The Perfect Murder: the First Inspector Ghote Mystery

by H. R. F. Keating

  ‘Our investigations are proceeding,’ Inspector Ghote answered.

  ‘Proceeding misleading,’ Lala Varde shouted back.

  His face was three inches away from the inspector’s.

  ‘Oh, I know you fellows,’ he went on. ‘Only the other night was I betting that you fellows couldn’t catch a thief on your own doorstep poorstep,’ he said.

  ‘Nevertheless, sahib,’ Inspector Ghote said with a flick of asperity, ‘it is the crime on your own doorstep that we are concerned with now. I have certain questions I wish to put to you. Shall we go somewhere more private?’

  Lala Varde laughed. Deeply and richly.

  ‘Private, my good Inspector,’ he bellowed. ‘Do you think anywhere in this house of mine is private? Everywhere there are servants with their little ears wiggling piggling to catch any word I speak.’

  He stopped, looked at them solemnly for a moment and then gave them an immense leering wink.

  ‘And besides,’ he said, ‘how do you think I would find out what is going on in my own family if there was anywhere in this house private?’

  ‘So that is why you locked the gate to the servants’ quarters on the night of the attack on Mr Perfect,’ Inspector Ghote said.

  And he succeeded in sobering up the great snorting honking whale in front of him.

  ‘Ah,’ said Lala Varde, ‘I think I have made a little mistake. Yes, I told you a lie about that, Inspector.’

  He gave a gurgle of a laugh.

  ‘But why did God give lies to mankind if not to use?’ he said.

  He looked at the almost puny form of the inspector like a visitor to a museum who finds in a display something he has always heard about and never seen.

  He shook his head slowly and sadly.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he said, ‘I was missing my old Mr Perfect. I am missing his always saying I will not listen to good advice. He would have advised me to be more careful with you, Inspector. And from now on I will take his advice.’

  Inspector Ghote cursed himself. It was something perhaps to have shown Lala Varde that he could not always get away with whatever he chose to say, but if it had been done at the cost of putting him more than ever on his guard it had been a bad bargain.

  He collected himself for a new long struggle.

  ‘Mr Varde,’ he said, ‘you yourself may not object to being heard by anybody who passes, but what I have to talk are police matters and I prefer to deal with them in private.’

  An idea hovered for a moment near the edge of his mind, and without having time to weigh its merits he seized on it.

  Wheeling quickly he walked the few steps to the doorway of the little room where Mr Perfect had been found lying in a trickle of his own blood.

  ‘Would you come in here, please?’ he said.

  Lala Varde hesitated.

  The inspector stood at the doorway waiting for him to enter, looking inwards as if any notion that Lala Varde should not do as he had been asked was inconceivable.

  The clutter of derelict objects was just as he had seen it when he had inspected the scene the day after the attack on Mr Perfect. The bookshelf still held its piles of yellowed newspapers, the little table still bore its disused bunch of long brass keys, its unworkable torch, its umbrella and even the same four empty matchboxes. Side by side on the top of the display cabinet the oil lamp in Benares work and the European tall brass candlestick stood in exactly the same relation to each other as they had done when the inspector had meticulously recorded their existence in his notebook in the first hours of the investigation. Against the wall the Moghul painting still leant beside the brass plate inscribed Varde Building Enterprises (Private) Ltd.

  ‘No,’ said Lala Varde.

  The inspector jerked round and looked at him.

  ‘No,’ Lala Varde repeated. ‘There is no reason why I should be going into that little pig of a room just to please you, Inspector. Oh, yes, I know it is the scene of the Perfect Murder, but you needn’t think you are going to frighten me with that. No, no. If you have got anything to say, say it out loud here and now.’

  It was the inspector’s turn to hesitate.

  Was this to lose a battle? If he gave way would he ever again be in a position of moral authority over the great fat business tycoon? Or was he being ridiculous in insisting on dragging a respectable citizen into a cluttered up disused lobby to ask him questions about a crime he himself had reported? And there was something else teasing away at the back of his mind, something else which he had to deal with.

  The lack of a quick decision was fatal.

  Lala Varde smiled comfortably, and the inspector knew that he had to concede the point. Was it more than just a point? He pushed the whole complex of thoughts brusquely away.

  ‘Very well, Mr Varde,’ he said, ‘if that is the way you prefer it, I am perfectly willing to say what I have got to say just where we are.’

  Arun Varde swept a leering glance over the big stone-floored hall.

  ‘Well, Inspector,’ he said, ‘perhaps you will be lucky. At least I cannot see anyone listening to all these police matters patters you are going to talk.’

  ‘They are also matters which concern yourself and your family,’ Inspector Ghote said.

  He spoke fiercely. And quickly wondered whether this was not the effect of hurt pride over having been worsted a moment before.

  He plunged on.

  ‘Yes, family matters,’ he said. ‘It has come to my notice, Mr Varde, that a very short time before the attack on Mr Perfect you decided to tell your elder son something you had concealed from him for years.’

  Lala Varde’s great moon-face remained utterly bland.

  ‘But, no, Inspector,’ he said, ‘you have got some wrong idea into your head. What should I have to hide from my Dilip? Always I have told him everything. Perhaps too much even. If he had been a bad son he could have ruined me.’

  Inspector Ghote looked stubbornly back.

  ‘My information is that you revealed a domestic secret,’ he said. ‘That you revealed this secret a few hours only before the attack on Mr Perfect.’

  Still Lala Varde was blandly calm.

  ‘And where did you get such information, Inspector?’ he said. ‘From some paid informer perhaps? Oh, my dear Inspector, they should have put someone on this case with more experience. Don’t you know that paid informers tell you what they think you want to hear only?’

  ‘I cannot say what my source is,’ Inspector Ghote said, keeping his voice as level as he could. ‘But I have reason to believe the information is highly accurate.’

  ‘Reason to believe, reason to believe. What good is your reason treason? How dare you come to me with such trash and try to get my secrets out of me? What’s the idea behind it, eh? What’s the idea of poking your nose in? I know what it is. I’ll tell you what it is. It’s just wanting to know things which are no concern of yours. It’s trying to look in dirty books in the bazaars. I know what you do there. You try and get your filthy little thumb under the edge of the wrapping so that you can peek and pry and satisfy your nasty little mind. Well, I warn you: don’t try lifting the paper that wraps up my family affairs. Because if I catch you at it I won’t be like a bazaar book merchant and just call out against you. Oh, no, I’ll do more than call out. Much more. A lot much more. I promise you that.’

  As Inspector Ghote listened to Arun Varde working himself up moment by moment he succeeded in preventing his face showing the least trace of what he was thinking. And when Lala Varde had finished he spoke quietly.

  ‘I will remind you of one thing only, sahib,’ he said. ‘Just one or two hours after you had told your son this thing Mr Perfect was attacked.’

  Lala Varde’s attitude changed much more swiftly than the sun breaks through after a storm.

  ‘Inspector, Inspector,’ he said, ‘what are you thinking? That is what I ask myself. What is he thinking this man who has come so suddenly into the middle of my family? He knows so little. He will think such wro
ng things. I know what he is thinking. He is thinking my poor, good, kind, gentle Dilip is murderer. That is what he is thinking.’

  ‘No question of a charge has arisen at the present time,’ Inspector Ghote said.

  But Lala Varde ignored this.

  ‘But no,’ he went on in a broodingly musing voice, ‘but no, after all I do not believe he is thinking that. I know this man. I can see what sort of a man he is. He is not the sort of a man who could make a mistake like that. He is a man who will go far in this police life of his. He is a man I must point out to his superiors as a man of far-sightedness, of understanding, of sympathy, of great sense.’

  He looked at the slight form of the inspector in front of him with caressing kindness. And suddenly through the all-pervading haze a thin ray of light cut a plain signal.

  ‘Because I am well acquainted with those in authority over you, Inspector.’

  Inspector Ghote just moistened his lips.

  ‘Oh, yes, sahib?’ he said. ‘May I inquire who it is in particular that you are thinking of?’

  Lala Varde swelled up.

  ‘I am thinking of your very –’

  And he checked himself.

  ‘Inspector,’ he said soothingly, ‘it is better if I do not mention. It would be wrong if anyone should think I was trying to influence you by mentioning such names. No, I prefer not to say.’

  ‘Just as you wish, sahib,’ said the inspector. ‘And now, if you please, I would like answer to my question.’

  ‘Question? Question? What question is that, Inspector? So many questions you are asking my poor old head is all whirling.’

  Lala Varde put his large, astute-eyed head between his podgy palms and rocked it to and fro.

  ‘Oh, Inspector, Inspector,’ he said, ‘I cannot do any more. Come tomorrow, my kind Inspector. Come tomorrow and I will try to answer.’

  He began lumbering away, his head still held in his two vast chubby hands, his eyes looking here and there for the quickest escape route.

  ‘Lala Varde sahib.’

  The words shot out. Like an order.

  Lala Varde shambled away. A cunning old bear.

  ‘Mr Varde, I have some questions I must put to you as officer in charge of the investigations into the attack on Mr Perfect.’

  The inspector issued the words.

  And they impinged. Lala Varde, still with his back to the inspector and to the big silent Swede hovering awkwardly behind, raised his left arm.

  With the fingers of the hand spread wide he made an impatient brushing away gesture.

  Inspector Ghote closed in.

  ‘Mr Varde, I would be most reluctant to raise question of failing to assist an officer of the law in the execution of his duty, but –’

  Lala Arun Varde was facing him. Walking towards him, swaying slightly from side to side, an absorbed distant look on his broad face.

  ‘What was that? What was that, Inspector?’ he said in a vague friendly way from his distant station.

  ‘Mr Varde, I have a question to which I insist on answer.’

  ‘Good, good. You are acting like real policeman, Inspector. In the films I have seen them. “Answer up buddy. Answer up, if you don’t want to get hurt”.’

  Lala Varde bunched up a podgy fist into the semblance of a pointing gun.

  He gurgled with laughter.

  ‘Sir, this is not film,’ Inspector Ghote said. ‘I am acting like a policeman because I am a policeman. I am the investigating officer for a very serious case: it is my duty to put all necessary questions and obtain answers with minimum delay. That is what an investigating officer does.’

  Lala Varde looked at him wide-eyed.

  ‘He does that, Inspector?’

  ‘That is his duty.’

  Lala Varde’s eyes went a shade wider even.

  ‘Sometimes,’ he said with an admixture of plaintiveness, ‘sometimes a little bit he eats?’

  ‘What is this?’ Inspector Ghote snapped.

  ‘Sometimes three or four minutes only he sleeps?’ asked Lala Varde. ‘Sometimes he drinks? Then there is the question of sexual matters. Oh, such a lot of things, such a lot of things.’

  He drew himself up.

  ‘Inspector,’ he went on, ‘sometimes you have to be man, not policeman. Inspector, this would be a very good time.’

  ‘No,’ said Inspector Ghote. ‘No, no, no. This is not the time. Never is the time. Always until the case is solved I am the investigating officer. Till the end.’

  He took one single step forward.

  ‘Mr Varde,’ he said. ‘You told your son Dilip a few hours before the attack on Mr Perfect that his wife had had an affair with someone before her marriage. Mr Varde, who was that person?’

  Lala Arun Varde sighed. Slowly he lifted his great round face and looked full at Inspector Ghote.

  ‘Inspector,’ he said, ‘the man was Shri Ram Kamath, present Minister for Police Affairs and the Arts.’

  15

  The little, sharp elephant eyes in Lala Arun Varde’s big round many-chinned face glittered ferociously.

  ‘Oh, yes, my Inspector,’ he said. ‘You have found out a secret. You have found out that when Neena Athalye was a girl she was unable to resist the well-known attractions of your present boss. You have found out something which Ram Kamath would prefer kept quiet. Let us hope for your sake, Inspector detector, that no one ever tells him that you know.’

  Inspector Ghote fought down the chill he felt inside.

  His mouth went suddenly very dry and he moved his lips to moisten them.

  ‘If I have learnt anything of a confidential nature in the course of inquiries, you can be certain I know my duty to let it remain a confidential matter,’ he said. ‘Trust is an essential attribute for the detective officer. You will find it stated in the very best authorities.’

  Lala Varde slapped him heartily on the back as he stood rigidly at attention.

  ‘Oh, there is no need to worry,’ he said. ‘I am your friend, remember that. If there is ever anything I can do for you, you have only to say. And I know also, if ever I want anything done, I can come to you. There are always many things a policeman can do for his friends, thank goodness.’

  ‘I think my inquiries at this point take me elsewhere, Mr Varde,’ Inspector Ghote said.

  He brought his head forward in a little nod and turned on his heel.

  From the perimeter Axel Svensson smiled at Lala Varde. But the huge whale-like figure did not acknowledge it. He was standing looking at the inspector’s back, and in his eyes was an unmistakable look of calculation.

  The tall Swede strode out after the inspector.

  He found him standing beside the police vehicle. The stately driver was nowhere in sight. The inspector marched back to the constable standing inconspicuously near the big front door of Lala Varde’s house.

  ‘Where is that man?’ he snapped. ‘Why isn’t he waiting in the truck?’

  ‘Don’t know, sahib,’ the constable said.

  He looked uneasily from left to right and back again.

  ‘What do you mean “Don’t know”? It’s your business to know. You’re a policeman. A policeman. You’re meant to have eyes in your head. Where is he?’

  ‘He had gone that way, sahib,’ the constable said.

  The inspector was obviously not in a mood to be lied to.

  ‘Damn him,’ he said. ‘Why isn’t he here when he’s wanted?’

  ‘Perhaps he had to fetch something for car, sahib,’ the constable suggested.

  ‘He’ll fetch more than something for car when he gets back,’ said Inspector Ghote savagely.

  ‘Listen, my friend,’ Axel Svensson called from near the vehicle.

  Inspector Ghote turned and walked back over to him.

  ‘Listen, my friend, there is no hurry. Let us wait beside the car for a little. We can stand in the shade. I want very much to hear your comments on that last interview. I do not see how it advances matters to know now that it was R
am Kamath himself.’

  Inspector Ghote stamped sulkily into the shade.

  ‘What comment do you expect?’ he said. ‘That I have probably finished my police career whatever happens in the Perfect case?’

  ‘But no.’

  The Swede sounded shocked, incredulous, innocent.

  ‘But surely,’ he went on, ‘because you have accidentally found out something to the discredit of a Minister, something that has nothing to do with the case in hand, something that need never be mentioned again, that does not mean your career is in any danger? Is there anything I can do? I am perfectly willing to make recommendations. Anything.’

  The inspector thought for a moment.

  ‘Perhaps I am lucky,’ he said. ‘I had not taken into account what it might mean that you were there. Perhaps because of that nothing will happen.’

  He heaved a long sigh.

  ‘And after all,’ he said, ‘Ministers go in the end. They move departments.’

  Unaccustomed lines of worry furrowed the Swede’s wide deep-pink brow.

  ‘It is certainly a problem for you, my friend,’ he said. ‘But remember this: if ever you have any reason to believe you are in trouble because of this, let me know. Wherever I am in the world I will do what I can to help.’

  Inspector Ghote looked at him gratefully.

  Axel Svensson raised a huge open hand to stop him speaking.

  ‘My friend,’ he said, ‘no thanks are needed. I can recognize a good police officer when I see one. Something like this ought not to stop you getting in the end to where you deserve.’

  Inspector Ghote hung his head.

  He refused to let himself think about what the broad-shouldered Scandinavian standing beside him in the narrow patch of shade had said. Not now. Not at present. Later he would allow himself the luxury of taking out those words and fingering over each one lovingly. But for now they were safely stored away.

  ‘There is one other problem,’ the Swede said.

  The inspector looked up.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘There is the problem of the business of that missing rupee note. What you have just learnt is going to complicate your handling of that, I am afraid.’