Vintage Crime

by Martin Edwards

He regarded the author with apprehension. But it seemed he need not have worried.

  “Excellent idea, Inspector,” Mr. Reymond replied. But then he added: “Though there is one small discrepancy.”

  Ghote knew it had been too good to be true.

  “Please?” he asked resignedly.

  “Oh, just that we don’t have servants in England now. It’s why I find it difficult to know how to behave with them.”

  “Well, you behave with them as if they were servants,” Ghote said. “But if you do not wish to be present at the interview, perhaps that would be best.”

  So he had the pleasure of tackling the Muslim unimpeded by any bulky British shadow. It was a good thing too, because Fariqua proved every bit as evasive as he had told Mr. Reymond servants could be. He needed, when it came down to it, to use a little tough treatment. And he had a notion that cuffs and threatened kicks would not be the way Mr. Peduncle conducted an interrogation.

  But, after ten minutes in which Fariqua noisily maintained he had not been in the author’s flat at all the previous night, he caved in quite satisfactorily and produced a story that might well be true. He had been playing cards with “some friends” and it had got too late to catch a train to Andheri. So he had bided his time, sneaked back into the author’s flat before the door was locked and had hidden down between the stove and the wall till he had been able to take what, he implied, was his rightful place on the sitting-room couch.

  Ghote gave him another couple of slaps for impudence.

  “Now, what are the names of your card-playing friends?”

  “Inspector, I do not know.”

  But this time Ghote had hardly so much as to growl to get a better answer.

  “Oh, Inspector, Inspector. One only am I knowing. It is Kuldip Singh, sir, the driver of Rajinder Sahib at Flat No. 6, Building No. 2.”

  “Achchha.”

  Ghote let him go. He ought to walk round to Building No. 2 of the flats and check with the Punjabi gentleman’s driver, but that must wait. The Noted British Author might change his mind and want to come with him. And he would get that address, the simple key to having a solid case against the three of them, much more quickly unencumbered.

  It turned out, however, that the Parsi lady’s “divine but madly expensive” flat was not, as Mrs. Dutt-Dastar had said, in a block called Gulmarg in Nepean Sea Road but in a block of that name in Warden Road on the twin prominence of Cumballa Hill. But at least Mrs. Kothawala, sixty, exquisitely dressed, precise as a crane-bird, was helpful. She knew to a week just how long she had employed Louzado. She knew to an anna just how much he had cheated her by. She remembered having warned Mrs. Dutt-Dastar about him, and that Mrs. Dutt-Dastar had clearly forgotten before the telephone conversation was halfway through. And she knew for a fact that she had never had John’s address in Goa. But, of course, she was able to tell Ghote where he had worked before he had come to her.

  But sorting out Mrs. Dutt-Dastar’s error had taken a long time and Ghote found that having dutifully telephoned Inspector Dandekar and made sure there was no sign of the Noted British Author – their suspect was still unshaken too, he heard – he had time that evening to make only this one inquiry. And that proved as exasperating as the others, worse even, since instead of getting at least the name of Louzado’s next earlier employer he had to be content with the name only of a lady who would be “sure to remember”.

  Before trying her next morning he gritted his teeth and put in a call to Mr. Reymond, who, of course, was only too keen to come with him – “I had been thinking of looking in on Inspector Dandekar actually” – and only by wantonly altering the geography of Bombay did he persuade him that it would be more economical for him to stay at Shivaji Park until after he had made this one inquiry, which he promised would be rapid. But in fact the task proved immensely troublesome since the possibly helpful lady had moved house and no one nearby seemed to know where to. Application to the postal-wallahs met with a certain amount of bureaucratic delay and it was not until the very end of the morning that he had an address to go to. So he telephoned Mr. Reymond once more and dolefully arranged to collect him after lunch.

  “No sleep for me this afternoon, Inspector,” the cheerful voice had assured him. “I’ve a lot I want to ask you.”

  “Yes,” said Ghote.

  The first thing the Noted British Author wanted to know was why Fariqua had not been arrested. Ghote produced the fellow’s explanation for the “significant variation” in his behaviour.

  “Ah, so that accounts for it,” Mr. Reymond said, for once apparently happy. “I’m glad to hear it. I wouldn’t like to think I was getting my breakfast scrambled eggs from the hands of a murderer.”

  Ghote gave a jolly laugh. It came to him all the more easily because he had felt sure there would be some lacuna or loose-end to pursue. But the journey passed with no more than questions about the peculiarities of passers-by until they were almost at their destination, a house just inland from Back Bay in Marine Lines.

  Then the author, after a silence that had prolonged itself wonderfully, suddenly spoke.

  “Inspector Ghote, I can no longer conceal it from myself. There is a lacuna.”

  “Yes?” Ghote asked, misery swiftly descending.

  “Inspector, you did not, did you, check Fariqua’s alibi with Mr. Rajinder’s chauffeur? And I think – I am almost sure – Mr. Rajinder is the man who left on holiday by car three days ago.”

  “Then I will have to make further inquiries,” Ghote said glumly.

  But he forced himself to brighten up.

  “In any case,” he said, “perhaps we shall learn here just where John Louzado is to be found in Goa, and then, who knows, a single telephone call to the police there and they would have the fellow behind bars and we would have evidence in plenty, even some of the stolen jewellery, if we are lucky.”

  “Yes,” Mr. Reymond said, “but Fariqua’s invented story still leaves a loose-end.”

  Yet the interview at the Marine Lines flat looked from the start as if it was going to be all that Ghote and Inspector Dandekar had been counting on.

  “Oh, John, yes,” said the deliciously beautiful occupier, Mrs. Akhtar Hazari. “Yes, we should have an address in Goa. Not for John himself but for a priest – John was a Christian – who was to provide a reference. In fact, it was when we heard that John had a criminal record that we decided he must go. My husband imports watches and we often have valuable stock in the flat.”

  Ghote was possessed of a sudden feeling that everything in the world was simple. Confidence bubbled in his veins. It would not be as direct a way of wrapping up the case as he had spoken of to Mr. Reymond but the whole business might still be dealt with inside a few days.

  “Of course it was two or three years ago now,” Mrs. Hazari said. “But I always seem to keep letters. I will look. Will you take tea?”

  So they sat in her big cool sitting-room, Ghote on a fat pile of cushions, the Noted British Author swinging rather apprehensively in a basket chair suspended by a chain from the ceiling.

  Time passed.

  The servant came back and inquired whether they would like more tea. Mr. Reymond hurriedly refused for both of them. Ghote would in fact have liked more tea, but even better he would have liked to see that letter. He asked Mr. Reymond, who seemed to feel it necessary to speak in swift hushed tones, a few questions about his books. But the answers were not very satisfactory.

  And then at last Mrs. Hazari returned.

  “Inspector,” she said, “I must tell you that after all I have not got that letter. I had thought it was in an almirah where I put old papers like that. I even knew exactly the box it should be in. But my memory played me false. I threw out a lot of junk about a year ago, and it must have been in that.”

  Ghote felt like a child robbed of a sweetmeat. And now, he realised, with gritty dis
may, he would solemnly have to pursue Mr. Reymond’s theory about Fariqua.

  “And John came straight to you from Goa?” he asked Mrs. Hazari desolately.

  “No,” she said. “He did have one short job first. He went to a family where at once the wife died and the man no longer needed so many servants. That was why we took him without a reference. It was a business acquaintance of my husband, I think. And unfortunately he’s in Delhi. But if you would give me a ring tonight, I could perhaps tell you then.”

  With that Ghote had to be content. That, and the dubious gain to be had from dealing with Fariqua’s final lie.

  Happily by the time they got back to Shivaji Park Fariqua had left for Andheri, earlier than he should have done but not so much so that there was any reason to suppose he had run off like John Louzado. To placate Mr. Reymond Ghote sadly confirmed that the Kuldip Singh with whom Fariqua had claimed to be playing cards on the night of the murders had indeed already left Bombay by then.

  Perhaps, Ghote thought as he turned from saying a last goodnight, down at HQ the boy would have broken his obstinate silence and admitted the truth and then there would be no need to pursue next morning this surely – surely? – unsatisfactory loose-end. Or was it a lacuna?

  But Inspector Dandekar had no good news. Indeed he seemed considerably worried.

  “I had the damned boy in the interrogation room today for eight solid hours,” he said. “I have kept him standing up. I have been drinking tea and smoking cigarettes in front of him. I have had a trestle set up and Head Constable Kadam standing there swinging a Iathi. But nothing has moved him one inch.”

  “Inspector,” Ghote said with some hesitation, “is it possible that those ropes on his wrists had been altogether badly tied by the real miscreants and not faked only?”

  Dandekar sat in silence glaring down hook-nosed at his desk. “Well, yes, anything is possible,” he said at last. “But damn it, I cannot believe it. I just cannot believe it.”

  * * *

  So Ghote was up at Shivaji Park before eight next morning, waiting for the tricky Fariqua and telling himself that there was no reason why the fellow would not come to work as usual.

  But the surge of relief he felt when the Muslim did appear made him realise how much he was now expecting everything about the affair to go wrong. He pounced like a kite dropping down on a tree-rat.

  It did not take long to reduce the fellow to a state of abject fear. And then he talked.

  “Aiee, Inspector. No. No, Inspector Sahib. I swear to God I had nothing to do with it. Inspector, I just got to know those fellows. We used to sit and talk when I was sleeping here. Inspector, I did not know they were bad-mash fellows. Inspector, I am swearing to you. And then that night, that one Budhoo – Inspector, he is a really bad one that one, a devil, Inspector – Inspector, he said more than he was meaning. He said something was going to happen that night. We were in the kitchen of their flat, Inspector. All of them were out, Sahib, Memsahib and the boy. I did not know it was going to be murder, Inspector. I thought they had a plan only to take the jewellery, Inspector. They were saying she had jewellery worth one lakh, Inspector. They would hide under a bed. But no more were they telling me. And then they threatened that I should stay with them. But after they said I could go, Inspector. Then it was too late to go to Andheri. But Reymond Sahib had his door open still and I was able to creep in. I swear to you, honest to God, Inspector, I am never knowing anything about killing. But they said also that they would kill me if I spoke. Inspector, will you be saving me, is it? Is it, Inspector? Is it?”

  Ghote stood looking down at the shrunken cringing figure. Was he letting the fellow trick him again? It did not really seem likely. What he had said this time had been more than simply logical, like the story of card-playing with the Punjabi’s driver. This account of inconclusive talk with two of the murderers in the kitchen of the dead couple’s flat had rung true through and through. No wonder the fellow had tried to set up an alibi if that had happened. Of course, there had been no mention of any involvement by the son. But then the other two would have kept quiet about that. Yes, what he had learnt would scarcely help Dandekar.

  “You will be safe enough from your friends,” he growled at Fariqua. “In the lock-up.”

  Without the rest of them there would not be a case worth bringing as an accessory before the fact. But no harm to have the fellow to hand.

  He marched him off.

  He gave the Noted British Author the news by telephone. A witness who had heard and not properly heard the criminals’ plans: hardly the sort of thing for the pages of Mr. Peduncle Plays a Joker. A man induced by threats to join a robbery and then let go before it had begun: not exactly the sort of event for Mr. Peduncle Hunts the Peacock.

  And indeed questions and doubts poured out so fast that he was reduced at last to pointing out sharply that Mr. Reymond was now without a servant. At that the Noted British Author betrayed signs of disquiet. So Ghote explained he could get a replacement by talking to his neighbours and was rewarded by the author quite hastily ringing off.

  Encouraged by this, he hurriedly set out for the address he had got from Mrs. Hazari late the night before. It was, her husband had said, a Mr. Dass whose wife, now dead, had first briefly employed John when he had come to Bombay. He lived in a block of flats in B Road behind Churchgate.

  Climbing up the tiled stairway of the building, Ghote found he was retaining, despite the rather shabby air of the place, all his optimism. Louzado’s trail had been long, but now it must be near its end. This was, after all, where the fellow had had his first Bombay job. They could go no further back. But it was equally the most likely place for an employer to have noted that Goa address.

  On the door of the flat a small tree-slice nameboard had painted on it in much-faded script “Mr. and Mrs. Gopal Dass.” It must, Ghote reflected, have been a long while since there had been a Mrs. Dass if it was her demise that had brought Louzado’s first Bombay job to its abrupt end. And certainly the little irregularly shaped board had a strong look of dusty neglect.

  He rang the door bell.

  There was such a long silence that he almost became convinced he was to experience yet another defeat. He was even turning towards the next-door flat to make inquiries when the door opened by just a crack.

  He swung round.

  “Is it Mr. Gopal Dass?”

  The door opened a little more. Ghote saw in the bright light from the room beyond a man who had once been fat.

  Afterwards he was able to account in detail for the instantly stamped impression. It had come in part from the old European-style suit, its jacket drooping from the shoulders in deep encrusted folds, the trousers hanging in baggy rucks from the hips. But even the face had shown the same signs: flesh seemed to sag from it.

  “What is it you are wanting?”

  The voice, too, appeared to be coming from someone no longer there, hollow and without force.

  Rapidly Ghote introduced himself and stated his problem. He felt that the slightest chance might cause the tall empty man to close the door so barely opened.

  Mr. Dass heard him out, however. Then he sighed, driftingly like a puff of night breeze with hardly the strength to ruffle lonely waters.

  “Oh, no, no,” he said. “No addresses. Everything like that went when my wife left me for another life. Everything.”

  He turned slowly and looked into the room behind him. Ghote saw over his shoulder that it was almost completely bare. No curtains, no carpet, no pictures of the gods. Just a small table with a brass bowl, a brass tumbler and a packet of Mohun’s cornflakes on it, and in a corner a bed-roll.

  “Yes,” Mr. Dass said. “I got rid of everything. My life is at an end, you know. At an end.”

  And very slowly, and without any sense of discourtesy, he turned and closed the door.

  And I too, Ghote thought in the
thick sadness he felt billowing from the shut door with its once gay tree-slice nameboard, I too have reached an end. The end of my hunt for John Louzado.

  But one part of the affair certainly was not over. The Noted British Author would undoubtedly be out pursuing his loose-ends before much longer. He might be doing so already. One conversation could well have found a new servant.

  He ran clatteringly down the empty echoing stairway, drove full-out back to HQ, glancing wildly at Dandekar’s office as he came to a gravel-squirming halt, and ran for his telephone.

  “Ah, Inspector Ghote.”

  The British author’s enveloping smile seemed to come all the way down the line. “Ah, good. I was just setting out to see you. You’re speaking from your office?”

  “Yes,” Ghote answered. “That is – no. That is…”

  “There seems to be a bit of a discrepancy,” the plummy voice said.

  “Not at all,” Ghote answered with sharpness. “I am at office, and I shall be here all morning.”

  But when the Noted British Author arrived he was magnificently insulated from him. Within two minutes of his call Inspector Dandekar had asked him to take over his interrogation. It had been something of an admission of defeat for Dandekar. He had told Ghote he felt he dared no longer leave unexplored the possible trails in the Bombay underworld. If the boy was innocent despite everything, then inquiries through the usual network of touts and informers must be pursued now with extra vigour.

  “Mind you,” he had concluded, “I still swear young Raju is guilty as hell. I hope you can break him.”

  So, with Dandekar gossiping to thief acquaintances in such places as the stolen goods mart of the Chor Bazaar and thus safe from any British botheration, Ghote felt perfectly justified in leaving the author to cool his heels.

  And in the meanwhile he faced young Raju, cocksure graduate of Bombay University, adopted son of the murdered ice-cream manufacturer, and, as Dandekar had discovered at Shivaji Park, openly mutinous at having been given the fairly humble job in his new father’s firm of going round to shops and restaurants instead of having a fat sum given him to start up on his own.