decisively together.

  ‘You are the police inspector,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, certainly,’ he replied a little uneasily.

  ‘I am Mrs Lakshmi Varde. Has my daughter-in-law refused to answer?’

  Inspector Ghote licked his lips.