by Satyajit Ray
‘Really? Why?’
The man cleared his throat. Was he feeling nervous for some reason? ‘I’ll explain later if you allow me to call on you,’ he said. ‘Will you be home tomorrow?’
‘Yes, but only after 5 p.m.’
‘Very well. May I please have your address?’ He took out a notebook and a fountain pen from his pocket, and handed them over to Feluda. Feluda wrote down our address and returned the notebook and pen to the gentleman. ‘Sorry,’ he said, looking ruefully at Feluda’s finger, which was slightly smeared with violet ink. His pen was obviously leaking. ‘My name is Batra,’ he added.
Lalmohan Babu had gone to buy a refill. He returned just as Mr Batra left. ‘Have you found yourself a client already?’ he asked. Feluda smiled, but did not say anything. The three of us came out, and began walking in the direction of the daalmut shop. Lalmohan Babu took out a red notebook and began scribbling in it. This meant, inevitably, that he got left behind each time he stopped to make a note. Then he had to rush forward to catch up with us. Feluda was walking in silence, looking straight ahead, but I knew his eyes and ears were taking in every detail.
The market was very crowded today, possibly because Puja was just round the corner. Lalmohan Babu said something about the crowd. I only caught the word ‘cosmopolitan’, but couldn’t ask him to repeat what he had said, for we had arrived at Kalimuddi’s shop. ‘Salaam, Babu,’ he said and began making up a packet for us. He knew what we wanted. I loved watching the way he mixed all the masala, shaking the packet gently. Its contents, I knew, would taste heavenly.
He finished in a few moments and passed the packet to me. Feluda put his hand into his pocket to take out his wallet, and turned into a statue. What on earth was the matter? What was he staring at? Had his wallet been stolen?
It took me a moment to realize what it was. Feluda’s wallet was quite safe, but he was still staring at the man who had just walked past us, glancing once in our direction without the slightest sign of recognition. He looked exactly like Mr Batra.
‘Twins,’ whispered Lalmohan Babu.
I felt inclined to agree with him. Only an identical twin could bear such a startling resemblance. The only difference was that this man was wearing a dark blue shirt. And, of course, he didn’t seem to know Feluda at all,
‘There’s nothing to feel so amazed about, really,’ Feluda remarked. ‘So what if Mr Batra has a twin? Dozens of people do!’
‘No, sir,’ said Lalmohan Babu most emphatically, ‘if a mountain doesn’t have a snow-capped peak, I don’t call that a mountain at all.’
He was sitting in our living room the next evening, talking idly about going to a hill station for a holiday. There was an atlas lying on the coffee table. Lalmohan Babu stretched out a hand towards it, possibly to find the map of India, but withdrew it as the bell rang.
Srinath answered the door and, a minute later, Mr Batra walked in. Srinath followed, only a few moments later, with a cup of tea.
‘Do you have a twin?’ Lalmohan Babu asked as soon as Mr Batra was seated. His eyebrows shot up immediately, and his mouth fell open.
‘How . . . how did you . . . ?’
‘Let me explain,’ Feluda said. ‘We saw your twin soon after we met you yesterday in New Market.’
‘Mr Mitter!’ Mr Batra cried, bringing his fist down on the arm of his chair in excitement. ‘I am the only child of my parents. I have no brother or sister.’
‘Well, then—?’
‘That is precisely why I’ve come to see you. It started a week ago, in Kathmandu. I work in a travel agency there called Sun Travels. I am their PRO. There is a good restaurant near my office where I have lunch every day. Last Monday, when I went there, the waiter said he was surprised to see me, for hadn’t I already eaten my lunch? A couple of other people also said they had seen me eating only half an hour ago. Just imagine, Mr Mitter! It took me some time to convince them that the man they had seen wasn’t me. Then the waiter said he had felt a little suspicious since this other man had a full lunch with rice and curry and everything, whereas I normally have a few sandwiches and a cup of coffee.’ Mr Batra paused to take a sip from his cup. Then he continued, ‘I arrived in Calcutta the day before yesterday, which was a Sunday. My work is such that I have to travel to Calcutta, Delhi and Bombay quite often. Anyway, yesterday, I was walking out of the hotel—I’m staying at the Grand—to buy some aspirin, when I heard someone say, “Mr Batra, can you come here for a minute?” It turned out to be a salesman from the hotel’s gift shop. I went in, and he showed me a hundred rupee note.’ “This is a fake,” he said, “there’s no water mark on it. Please change it, sir.” At first, I could only stare at him. You see, I hadn’t been to that shop at all. But the salesman assured me that I—or someone who looked like me—had bought a kukri from them and given them that fake note!’
‘Kukri? You mean a Nepali knife?’ Lalmohan Babu asked.
‘Yes. Why should I buy a Nepali knife here in Calcutta, tell me? I live in Nepal, for heaven’s sake! I could buy a kukri any day at half the price.’
‘Did you have to change the note?’
‘Oh yes. I tried telling them I wasn’t the same man, but they began to give me such strange looks that I . . .’
‘Hm.’
‘What am I to do, Mr Mitter?’
Feluda flicked the ash from his Charminar into an ashtray and said, ‘I can understand how you must feel.’
‘I am getting into a state of panic, Mr Mitter. God knows what this man will do next.’
‘Yes, it’s an awkward situation,’ said Feluda slowly. ‘I might have found it difficult to believe your story if I hadn’t seen your look-alike myself. But even so, Mr Batra, I must confess I’m at a loss to see how I can help you.’
Mr Batra nodded, looking profoundly miserable. ‘Yes, I know there’s nothing for you to do—yet,’ he said. ‘My problem is that I am going back to Kathmandu tomorrow. What if this man follows me there? It’s obvious he’s trying to harass me deliberately. So far it’s cost me only a hundred rupees, but who knows what he might do next? What if—?’
‘Look,’ Feluda interrupted gently, ‘at this point of time I really cannot help you. Go straight to the police if you’re harassed again in Kathmandu. What a man like this needs is a sound thrashing, and the police can hand it out much better than anyone else. But let us hope it won’t come to that.’
‘Yes, I certainly hope so,’ said Mr Batra, rising to his feet. ‘Anyway, at least this gave me the chance to meet you. I had heard such a lot about you from Sarweshwar Sahai.’
Sarweshwar Sahai was an old client.
‘Goodbye, Mr Batra. Good luck!’
‘Thank you, I may well need it. Goodbye!’
Lalmohan Babu was the first to speak after Mr Batra had gone. ‘Strange!’ he said. ‘Kathmandu is a hill station! Why didn’t I think of it before? Just because it’s in a foreign country?’
Two
What happened the next day marked the real beginning of this story. But before I talk about it, I must mention the telephone call Feluda received a few hours after Mr Batra’s departure.
Lalmohan Babu left at 7 p.m. ‘It looks as though it’s going to rain,’ he said, looking out of the window. ‘I had better be going today. Tell you what, Tapesh, I’ll come back tomorrow. You see, I’ve thought some more about that new plot. I’d like to discuss it with you.’
It began to pour at around eight. The phone call came at 8.45. Feluda took it on the extension in his room. I heard the conversation on the main telephone in the living room.
‘Mr Pradosh Mitter?’ asked a deep, rather refined voice. ‘Speaking.’
‘You’re the private investigator?’
‘Yes.’
‘Namaskar. My name is Anikendra Som. I’m calling from the Central Hotel.’
‘Yes?’
‘I need to meet you personally. When can I—?’
‘Is it urgent?’
‘Yes, very. It’s raining so heavil
y it might be difficult to go out tonight, but I’d be grateful if you could find some time tomorrow morning. I’ve travelled to Calcutta expressly to meet you. I think you’ll be interested in the reason.’
‘I don’t suppose you could explain a bit further on the telephone?’
‘No, I’m sorry.’
‘All right. How about nine o’clock tomorrow?’
‘That’s fine. Thank you.’
Mr Som rang off. Two clients in one evening, I thought to myself. At this rate, Feluda would soon have a queue outside our front door!
I had recently decided to follow Feluda’s example and started to do yoga in the morning. We were both ready for the day by 8 a.m. Lalmohan Babu rang at half-past eight.
‘I’m on my way to your house,’ he said. ‘I’ll stop on the way at New Market to look at a green jerkin I saw the other day. I need to find out its price.’ He had clearly started making preparations for going to a hill station.
More than an hour later, we were still waiting in the living room, but there was no sign of Mr Som. At 9.45, Feluda glanced at his watch and shook his head irritably. I could tell he was about to comment bitterly on Mr Som’s sense of punctuality. But the telephone rang before he could utter a word.
‘Why do I find your phone number in the diary of a murder victim?’ boomed a familiar voice. It was Inspector Mahim Dattagupta, in charge of the Jorasanko police station.
Feluda frowned. ‘Who’s been murdered?’
‘Come to Central Avenue, Central Hotel. Room number 23. All will be revealed.’
‘Is it Anikendra Som?’
‘Did you know him?’
‘No, I was supposed to meet him this morning. How did he die?’
‘Stabbed.’
‘When?’
‘Early this morning. I’ll give you the details when you get here. I arrived about twenty minutes ago.’
‘I’ll try to get there in half an hour,’ said Feluda.
Lalmohan Babu walked in five minutes later, but did not get the chance to sit down. ‘Murder,’ said Feluda briefly, pushing him out of the house. Then he threw him into the back seat of his Ambassador, got in beside him and said to Lalmohan Babu’s driver, Haripada, ‘Central Hotel. Quickly.’
I got in the front with a swift glance at Lalmohan Babu’s face. Shock and bewilderment were writ large, but he knew Feluda wouldn’t tell him anything even if he asked.
Haripada drove as fast as the traffic let him. Inspector Dattagupta filled us in when we arrived. Apparently, Anikendra Som had checked in on Sunday evening. The hotel register showed he lived in Kanpur. He was supposed to check out tomorrow. At 5 a.m. this morning, a man came and asked for him. On being given his room number, the man went up, using the stairs, not the lift. He was seen leaving the hotel fifteen minutes later. The hotel staff who had seen him described him as a man of medium height, clean shaven, clad in a blue bush-shirt and grey trousers. The chowkidar said he had a taxi waiting.
Mr Som had ordered breakfast at 8 a.m. A waiter arrived on the dot, but when there was no response to his loud knocking, he opened the door with a duplicate key. He found Mr Som’s body sprawled on the floor, stabbed in the chest with a kukri. The knife had not been removed.
In due course, the police arrived and searched the room. All they found was a small VIP suitcase with a few clothes in it, and a pair of boots. There was no sign of a wallet or money or any other valuables. Presumably, the killer had removed everything. Feluda went in to have a look at the body. ‘A good looking man,’ he told us afterwards, ‘couldn’t have been more than thirty.’
According to the receptionist, Mr Som had spent most of his time outside the hotel the day before. He had returned an hour before it started raining. Since the rooms did not have telephones, he had used the telephone directory at the reception desk to look up a number. Then he had written it down in his notebook and used the telephone at the reception counter to make a call.
The police found the notebook with Feluda’s number in it. It was lying on the floor between the bed and the bedside table. Only the first three pages had been written on. There were disjointed sentences, apparently written at random.
‘What do you make of this?’ Feluda asked, showing me the scribbles.
‘Well, it looks as though a rather shaky hand wrote these words. The word “den”, in particular, is almost illegible.’
‘Perhaps the man was under terrible mental strain,’ remarked Lalmohan Babu.
‘Maybe. Or he may have been travelling at enormous speed. I think those words were written in an aeroplane, and as he was writing the word “den”, the plane dropped into an air pocket.’
‘Yes, you must be right!’ exclaimed Lalmohan Babu. ‘Awful things, air pockets. I remember on our way to Bombay, I had just taken a sip from my cup of coffee when there was such a mighty bump that I choked and spluttered . . . God, it was awful!’
Feluda wrote the words down in his own notebook and returned Mr Som’s to the inspector.
‘I will inform his people in Kanpur,’ said Mahim Babu, ‘the body will have to be identified.’
‘I believe there is an evening flight from Delhi that comes via Kanpur. You can check if the passenger list last Sunday had Mr Som’s name on it. But I think he had recently been to a hilly area.’
‘Why, what makes you say that?’
‘Did you notice those heavy boots in that corner? One of them has a piece of fern stuck on its heel. It couldn’t have come from a place on the plains.’
‘Yes, you’re probably right. I’ll keep you informed, Mr Mitter, especially if we find any fingerprints on the kukri.’
‘There’s one other thing. Please check with the gift shop in the Grand Hotel if the kukri was sold by them.’
On our way back, Feluda showed us the words he had found in Mr Som’s notebook:
1. Is it only LSD?
2. Ask CP about methods and past cases.
3. Den—is it here or there?
4. Find out about AB.
5. Ring up PCM, DDC.
The last sentence was followed by Feluda’s number.
‘Is it something to do with foreign exchange?’ asked Lalmohan Babu.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Well, LSD . . . I mean, it looks like an L, but could it be pound-shillings-pence?’
Feluda clicked his tongue in mock annoyance. ‘Do stop thinking of money all the time,’ he admonished. ‘This LSD refers to the drug, Lysergic Acid Diethylamide. The whole world knows about it. The human brain contains a chemical called serotonin, which helps the brain function normally. LSD, I believe, reduces the level of this chemical. The brain then acts abnormally, causing hallucinations. For instance, if you took a dose of the drug now and looked out of the window, you wouldn’t see the traffic or the crowds. Green meadows and rippling rivers may greet your eyes instead.’
‘Really? Is it possible to buy this stuff?’
‘Yes, it most certainly is; but not, obviously, at your local pharmacy. It is sold secretly. If you went to the hotel behind the Globe cinema where a lot of hippies stay, you might be lucky enough to get a sugar cube.’
‘Sugar cube?’
‘Yes. Just one grain of LSD in a sugar cube is quite enough. It would have the strength of—to borrow your own phrase—five thousand horse power! But, mind you, hallucinations caused by this drug needn’t necessarily be beautiful. I have heard of a case where a man climbed to the roof of a multi-storey building and threw himself over, thinking all the while that he was simply going down a flight of stairs.’
‘My God! You mean—?’
‘Yes. Instant death.’
‘How terrible!’
Three
Two days after the murder, Inspector Dattagupta rang Feluda. He had a lot to say.
Anikendra Som, it turned out, used to teach at the Kanpur IIT. He had no family there, but the police had located a brother in Calcutta, who had identified the body. Apparently, Mr Som was a loner. He was barely in
touch with his relations, although his brother agreed that he had always been a brave and honest man.
Secondly, there were no fingerprints on the kukri. But it was possible to tell from the way it had been used that the murderer was left-handed. The shop in the Grand Hotel had confirmed that the weapon had indeed been sold by them, to one Mr Batra. He was staying in the hotel and had left for Kathmandu by the nine o’clock flight the same morning Mr Som was killed.
Finally, Anikendra Som’s name could not be found on the list of passengers on the flight from Kanpur. However, the police had checked the passenger lists of all other flights that came in on Sunday, and discovered that Mr Som’s name featured on the Kathmandu-Calcutta flight. It had reached Dum Dum at 5.30 p.m.
Mahim Babu finished by saying, ‘Since the culprit seems to have escaped to Nepal, there’s nothing we can do from here. The case will have to be passed on to the CID (homicide), and the Home Department. Once the Home Department gives the go-ahead, the government of Nepal can be requested to help with enquiries. If they agree, a man from the CID will travel to Kathmandu.’
Feluda said only one thing before replacing the receiver, ‘Best of luck!’
Feluda sank into silence after this and, for the next couple of days, said virtually nothing. But I could tell that he was thinking deeply and trying to work something out, from the way he paced in his room, cracking his knuckles absentmindedly, and occasionally throwing himself on his bed, only to stare at the ceiling.
On the second day, Lalmohan Babu arrived in the evening and stayed for nearly two hours, but Feluda did not utter a single word. In the end, Lalmohan Babu told me what he had come to say.
‘You know what, Tapesh,’ he began, ‘I’ve just been to see a palmist. His name is Moulinath Bhattacharya. An amazing man. He doesn’t just read palms, but also does his own research. And his theories are fantastic. According to him, monkeys, like human beings, have lines on their palms and it is possible to read them. So he spoke to the curator of the local zoo and actually went into the cage of a chimpanzee. Apparently, it was a very well-mannered and well-trained animal. Mouli Babu took ten minutes to look carefully at his palms, but he didn’t seem to mind at all. Only, as Mouli Babu turned to go, the chimp stretched out a hand and pulled his trousers down. But that might have been an accident, don’t you think? Anyway, Mouli Babu says this animal will live until August 1983. I’ve noted the date down in my diary. Thrilling, isn’t it?’