Ghote read the entry.
‘One 50-gram jar, arsenic trioxide.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘how much is left in the bottle?’
Sonny Carstairs rubbed his hands together smoothly.
‘Just a jiffy,’ he said.
He quickly brought out a weighing balance, set the poison jar on one pan and a similar empty one on the other with a couple of tiny weights and adjusted the beam.
‘Yes,’ he said, as the indicator waved to a balance, ‘you can take it definitely, Inspector, that a considerable quantity of this poisonous substance has disappeared.’
He put the balance back in its cupboard with an air of satisfaction.
Ghote flipped over a page in his notebook.
‘I shall require that jar for the purposes of the police laboratory,’ he said. ‘I am making out receipt in due form.’
He wrote with diligence.
Without looking up, he let a question slip gently out.
‘The keys to the hut,’ he said, ‘who else has them besides you and Dr Diana?’
It was not until later that he properly reconstructed the sequence of events in the next few seconds.
First there came a curious hissing gasp from the little Anglo-Indian. But this was almost immediately blotted out by the sharp crack of breaking glass as the jar of arsenic trioxide slid off the shiny top of the shelf and fell straight on to the cement floor below.
Ghote jumped back with the powder wafting up towards him in a venomous white cloud.
‘It’s all right, man,’ Sonny Carstairs said. ‘It won’t do you any harm. It may be poison, but a small quantity on your shoes is not going to hurt.’
Ghote bit his lip with vexation.
‘Destroying evidence is serious offence,’ he snapped.
‘Destroy – Oh. No.’
The neat little Anglo-Indian subsided on to the shelf and buried his face in his arms.
Ghote took a step forward, gripped him hard by the shoulder and jerked him up.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘destroying evidence.’
Sonny Carstairs shook his head.
‘It was – It wasn’t that – Look, man, it was the key,’ he said.
‘The key? What key?’
Sonny swallowed.
‘The key of the dispensary.’
‘What key is this? There are many keys. But there was only one jar of poison. And there it is.’
Ghote pointed dramatically to the chunky fragments of thick brown glass in the middle of the patch of exploded white powder.
‘Do not tell me that you have not destroyed evidence,’ he said.
The dispenser’s smooth face was creased with conflicting anxieties.
Suddenly he darted forward and looked at Ghote with big, pleading brown eyes.
‘Look, Inspector,’ he said, ‘I’ll tell you. I must. I didn’t knock that jar off the shelf on purpose. It was shock that made me do it.’
‘Shock?’
Sonny licked his lips.
‘Inspector,’ he said, ‘I just realized at that moment what it means. You see, there are not many keys to this hut: there is only one. And I am the one who keeps it.’
He thrust an anxious, sweaty hand into the pocket of the drill trousers he wore under his white overall and pulled out a flat key of unusual design with a neat piece of white tape through the hole in the top.
Ghote took it and looked at it.
‘You are telling that this is the only key to the whole hut?’ he said.
‘Yes, Inspector. But listen.’
Sonny stepped half a pace nearer till his neat features were within inches of the inspector’s face.
‘Listen, Inspector, I swear by all that’s holy that that key never left my possession.’
‘There must be other keys,’ Ghote said, turning irritatedly away.
‘No, Inspector. That is a special American lock. It is very difficult to get keys for it. When we had it put on, just after Dr Diana first came, she said it was safest only to have two keys. One for her, one for me.’
Ghote went over to the windows. As he had recalled, they were fitted with heavy metal grilles well fixed to the surrounds.
‘These windows cannot be forced as easily as all that,’ he said. ‘And not without leaving very plain marks.’
‘No,’ Sonny answered. ‘That was Dr Diana too. When she came she insisted we improve security all round.’
Without replying, Ghote turned and went into the outer half of the hut, the examination room. As he had remembered, the windows there were exactly like the ones in the dispensing room, and equally plainly they had not been tampered with.
He came back.
‘Well, what happened to the second key?’ he said.
If this man was telling the truth about never having let the key out of his possession, then it was going to be hard to link the theft of the poison with Amrit Singh. And that was what had to be done.
‘That key was crushed by a tram, Inspector,’ Sonny said.
‘A tram?’
Ghote took an outraged step forward. Sonny Carstairs stepped back.
‘It was, it was, Inspector. Honest to God. It wasn’t my fault. I’ll tell you what happened.’
Ghote looked at him coldly.
‘It was like this, Inspector. I had just locked up here one day just after we got the new keys and I was walking up to the bungalow holding my one in my hand when I happened to notice some of the clients in the road outside. I looked to see what they were doing and I found them throwing coins under the trams as they passed the house.’
Ghote waited impassively. Evidently Sonny felt that his narrative required some comment.
‘Throwing coins, Inspector,’ he said earnestly.
‘Yes, I did the same sort of thing myself as a boy, only it was with trains on the railway.’
Sonny’s neat features took on a look of faint disdain.
‘Well then, Inspector,’ he went on, ‘naturally I went over and pointed out to the boys that they were committing a serious malpractice.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘Well, first they uttered some obscene remarks, and then one of them ran up, snatched the key I was still holding and threw it under a tram that was just going by. It was the boy who insists on calling himself Edward G. Robinson.’
‘I know him,’ Ghote said, seeing the tattered black jacket and the crinkled old man’s face.
‘Well then, Inspector, you know that that is the sort of unbalanced action he would indulge in.’
Ghote did not answer directly.
‘You are sure there were only two keys in the beginning?’ he asked.
‘If you don’t believe me, go and see Dr Diana,’ Sonny said. ‘She will tell you all right, man.’
Ghote felt a sudden tightening of the muscles in his stomach.
‘No,’ he snapped. ‘That will not be necessary. Not necessary at all.’
He swung round and looked at the neat figure of the Anglo-Indian.
‘At the moment I have urgent work,’ he said.
He hurried out, cursing himself for having shied away from an encounter with Dr Diana in such an obvious way. He knew he ought to check the keys story with her. If it was true, it was very important. There could be no doubt that the hut had not been broken into. The bars on the windows had plainly not been shifted, the lock on the door had not even been scratched. So that in the time between the afternoon when the arsenic trioxide had arrived and it having been put into Frank Master’s curry before the meal that evening someone must have used a key to enter the hut.
The most likely thing was that the dispenser was wrong about there being only one key. There must be another unknown one, or Sonny Carstairs had convicted himself out of his own mouth.
Ghote thought suddenly of his room at headquarters, of the familiar scored surface of his desk, the familiar walls and furniture. The very labels on his prized, non-issue filing cabinet, ‘Songs’, ‘Dance’, ‘Piano’, ‘Sacred’, ‘Vari
ous’, presented themselves vividly to his mind. Half an hour of peace there and he would be ready to tackle anybody.
He passed through one of the gaps in the heavy wistaria trellis and set off across the big lawn at something approaching a trot.
‘Inspector.’
The voice rang confidently out in the hot air.
Ghote looked round knowing inescapably whom he would see. Sure enough, Dr Diana had just stepped out of a pair of french windows overlooking the big lawn.
‘You called to me?’ Ghote said.
‘Of course I did,’ Dr Diana declared, striding over the dark green grass towards him.
Ghote succumbed to the temptation to play for time. If I can just get away from her for the moment, he thought, until I have got a plan of campaign fully worked out. It is no use rushing into things without a proper plan of campaign …
‘You have some information to give?’ he asked as Dr Diana reached him.
‘If I’d had any information, I’d have given it to you last night,’ she said. ‘I merely wanted to know whether you were making any progress. What you might call a friendly inquiry.’
She stood, her feet in flat brown brogues planted wide apart, looking down at him.
‘Progress is satisfactory,’ Ghote said.
No, he decided abruptly, to put off asking about the keys even one moment longer would be utterly ridiculous.
He coughed, putting his hand up to his mouth.
‘There is one matter,’ he said.
‘All right then,’ Dr Diana replied.
She glanced at the little gold watch fastened delicately to her strongly muscular pink wrist flecked with a down of golden hairs.
‘But I warn you,’ she added, ‘I haven’t got all day.’
This was a temptation Ghote resisted.
‘What I have to ask may take some time,’ he replied, feeling each word cutting off any means of flight, ‘but it is most important matter.’
‘Out with it then,’ Dr Diana said.
‘Can you then tell, please, how many keys there are for the dispensary hut?’
For a moment Dr Diana did not answer. She glanced at Ghote with a look of calculation.
‘So you’ve got on to that,’ she said at last.
‘I regret,’ Ghote replied, ‘the course of the investigation cannot be disclosed to all and sundry.’
Dr Diana laughed.
‘My dear man,’ she said, ‘I can think things out for myself, you know. You can’t expect me to believe Frank Masters contracted arsenical poisoning from working in a smelter’s shop or acting as assistant to an animal stuffer. Is he your idea of an under-gardener? Can you see him messing about with a fruit spray or something?’
‘We admit that the case is being treated as one of murder.’
‘Splendid. And how about admitting, while you’re at it, that you were busy just a moment ago asking my dispenser about what arsenics we had in that hut. Well, we had some arsenic trioxide. It arrived just yesterday afternoon. Did he tell you that?’
‘As a matter of fact, yes,’ said Ghote sulkily.
‘And is any missing?’
‘That is impossible to say.’
Dr Diana put her arms akimbo on either side of her billowing white blouse.
‘Listen,’ she said, ‘you can carry this reticence business too far. I’m a doctor, you know. I happen to be aware of what the lethal dose of that stuff is. And what’s more, it’s my stuff, or as good as. So cough up. Ek dum.’
‘Madam,’ Ghote said, ‘you are not in position to give orders. It so happens that the jar of powder in question became accidentally spilt.’
Dr Diana burst out laughing.
She stood with the sun shining steadily down on her in the middle of the big back lawn and hooted with laughter.
‘You Indians,’ she said at last. ‘How you manage it I’ll never know. To get hold of the source of the poison and then to go and spill it all. I suppose it just slipped out of your fingers? You’re wonderful, wonderful.’
‘Please,’ Ghote said, with an edge of sharpness, ‘please, will you be so good as to tell whether you formed this opinion of Indians from the behaviour of your dispenser, Mr Carstairs?’
‘Mr Carstairs? Mr Carstairs?’
Dr Diana seemed to find this as funny as anything else. She had to wipe away a tear before she could add to her reply.
‘No,’ she said, ‘as a matter of fact the ever-obliging Sonny is moderately deft with his fingers. I wouldn’t have him about the place if he weren’t.’
‘He is not in any way a clumsy individual?’
‘No. I told you. Why do you ask?’
‘Because,’ Ghote said, ‘Mr Carstairs was responsible for dropping the poison in evidence.’
Dr Diana suddenly paid attention.
‘Was he indeed?’ she said.
She thought for a moment.
‘Tell me,’ she went on, ‘how do you think the arsenic got from my dispensary into Frank’s stomach?’
‘It is the police belief that he took it unsuspectingly,’ Ghote said. ‘But this is not the time to discuss.’
He turned resolutely and began to walk towards his waiting truck.
‘For heaven’s sake, stop waltzing away like that all the time,’ Dr Diana said. ‘And stop all this “police belief” nonsense. Everybody knows you took half the dustbins away with you, and a pretty fine mess you left behind too.’
Ghote stopped.
He turned back to face her.
‘That is wrong,’ he said. ‘I personally supervised the dustbin operation. There was no mess.’
‘Oh, wasn’t there? Well, I’m surprised to hear it. There generally is when chaps like you have been around.’
‘In this case not,’ Ghote said furiously.
‘All right, all right. I apologize. That’s what you want, isn’t it?’
‘Apology was called for,’ Ghote said.
‘All right, you’ve had one. So now perhaps you’ll tell me how you think the arsenic got out of my dispensary. I happen to be interested, you know. Especially as there’s only one key and the place is meant to be pretty safe.’
‘There is definitely only one key?’ Ghote said.
Dr Diana blew out a sigh.
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘There’s only one. We had two when we started, but that fool Sonny Carstairs went and let one of the boys snatch the second out of his hand and throw it under a bloody tram.’
‘You had two keys only after the lock was changed?’
‘You know all about it, don’t you? Why ask me?’
‘In a matter of this importance it is impossible to have too many checks,’ Ghote replied.
He let his glance as he spoke wander back to the door of the dispensary hut. Sonny, he was certain, was still in there. If he suddenly came out and made his way off at speed, could he catch him?
He decided that he could, and gave his attention to what Dr Diana was saying again.
‘All right then, if you’re so keen on making checks you can see the correspondence we had with the firm that imported the new lock. They weren’t very keen on supplying not more than two keys. I had to point out to them, pretty forcefully as I recall, that to go giving keys to every Tom, Dick and Harry simply defeated the object of the exercise.’
‘Thank you,’ Ghote said. ‘I will send a sergeant to examine, if I may.’
He spoke a little absently.
If Sonny Carstairs had the only key during all the time between the arsenic trioxide arriving and the curry being left near the open tiffin room window, he kept thinking, then Sonny must be the only one who could have got hold of the poison. But if so, surely he could not have been so utterly stupid as to stand there and simply state the facts? No one who was guilty could possibly be so senseless, and Sonny was a skilled technician, to say the very least.
He brought his thoughts sharply back to Dr Diana. She had been saying something in a very loud voice.
‘I regret,’ he
said, ‘I did not quite catch …’
‘I said, “Who had the weak-kneed Sonny lent his key to then?”’
Why did I miss it? Ghote asked himself. Why did I miss that Sonny in spite of what he had said must have let the key out of his possession? And at once he knew the answer. Because at the moment he could have worked it out Sonny had suggested that it would be necessary for him to speak to Dr Diana again. And he had been ridiculously unwilling to face being taken for a fool once more.
‘It was his habit to lend this key?’ he asked sharply. ‘I must point out that to allow the key of a building containing a number of poisonous substances to pass from hand to hand in this manner is a highly irresponsible proceeding.’
‘Thank you,’ said Dr Diana. ‘But let me tell you that if I’d ever suspected he’d done this before, I’d have had him out in less time than it takes to tell. And, may I add, it’s not particularly responsible to have missed asking him that question for yourself.’
‘But if it was not his habit to lend the key,’ Ghote answered, feeling himself growing hotter, ‘then why do you say he did this? He may have kept it all the time.’
‘And sat there and waited for you to find out he was the only one with access to the poison? Sonny may have his faults, but he’s not that stupid.’
There was nothing else Ghote could do. It was no use claiming now that he had already thought of this. Dr Diana would simply not believe him.
‘Very well,’ he said, ‘I would go and ask.’
He turned towards the gap in the laden trellis through which he could see the door of the dispensary.
‘And you think he’ll tell you?’ Dr Diana said.
‘He will tell,’ Ghote replied.
‘All right. All right. Don’t sound so cross. I dare say you’ll have the poor chap beaten up in some out of the way cell or other. He’ll talk fast enough then.’
‘He will talk when I want.’
‘But will he tell you the truth?’
‘I will see he does, however long it may take.’
‘Even if there’s another way of getting to know? A simple and easily made check?’
Ghote swung round. The doctor was standing looking towards him wearing an expression of amused tolerance like a placard round her neck. With an effort he conquered a desire to shout something, anything, at her.
‘If you can suggest such a way,’ he said, ‘I would be delighted.’
Inspector Ghote's Good Crusade Page 5