‘How long did that take?’
‘Not very long,’ said Gauri. ‘I must have been around twenty minutes there. Then I came out and sat near Swami saab’s door.’
‘Why particularly near his door?’ asked Hamid Pasha.
Gauri shrugged. ‘I usually sit there for an hour or so after my morning chores, babu. The room opens out to a spacious area in the living room. It just happens that the room belongs to Swami saab.’
Hamid Pasha nodded. ‘Was he in the room when you came down?’
‘Yes. He called me in for a glass of water as soon as I came down. He said he was having a headache and was going to sleep for a while. He told me to “keep things quiet” outside.’
‘And when did Raja leave for the movie?’
‘He left soon after I left his room, babu. So it must have been between noon and half-past the hour.’
‘Tell me something, Gauri,’ said Hamid Pasha, ‘how does Raja go to the movies? Does he get somebody to pick him up?’
‘Oh, his auto fellow comes to pick him up, babu. Prabhu is his name.’
‘Same man every time?’
Gauri nodded. ‘Raja babu calls him a half an hour or so before he has to leave and the fellow comes. No good, that fellow, babu. Sometimes he comes drunk during the day as well. And he nicks money from the house too, you know.’
‘Indeed?’
‘Oh, yes. Kauveramma is always telling Raja babu to be aware of Prabhu because he has a loose hand, she used to say. But when did the sons ever listen to their mother? She was quite sensible, the old woman.’ Then Gauri leant in closer. ‘That is more than we can say for the sons, no?’
‘Yes,’ Hamid Pasha agreed. ‘I heard that in the last week Kauveramma had a fight with Raja. Is that true?’
‘Oh, yes, babu. None of my business listening in on what they said, of course, but they were shouting at the tops of their voices, babu. I could not help but hear.’
‘Of course. Of course.’
‘She was warning him against the two other brothers, babu. You know Raja babu’’s legs are useless, so the other two brothers can always con him out of his money, you know—or at least that is what the old woman must have thought. But Raja babu is not lame up here, you know.’ She tapped her head.
‘Tell me, Gauri, did she by any chance say to Raja, “Do not trust those two louts”?’
Gauri nodded. ‘Yes, that is exactly what she said. How did you know, babu?’
‘That is not important. Now tell me, Gauri, when you were upstairs in Venkataramana’s house, did you see him in his room?’
‘I saw him go into the room, and for as long as I worked up in their house, I heard him working in his room.’
‘Heard him?’
‘Yes, there is a typewriter in the room. I heard him type stuff every now and then. The typing went on for as long as I was there.’
‘That is interesting. Ah, yes, interesting indeed. And you were in their house from round about eleven to twelve, were you not?’
‘Yes, that sounds correct.’
There was a pause, and Nagarajan noticed that Hamid Pasha’s jaw was moving in a slow, chewing motion, and his eyes were set on some point in the distance. He wondered what the point of all this questioning was; in his mind they were not any further into the investigation than they had been in the morning. Now, if only that constable he had sent along the other trail came back with something... yes, then they would have progressed.
‘What about your sister, Gauri?’ Hamid Pasha asked abruptly.
‘My sister, babu? What about her?’ she asked in a startled tone.
‘Oh,’ Hamid Pasha said, in what Nagarajan thought was a crestfallen voice. ‘So she does exist?’
‘Of course she does exist,’ Gauri said indignantly. ‘She comes to visit me for every festival without fail.’
‘So she was here, then, on the day when Kauveramma died?’
‘Oh—no—no, she was not. Why do you ask that? The last time she came here was a month ago.’
‘Ah.’ Hamid Pasha’s spirits rose visibly. ‘Now that is interesting too, is it not, miyan? Yes, that is very interesting. Now tell me, Gauri, does your sister have a habit of covering her head with her sari?’
‘Yes,’ Gauri said. ‘But even I do so, now and then.’
‘But your sister does it always, am I right?’
Gauri nodded. ‘What if she does?’
‘And I do not suppose you tell the people in the family when your sister is here and when she is not? I mean, you do not keep them updated as to her whereabouts, do you?’
Again her tone was indignant. ‘I don’t see why I should tell them about my sister. When she comes she helps me with my work, and they get to know anyway.’
‘Ah!’ And Hamid Pasha uttered a chortle of delight. ‘That might just be the most important thing I have heard all day! Do tell your sister that I thank her from the bottom of my heart, Gauri, please.’
Gauri looked questioningly at Nagarajan, but he simply shrugged.
‘Hamid Pasha addressed him, ‘We might yet pull this off, my friend. We might yet find a way through this maze of stories and anecdotes and incidents. Yes, now I can see a lamp at the end of the tunnel. Is that how you say it?’
‘A light, yes,’ said Nagarajan.
‘Ah, yes, a small lamp, mind you, but a lamp all the same. You cannot complain, can you, when all this time we have been groping in the darkness.’ He clapped his hands and danced a little. ‘Oh, yes, no, we cannot complain at all.’
Once again Nagarajan shared with Gauri a glance of mutual empathy.
‘But Gauri,’ Hamid Pasha said, arresting his celebratory gyrations for a minute. ‘I needed to ask you one last thing. Did you go near the well that afternoon at all?’
A flicker of hesitation crossed Gauri’s eyes. Nagarajan was sure he saw it.
‘No,’ she said, and her voice was low.
‘Not even once?’ Hamid Pasha pressed. ‘Around, say, two in the afternoon?’
‘No,’ she said, this time more decisively.
Hamid Pasha gave her a sweet smile. ‘Of course. Miyan, come!’ He nodded in Gauri’s direction quickly, turned on his heel and walked out towards the front of the old house. Nagarajan followed him.
‘Is she lying?’ Nagarajan asked when they were out of earshot.
‘Either she is,’ Hamid Pasha said cheerfully, ‘or the one in that house is’. He pointed up at the first floor of Kauvery Nilayam.
‘Great. All we need to find out now is which one.’ He could not keep the scorn out of his voice.
‘Ah, miyan, there is no hurry. You do not go chasing after the truth. You let her come to you. And she always comes, you know. Maybe she will take her time. Maybe she will not come to you when you want her to come. But you wait; she will come, eventually.’
‘I don’t want to wait too long,’ said Nagarajan.
‘The noose draws near, miyan. I am still not sure of a good many things in this case, but I feel like it is all coming together. Do you not?’
‘No.’
Hamid Pasha stopped and gave Nagarajan a queer glance. ‘Do you not see, then, the importance of Gauri’s sister?’
‘The importance of her existence?’
‘Yes, yes of course. Does that not strike you as odd in any way?’
Nagarajan thought, but nothing came to him. ‘No,’ he said wearily.
‘Well,’ said Hamid Pasha, ‘consider what it does to our opinions of the couple Venkataramana and Kamala. We thought one was the observant kind who kept tabs on everybody and everything while the other was the preoccupied, uninterested kind. But this throws a wrench in that, do you agree? Is Venkataramana more “occupied”, then, than he looks? Is Kamala not as “observant” as she looks?’
‘How does it matter?’ Nagarajan asked, exasperated.
‘Maybe it does not,’ Hamid Pasha said dreamily. ‘Maybe it is just a theory of mine. I do not know.’ After a pause, he said, ‘But you saw th
e significance of the old lady’s spotted hands?’
‘You mean the arsenic poisoning?’
‘Oh, and vomiting and the blood? Did you not connect that?’
‘We don’t know that she vomited blood.’
Hamid Pasha turned to Nagarajan and smiled. ‘Don’t we? Maybe we ought to make sure. Maybe—yes, maybe we should. But now you see how it all hangs together—sort of?’
‘No.’
Hamid Pasha sighed and shrugged, but Nagarajan saw he was still smiling in that faint, playful way that so irritated him. ‘Maybe this is all a big smokescreen,’ Hamid Pasha said. ‘Maybe—maybe it is just a pet theory of mine.’ He looked away into the distance, smiled again and shook his head. He was clearly enjoying himself.
‘Whom do you want to talk to now?’ Nagarajan asked, not a little sourly.
Hamid Pasha’s good humour did not waver. As they walked in the direction of the main path in front of the house he looked up and nodded at the figure standing by the gate ahead, his hands folded, staring at them as though he had been waiting for them. ‘Looks like it does not matter who I want to talk to, miyan, because that man certainly wants to talk to us.’
15
THE MAN AT the gate was sweating.
The evening was by no means warm. While the afternoon had been humid and sultry, sometime around four in the evening the clouds had cleared, and now the evening sun cast long, slanting shadows across the front yard. The branches of the big neem tree that stood just inside the compound heaved to and fro in the breeze. Nagarajan would not go as far as to say there was a chill in the air, but it was certainly not warm.
And yet the man who stood at the gate had round spots of sweat on his shirt around his armpits, and two more spots resembling maps of unknown countries featured on either side of his chest. He was in the process of scrubbing his heavily bearded face with a drenched, white handkerchief. Nagarajan figured this man needed it—and as many more as he could get.
When they moved closer to the gate he shoved his kerchief into his pocket and took a couple of steps towards them. He walked with his legs splayed apart, an understandable habit, thought Nagarajan, given how much the man evidently sweated. He said in a gruff, untrusting voice, ‘You have talked to my mother and father.’
It was not a question, but Nagarajan and Hamid Pasha both nodded.
‘People,’ he bent his head towards the house. ‘People must have said things about me in there. I am not very well liked around this place.’ He did not seem too unhappy about that. His mouth twisted upward in a cynical smile, suggesting that he even liked it. ‘I bet some of them even said I pushed the old woman over.’
‘You mean your grandmother, miyan,’ Hamid Pasha said severely.
‘I bet even my father thinks I am the one who tipped her over. I don’t know why the whole house is crying over her, if you ask me. She was an old lady. She had lived her life. If anything, she had lived longer than was comfortable for most of them.’ He jerked his head towards the house. Nagarajan could see beads of sweat growing into the size of droplets on his forehead.
A lack of interest was evident from Hamid Pasha’s expression. He was looking at the man in front of him as if his own mind was elsewhere, on something else that that had struck him, listening to what this man was saying only out of politeness.
‘There was a time,’ he said mechanically, ‘when you told the lady you would love to kill her?’
‘Oh yeah, who told you that?’ Lakshman’s eyes reddened. ‘I did say that to her, yes. But that does not mean I did want to.’ Once again the hint of a smile played on his lips. ‘If I had planned to kill her I would have been a lot more—direct.’
Nagarajan looked down at the man’s scaly, brown hands, moist with sweat. When he rubbed the kerchief with them he closed them over it from both sides, and it disappeared between his hands. Nagarajan could think of less subtle ways of killing an old woman than pushing her into a well. Less subtle, quicker, quieter...
Lakshman’s eyes narrowed on him, the smile still on his face. ‘Yes, I would not have bothered with all this—getting her to come to the well, pushing her over, running the risk of someone seeing me from the windows up there...’ His eyes moved up to the windows and back again. ‘I would have just taken her to the back and... I am not capable of planning something as elaborate as this. Did the people in there not tell you that?’
‘No,’ said Hamid Pasha, ‘but I got that impression’.
‘Oh, you did, did you?’ Lakshman said mirthlessly. ‘So who, according to you—or is it you?’ He turned to face Nagarajan. ‘Who do you think, then, is capable of planning such a thing? My brother?’
‘We have not yet met him, miyan.’ Once again Nagarajan felt that Hamid bhai’s words sounded mechanical. ‘Do you think he is capable of such a thing?’
‘Well, he has a law degree. He is the most qualified person in our family. I am not counting Kotesh Bava, of course.’
Nagarajan asked, ‘But he was the one who found the body.’
‘So?’
So, nothing. Nagarajan knew that it was an irrelevant fact who “found” the body. ‘But what did he have against the old lady?’ he asked.
‘What did I have against the old lady?’ Lakshman shot back. ‘He is my brother. Whatever grudge I hold against her, he must have the same one as well. Makes sense, doesn’t it?’
‘If it is the property you’re referring to, yes, I agree with you. But if the grudge is a personal one, then you could have your own reasons and he could have his own.’
‘Correct,’ said Lakshman, smiling. ‘Do you want to know my brother’s secret, then?’
‘Does he have one?’
‘Oh, all of us have secrets. Praveen has his. And though he has this reputation of being the good boy of the family—oh, yes, he does—he and the old woman had had some pretty nasty arguments in recent times.’
‘Indeed. What were these arguments about?’
Lakshman closely examined his thumbnail. ‘You know, I don’t blame Praveen for that. The old woman got under everybody’s skin. I bet there’s not one person in that house who is really grieving for her. You think Swamanayya is crying? He is glad that he finally has the money to pay off those communist idiots. You think Raja is crying? He is glad that he finally has all the money he needs for his movies and his cigarettes—and his women.’ His eyes rose up to them, and his lips widened in a sly grin. ‘Oh, you did not know that? He only lost the use of his hands and legs to polio, you know.’ He paused. ‘You think my father is crying? He now has all the money to pay off those land-grabbers in Puthoor. When a rich man dies, nobody really cries.’
‘That is an interesting thing you say, miyan,’ Hamid Pasha said, and Nagarajan saw that his eyes were now focused on Lakshman. ‘Did you say that your brother had a fight with your grandmother?’
‘Not one fight, sir. Repeated fights. Every now and then over the last two years.’
‘And these fights are over—what? A girl?’
Lakshman said cheerfully, ‘You must be a married man. You know a girl has to be involved somewhere. But she’s only part of it, you know. Praveen is not like me—he allows himself to get trampled on. When people ask him to bend over, he says “How much?” No one asks me to bend over, though, because I just ask them to...’ He stopped, and his voice, which had climbed steadily in intensity over the course of that sentence, dropped back to its conversational nature. ‘Praveen is not like me. He is malleable.’
‘What else was there apart from a girl?’
For a moment Lakshman did not answer. Out came his handkerchief to dry his face and hands, and back it went into his pocket. ‘You have to understand his psychology. Praveen has never done what he wanted in his life. If he wanted to wear a pink shirt when he was a child, the old woman would say he should wear a white one. If Praveen wanted to eat rice for dinner, the old woman would make chapattis for him. When Praveen said he wanted to go into sciences—he wanted to be a doctor like Kotesh
Bava—but no, the old woman said there was no lawyer in the house, and he must remedy that situation.’ He paused. ‘One thing you have to remember is that even spineless people have spines.’
‘So the girl was simply the last straw, you mean to say,’ Hamid Pasha said.
Lakshman shrugged. ‘Who can tell? Praveen always came around. After every fight with the old woman he would go back to her the next morning and wag his tail for her and she would throw him a biscuit. But maybe this was the last straw. Especially when she did not have any problem at all with Kotesh Bava marrying outside the caste. And you know, Praveen has always been a bit of a shadower, always doing what Kotesh Bava does; imitating his hair-styles, his dressing, his words, you know how hero-worship is.’
‘What reason did Kauveramma give for saying no?’
Lakshman leaned back a little and laughed. Nagarajan saw that the man had a happy face, and he could easily imagine him being the star of gatherings if only he put his mind to it. He wondered where the bitterness had come from; if his resentment towards his grandmother was justified or if it was just a result of Kamala’s slow poisoning of his mind. But if that were so, why was Praveen not similarly affected?
‘She was of a lower caste, you see. All castes are equal according to my grandmother, which was what she said when Kotesh Bava wanted to get married. But some castes are more equal than others. I think there was a book with a similar saying about animals, wasn’t there?’
Hamid Pasha said, ‘And Praveen’s girl was not of an “equal” caste?’
‘No, of course not. Durga was from a Reddy family. Brahmins and Reddys are at the top of the tree, you know, together. Praveen’s girl happens to be a—well, it doesn’t matter what, she is not from either of those castes.’
‘But,’ Hamid Pasha asked very slowly, ‘are you saying that it is enough to make a man want to kill?’
‘Praveen also had a love of the stage,’ Lakshman said, as if Hamid bhai had not spoken. ‘When he finished his degree he said he will take a year off and go to Bombay. He said he will give acting a go—and guess who said no?’ He looked up and smiled. ‘Maybe taken one at a time, it is not enough to make someone want to kill. But take all these into account, one after the other, and take into account the kind of guy Praveen is—I tell you, when a man like him breaks, he breaks clean, in half.’
Banquet on the Dead Page 16