His indignation made me burst out laughing. ‘You’re welcome to do so later,’ I told him, ‘but for now, you need to solve this case. What did you infer from the information that Damayanti was not Nishanathbabu’s lawfully wedded wife?’
A miffed Byomkesh did not deign to reply.
The waiting room at the station was locked. We got the staff to open it up and went in and made ourselves comfortable. We had a coolie buy us some puris and sweets from the market to appease our hunger pangs.
Meanwhile, the clouds in the sky had gathered in a mass, occasionally releasing a few fat drops of rain that startled passers-by. It looked as though a violent storm were brewing and would unleash its fury that evening.
We stretched out on two armchairs with extended armrests. Outside, trains could be heard drawing into the platforms and pulling out. I nodded off from time to time as a subtle thread of thought teased my mind: Damayanti Devi wasn’t Nishanath’s lawfully wedded wife; she was Lal Singh’s spouse … What kind of thought processes could drive a respectable gentleman to do something of this nature? In truth, what sort of a person was Damayanti? … A tease? … A seductress? But she didn’t seem to fit any of these descriptions …
At five-thirty that evening, Barat arrived at the station in the police van. The heavily overcast sky gave the impression of imminent dusk. Clouds had covered it like a thick blanket, seeming to shut out even the slightest chink of sunlight.
Barat said, ‘I have sent Bikash to check out No. 19 Mirza Lane as you’d suggested. We’ll get some news by tomorrow.’
‘Bikash,’ Byomkesh mused, ‘well, that’s good. Is he one of your men? I mean, is he in the police force?’
‘He is, but he’s not required to be in uniform. Fine fellow, that one. Come on, let’s get going.’
We had just gulped down some tea from the stall on the platform and were about to start, when a train from Calcutta pulled in. As we looked on, Nepalbabu get off the train and strode away. He hadn’t noticed us.
‘Let him go ahead,’ Byomkesh suggested. ‘We’ll follow half an hour later.’
We returned to the waiting room and sat down. The next half hour was spent in conversation on general topics. When the appointed time arrived, we set off in the van.
As we were nearing the farm’s main gate, Byomkesh said, ‘Please have the driver stop the van right here; there’s no need to take it all the way in. Everyone gets worked up over nothing.’
The van came to a halt and we got off. It had grown very dark outside. We walked up to the farm gates and noticed that the lights were on in the room next to Nishanathbabu’s.
Byomkesh knocked on the front door. Bijoy opened it and seemed startled to see us. ‘Oh, hello, gentlemen!’ he said.
Looking in, we saw Damayanti seated on a chair. Byomkesh announced, his expression grave, ‘We need to ask Damayanti Devi a few more questions.’
As she saw us enter the room, Damayanti Devi stood up apprehensively. Her face was pallid. ‘Please don’t get up,’ Byomkesh told her. ‘Bijoybabu, do take a seat as well.’
Slowly, Damayanti Devi sank down on her chair again. Bijoy walked up to her chair and positioned himself behind it. He stood there, his eyes brimming with fear and suspicion.
We seated ourselves. Byomkesh asked, ‘Is there no one else in the house?’
Bijoy shook his head without uttering a word. Byomkesh studiously averted his gaze from the young man. He looked down instead at the nails of his right hand, examining them with interest. ‘Damayanti Devi,’ he said, ‘the other day when I interrogated you, you didn’t tell us everything. Will you do so now?’
Damayanti raised frightened eyes to his face. ‘What things?’
‘The other day,’ Byomkesh went on nonchalantly, ‘you stated that Nishanathbabu and you were married ten years ago. But we have come to know that it’s untrue. Nishanathbabu was not your lawfully wedded husband …’
Cut to the quick, Damayanti Devi wailed, ‘No, oh no! He was my husband—he was …!’ She slumped forward and her head dropped into her lap.
Bijoy snarled, ‘Byomkeshbabu!’
Byomkesh ignored Bijoy completely and continued. ‘We really did not need to pry into your private life. In different circumstances, we might have treated it with discretion. But now is not the time to remain silent. We need to know absolutely everything …’
In a voice distorted by rage, Bijoy asked, ‘What else do you wish to know?’
Byomkesh cast Bijoy a swift glance and said in a voice as harsh as a handsaw, ‘You owe us a great many explanations yourself, Bijoybabu. You have told us many lies. But we’ll come to that later. Now I wish to know from Damayanti Devi what exactly happened on the night Nishanathbabu died.’
Damayanti was sobbing in sporadic outbursts. Bijoy knelt down beside her and murmured in an outflow of pent-up feeling, ‘Kakima … Kakima …!’
It took nearly ten minutes for Damayanti to compose herself. She raised her tear-stained face and wiped it with the edge of her sari. Byomkesh said without mincing his words, ‘There are many pitfalls in concealing the truth. It could well be that poor Panugopal lost his life because of such hush-hush dealings. Please don’t come out with any more falsehoods and complicate the matter further.’
In a broken voice, Damayanti declared, ‘I did not lie; I have told you all I knew about that night.’
‘Look,’ Byomkesh told her, ‘Bijoybabu knows about the ghastly manner in which Nishanathbabu was murdered. It is quite impossible that you should have been in the next room and remained ignorant of what was going on. Either you were not in the house between ten o’clock and eleven that night or Nishanathbabu was killed right before your eyes.’
There was complete silence in the room for a full minute. Then, Bijoy interjected in impassioned tones, ‘Kakima, what’s the use of hiding it any longer? Tell them all that you told me. Maybe …’
Damayanti remained silent for a while longer. When she spoke, her voice was indistinct. ‘I was not in the house.’
‘Where did you go? And why?’
In a tone muffled by deep distress, Damayanti recounted the tale of her nocturnal excursions that had spanned an extended period of eight months. If her account were to be rendered verbatim, it would make for an extremely complex and unwieldy narrative. The gist of it is as follows.
Nearly nine months earlier, Damayanti had received a note in the mail. It was from Lal Singh. He had written: ‘I came to know of your whereabouts after I was released from jail. I visited Golap Colony in disguise and obtained a clear picture of what you have been up to. I could exact revenge in the most horrifying manner possible, but I won’t. I need money. Tomorrow night, between ten and eleven, you will come to the greenhouse next to the farm gate and leave Rs 500 on a bench inside. You will keep your mouth shut about this, or else I shall kill you both. I shall never write to you again (I picked up Bengali during my stint in prison, but have no desire to write in the language). Whenever I need money, I’ll leave a broken automobile part near your house. That very night, at the time specified above, you will leave Rs 500 for me in the greenhouse.’
The letter frightened Damayanti Devi out of her wits. But she didn’t say a word about it to Nishanathbabu. That night, as directed, she left the money in the greenhouse. Damayanti held the farm’s purse strings. So nobody was the wiser.
This blackmail continued for months. The motor parts were delivered several times a month. Damayanti would go to the greenhouse and leave the money there. The farm’s monthly income had varied between two and a half and three thousand. But when the car parts began arriving, the income had already dropped. To aggravate the problem, nearly one and a half thousand was disappearing from the till in the form of Lal Singh’s extortion fee. Earlier, the farm would yield a surplus income. Now it was barely breaking even.
Nishanath hadn’t been keeping track of the money, but even he began to notice the changes. He questioned Damayanti about it, but she fended off his queries by telling him abo
ut the drop in the farm’s income and keeping him in the dark about the rise in expenses.
Eight months went by in this manner. On the day Nishanath was fated to die, Damayanti had received another note in the morning. Lal Singh had written: ‘I am leaving this place. I’d like to meet you before I go. Come to the greenhouse at ten o’clock tonight and wait for me there. If I fail to make it by eleven o’clock, you may go back home. I have forgiven you for the way you wronged me, but if you tell anyone about this or try to have me apprehended, I shall kill you.’
That night, Damayanti entered the house after dinner and found that Nishanath had switched off the lights and gone to bed. Silently, she slipped away through the back door. But Lal Singh failed to turn up. Damayanti waited at the greenhouse until eleven o’clock, then returned home. She looked in on Nishanath and saw that he was sleeping, the way he was when she left the house. So she made her way to her own room and went to bed.
The following morning, when Damayanti touched Nishanath’s body, she realized he was dead. She screamed and fell to the ground in a faint.
His face averted, Byomkesh heard her out. Then he looked up at Bijoy and asked, ‘Bijoybabu, when did you come to know of these developments?’
Bijoy said, ‘About three or four days ago. If I had known this earlier …’
Grimly, Byomkesh said, ‘Now, for the other matter: About the relationship between your Kaka and Damayanti Devi—you were aware of it all along. Did you ever mention it to anyone?’
Bijoy was startled. His face flushed as he replied, ‘No, never.’
Byomkesh stood up and said to Barat, ‘Come on, let’s be on our way.’
He went up to the door, turned around and announced, ‘Let me give you a piece of news. Lal Singh died in prison two years ago.’
22
In the police van on our way back, Byomkesh observed, ‘I believe Damayanti Devi was telling the truth. Nishanathbabu had suspected that someone was blackmailing her; which was why he had casually mentioned the word “blackmail”, as though in passing, when he came to meet us. The word was bothering him and so it came out.’
‘Now, the question is,’ Barat mused, ‘who could be the blackmailer? It has to be someone who is aware of Damayanti’s secret.’
Byomkesh said, ‘As far as we know, at least three persons were aware of it—Bijoy, Brojodas and Nepalbabu. If Nepalbabu knows, then, presumably, Mukul does too. That makes four in all. There may be others we’re not aware of. If nothing else, there is at least a clear motive for the murder now.’
‘And what is this clear motive?’ I asked.
‘Let us suppose it was Nepalbabu who was blackmailing her,’ Byomkesh went on. ‘Over a period of eight months, he had extorted a good amount of money and had every intention of continuing to enjoy this “pension” for an extended period of time. At this point, he realized that Nishanathbabu’s suspicions had been aroused and the latter had called me in. Nepalbabu feared that his profitable business was on the verge of being wound up. Moreover, if his involvement came to light, the details would also be revealed about the murder he had committed earlier in collaboration with his daughter. That the latter was actually the film actress, Sunayana, alias Nrityakali, would then become common knowledge.
‘Such apprehensions must have been uppermost in his mind when he saw Ramen Mullick with us. What was the way out for him then? If he got rid of Nishanath, his problems could be wrenched out from the root and the blackmailing could continue. But Nishanath’s death would have to be a natural one. The victim, therefore, died in as natural a manner as possible. But the murder fell short of perfection. The police began to sniff around. And to crown it all, Panugopal, it seems, had been an accidental witness to something related to the crime. So he too had to be done away with. Basically, this would be the obvious motive.’
‘So, what is our target now?’ Barat inquired.
Byomkesh said, ‘I think I have a plan, but we’ll implement it later. There is something that needs to be done tonight itself. We shall have to go back to Golap Colony. We’ll have to set up a secret surveillance of those living on the farm.’
‘The objective being …?’
‘Tonight the sky is overcast and the moon obscured by clouds—the ideal conditions for a tryst. We have to find out whether anyone on the farm enters someone else’s room. Are you agreeable to the idea?’
‘I certainly am. But first, let’s go to my place for a bite.’
We finished dinner at Barat’s place and left for the farm at around quarter past nine. It was better to be early. It would make little sense to keep a nocturnal vigil in the auditorium after the show was over. Barat managed to get hold of two raincoats for us.
The van was parked half a mile from the farm. We asked the driver to wait for us there and made our way to the farm on foot. The sky remained overcast, but of rain there was no sign so far. The occasional glimmer of lightning was as subdued as a bride’s shy smile diffused by her diaphanous veil. It wasn’t even accompanied by the usual rumbling of thunder.
On entering the farm, we found that the lights had been switched off in all the cottages, except for the dining hall. Everyone was at dinner. Byomkesh quietly gave us instructions. ‘Ajit, take up position behind the bushes near Bijoy’s cottage and keep an eye out for anybody other than Bijoy coming that way. Inspector Barat, you are to watch the back door of Damayanti’s house.’
‘And you?’
‘I shall keep Nepalbabu’s cottage—both the outside and the inside—under observation. I have marked out a karabi bush from behind which I can keep a lookout both ways.’
The raincoat-clad figures of Barat and Byomkesh vanished into the darkness. I took up my position behind one of the hedges near Bijoy’s cottage.
Within twenty minutes or so, the diners began to make their way back home. The lights came on first in Dr Bhujangadhar’s home. Then I heard Bijoy’s footsteps. He entered his cottage and switched on the lights. Bonolokhhi’s room was in darkness; she was probably still in the kitchen.
As I crouched there, Damayanti and Nishanath occupied my thoughts. I tried to flesh out the skeletal version of events we had been given and to bring it to life. It was possible that Damayanti hadn’t really loved a brute like Lal Singh. But when he was arrested for murder, she had felt, as any illiterate village woman would, that it was her duty to go and plead with the judge for clemency.
In course of time, she had grown fond of Bijoy and was drawn to Nishanath, tempted by her vision of the tenderness that could be an expression of marital bliss—something she had never had a taste of. Nishanath too had been attracted, perhaps against his will, to this charmingly vulnerable woman. His conscience was ravaged by conflicting impulses, but seated on the throne of justice, he could not bring himself to transgress the norms of morality. He retired from his job and came away to this remote place and began living together with Damayanti.
Who was to blame? Who had swung the first noose of temptation? These were futile questions. But it was impossible to avoid retribution for one’s sins in this life. You would reap as you sowed and nothing came without a price. Nishanath had paid a terrible one. Beset by apprehensions and overwhelmed with shame, Dayamanti too was paying dearly for her deeds. The enemy in search of an Achilles’ heel had found hers. He had wanted to live off her like a parasite. But he was a mere instrument. He too, would have to pay the price for his misdeeds some day …
The lights went off in Bijoy’s room. Next door, Bonolokhhi’s lights came on. A little later, the strains of Bhujangadharbabu’s sitar wafted out of his cottage, situated on the other side of Bonolokhhi’s rooms. I could not identify the raga, but it had a brisk rhythm to it and revealed an assured poise, as though it had acquired new zeal in its quest to issue an ardent invitation to a lover.
Ten minutes later, the strains of the sitar died away and Bhujangadharbabu switched off his lights. Within a few minutes, Bonolokhhi’s cottage too lay in darkness. All the lights in the cottages had now bee
n switched off.
What were they doing, I wondered. What thoughts passed through their minds as they rested in their assigned cottages? Beneath the pall of gloom that lay over the farm, what kind of thoughts played in the minds of each of these people? What was Bonolokhhi thinking of as she lay on her narrow bed? Who was she thinking of? Now, if I were omniscient …
About an hour went by in such idle thought. Suddenly, I grew alert as I heard footsteps—quick, yet cautious. They passed by the hedge behind which I was concealed and headed towards Bijoy’s cottage. In the impenetrable darkness, I could see nothing.
Bijoy’s front door stood about twelve feet away from my hiding place. I could hear the little taps on his door—the sound of knocking. Then I heard the door open. After that, silence.
At this moment, the veiled bride in the sky flashed a smile. Had she done so half a minute earlier, I would have caught sight of Bijoy’s nocturnal visitor.
Five minutes, then ten. I might have heard something if I had moved closer to the hut. But I didn’t dare. If I stumbled or fell in the dark, that would only serve to reveal my presence.
I heard the sound of the door opening. Once again, the invisible visitor went past me. The heavenly bride did not smile on us. I could see no one. All that came to my ears was the sound of a muffled sob. Who could it be? I couldn’t make out from the sobs, but whoever it was, it was a woman.
Menagerie & other Byomkesh Bakshi Mysteries Page 13