by Tarquin Hall
“This is a robbery!” the taller of the two shouted in Hindi, stating the obvious. He was brandishing a country-made weapon. It looked like a poor imitation of an English highwayman’s pistol. “Everyone stay sitting and do what you’re told and no one will get hurt!”
A few of the women shrieked. Lily Arora stood up and shouted: “How dare you invade my home like this! Who do you think you are? Do you know who my husband is?”
“Shut up, woman!” interrupted the gunman, pointing his weapon at her. “Sit down!”
Lily Arora glared at him contemptuously with her hands on her hips. “I’ll do nothing of the sort!”
“Sit down or I’ll shoot!” The gunman cocked his pistol.
The click caused some of the women to scream again and bury their faces in their hands.
“Please sit down,” insisted a frightened-sounding Mrs. Nanda, tugging on Lily Arora’s churidar. “It’s not worth it. Do as he says.”
With an icy glare of contempt, the hostess resumed her place on the sofa.
“That’s better,” said the gunman, standing with his back to the fireplace, the most commanding position in the room, while his accomplice guarded the door. By now, most of the ladies were holding their hands up in the air although they had not been told to do so. “I want the kitty fund. Where is it? Hand it over.”
“It’s here, I have it,” blurted out Mrs. Deepak, who was shaking. “Take it. Just don’t hurt us!”
The gunman grabbed the money and sized it up. The other women exchanged confused looks but kept quiet.
“There’s only fifty or sixty here. Where’s the rest?” he demanded.
A calm, quiet voice spoke up. It was Puri’s mother. “No need to shout, na,” she said. “It’s here with me.”
The gunman crossed the room.
“Where?” he demanded.
“In my purse, only.” By ‘purse’ she meant handbag. He picked it up and started rummaging through the contents. Although of average size, it contained a considerable amount of stuff: her wallet, a mobile phone, a makeup kit, a bulging address book, a little plastic bag of prasad, a miniature copy of the Gita and a small canister of Mace. The gunman dropped half the items on the floor in his search for the cash.
“There’s nothing here!” he exclaimed eventually.
“You’re sure? Strange, na? Let me see.”
As Mummy took her handbag back from him, she scratched his left hand with the fingernail of her right index finger. The gunman yelped.
“Hey, what are you doing, Auntie?” he hollered, nursing his hand.
“So clumsy of me, na,” she said, smiling apologetically. “You’ll be needing one bandage. Mrs. Arora must be having one.”
“Forget that! Just give me the money or I’ll shoot!” He raised his clunky weapon again. This time he pointed it directly at Mummy’s forehead.
“It’s over here! It’s over here!” interrupted Lily Arora urgently. “I’ve got it. Leave her alone!”
The hostess picked the plastic bag up off the floor and threw it to him.
“OK, let’s get out of here,” said the accomplice by the door. He was evidently young; his voice sounded like it was breaking.
“Shut up! Salah! Go start the engine!”
The teenager hesitated and then backed out of the living room.
The gunman started toward the door himself, his weapon still trained on the group.
“I want all of you to get down on your knees and face the ground. Do it now!”
One by one, with varying degrees of success, the ladies did as he instructed.
“Now stay where you are for five minutes and don’t call the cops! Remember, I know where you live!”
The gunman glanced around the room at the array of bottoms sticking up in the air. Then he was gone.
The ladies breathed a collective sigh of relief. All of them stayed put apart from Mummy.
“Call the police and don’t touch my things,” she whispered to Rumpi.
“Mummy-ji, where are you going?” asked Puri’s wife, sitting up on her knees. “It’s dangerous!”
Ignoring her, the elderly lady put her head around the sitting room door in time to see the gunman escaping out the back of the house.
She headed outside to the front gate, where all the ladies’ drivers were sitting on the pavement playing teen patti.
“Some goondas have done armed robbery of our kitty party!” she announced. “Where’s my driver, Majnu?”
“Toilet, madam,” answered one of the men.
“Typical! But we’ve got to give chase, na? One of you must drive. Come. Don’t do dillydally.”
The drivers all put down their cards and stood respectfully, but none of them jumped into action. They needed permission from their respective madams before they could leave their posts, one of them explained.
Mummy went back inside and fetched Lily Arora. But her Sumo was penned in behind four other vehicles.
By the time they had been moved, the thieves had got clean away.
♦
The police reached the house in record time and in record numbers, thanks to Mrs. Devi, whose husband was a childhood friend of the chief.
Two servants were soon discovered in the pantry, bound and gagged. Once untied, they were summarily taken away on suspicion of being accomplices to the crime.
Lily Arora’s poodle was also found lying on the kitchen floor unconscious and was immediately rushed to the vet’s.
A young assistant subinspector then took the ladies’ statements in the living room. He was dismissive of Mummy, so she sought out his senior.
Inspector I.P. Kumar was standing by the front gate along with three gormless constables, giving the hapless drivers a grilling.
“Madam, you gave your statement?” he asked her wearily when she insisted on talking to him.
“What is point? So stupid he is, na? Got rajma for brains seems like. Now, something is there you must know. So listen carefully, na? I’ve some vital evidence to show.”
Mummy held up her right hand; she had wrapped it in a plastic freezer bag.
“You’re hurt, madam?” asked Inspector Kumar.
“Not at all,” she replied. “Just I scratched the gunman most deliberately.”
“Why exactly?”
“For purpose of DNA collection, naturally,” she said impatiently. “That is what I have been telling. Fragments of that goonda’s skin and all got under my nail. Just his fingerprints are on my compact, Gita and hand phone, also.”
Mummy held up another freezer bag, which contained the other evidence she had collected.
“Madam,” Inspector Kumar said with a weary sigh, “this is not Miami, US of A. For everyday robberies we’re not doing DNA testing. That is for big crimes only. Like when non-state actors blow up hotels and all. Also, your fingernail does not constitute evidence. Could be you scratched yourself or petted the dog. How are we to know?”
Mummy bristled. “I will have you know my late dear husband was himself a police inspector and I was headmistress of Modern School – ”
“Then better you stick to teaching and leave police work to professionals, madam,” interrupted Inspector Kumar before turning away and continuing with his interrogation of the drivers.
Mummy felt Rumpi’s hand on her arm.
“Come, Mummy-ji, we should be getting home,” she said.
“But police are being negligent in their duties,” she complained, still brandishing the evidence she had collected.
“I know. You can lead camels to water but not force them to drink. Come.”
The two women walked out into the street where their cars were parked.
Behind them Kumar and the constables were chortling conspiratorially.
“Seems Miss Mar-pel is here,” one of them joked.
“Bloody duffers,” cursed Mummy. “No wonder so many of crimes are going unsolved.”
“Perhaps we should call Chubby,” suggested Rumpi.
“W
hy we should ask for his help, you tell me? He’s no better. Just he’ll do bossing and tell us don’t get involved. Mummies are not detectives and all that. No need for him, na?”
“What do you mean ‘us’, Mummy-ji?”
“We two. We’ll solve this case together, na? Who better? It’s an insider job for sure.”
“You think the servants were involved?”
“Those poor fellows? Most unlikely.”
Rumpi’s eyes widened. “Are you saying it was one of the other ladies?” she asked, lowering her voice.
Mummy nodded gravely.
“How can you be so sure?”
“Simple, na? Those goondas were knowing how much our kitty would be. Today with my share there was some extra bonus. Also they failed in their duty to do robbery of our jewelry. So many bangles, earrings and mangal sutras and all were present. That Mrs. Azmat was wearing platinum worth lakhs and lakhs. But not one single item they took. Why?”
∨ The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing ∧
Eight
Shivraj Sharma, whose very first visit to the Laughing Club had ended so dramatically and in such turmoil, was first on Puri’s list of interviewees. His title was superintending archaeologist; it said so on the door to his office deep in the vaults of the National Museum, a stone’s throw from Raj-path.
The contents of his office also left the visitor in no doubt as to his occupation. Crates containing broken bits of pottery and fragments of idols coccooned in Bubble Wrap were stacked on the shelves. The walls were papered with maps indicating the territory occupied by the Harappan Indus Valley Civilization, which flourished between 2,600 and 1,900 BC. Pinned to a board were satellite images of the area lying between the Himalayas and the Arabian Sea, with a line indicating one of the possible routes of the lost Sarasvati River.
“I am happy to see you, but I spoke with the police yesterday and told them everything I know,” Sharma explained to Puri. His tone was amiable but betrayed a boyish insouciance common amongst India’s so-called creamy layer.
“As you can see I’ve a good deal of work to get on with,” he added, indicating the manuscript that lay on the desk in front of him. “I do hope this won’t take too long.”
Sharma was pushing fifty, smartly dressed in a striped shirt, silk tie and blue blazer. He had visited the temple that morning and was wearing a fresh, rice-encrusted tilak on his forehead and a knotted kalava on his wrist. He wore thick glasses, and like so many people in Delhi today, his eyes suffered from the pollution – hence the bottle of eyedrops, which, judging from his damp eyelids, the archaeologist had used moments before the detective had been shown into his office.
“Sir, just five minutes is all that is required,” said Puri.
The plump man in the safari suit and Sandown cap standing in front of Sharma’s desk, business card in hand, was not the boisterous Vish Puri who had kept his son-in-law Har-tosh entertained last night with generous amounts of Royal Challenge. Nor the supremely confident, tough-talking version, either. Face-to-face with a learned, well-to-do type, he was deferential.
This was an instinctual reaction. Academics were up there with ministers and virtuoso musicians, and such erudite surroundings genuinely awed him. But his deportment did his cause no harm. Obsequiousness was what Indians of such standing – barre admi, big men – were used to, and as Puri was well aware, allowing their conceit and assumption of intellectual superiority to go unchallenged often proved beneficial.
“Very well, but five minutes is all I can spare,” said Sharma with a sigh, not deigning to stand or shake his visitor’s hand. He motioned Puri into a chair.
“Most kind of you, sir, and quite an honor, I must say,” said Puri. He glanced around the office with a childish glint in his eye. “Such a fascinating field you work in. So much of history and culture. I myself take great interest in the Mauryan dynasty. Something of a golden age we might call it.”
“India was certainly a very different place in those days, Mr…” Sharma referred to the detective’s business card. “… Puri,” he read, squinting down through his bifocals. “But my speciality is Harappan culture.”
“Fascinating,” Puri said, beaming.
“Currently my department is involved in extensive underwater marine work off the coast of Gujarat. There is every indication that we have located Dvaraka.”
“The lost city of the Mahabharata.” Puri’s eyes widened in awe.
“This find, together with the discovery of the Sarasvati River and a good deal of other evidence unearthed in the past forty or so years, leaves no doubt as to the indigenous origins of Vedic culture,” added Sharma.
The controversial nature of this statement was not lost on Puri. It suggested a Hindu nationalist bent, a rejection of the theory that Aryan tribes brought the holy Hindu scriptures to India from elsewhere. But he merely said, “Just imagine what India would be like had we not had so many of invasions. Is it any wonder everything has gone for a toss?”
Sharma met Puri’s gaze in silent, meditative appraisal.
“It is undeniable that certain, shall we say, alien belief systems have been foisted on us that have no place here and have done considerable harm to our indigenous culture.” A slight smile played across his lips. “But that’s not what you came here to talk about, now, is it, Mr. Puri?” said the archaeologist.
“Correct, sir,” answered the detective, fishing out his notebook and opening it to a new page. “Just a few questions are there.”
Sharma gave a vague nod of encouragement.
“I would be most grateful if you told me what happened yesterday morning exactly,” said Puri.
Sharma sighed. “As I already told the police,” he said slowly and deliberately, “it is extremely difficult for me to answer that question.”
“I understand you dropped your glasses, is it?”
“That’s right, Mr. Puri. And without them I can hardly see a thing. Everything is just a blur. So I was groping around in the dark for a while, so to speak.”
“What point exactly you dropped them, sir?”
“Just after Professor Pandey started telling his silly knock-knock joke and everyone started laughing again. I saw this mist forming on the ground. Where it came from I can’t say – and then there was a flash. It startled me and I fell over backward. That’s when my glasses came off.”
“You started laughing, is it?”
“I did not. The others were all howling, though. I could hear them.”
“You were able to move?”
“Perfectly able, Mr. Puri.”
“And by the time you got your glasses back on, Dr. Jha was lying dead and the Kali apparition, she was gone?”
“Exactly.”
“So you never saw her?”
“I saw a figure but it was blurred.”
Puri asked if he had seen the murder weapon.
“Again this is all in the statement I made to the police.”
“Yes, sir. Just I am cross-referencing. Sometimes these things get in a muddle.”
“I did not see the murder weapon,” Sharma stated categorically.
Puri scribbled in his notebook and then asked: “Sir, how you felt afterward?”
“Awful, obviously. It was a great shock. It’s not every day this sort of thing happens.”
“You told Inspector Singh you had a headache, is it?”
“That’s right. I came home and used some Muchukunda.”
“That is what exactly?”
“You’ve never heard of it, Mr. Puri?” Sharma tut-tutted and wagged a finger at him. “It’s an Ayurvedic remedy. A paste that is applied to the forehead. Much better than aspirin. It’s been used in India since time immemorial.”
Puri tried making a note of it, but his pen didn’t work. He chose another from the four in the outside breast pocket of his safari suit, but that one didn’t work either. The same was true with the next.
“Just the humidity is wreaking havoc,” he said by way of an ap
ology.
“Here, take mine,” said Sharma impatiently.
The detective wrote down ‘Muchukunda’, checked that he had got the spelling right, and then asked: “You saw anything unusual, sir?”
“Unusual? Mr. Puri, I believe the entire incident falls under that category, does it not?”
“Yes, sir. You saw any suspicious persons around the place?”
“After Dr. Jha was murdered the place was mobbed by people. Dozens of them sprang from nowhere. It was complete chaos.”
“You didn’t see any ice cream wallahs, for example?”
Sharma gave him a quizzical smile. “So early?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I did not.”
Puri could sense that his time was running short; he got in his next question quickly.
“Dr. Jha was known to you?”
“I met him yesterday for the first time,” Sharma replied briskly. “And now, Mr. Puri, I must get on with my work. I’m giving a lecture at the Habitat Centre this evening and I need to prepare.”
“Actually, sir, one last question is there.”
“Last one?”
“Undoubtedly, sir.” Puri paused. “Just I wanted to ask, it was your first time at this Laughing Club?”
“That’s right.”
“How you came to join exactly?”
“I heard about it through somebody – a friend, I think. I’m in need of exercise so I thought I’d give it a go.”
“Forgive me, sir, but you look fit already, if I may say so.”
“Well, looks can be deceptive, Mr. Puri. I am in as much need of exercise as the next man. And they say laughter is good for you.”
“You enjoyed it, sir?”
“Now that’s four more questions, Mr. Puri, and frankly I fail to see the relevance. But seeing as you ask, I did not enjoy it. There’s something very unnatural about forcing yourself to laugh. It didn’t feel comfortable.”
“You won’t be continuing membership, sir?”
“No, Mr. Puri, it’s not for me. And now if you don’t mind, I’ll take back my pen.”
♦
Second on Puri’s list was N.K. Gupta, senior advocate.