‘I think she became upset,’ he said. ‘I hope you do not think my questions were in any way improper.’
A tiny glint of almost contemptuous humour came into Lakshmi Varde’s sombre eyes.
‘I said nothing,’ she replied. ‘Were questions improper?’
‘Oh, no, no, no, no,’ Inspector Ghote said quickly.
He looked round at a loss for words.
And saw Axel Svensson.
‘May I introduce Mr Svensson?’ he said. ‘I should have done so already. Excuse me. He is Mr Svensson.’
‘Mr Svensson,’ said Lakshmi Varde. ‘Good morning, Mr Svensson.’
‘I should have explained Mr Svensson is a criminologist,’ said the inspector. ‘That is – That is, he is actually an expert employed by Unesco. He is making a study of our methods here in Bombay.’
‘He will be very pleased.’
The inspector could not make up his mind whether this remark had been made at his expense or not. He talked to cover his growing confusion.
‘You must answer my questions,’ he said. ‘I mean, that is, would you be good enough to try to see if you …’
‘But, yes, Inspector. You must have questions. You should have come before.’
‘I am very sorry,’ Ghote said. ‘I meant of course to come to you first. I realize that that is what I ought to have done, but various things –’
He stopped short.
‘Inspector,’ Arun Varde’s wife said with inflexible patience, ‘ask now.’
‘Oh, yes. Yes, of course. First – No. That can come later. No. First I would like sincerely to know, that is, if at all possible, what were your movements – That is, your movements on the night of the murder.’
‘Murder, Inspector? Has Mr Perfect died?’
Inspector Ghote felt the full force of the rebuke. What was he doing? Was he wishing Mr Perfect dead? Was he wanting to be faced with the Perfect Murder?
‘No, no, no,’ he stammered. ‘I meant – That is –’
Lakshmi Varde cut him short.
‘On evening of attack,’ she said, ‘first I saw that servants were cooking properly since we had guest. Then I saw meal was served. I ate myself. I went back to women’s quarter. I went to bed.’
Inspector Ghote listened attentively. Axel Svensson seemed to think he could do with some assistance.
‘Excuse me, madam,’ he said to Lakshmi, ‘but could you also tell us when you last saw Mr Perfect?’
‘Yes,’ she replied composedly, ‘I saw early in evening when he came from office with my husband. After I was not where he should be.’
‘I see,’ said the Swede. ‘That has been most help –’
Inspector Ghote suddenly interrupted.
‘A guest,’ he said. ‘You told us there was a guest. Who is this? I have heard nothing of guest.’
Lakshmi gently ignored the rather hectoring tone of this. She smiled slightly, though without warmth.
‘It was because guest was only my husband’s brother-in-law,’ she said. ‘You know Mr Gautam Athalye, Neena’s father?’
‘Oh, yes. Certainly. That is, I know him by name, of course. A lawyer of such eminence. But of course I – Not personally, that is.’
The sweat was coursing down the inspector’s face.
‘I think it will be necessary to see him as soon as possible,’ he blurted out. ‘It seems likely attempts were made to prevent …’
He realized he was saying more than he wanted to.
Lakshmi Varde smiled again.
‘Then if you are in hurry,’ she said, ‘I would go to my servants. They need to be watched.’
She began to leave but decided to add one more remark.
‘You would find Gautamji very different from my husband, Inspector,’ she said.
The inspector addressed her retreating back.
‘No, wait. Wait.’
She turned with the faintest look of surprise at this peremptory request.
‘Is there more I can tell?’
‘Yes. I am sorry,’ said Ghote. ‘But will you say in what way Mr Athalye is different from your husband?’
‘He is different. I just told it.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Ghote said. ‘But I was surprised – That is –’
‘You were surprised?’
Ghote drew a deep breath.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I was surprised that you should have spoken about the difference.’
‘And why?’
He looked straight into her unblinking eyes.
‘It did not – does not seem to me that you are a person who would say a thing like that unless you were asked for your opinion.’
Lakshmi Varde regarded the inspector for a long time, unwaveringly.
‘I must be careful,’ she said at last.
‘And the answer to my question?’
A swift blaze of anger came into her stern eyes.
‘Gautam Athalye is a man of old school,’ she said. ‘He is not foolishly wishing to be great always. It would be better if it was his office my husband was putting into my Prem.’
And without ceremony she walked swiftly back into the house. This time Inspector Ghote did not attempt to keep her. Instead he made his way quickly over to the french windows.
Axel Svensson hurried after him, wiping a huge coloured handkerchief across his large pink features.
‘Is it Mr – Mr Athalye you are going to?’ he asked.
‘It is,’ said the inspector.
He sounded a little grim.
‘I think I ought to have heard before this that he was in the house on the night of the attack,’ he said. ‘It may not be of great importance, but it is typical of how the whole matter has been treated. They think it is best to tell me nothing unless I force answers.’
He seized the heavy front door and began swinging it open without waiting for the obsequious, scuttering bearer to do it for him.
‘Yes,’ he said as he clattered down the steps to the street, ‘they think they can do that. All of them.’
‘Well, my friend,’ said Axel Svensson, hurrying along beside him, ‘you didn’t let Mrs Varde put you off, once you had got a smell of the trail.’
At the waiting police vehicle Inspector Ghote stopped for a moment.
‘She is a terrible woman,’ he said. ‘She gives me the feeling of being without my trousers.’
He clambered into the vehicle. The driver turned his rotund body a little, by way of asking for orders.
‘The offices of Athalye and Co.,’ said the inspector. ‘And hurry.’
The latter instruction was unnecessary. As always their vehicle was flung at the traffic ahead with the maximum of reckless disregard for life, limb, property and road regulations. As always they arrived at their destination unscathed but with pounding hearts.
They jumped out and began to make their way across the crowded, broad and prosperous pavement towards the huge shining white concrete box towering up against the tired blue of the sky. From the deep shadow of the next doorway a Sikh fortune-teller, with a huge, unkempt beard, ingeniously ragged clothes and a tattered notebook ready opened for immediate use, slunk up to Axel Svensson.
‘Sahib,’ he said, ‘I see already that you would meet today a man who would tell you many things you most wish to know.’
Axel Svensson stopped in his tracks.
‘What was that? What was that?’ he said.
The Sikh salaamed.
‘If I could cast the sahib’s horoscope,’ he said, ‘I would tell him many things. Very cheap.’
A conflict visibly took place on the ox-like Swede’s fresh-complexioned face. The ingrained scepticism of the cold North fought a battle against mysterious and exciting forces from the ancient East.
‘Mr Svensson, please,’ Inspector Ghote said a little pleadingly.
‘But did you hear what he said?’ Axel Svensson replied. ‘How could he have told that we were going to ask someone to tell us things we want to know?’
�
�Most people going into offices want to learn something,’ the inspector said sadly.
The big Swede looked at him and with a great shake of his huge shoulders turned away from the fortune-teller and plunged into the up-to-the-minute austerities of the building in front of them. But even in the aluminium-walled lift sweeping them upwards to Gautam Athalye’s offices he still wore a look of deeply thwarted curiosity.
The private office of the well-known lawyer, Gautam Athalye, was in sharp contrast with the international modernity of the building all around it. It was sombrely furnished in the style of a British bank of the early years of the century. Instead of the wall-to-wall carpeting in a contemporary colour which pervaded the rest of the building the room had a single large patterned square in shades of dark red and deep green. In place of the ubiquitous steel filing cabinets were two or three large wooden cupboards which might have been there for the best part of a century, except that the building had been in existence less than five years.
Gautam Athalye himself directed the inspector and Axel Svensson to two dark-wood cane-seated arm-chairs and then surveyed them benevolently from behind a wide mahogany desk.
He was a man of moderate height, conservatively dressed in European style, with a discreetly striped tie the only point of colour against the light grey suit and white shirt. His features were unemphatic; his hair was sparse and carefully brushed across his head to the best advantage; he had a moustache of modest dimensions.
‘Well, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘in what way can I assist you?’
‘We are investigating the attack on Mr Arun Varde’s secretary,’ Inspector Ghote replied.
‘Ah,’ said Gautam Athalye, ‘what the Press likes to call the Perfect Murder. I prefer myself to think of it as the Perfect incident.’
Inspector Ghote felt a sudden sympathy, and put his first question much less hostilely than he had intended.
‘I understand you were visiting Mr Varde, as it so happened, on the evening in question,’ he said.
‘Yes, that is so,’ the quiet lawyer answered without a flicker of embarrassment.
The inspector smiled.
‘Would you be so good as to give me an account of your movements on the said occasion?’ he asked.
‘Yes. After all that is what you have come for.’
Gautam Athalye coughed, once.
‘I entered Mr Arun Varde’s house at approximately 7.20 p.m.,’ he said. ‘And I was shown into the main drawing-room where I discussed business matters in general with my host and my son-in-law, Dilip. At approximately 8.30 p.m. we entered the dining-room. The meal, at which all the family were present, lasted for some hour and a half, a little longer than I would have preferred. And then my host and Dilip and I returned to the drawing-room while the others went about their business.’
He looked vaguely disapproving, though it was not clear why.
‘And you left shortly after that?’ the inspector asked.
‘No,’ said Gautam Athalye, ‘unfortunately I did not.’
‘Unfortunately?’
The modest-looking little lawyer stared hard at Inspector Ghote.
‘You’ve met my brother-in-law, Inspector,’ he said, ‘so I don’t need to tell you that affairs in that establishment are not always carried out in the most usual manner.’
The inspector leant forward to signify that he understood what was meant without appearing to criticize Lala Arun Varde himself.
‘Exactly,’ said Gautam Athalye. ‘So it will come as no surprise to you to learn that I was pressed to stay on in a fashion which frankly left me no alternative but to comply after I would have wished to leave. It is my habit to retire moderately early.’
The inspector nodded in sympathetic agreement, and gave a fleeting thought to his long nights on duty and the sleepless days that so often followed them.
‘And not only that,’ Gautam Athalye went on, ‘but both my host and my son-in-law chose to desert me absolutely for a considerable time during that extensive period. It was extremely awkward.’
He frowned sharply.
The inspector’s eyes lit up.
‘Could you tell me when this absence was, sir?’ he asked.
‘Yes, of course.’
The inspector began to list times in his head, ready to fill in the blanks.
‘They left me fairly soon after we had gone back into the drawing-room,’ the quiet lawyer said. ‘At pretty well 10.15, I should say, and my host was away for a clear half-hour. I never saw young Dilip again the whole evening.’
The inspector felt a slow, puncturing disappointment.
‘This wasn’t after midnight?’ he asked.
‘Certainly not,’ replied Gautam Athalye sharply. ‘I am not accustomed to being nearly two hours out in my calculations, Inspector. And in any case I had left by midnight. Bundled out of the house and pushed into a taxi quite suddenly, as if I had overstayed my welcome.’
He shook his head disapprovingly.
‘And Mr Perfect,’ said the inspector, ‘did you see him during the course of the evening?’
‘Certainly I did,’ Gautam Athalye said. ‘And the fellow simply served to provide another excuse for Arun Varde’s extraordinary behaviour.’
‘What was that, sir?’ Inspector Ghote dutifully inquired.
‘It was just as we were going from the dining-room back into the drawing-room. Varde caught sight of this chap, and right in the middle of an observation of mine he walked over to him and began a long whispered conversation. Extraordinary way of going on. When I consider that I broke off another engagement at Varde’s particular insistence to dine with him that night I simply cannot understand it. You can take it from me, I shan’t be going there again in a hurry.’
‘This was a special occasion then, sir?’ Inspector Ghote asked, his interest perking up again.
‘No, no,’ Gautam Athalye said. ‘Nothing particularly special. Dilip had just arrived back from Delhi. That was the supposed reason for the invitation. But as I see quite enough of the boy in the ordinary way at the club and so forth, I don’t think there was any special need to make a great song-and-dance over him.’
With an effort the inspector prevented himself smiling at the notion of a family dinner for six being a great song-and-dance.
Dinner for six, he thought. These were the six from among whom he had in all probability to find Mr Perfect’s attacker. He no longer felt like smiling.
‘Mr Dilip Varde has only just come from Delhi then?’ he said to keep the conversation going while he regained his equilibrium.
‘Yes,’ said Gautam Athalye, ‘he has just been summoned back. I’m not sure he altogether welcomes it.’
The inspector wondered if he had not contrived to hit on a very useful line.
‘Did he say anything about this, sir?’ he asked. ‘Did he suggest, for instance, that Mr Perfect might have something to do with it?’
Gautam Athalye considered the question solemnly.
‘No,’ he said at last, ‘I can recollect nothing of that kind. Mind you, there would be some natural antagonism there, I dare say. Perfect was, or rather is, a pretty industrious chap, and young Dilip appears to prefer to spend the greater part of his time reading a somewhat trashy sort of literature.’
‘In the nature of pornographic matter?’ Inspector Ghote asked.
‘I really know very little about it,’ Gautam Athalye said shortly. ‘But I would say not specifically pornographic, more in the line of fictional representations of your own work, Inspector.’
‘I see, sir. Now you mentioned that Mr Perfect was an industrious person. That means, I take it, that you know him well?’
‘My brother-in-law and I have certain business matters in common,’ Gautam Athalye replied calmly. ‘So naturally I see something of his secretary, who does a great deal more than the average secretary is asked to undertake. Rather bad practice, I think.’
‘Do you have any dealings with him other than for business matters?’
The inspector got up as if he had no more to ask.
‘It was very good of you to spare so much of your time, sir,’ he said.
‘Not at all. Not at all. We all have our duties as citizens.’
For a moment Gautam Athalye paused.
‘Though some of us are rather remiss in carrying them out,’ he added.
‘That is true, sir,’ Inspector Ghote agreed.
He shook hands with Gautam Athalye, and waited while the Swede did the same. Then he went towards the door. When he reached it he turned.
‘Did you know Mr Perfect at the time that your daughter was married to Dilip Varde, Mr Athalye?’ he said.
Gautam Athalye, standing beside his big mahogany desk smiling affably at his Swedish visitor, jerked suddenly straight.
13
‘Inspector,’ Gautam Athalye said levelly, ‘if you think my daughter’s marriage has anything to do with this deplorable Perfect business, then you are highly mistaken.’
He stood looking Inspector Ghote straight in the eyes and said no more.
The inspector thought quickly. His attempt to surprise an answer out of the lawyer had failed utterly. It was most unlikely that any other method would be more successful. Yet nevertheless his question had been sidestepped.
He looked over at the towering form of Axel Svensson. Should he invoke his aid in at least getting Gautam Athalye to admit or deny knowing Mr Perfect at the time of his daughter’s coming into the Varde household? But instantly he rejected an appeal as being altogether too cowardly.
And still Gautam Athalye stood beside the old-fashioned European-style mahogany desk looking implacably at him and waiting for the next move.
‘Mr Athalye,’ he said, ‘I shall accept your word that there is no connexion. But I must tell you that if I learn anything to the contrary I shall have to insist.’
‘Very well, Inspector,’ Gautam Athalye replied. ‘I do you the credit of assuming you know your business. If you wish to see me again, you know where you can find me.’
And the interview was over.
During the drive back to the C.I.D. Axel Svensson made only one remark.
The Perfect Murder: the First Inspector Ghote Mystery Page 14