Inspector Ghote groaned blackly.
Opposite him the big Swede shifted restlessly but said nothing.
The silence grew and grew.
And then through the open window there came a stirring. A faint, premonitory shifting breeze. Watched and waited for so intently that its eventual arrival had seemed an impossibility, the rain really was coming at last.
Inspector Ghote pushed back his chair.
‘This is it,’ he said.
‘It?’
‘The monsoon. The rain. It’s coming. At any –’
Like a sudden mad tattoo the first big drops of rain thudded down, explaining more vividly than any words what it was the inspector had meant. Within seconds the rain was falling in great swaths and sheets, plunging down with hysterical abandon as if it meant to penetrate to the depths of the parched earth that had been yearning for it.
Ghote leapt up.
‘Come on,’ he shouted. ‘Come on, let’s go out and see it.’
‘Out? In this? But –’
Axel Svensson allowed himself to be swept out of the little office, whirled along the corridor and swished through the impressive portals of the headquarters out into the joyous rain-soaked street. Ahead of him the inspector looked up and let the rich, cooling, quenching rain pour down on to him. With a stare of bemused wonder the stiff Swede bit by bit allowed himself in his turn to surrender to the warm, sweet embrace of the tumbling water. All around them the great drops thundered on roof and pavement. The gutters gurgled and sang. The closed-in earth and the brittle foliage of the plants and trees breathed again in a sudden waft of released fragrance.
‘Come on,’ Inspector Ghote shouted again.
The hulking Swede, his bony face alive now with laughter, looked at him.
‘Where to, for heaven’s sake?’ he said.
‘To the Varde house, of course,’ the inspector shouted. ‘Let’s go and solve this Perfect Murder.’
‘But how? But why? But what has happened?’ the bewildered Swede shouted back through the din of the rain.
‘I’ll tell you what has happened,’ Ghote yelled. ‘The monsoon has come.’
Their truck was standing where they had left it but their pot-bellied stolidity of a driver was nowhere in sight.
‘Never mind, jump in,’ Ghote shouted.
The big Swede sprawled in, and they were off.
At Lala Varde’s they leapt out and, wading through the deep puddles that had already formed in the street, they clambered into the house. It stood empty and echoing to the drumming of the rain.
‘Where is everybody? What has happened?’ said Axel Svensson.
‘The roof, the roof,’ the inspector replied. ‘When the monsoon starts everybody is liable to go out on the roof.’
He led the way up the stairs.
Sure enough when they emerged on to the flat black roof of the house the whole household was standing spread about in groups letting the water pour over them and stream away down the hungry waterpipes.
A little apart from the others, arms held high above his immense torso, was Lala Arun Varde.
He caught sight of the inspector as he came out on to the roof.
‘Oh ho, Policias,’ he bellowed. ‘I hear you have let go my son. Ho, ho, you have not solved the Perfect Murder yet.’
They went over to him.
‘Is it the Perfect Murder?’ shouted Inspector Ghote. ‘Nobody ever dies when the monsoon comes. Don’t say Mr Perfect is murdered now.’
‘No, no,’ Lala Varde yelled back. ‘No, when the rain came at once the dry old stick looked better. He will live, Inspector detector, he will live and Lala Arun Varde will prosper.’
He shook the sheeting rain out of his eyes, and stuck out his fat pink tongue to gulp it up.
‘Yes,’ he bellowed on, ‘the old stick will grow leaves in the rain. He will grow leaves and flourish. And that other old stick of a Ram Kamath, he too will grow leaves and he will agree to put his police college on the land I already bought. Now the monsoon has come even he will lose his caution and all his talking palking about wait and see what happens over the Perfect Murder.’
A wild idea began to grow, like the rain-restored plants, in the inspector’s brain.
‘Ram Kamath,’ he bawled into Lala Varde’s ear. ‘You were doing a secret deal with Ram Kamath on the night of the murder?’
‘Yes, yes, of course. Old Ram Kamath came to my house. What a night to choose, eh? What a shaming naming. What trouble bubble.’
The inspector looked at him through the spearing, shimmering rain.
‘But what about Gautam Athalye?’ he shouted. ‘Didn’t he make you promise you would have nothing to do with Ram Kamath if his Neena became your son’s wife? He told me he made conditions. Wasn’t that one?’
Lala Varde blinked the rain away.
‘You are cunning fox,’ he said. ‘You have guessed.’
He shook his head.
‘But never mind, who cares?’ he shouted. ‘Who cares for dry old Gautam?’
He slapped time and again at his great rain-sodden sides with a noise resembling a volley of cannon fire.
The thoughts swam in the inspector’s head like the debris twisting and whirling in the roaring runnels of the house. And the last piece fell into place.
Of course Ram Kamath’s presence in the house had to be kept secret, especially from Gautam Athalye.
Of course the servants had to be locked out of the way.
Of course Athalye had to be made to stay where Lala Varde knew where he was and then had to be bundled into a taxi at the critical moment.
Of course Mr Perfect had to visit Ram Kamath to arrange the preliminaries and had to wear an atchkan instead of a baggy old cotton jacket and trousers. Only so would he be inconspicuous in the evening at the Minister’s house.
Of course Lala Varde had wanted to put Dilip in the picture when his wife was involved.
Of course Mr Perfect would disagree and be so obsessed by his fears that they had broken through his unconsciousness into vague mutterings.
Of course Dilip, with his over-developed sense of the importance of the family, would be horrified to learn about Neena and Ram Kamath.
Of course, stupid as he was, he had burst out with the news to Prem and leaving him, still in a fury, he had seen the dim figure waiting by the front door.
Of course it had really been Mr Perfect, there to let Ram Kamath out.
Of course the two men were physically like as two sticks – tall, thin, grey-haired, wearing tin spectacles.
Of course Dilip knew Mr Perfect only slightly.
Of course he had mistaken him for Ram Kamath, had seized the candlestick so hastily that he had got it the wrong way round, and had struck down the person he thought had ruined his honour.
And, of course, who but Dilip, the reader of mystery stories, would think in all the haste of wiping off fingerprints?
Inspector Ghote shook his head to clear the last doubts. The plummy raindrops flew all around.
But there could be no real doubts. The Perfect Murder had in fact been all a mistake, a simple mistake in the dark. He should have expected as much in this land of imperfections: to be confronted with a very imperfect murder, with a victim who was not meant to have been a victim at all and an attack that had, naturally, been bungled. He might have known it would be like this all along, a triumph of the incompetent.
Yet had he himself been so wonderfully competent? Hadn’t all his cherished efficiency led only to a mad chase after the wrong person? Hadn’t he in the end cleared up the mystery in a rush of wild, pointless enthusiasm brought on by the coming of the rain? There was nothing in Gross about the use of monsoon joy to solve murders.
And, now that he knew the answer, was he any better off? Mr Perfect would almost certainly live, but his own prospects looked worse than ever. If he hauled Dilip off as he had taken Prem, Lala Varde would be outraged to the point of taking every action, legal and illegal, that entered hi
s fertile head. Things would not be pleasant, not pleasant at all.
He looked round about him. Dilip was standing conveniently in a corner by himself, looking moody. An arrest would present no problems.
No practical problems.
Axel Svensson leant his big, blond head towards him.
‘What is wrong, my friend?’ he said. ‘Suddenly you look most unhappy.’
‘I have solved the Perfect Murder,’ Inspector Ghote said. The big Swede’s eyes broke into delighted wonder.
‘But that is good,’ he shouted.
‘Is it?’ said the inspector. ‘I am going to arrest Dilip and he is the apple of his father’s eye.’
He turned and looked at the great figure of Lala Arun Varde. The rain was beating and cascading over him, a wide smile of utter bliss was on his face, his powerful shoulders were spread to receive the blessing of the water, his pig-determined eyes were glinting now with purest pleasure.
He would not be like that for long.
Inspector Ghote shook his head sadly.
‘It’s all a great muddle,’ he said. ‘But perhaps after all muddle is the only possible thing.’
The Perfect Murder: the First Inspector Ghote Mystery Page 24