Dead on Time

by H. R. F. Keating

  But now the D.G.P. apparently was ordering him not to pursue the matter at all.

  He almost asked once again if that was what had been said. But before he had gone that far the D.G.P. spoke.

  “No, Inspector. The damn thing is more complicated than that. And it is because of the complications that I sent for you.”

  Ghote felt at one and the same time worried and flattered. Worried that he would not succeed in dealing with the complications, whatever they were. Flattered that he had been picked out as capable of doing so.

  “Your name was suggested to me, er, er, Ghote,” the D.G.P. went on distantly, as if as he spoke he was trying to decide how he could say what he had to say. “Suggested as a suitable officer who, if worse came to worst, could be—”

  Then abruptly he made up his mind.

  “It is the identity of the particular victim,” he blurted out. “That is the trouble. He is one Ramrao Pendke, who turns out to be the grandson and sole heir of a certain Bhagwantrao Pendke, patil of a village called Dharbani, out somewhere miles away, beyond Nagpur. And Bhagwantrao Pendke is a landowner about as big as they come, who—not to beat about the bush—has got ten thousand votes in his pocket.”

  Then Ghote realized what the D.G.P.’s complications were. The headman of a village with so many votes at his command, whose word, deep in the mofussils, would be law to hundreds and hundreds of illiterate petty tenants and landless laborers, was in a different way every bit as influential as the Dhunjeebhoy brothers. They might have vast wealth, but this Bhagwantrao Pendke would have something as precious in today’s India: votes that could turn a politician into a minister.

  But surely the mere fact that the Patil of Dharbani was the murder victim’s grandfather could not be the whole of the complication. Bhagwantrao Pendke was unlikely to be offended even if it should turn out that the officer who had extracted that swift confession had been—the scathing words of Dr. Hans Gross, whose Criminal Investigation had for so long been Ghote’s holy writ, came back to him—too much of an “expeditious investigator.” So long as whoever had killed the Patil’s grandson was brought to justice in the end, surely he would be content. Yet . . .

  “Superintendent Verma, in charge of District Ramkhed under which Dharbani falls, happens to be an old colleague of mine from Police Training School days,” the D.G.P. went on. “And, as soon as the news reached him that young Ramrao Pendke had been killed, he got on to me with some private information.”

  From behind his wide, papers-strewn desk he looked at Ghote sharply.

  “Private information, Inspector,” he said. “Information not a hint of which is to go beyond these four walls. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” Ghote said.

  And he could not fight away a feeling of sinking dismay.

  “It appears that in the event of Ramrao Pendke’s death— something which, incidentally, nearly took place already a few weeks ago—the next in line to the Patil’s lands and influence would be the boy’s cousin-brother, one Ganpatrao by name. And that particular gentleman, not to mince words, is a damn bad hat.”

  Ghote felt another massy beam lowered into place in the weighty structure being heaved onto his shoulders. If Ganpatrao Pendke was such a damn bad hat, it was very possible that he had murdered the cousin who stood between him and power, wealth, and influence. But this murderer, if murderer he was, was also a grandson of the Patil of Dharbani. How content would that influential man be if it was proved that his other grandson was the killer? Or, worse, if it was half proved? And by him himself?

  “S.P. Verma,” the D.G.P. was going on, “not knowing that the watch-shop murder had been satisfactorily dealt with here, any more than I did myself at the time, thought fit to give me a private tip that this fellow Ganpatrao was a man perfectly capable of doing someone to death. And you know the old saying about paternal cousins, Inspector? Kautilya Chanakya, 250 B.C.?”

  Ghote, who thought he probably did know the saying, more or less, had sense enough to say, “No, sir.”

  “‘Paternal cousin is a naturally envious person,’ Inspector. That’s the wisdom of old Kautilya Chanakya, and I’ve no reason to doubt it still holds good.”

  “Yes, sir. And you were telling also, no, that the victim in question nearly died some weeks ago? Did the said Ganpatrao make some attack on him at that time?”

  “No, no, not at all. No, you see, the whole reason young Ramrao was in Bombay was that he was very seriously ill. So serious that his death was, so to speak, assured. But then an America-returned surgeon who’s just set up a clinic here in Bombay, name of Yadekar, I think—something like that— succeeded in giving him some sort of transplant. And from being on the point of expiring, though a patient stiil at the clinic, he was to all intents and purposes alive and well again.”

  “And Ganpatrao’s hopes to become heir to all those lands had vanished,” Ghote said. “So, yes, sir, I see he then had very much more of motive. But, sir, was S.P. Verma telling that the said Ganpatrao was in Bombay itself yesterday at the time of the crime?”

  For a moment the D.G.P. looked a little disconcerted.

  “Well,” he said, “there you’ve put your finger on it, Inspector. My old friend, Verma, is in a somewhat difficult position. After all, the Patil of Dharbani is by far and away the most important individual in his whole district. The fellow may choose to stay in a village, but he is due a great deal more respect than the Chairman of the Municipal Council in Ramkhed, or anybody else. So Verma is not particularly anxious to go poking his nose into the family’s affairs. Why prod the cobra’s nest, as they say?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Look at it this way, Inspector. Ganpatrao Pendke may be a thoroughly dirty dog, but whatever he’s done to come to police notice hitherto has invariably been allowed to lie in the dormant file. At the particular request of his grandfather.”

  “I see, sir,” Ghote said.

  The cloud of despondency that had hovered over him ever since he had heard the words private information, with their hint of things that ought to be made public being kept neatly under cover, descended fully onto him now. Damp and chilling.

  It had begun to be altogether clear that if the D.G.P.’s friend, Superintendent Verma, felt himself debarred from conducting any investigation out at Village Dharbani, that tricky task was going to be given to Inspector Ghote. But a flicker of hope sprang up.

  “Sir,” he said, “even if Mr. Ganpatrao Pendke is responsible for the death of his paternal cousin, surely it would not be necessary to go to his native place to find out if he had left for Bombay before the murder. Sir, he could all the time have hired some goonda to do his dirty works.”

  “No, no, Inspector,” the D.G.P. said, whisking the idea away with a dismissive hand. “Do you think a man like this Ganpatrao would entrust a secret that could cost him his life to a sopari he had hired? Or at the least lay himself open to lifelong blackmail? No, no. Ridiculous.”

  “Yes, sir,” Ghote said, realizing the D.G.P. was almost certainly right.

  If Ganpatrao Pendke had killed his cousin he was bound to have come to Bombay for the purpose. Which meant that he in turn would have to go out to Village Dharbani and conduct the investigation which S.P. Verma was too much of a bootlicker to conduct himself, to find whether Ganpatrao had or had not been in Bombay at the time in question.

  “So what I want you to do, Inspector,” the D.G.P. went on, hammering Ghote’s last hopes into the ground, “is to get yourself out there and, without disclosing your identity as a police officer and thereby bringing trouble down on poor Verma’s head, quietly ascertain just exactly where Ganpatrao Pendke was yesterday morning.”

  ' “Yes, sir.”

  The D.G.P. leaned back in his tall desk chair, a burden off his mind.

  “In any case, er, Ghote,” he said with sudden affability, “I daresay the whole Ramkhed end of the business is no more than a mare’s nest. The investigation here is under one Assistant Inspector Lobo, a chap I�
�ve had my eye on for some time. Thoroughly keen and reliable. A tiptop officer. He won’t have gone far wrong, take my word for it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Ghote could not help asking himself briefly how it was that a fellow of assistant inspector rank only could have got himself so well into the D.G.P.’s good books. He would have his promotions accelerated no doubt. Yet he himself was so little known to higher authority that for almost all this interview the D.G.P. had had difficulty remembering his name.

  And then something else was borne in on him. That he had in fact been picked out for the task that had been thrust upon him because, if his investigation should somehow earn the displeasure of the votes-rich Patil, any ensuing trouble could conveniently be visited on his own head and no one else’s.

  For a moment more the D.G.P. appeared still to be reflecting pleasurably on Assistant Inspector Lobo and the rapidity with which he had obtained a confession in the case. Then he rubbed his hands briskly together once more, pulled back the sleeve of his shirt, and consulted his new Exacto.

  “Right,” he said. “Well, now, I’ve promised to take lunch at home today. A grandchild’s birthday. Must honor the occasion. So I’ve had a train looked out for you, er, Ghote, and ...”

  He scrabbled for a slip of paper.

  “Ah, yes, the fourteen-fifteen hours for Nagpur. You’ll have to make your own way from there to Village Dharbani. But I daresay by the time you get back to Bombay you’ll find A.I. Lobo has got a detailed confession properly recorded in front of a magistrate and that will be that.”

  “Yes, sir,” Ghote said.

  He clicked heels in salute and turned to go, not without momentarily allowing a disloyal thought to enter his head. If this wonderful A.I. Lobo was going to have the whole business wrapped up in such short order, was it truly necessary for him himself to go all the way out to Dharbani and risk getting into a devil of a soup?

  But orders were orders. . . .

  Then, as he went down the stairs and out into the road, another thought struck him. It was—he looked at his ancient watch—not yet a quarter to twelve. His train did not leave V.T. Station till a quarter past two. So, even after going home and packing a suitcase, he ought to have time enough to call in at the station covering Kemp’s Corner and the Tick Tock Watchworks nearby. And there at least he could make himself discreetly better acquainted with the facts of the case. Because, if he could do that, when he arrived at the remote Village Dharbani he would be in a very much stronger position. It would be all the easier then to find out how likely it was that Ganpatrao Pendke, the damn bad hat, had been responsible for killing his cousin rather than the watchshop owner, Rustom Fardoomji, so rapidly lined up as the culprit by Assistant Inspector Lobo, D.G.P.’s pet.

  Provided he went carefully, it need never come to the ears of the D.G.P. that he had ventured to go just a little against those orders to keep the Dharbani possibility strictly confidential.

  And—it occurred to him suddenly—he had a certain advantage here. One Sub-Inspector Miss Shruti Shah.

  He had worked alongside S.I. Shah out in the suburbs not many months before. It was a case in which a young schoolteacher, who in a love match had married the daughter of a high-up municipal councilor, had then killed her. A tragedy that had for weeks given him periods of gray sadness. The murderer, tormented by his inability to provide his new wife with the comforts she had been used to, and yet more by the obsessive jealousy she had soon shown, leading her even to time to the minute how long it took to bicycle back from his school to their one-room flat, had in the end beaten her to death with her own wooden belna as she had been rolling out chapattis. He had afterward made a pathetic attempt to lie his way out of the crime.

  S.I. Shah had had no difficulty in seeing through his story, and he himself had had even less to do than usual in keeping his watching brief on the investigation. But he had been much impressed with the humane yet unflinching way Shruti Shah had handled her pathetic killer. And in the short while they had worked side by side they had become friendly.

  More—a great piece of luck—he had heard that she had recently been transferred to the Kemp’s Corner area.

  And, yet more good luck, when, suitcase in hand and wifely complaints over his sudden departure still ringing in his ears, he arrived at the station he was told that S.I. Shah was due back from her lunch break almost at once.

  He decided then to stroll up and down outside to wait for her. He was hardly anxious to meet the D.G.P.’s star, A.I. Lobo. But before long he had begun to think he had made a mistake. The minutes ticked by, five, ten, twelve, and there was no sign of Shruti Shah. His suitcase grew heavier and heavier in his hand, and there was no shade anywhere.

  He remembered now that Shruti, though a model officer in every other way, intelligent, quick, thorough, and sympathetic as well, was a congenitally bad timekeeper. She had not once, during the week they had worked together, met him at exactly the appointed hour. She had always arrived behind time in a desperate hurry, hair falling down, uniform sari tugged awkwardly over her shoulder, full of incoherent excuses. And this despite a habit she had—she had told him about it quite early in their acquaintanceship—of permanently keeping her watch five minutes fast. Adding, not much to his surprise, that in fact she never succeeded in tricking herself. She was, he had realized almost as soon as he had met her, much too quickly intelligent to let herself be deceived in this way.

  He had found this unpunctuality, her sole fault, endearing then. But now, with time going by before that train to Nagpur, he began to feel differently.

  He turned once more and walked slowly in the other direction, sweat gathering on shoulders and back. Should he give up the idea of finding out that little extra about the crime at the Tick Tock Watchworks and get off in good time to V.T. Station?

  “Inspector Ghote, it’s you.”

  S.I. Shah had come up behind him in a rush. She was looking every bit as disheveled as he had seen her before, face glistening with perspiration, a heavy shopping bag swinging at her side, a strand of hair running from forehead to lower lip.

  “Shruti,” Ghote said, “I have been wait—I had hoped I would see you. There is one favor ...”

  “My God, but come inside. Ek minute just. There is a phone I must make. I am running behind time also.”

  She glanced at the slim watch on her wrist, and gave a little grimace at, once again, not having tricked herself by altering its hands.

  Ghote grinned. He could not help it.

  “I will come in,” he said. “But I cannot stay long, I have a train.”

  He followed Shruti’s scurrying figure into the station.

  Her phone call took her a good deal longer than the “ek minute” she had promised. But, listening with half an ear, Ghote had to recognize that she was not wasting the time. Evidently it was a tricky matter—something to do with a girl being possibly detained against her will—and he could only admire the way she was dealing with it.

  But at last she put down the receiver and turned to him, and he was able to explain what the discreet favor he needed was.

  “Well,” she said, “Mike Lobo is playing this one altogether close to his chest. But, if you are wanting, I can at least show you the scene.”

  Ghote looked at his watch.

  Yes, there should be time still if it did not take too long.

  The Tick Tock Watch works, when Shruti Shah led him around to the lane just off busy, prosperous Kemp’s Corner, where it stood between a cheap eating place called the Sri Krishna Lunch Home and a small barbershop, the Decent Electric Hairdresser, came as something of a disappointment. He had had only the vaguest notion of what he might see there that would somehow eventually perhaps show up expeditious A.I. Lobo. But when he was confronted by the blank, pulled-down metal shutter of the little shop he realized that there could hardly have been anything to learn without having first arranged to get inside.

  “Well, there it is,” Shruti Shah said, as they pus
hed through a circle of idlers, small boys, beggars, youths with cigarettes dangling from their mouths, dallying office messengers, still staring hopefully at the rust-streaked shutter behind which a murder had happened. “You know it was a watch company salesman who first saw the body? He came into the shop and found the place deserted. The victim, badly beaten up, was lying on the floor just inside. So he phoned the station, and Mike Lobo came around, twice as fast as light as usual, just in time to meet a traffic constable bringing back the owner. Mike guessed he had been absconding, nabbed him, and straightaway got a confession.”

  “Just only like that?”

  “Just only with a few slaps and some hair pulled and probably a little more,” Shruti Shah answered. “Mike’s an expert.”

  “And why did this owner fellow do it?” Ghote asked, remembering only just in time that he had better not let even Shruti learn he knew the man’s name was Rustom Fardoomji.

  “Well, as Mike says, police has only to prove means and opportunity, and motive can go to hell. I am quoting. Hey, but look.”

  Ghote turned in the direction she had indicated. A neatly dressed, busy-looking man with a brush of a moustache, carrying a flat black briefcase, had come to the back of the little crowd around the shuttered shop and was staring at it almost transfixed.

  “A piece of luck for you, Inspector,” Shruti Shah said. “That is the man who was finding the body. By the name of Saxena. I had a word with him yesterday when Mike was making out the F.I.R. on the case.”

  The First Information Report on the affair was a document Ghote would dearly have liked to have had a sight of. But this chance meeting with the watch company salesman who had discovered Ramrao Pendke’s battered body might be almost as rewarding.