Dead on Time

by H. R. F. Keating

  Then there had been another, longer period of full attention when, a little later, he had learned that he had missed the train. He must have then, he realized afterward, made up his mind to go by air. Somehow he had had sense enough to get into a taxi and go to Nagpur Airport. And he could remember getting a ticket there, and his relief when he had found he had actually had money enough to pay for it. And at some point—was it at the railway station or the airport?—he had drunk, one after another, three cans of sweet, dark red, fizzy Thums Up. Or had he? Had that been a delusion brought on by raging thirst?

  It must have been some time about then, however, waiting for the plane, that he had become conscious of what a state he was in. There was the blood from his neck, which Sitabai had made some effort to wipe with her sari, but which had left a wide stain, stiff and rusty brown, on his already limp and sad shirt. His trousers, he found, had a long rip in them on the left side, almost from hip to calf, and they, too, were stiff here and there with dried blood. And he was bruised. Bruised and bruised again.

  He had felt incapable of discovering exactly how much. But he was aware that his ribs on the left as well as the whole hip and the thigh below it jabbed fierily whenever he moved. His cautious, dazed explorations had, nevertheless, reassured him. He seemed to have no broken bones and his wounds, though more plentiful than he was prepared to count, were no worse than severe grazes.

  So, once safely landed in Bombay, he had felt it his duty to get to a telephone and ask the D.G.P.’s secretary for an immediate appointment with him.

  It was with more than a little relief, however, that he failed to get it. After much delay the secretary informed him that D.G.P. sahib could not see him until 6:00 p.m., and that that would have to be at his residence between other appointments.

  He both fretted at the check and welcomed it. He fretted because, as he had recovered, he had found his mind full of a throbbing determination to pin the Tick Tock Watchworks murder on to Ganpatrao Pendke. Or, just possibly, failing that, on to the Sarpanch. It was clear to him that one or the other of them must be responsible, perhaps both jointly. Each of them was plainly capable of murder, as the Dhunjeebhoy brothers had protested their young cousin was not. Each of them had a good motive for wanting Ramrao dead, as he so nearly had been until his operation at the clinic. Rustom Fardoomji’s motive, on the other hand, despite his confession to A.I. Lobo, was altogether unclear. Both Ganpatrao and the Sarpanch had, too, been in Bombay when the crime had been committed, even though they had produced some show of having a joint alibi.

  The enforced delay before he could put all this to the D.G.P. was welcome because, as he had recovered in mind from the attack, he had become increasingly aware of how bruised and battered he was in body. The thought of going home and being cared for by Protima was wonderfully cheering. It would be a breathing space. He needed that. And he could be sure at home of having it, even though he was returning without the Nagpuri sari he had promised himself to bring as a peace offering.

  And, he thought with sudden confused dismay, even though he would come without the suitcase he had left at the Skylark Hotel, supposedly far away from “the clog clog of machines, the whizzing trains, the blaring of horns and sirens.”

  So it was rested, freshly clothed, and much comforted by wifely applications of turmeric and sugar for his bruises and May and Baker’s Propamidine cream for his cuts that he presented himself at six o’clock that evening at the D.G.P.’s flat on the fourteenth floor of a towering block called Sunny Hours. Or, as it turned out, since his efforts at home to get his watch going again had failed, at twenty-five minutes before six.

  The servant, who had answered his ring at the bell and gone to tell the D.G.P. he had arrived, returned promptly with a message. It was a terse echo of his master’s voice. The correct time was 5:35 exactly, and Inspector sahib’s appointment was for 6:00 precisely.

  As the darkly gleaming door of the flat was being closed almost in his face, he managed to blurt out a request that the man would come and readmit him at six. Sheepishly he added that his watch was broken.

  He stood then in the marble-chip blankness of Sunny Hours’ fourteenth-floor lobby and cursed. He was bringing urgent information about a serious crime. He was almost able to name the man or men who had committed it. And he was being made to wait.

  Surely just in obedience to the D.G.P.’s mania for absolute punctuality.

  He leaned against the wall beside the flat’s gleaming blank door and let himself grow into a sullen huddle. And, as he did so, he became gradually aware of a high, piping voice that seemed to come from nowhere directly to mock him.

  “Sixty seconds, one minute. Sixty minutes, one hour. Twenty-four hours, one day. Seven days, one week. Four weeks, one month. Twelve months, one year. Ten years, one decade. Ten decades, one century. Sixty seconds, one minute . .

  Eventually he realized what it must be. There must be a little girl in the flat opposite, No. 14B, and she was repeating and repeating an English homework lesson.

  “Sixty seconds, one minute. Sixty minutes, one hour. Twenty-four hours ...”

  But then, when he did not know how much time had passed, five minutes or fifty-five, the door of No. 14A abruptly swung back. The D.G.P.’s servant was there.

  “Six o’clock, sahib. On dot.”

  He followed the man in.

  The D.G.P. was sitting in his drawing room in the middle of a large flower-patterned sofa. Here and there in the big carpeted room were other chairs, deep and springy, covered in the same bright material. There were small tables, too, in much-polished wood. There were vases of flowers, tall and resplendent. There were statues on the tables of various gods and goddesses in ivory, bronze, and wood. There was a bookcase filled with leather-bound volumes. There was a large television set, its white cloth dust cover lying on the floor beside it.

  “Inspector,” the D.G.P. said, “let me tell you, it is as bad to be early for an appointment as it is to be late. I like to see my officers presenting themselves at the time stated. Neither before nor after.”

  Thrusting out his left arm, he consulted the shining new Tata Titan Exacto on his wrist.

  “The time now,” he said, “is precisely fifteen seconds past six P.M.”

  “Yes, sir,” Ghote said.

  Inwardly he raged. Things could hardly have begun on a worse foot. And, besides, what the D.G.P. had stated was not really true. Surely it was not so bad to be early for an appointment as it was to be late.

  “Well, now,” the D.G.P. went on, “I take it, Inspector, that, since you have insisted on coming to see me itself, you have got something more to report than that this fellow—what’s his name?—Ramrao Pendke was safely at home at the time of the murder.”

  “Ganpatrao, sir.” Ghote felt bound to put the correction. “Mr. Ramrao Pendke was the victim of the occurrence. It is his cousin, Mr. Ganpatrao Pendke, you sent me to Village Dharbani to make inquiries concerning.”

  “Yes, yes. Ganpatrao. What about him?”

  Ghote took a deep breath.

  “Sir, I was finding out in Dharbani that, number one, Ganpatrao Pendke was in Bombay at the time Ramrao was murdered. Number two, that he is not able to account to one hundred percent for his movements on the morning of March the ninth last. Number three, that now his cousin, Ramrao, is dead, Mr. Ganpatrao Pendke is direct heir to the great wealth of his grandfather, the Patil of Dharbani, and that it is also very much his life’s ambition to use such wealth for the building of a very fine house in the town of Ramkhed with a clock tower even, similar to the selfsame one of the Rajabi Tower here, sir.”

  “Hm.”

  Ghote had hoped that he might have had a more favorable response. But, he reflected, at least the case he had made against Ganpatrao had not been thrown out altogether.

  “And, sir, there is yet one more matter.”

  “Very well, Inspector.”

  “Sir, in Village Dharbani there is also residing one Jambuvant Dhoble, son-in-la
w of the Patil, and, for the reason that Ganpatrao has no children living and his wife is unable to conceive further, the said Jambuvant Dhoble, Sarpanch of Dharbani, is next in line to the Patil’s wealth after Ganpatrao, and, sir, he was in Bombay also at the time of the murder.”

  “And does this Dhoble fellow have any sort of alibi, Inspector? You made such inquiries as you could along those lines out there, I hope.”

  “Yes, sir, I was making. Sir, both Jambuvant Dhoble and Ganpatrao claim only that at some time on the morning in question they were visiting together the Rajabi Tower. But no more than that, sir.”

  “Hm.”

  The D.G.P. flicked a look at his watch.

  “No, Inspector,” he said, “I don’t think we will waste any more time over that precious pair. Bad hats, I daresay, but what case is there against either of them to compare with a perfectly good confession to murder?”

  “Sir,” Ghote burst out, unable to stop himself, “has the watchmaker then repeated his confession before a magistrate?” The D.G.P.’s forehead creased for an instant in disapproval.

  “I understand he has not, Inspector, if it’s any concern of yours. I gather A.I. Lobo feels a period of suspense is necessary to bring the culprit fully to the right frame of mind. A perfectly sound decision.”

  “But, sir.” Ghote hurled into battle something he had not intended to mention. “But, sir, the man Ganpatrao was attacking myself, sir. Just only this morning. He was riding one powerful motorcycle at myself, sir.”

  The D.G.P. sat up straighter on his flowered sofa.

  “Why didn’t you report this at once, Inspector? An attack on a police officer. Did you attempt to arrest the fellow?”

  “Sir, I was not able. I was rendered unconscious, sir. And also I did not to one hundred percent see him.”

  The D.G.P. frowned sharply.

  “Let me get this quite clear, Inspector. You were run down by a motorcycle. I see now you’re carrying yourself pretty stiffly. Very well. But you did not see who was riding the machine at the time? Yes?”

  “Yes, sir. I was attacked from the rear, sir. I was noticing just only at the last second. But I am believing it was Mr. Ganpatrao Pendke, sir. Definitely.”

  “I see, Inspector. And on the strength of some fleeting impression you expect my old comrade-in-arms, S.P. Verma out at Ramkhed, to have the grandson of the most prominent citizen in his district put behind the bars like a common criminal?”

  “No, sir. No. Sir, I was just only citing as additional evidence, sir.”

  “Hm. Well, I can’t say I much care for any of your evidence, Inspector, additional or not. I cannot set in hand inquiries into the lives of respectable citizens on such utterly flimsy grounds as you have brought me. It’s out of the question. Dismiss, Inspector, dismiss.”

  Ghote felt overwhelmed beneath a surge of despair. All right, the evidence he had gathered together was not strictly conclusive, and the confession A.I. Lobo had extracted was, on the face of it, altogether weightier. But those two out at Dharbani were certainly not innocent as newborn babes. It surely ought to be worth looking into their activities in Bombay at a time when a man they both had good reason to want dead had been murdered. And yet just because the D.G.P. had so much of faith in Lobo . . . and because the Patil was a man of such influence . . .

  But what was there he could do?

  Leadenly he clicked heels in salute and turned to go.

  And, as he wheeled round, out of the corner of his eye he just caught the D.G.P. looking once again at his new Tata Titan watch. Whether it was the word Tata that set off some buried train of thought in his mind, or whether it was some other cause altogether, he found at that instant a dozen different things he had heard or half heard during his time away from Bombay had run together into a whole coherent possibility. An altogether new possibility.

  He turned back and faced the D.G.P.

  “Sir,” he said, “there is one more thing I should be informing you of. There is one more suspect in the case, sir. One who is not at all influential. Sir, there is a fellow working at the Tata Institute. Of Fundamental Research, sir, here in Bombay. One by name of Barde, sir. It is Raghu Barde. His native place is located at a village called Khindgaon, some miles distant from Dharbani but altogether within the purview of the Patil there, sir. And though this fellow is working at T.I.F.R., he is very much still interested in this Village Khindgaon, sir, which is altogether a poor place. So he is spending much of time to assist his fellow villagers to sell in Bombay baskets they are making and cloth also that they are weaving. He is believing it is vital for them to pull themselves up by their bootstrings only. It is Gandhian principles, sir. But, sir, I have also been learning that Ramrao Pendke, the murder victim, had a plan to start up manganese mining at Khindgaon, sir. Such would destroy the rural peace of that place. So it is possible that the said Raghu Barde would go to the lengths of murder to stop same, sir.”

  The D.G.P. had at least allowed him to get his whole string of facts and suppositions out uninterrupted. He stood now awaiting the verdict.

  “Yes, Inspector. Yes, that’s more like it. You say this fellow started life as a simple villager, eh?”

  “Yes, sir. Yes.”

  “Then why the hell didn’t you tell me about him straightaway? However, since you have got round to it at last, follow it up, Inspector. Follow it up. Find out all you can here about the fellow, and I’ll send word to Lobo to keep his man on ice a little longer. Might be no bad thing in any case.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. And, sir, should I also just only make some inquiries, in a hundred percent discreet manner, sir, into those other two?”

  “If you must, Inspector. If you must. But I am warning you, cause any trouble and I shall know who to blame. Yes?”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  Despite his stiff side and tender bruises, Ghote ran all the way down the green and white marble-chip stairs of Sunny Hours, too impatient to wait for the lift and the khaki-uniformed liftwalla who had brought him up, much too early, to the fourteenth floor. Outside, he hailed a taxi and had himself driven through Bombay’s tumultuous evening traffic, halted and freed and halted again, to the police station near Kemp’s Corner.

  It had come to him the moment he had been given permission to continue his investigation that what he had to do before all else was to obtain the fullest possible details of the actual murder. The exact time it had taken place, the names of any witnesses, any and every circumstance connected with it. Then perhaps he would be able to see if there were links between it and Ganpatrao Pendke and the Sarpanch. Then, too, he would be able to question Raghu Barde at the Tata Institute a great deal more effectively than he had questioned Ganpatrao at the hour of cowdust out on the path from Dharbani or the Sarpanch in his house while the fellow stole tidbits from the thali he had had put before him.

  At the station he was told, to his mounting delight, that A.I. Lobo was inside.

  And there he was, sitting on the corner of a table thick-piled with papers and files dusty with age, a short, athletic-looking fellow, bar signs of a thickening waist, with a round face enlivened by a pencil-thin, sharp moustache. He was wearing a bright pink shirt within its pocket three silver-clipped pens.

  Introducing himself, Ghote stated at once that he had the D.G.P.’s permission to take an interest in the Tick Tock Watchworks murder.

  He had been ready for Lobo to take instant offense, as many station officers did when someone from Crime Branch was allocated to a case they were handling. But the reception he got was far from cool or guarded.

  “Yeah, man,” Lobo said at once, “thought Crime Branch would be round sooner or later. Big tamasha, this. But let me give you the full works. Come and chew a cup of tea.”

  Ghote expected to be taken to the station’s canteen. But instead Lobo led him out to a small restaurant. Its proprietor, sitting behind his cash desk, received them with obsequious smiles. A waiter hurriedly cleared a table.

 
“Tea, Inspector?” Lobo asked cheerfully. “Or, better, do you want Nescafe? Or a cold drink? Have a cold drink and something to eat. They bring me only the best here. On the house, of course.”

  “I will take tea only,” Ghote said, his suspicions of Lobo wrinkling up again.

  As soon as the waiter had brought their order—Ghote realized that his tea was a Special, in a large cup, full to the top, with a spoon in the saucer, while Lobo had two egg sandwiches and a cold Mangola—the assistant inspector leaned forward and spoke in a confidential undertone.

  “We can do this nicely between us, I hope, Inspector. Don’t go thinking I’m one of those boys who always tries to blind any Crime Branch walla. Jesus, they ought to know better. Give and take, that’s what I say. I help you, you help me.”

  “Very well, A.I.,” Ghote said cautiously. “So, tell me, please, what exactly do you believe took place at the Tick Tock Watchworks?”

  “Oh, simple enough, man. This Ramrao Pendke came in there, loaded with money. You could tell that from the body even. Gold Rolex on his wrist. And, guess what, that was stopped at the time of the murder. God, would you believe? Just like a crime film. But there it was in real life. This Rustom Fardoomji had beaten and battered him so much that he actually hit the watch. Stopped it dead. At eight minutes past eleven exactly. Good evidence, that. And you know something else? The bloody watch was a fake. A fake, man. Genuine Swiss, made out at Ulhasnagar. I happened to catch sight of the little layer of lead inside, put in to make it the same weight as gold. Keep my eyes open, you know. By Christ, yes.”

  “But what evidence have you got that it was Fardoomji himself who did the battering?” Ghote asked.

  “Evidence? One confession. Came popping out of him like a stone from a double-ripe mango. Hardly had to touch him. Still, nice to have it all wrapped up so quick.”

  “But if he was so quick to confess,” Ghote said, “is that at all fitting with him being a person who would batter the victim in the aforesaid manner? Breaking the watch even?”