The Perfect Murder: the First Inspector Ghote Mystery

by H. R. F. Keating

  ‘Do you think I care who listens?’ she said. ‘Do you think I care? If you’ve got anything to say, say it out loud here and now.’

  She looked at the inspector with contemptuous defiance.

  And he stared back vacantly.

  In his mind her last words echoed and re-echoed. And quite suddenly he realized where he had heard them before and who it was who had said them. And what it was they were linked with.

  He turned and ran out of the room. He ran without stopping to glance at Lakshmi and the women servants hovering within earshot of the tumbled saris and the low rosewood chest. He flung open the tall carved door of the women’s quarter.

  Axel Svensson standing anxiously waiting outside was startled half out of his wits.

  ‘What – What’s happened?’ he stammered. ‘Have you – Have you insulted them?’

  ‘Come on, this way,’ the inspector shouted.

  He ran forward. The tall Swede turned and hurried after him.

  ‘What is it?’ he called.

  ‘The weapon,’ Inspector Ghote shouted back. ‘The weapon. It’s been there all along in front of my eyes and I never saw it.’

  He tore open the door of the little cluttered room where Mr Perfect had been found lying.

  He half expected that the place would have been inexplicably swept clear in the short time since he had begun his search of the house there. But to his immense relief it still retained completely its air of an undisturbed museum of domestic trivia. The Moghul painting and the brass business plate, the four empty matchboxes and the broken electric torch, the piles of old newspapers and the ranks of unread books, the Benares lamp and the Birmingham candlestick.

  Inspector Ghote darted forward and peered hard at this last item.

  ‘Yes,’ he called out, ‘yes. Come and look at this. I was on the point of realizing about it when Lala Varde told me “if you have got anything to say, say it out loud here and now.” Only when I heard those same words again a moment ago did I recall. Look.’

  He pointed an excitedly trembling finger at the brass candlestick.

  Axel Svensson stepped nearer and peered hard at its base.

  ‘But I see nothing,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ said Inspector Ghote, ‘not at the bottom. Look at the top. Just in that crack there.’

  The Swede looked.

  ‘But, yes,’ he said. ‘A tiny piece of dried blood, definitely. The attacker must have failed to wipe it off in his hurry. But why should it be at this end of the candlestick? It ought to be on the base. If you use a candlestick like this as a weapon, you grasp it by the top, where the blood trace is now, and bring the heavy base down on your enemy’s head.’

  ‘That would be the logical thing,’ Inspector Ghote agreed. ‘But this time the attacker did not do the logical thing. He used the candlestick the wrong way up. Luckily for him in a way: if he had turned it round Mr Perfect would have been dead the moment he was hit.’

  He pulled his handkerchief, clammy and sweat-stained, out of his pocket and used it to lift the candlestick down by two of its edges.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Twenty minutes at the fingerprint bureau and this case will be solved. There is nothing like a little science.’

  Holding the tall ugly brass candlestick well clear of his body he marched out of the house and down to his waiting vehicle.

  The leatherette seat of the truck was burning hot after its wait in the oppressive heat. The inspector’s skin pricked like fire as he sat holding the precious candlestick. Although the motion of the vehicle stirred to some extent the hot, leaden air, the extra heat from the engine in front of them entirely outweighed any benefit they might have felt.

  The traffic was at its worst. Tempers were high and minor accidents frequent all round, so that new, and even more irritating, jams developed every few minutes. Above the jangling turmoil the sky was like a closely hanging tent of greyish discoloured silk. The roads, the pavements, the buildings, even the people, all gave off a sullen shimmering glare which, sunglasses or no sunglasses, seemed to strike to the very centre of the brain.

  The short trip felt interminable.

  But at last they arrived. Sore, sweat-soaked and headachy, Inspector Ghote bore his booty into the offices of the fingerprint bureau in triumph.

  He was a little disconcerted to find no inspector on duty. Sergeant Scroop, an Anglo-Indian, a small, bustling, bright-eyed man, was there together with another sergeant Ghote had never met.

  ‘Who’s in charge today?’ he asked.

  The second sergeant slid from his tall stool at the work-bench and hesitantly advanced.

  ‘Inspector’s on leave,’ he said. ‘Deputy is sick. We’re all that’s left. You haven’t got a job for us, have you?’

  He sounded as if it was a prospect he did not much look forward to.

  ‘Are you busy then?’ Inspector Ghote asked.

  ‘We could handle a job if we have to, Inspector. It isn’t because we’ve got a lot on.’

  ‘Don’t be a fool, Desai, man,’ Sergeant Scroop said. ‘Do you want to get us a bad name in Mr Svensson’s report to Unesco?’

  ‘You’ve got prints for the principals in my case in your records?’ Inspector Ghote asked. ‘You should have. I had them taken and sent in.’

  ‘We got ’em all right,’ said Sergeant Scroop. ‘Somewhere.’

  Inspector Ghote placed the candlestick on the workbench.

  ‘Please examine the base only for prints,’ he said. ‘We think the weapon was used the wrong way round. You can see what looks like blood here in that crack near the top. Please be careful. We shall have to take it to the forensic scientists later.’

  ‘Those boys,’ said Sergeant Scroop. ‘They’re no good at all, man.’

  Sergeant Desai nodded gravely.

  ‘I can tell you one thing, Inspector,’ he said, ‘those chaps are absolutely incomparable.’

  ‘Incomparable, incomparable,’ Sergeant Scroop said. ‘Here, tell us, Desai man, what that word means.’

  Sergeant Desai shifted from foot to foot.

  ‘Everybody knows that,’ he said. ‘Incompetent. That’s a word everybody knows.’

  ‘You,’ said Sergeant Scroop, ‘you’d mix up your best girl and your sister, you would.’

  The inspector’s eyes grew cold.

  ‘Sergeant,’ he said, ‘I do not like to use my rank, but I tell you if you don’t get a move on I will do so without hesitation.’

  Sergeant Scroop swung away to face the workbench.

  ‘They’re all the same,’ he muttered.

  But nevertheless he set to work on the tall candlestick, though with maddening lackadaisicalness.

  Above them the old-fashioned electric punkah with which the laboratory was furnished slowly groaned and creaked. It hardly seemed to stir the heavy air. Outside the lowering grey clouds had made it so dark that without the light over the workbench it would have been impossible to see.

  Ghote could feel the thunder tension tingling on the surface of his skin, made doubly sensitive by its patches of prickly heat. The monsoon was already late. He wondered how much longer it would be delayed. Certainly by the feel of things it ought to come soon, but always at this time of year it felt as if the air could not go on one moment longer getting hotter and heavier. And often it did go on. On and on until nerves cracked. On much too long for someone as near to death as Mr Perfect.

  He allowed himself to look at Sergeant Scroop. Some slight progress had been made.

  ‘It looks as though it’s coming on nicely,’ he said.

  And no sooner were the words out than he regretted them. Sergeant Scroop needed no loopholes to make himself a nuisance. He bounced round on his stool.

  ‘Coming on nicely, is it?’ he said. ‘I suppose you think you know all about it, eh, Inspector? Just because you’ve got the rank, I suppose you think the knowledge comes to you from the sky?’

  He jumped down and went across to Sergeant Desai.

  ‘H
ey, boy,’ he said, ‘tell the inspector just how long our course is before they think we’re fit to so much as puff an insufflator. Tell him that.’

  Sergeant Desai came and leant on the workbench.

  ‘ “Insulator”, that’s another of those difficult words,’ he said. ‘I tell you all through that course I called it “insulator”.’

  He laughed lugubriously.

  ‘Imagine that,’ he said, ‘calling it “insulator” instead of “insul –” ’

  He stopped and looked puzzled.

  Sergeant Scroop swung leisurely round to him.

  ‘Insufflator, man,’ he said. ‘Insufflator. That’s the word you want. Not “insulator” but “insufflator”.’

  He looked up at the towering form of Axel Svensson.

  ‘Honest,’ he said, ‘some of these damned Indians, they’re so stupid you could laugh.’

  Inspector Ghote longed and longed to reach out, grab the powder brush and rapidly deal with the candlestick. He clenched his fists hard. More sweat oozed out of his body. He thought he had sweated every drop he had.

  Sergeant Scroop fished a half-smoked de Luxe Tenor out of his pocket, stuck it in his mouth, searched for a match, found one, lit it and held the flame to the end of the cigarette. He puffed a cloud of rank smoke out into the room. It swirled sluggishly under the punkah and stung the inside of the inspector’s nose.

  He bit his lower lip and kept silent.

  At length Scroop got off his stool and went over to a cupboard, hissing a popular film tune from between his teeth. He found the Varde family fingerprint record cards more quickly than Inspector Ghote dared hope. He remounted his stool, pulled the lamp lower and took up a magnifying glass. Slowly and elaborately he polished it.

  Then at last he crouched down on the tall stool and began peering at the base of the candlestick.

  After a few seconds he gave a long, low whistle.

  ‘What is it?’ said the inspector.

  He held his breath.

  Sergeant Scroop said nothing. Instead he leant forward and looked at the scatter of fingerprint cards lying on the bench beside him.

  ‘You got something?’ Sergeant Desai asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Sergeant Scroop, ‘I’ve got something – a pain in the neck.’

  They all stood round him waiting.

  He puffed another cloud of sharp-smelling cigarette smoke out.

  ‘Wait a bit,’ he said, ‘it could be –’

  Without the least flicker of warning the lights went out and the electric punkah above them clacked to a slow halt.

  ‘Another bloody power cut,’ said Sergeant Scroop cheerfully into the dark.

  ‘What had you found?’ said the inspector.

  He was unable to keep the impatience out of his voice.

  ‘I found some prints,’ Sergeant Scroop answered.

  ‘But whose? Whose? Don’t you realize the whole answer to the case depends on that?’

  ‘Can’t say, man.’

  ‘You can’t say? What do you mean?’

  ‘What I tell you. I can’t say whose prints I found till I can finish checking them against the cards.’

  Inspector Ghote drew in a long breath in the darkness.

  ‘But they might be those on one of the cards you’re looking at?’ he asked.

  ‘Might be. Just depends on how soon I can start checking point by point. Got to get sixteen points agreeing before it counts as proof, you know, man.’

  They waited in the dark. The minutes passed by. It grew even hotter and closer.

  The inspector felt that at any moment he would tilt over in the enfolding darkness and flop to the floor in a daze of heat exhaustion.

  He stopped himself swaying.

  And if I feel like this, he thought, what about Mr Perfect? That little room up there in Lala Varde’s house is every bit as small as this. The window is only a tiny slit, as useless for getting in air as the stupid little window here.

  He knew what would happen. This delay would be fatal. While they waited in this damned unnecessary darkness the murderer would learn that the candlestick had been whipped off to the fingerprint bureau and would get away.

  He twisted his sweat-mired hands together in an agony of impatience.

  At this moment, he thought, at this very moment Mr Perfect is dying. He cannot go on any longer. An old man, in his condition, he could not live in this annihilating heaviness and heat. Now. At this instant the Perfect Murder had finally been comm –

  As abruptly as the lights had gone out they came on again. The punkah groaned horribly and began working once more, though not as fast as before.

  Sergeant Scroop took another puff at his evil-smelling cigarette.

  ‘Please, Sergeant, go on,’ said Axel Svensson.

  He sounded as choked with fury as the inspector felt.

  The sergeant got to work again. And within less than a minute he straightened his back and looked up at the ceiling.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘just what I told you: as clear a set as you could want. I brought ’em up a treat.’

  20

  ‘Whose? Whose? Whose?’

  Inspector Ghote felt his careful layers of self-restraint whipping away under the double assault of the sweltering airless heat and Sergeant Scroop’s maddening evasiveness.

  ‘Whose are the prints on that candlestick?’ he shouted.

  Sergeant Scroop tucked his feet under his tall stool.

  ‘Please, Inspector,’ he said, ‘if you’ll only give me a minute to tell you.’

  Ghote grabbed at the last shreds of his patience and clung silently and grimly on to them.

  And at last Sergeant Scroop obliged with the reply.

  ‘Mr Prem Varde,’ he said. ‘No doubt about it. They check on sixteen points at least. A clear set of the right hand. All alone on an unsmudged surface, only set there is. A lovely job I made of it.’

  He turned and reached for the tall brass candlestick. Inspector Ghote leapt forward and intercepted him.

  ‘Do not touch,’ he said. ‘It will be most needed as evidence, and especially when the forensic scientists show that the blood in that crack is that of the deceased.’

  ‘My friend, we hope it won’t come to that,’ Axel Svensson said.

  His words checked the inspector.

  Yes, Mr Perfect might still be alive, must still be alive in spite of everything.

  ‘You are right,’ he said to the Swede. ‘Mr Perfect is not dead yet. But now we must go. Perhaps young Prem has decided to make escape.’

  ‘Well, there is no reason for that,’ the big Swede said. ‘After all, he should not know we have found the weapon.’

  But an uneasy look had come into his clear blue eyes, and he hurried along after the inspector down to the vehicle, hotter now than ever under the waves of heavy glare which had assaulted it all the time they had been in the laboratory.

  In spite of the snarls of traffic they made surprisingly good time to the Varde house. From a sharp inquiry to the constable on duty outside they learnt that Prem was at home. But this reassurance did not prevent the inspector snapping angrily at the little erect bearer who answered the door when he showed some slight hesitation about telling them where the boy was. And, even when the man remembered that he had seen him quietly reading in his own room not long before, the inspector took the wide stairs at a run and burst in without warning or apology.

  Prem, dressed in an orange bush-shirt with a blue design on it, was sitting on the floor in front of a large picture or diagram that occupied most of one wall of the room. He seemed to be lost in ecstatic contemplation.

  Sure at last of his quarry, Inspector Ghote allowed himself to pause and decide on the best approach. He looked at the diagram Prem was sitting in front of. It showed the relations between all the arts of the world in a series of little square boxes linked together by long black lines. No doubt it was Prem’s masterpiece. It was a pity he would have to leave it.

  Inspector Ghote stood t
o attention.

  ‘Mr Prem Varde,’ he said, ‘I must inform you that the weapon used in the Perfect Murder has been discovered.’

  Prem looked at him. An alert look, interested and acute.

  ‘I think you know what that weapon was,’ Inspector Ghote said.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Prem.

  He seemed almost eager. His eyes shone.

  ‘It was a candlestick,’ he said.

  ‘Exactly,’ snapped the inspector. ‘A brass candlestick of European manufacturing. And I must beg to inform you that the fingerprints of your right hand, and no others, were found on it.’

  Prem’s mouth opened wide.

  ‘I know what you are thinking,’ he said.

  He glanced from side to side. A trapped animal.

  The inspector coughed.

  ‘I must ask you to accompany,’ he said.

  The window of Prem’s room was one of those looking out on to the street. It was set high in the wall and covered with its American steel grille. Nevertheless he gave it a look of wild longing.

  Inspector Ghote knew that there was no time to waste.

  Like a tiger he sprang across the room and caught Prem’s left arm in a locked grip.

  ‘Now then,’ he said, ‘C.I.D. headquarters for you.’

  He marched Prem swiftly out of the room ahead of him and down the wide flights of marble stairs. Behind them the big Swede, his white clothes crumpled and sweat-stained from the oppressiveness of the heat, followed like a perturbed ghost.

  If I can just get him into the vehicle without any fuss, Inspector Ghote thought over and over again to himself.

  His shoes, each a heavy penance in the enervating swelter, banged smartly on the stairs as they descended.

  And then out of the corner of his eye he glimpsed Arun Varde himself hurrying along towards the entrance hall. In a flash he foresaw the hours of noisy protests and wild explanations that would occur the moment Lala Varde realized that his younger son was being taken into custody.

  Savagely he pushed the boy down the stairs ahead of him at something approaching a run.

  ‘Inspector.’

  Lala Varde had seen him.

  ‘Oh, ho, Mr Inspector detector. Hoi.’

  Pretend not to have heard. That’s the only way. Leave explanations for afterwards. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry.