Dead on Time

by H. R. F. Keating

  The barber at the Decent Electric Hairdresser to one side of the Tick Tock Watchworks had long ago brought down his shutter. Even at the Sri Krishna Lunch Home on the other side, the flow of customers had dried up, leaving its proprietor moodily stirring at the remains of something in one of his big cooking vessels.

  Ghote was tempted to abandon his search. It was almost certainly altogether unlikely now to be productive. But he could think of no other way to use, of the remaining sixteen hours, those that came under the darkness of night.

  Then, as he stood looking dispiritedly at the watch shop’s rust-streaked shutter, trying to make up his mind where to try next, he saw the mad bus starter who had accosted him at this spot on the first day of the case. The fellow was coming meanderingly right up to the shop again. Should he try asking even this wandering-witted, shirt-flapping, dirt-begrimed witness whether he had seen Ramrao Pendke? Show him his now curled and fingers-blotched photograph? The fellow, after all, had been on the scene much nearer to the time of the crime than anyone else he had so far managed to question.

  But no. Even though most harmless lunatics to be seen on the streets of Bombay kept to a single fairly small area, there was surely no point in attempting to get concrete evidence from such a fellow as this. What was it he kept demanding? “Time kya? Time kya?” No, all the poor wretch could think of would be what time it was. And, if he was given an answer, would be none the wiser, wandering lost as he was in a truly timeless existence.

  “Time kya, sahib? Time kya?”

  The madman had come up, suddenly advancing, and was peering at him in the face.

  Well, perhaps no harm . . .

  For what seemed the five or six hundredth time he pulled the photograph of Ramrao Pendke from his shirt pocket.

  “Listen, bhai,” he said to the madman, trying to infuse calm and friendliness into his voice, “you are often here, in this place? Near this Tick Tock shop?”

  The eyes in the dirt-streaked, bushily gray-bearded face widened till their whites showed staringly in the light of the nearest streetlamp.

  “Tick tock, tick tock. Time going, time going. Going, going, going. Bus starting, but long, long, long, long before Saturn passing from me. Seven-seven long, long years.”

  With a grab, the demented fellow seized Ghote’s arm, his grip fierce with the unbridled strength of insanity.

  Ghote thought for a moment of how Shruti Shah had dealt with him when he had first seen him. She had been a model of patience. He made up his mind to be no worse.

  “Thik hai, thik hai,” he said soothingly. “All right, bhai, all right. It will pass.”

  The fellow seemed a little reassured.

  “Pass, pass, pass. Seven years to pass.”

  Ghote twisted around so that he could squarely present the blotched and smeared photo to this unlikely witness.

  “Look at this, please,” he said. “Are you knowing this man?”

  With a moment rapid as a mongoose diving for a snake’s throat, the madman shot out his hand and grabbed. A moment later Ghote saw, to his fury, the photo clutched between both the fellow’s dirt-encrusted hands as, a full yard away, he crouched peering over it.

  Was he intending in his demented way to keep it? Did he think it was some sort of gift?

  Could he himself get it back without an embarrassing struggle? He had to have it. Without it his whole hunt for a witness would be useless.

  He licked his lips.

  “Bhai,” he coaxed, “give it, yes? Give me the photo back.”

  The madman, his mouth distorted into a tight grin, made no reply. Crouching still over his prize, he was murmuring incoherently, like a mother monkey obstinately nursing her dead baby.

  “Give, bhai, give,” Ghote cajoled again.

  “Saturn,” crooned the madman with wrenching despair. “Saturn. Saturn. It is Saturn. You cannot stop Saturn. On, on, on he goes, through and through your house.”

  Ghote made a plunge.

  Quicker than any monkey, the tattered fellow swung away to hug his prize all the more possessively.

  “Give it to me,” Ghote snapped. “Give it to me now.”

  “Saturn, Saturn, Saturn. It is Saturn.”

  This is absurd, Ghote thought. I could all the time be showing that photo and asking. Just at this moment only someone might be here who saw Ramrao and whoever was with him last Tuesday.

  He made another grab.

  And this time succeeded in getting a hold on the thin, curly pasteboard slip. But the madman’s grip was yet tighter.

  If it gets ripped in half . . . Ghote thought, appalled. That would be worse. I will not have it tomorrow. Tomorrow when the same people who were here a week ago may be here again.

  “Let go of this photo,” he demanded, thrusting his face into the madman’s. “Let go, I tell you.”

  “Having trouble, Inspector?”

  Ghote half turned and looked up.

  It was old D’Sa.

  And whether it was because another voice had intruded, or for some other reasonless reason, at that moment the madman simply let go of the photo and went wandering off along the edge of the pavement.

  But Ghote’s embarrassment did not go wandering off.

  “A pagalwalla,” he said to D’Sa. “I was . . . that is, he had got hold of a photo I was using.”

  “That I could see,” D’Sa answered dryly.

  Ghote decided there was only one way he could put himself on to a good footing again with the old detective. He must handsomely admit to the wrong he had done him in believing him hopelessly muddled about having seen Ramrao Pendke in the August Kranti Maidan. Little though D’Sa would know he had had such contemptuous thoughts about him.

  “D’Sa sahib,” he said quickly, “I am owing you one apology. You were cent per cent correct about seeing the Tick Tock victim last Tuesday. I am sorry to say I was believing you had mistaken his identity.”

  “Yes, Inspector, I thought that had entered your head at the time. But not to mind. I am an old fool in many ways nowadays, so one person extra thinking the same does not much matter.”

  “But—but, no.”

  “No, no. You are acquainted with the British saying ‘No fool like an old fool’? Well, I tell you, it is altogether true. Look at myself, spending my time checking up postalwallas’ letter boxes. And, worse, do you know what time I get up in the morning?” A little bewildered, Ghote could do no more than reply with such politeness as he could muster.

  “No, D’Sa sahib. At what time is that?”

  A gleam of something like triumph at the absurdity of what he had to tell entered the old man’s eyes.

  “At five-fifty-nine precisely,” he said. “Each and every day.”

  “At five-fifty-nine?” Ghote could only echo.

  “Yes. Not one minute before, and hardly ever one minute after. And do you know why that is? Let me tell you. I am old. I do not need much sleep. So I am awake perhaps as early as five o’clock itself. But I have decided it is not right to get up before six. That is a decent hour. So I lie in bed and look at my alarm clock, waiting for six. But then I say ‘What is one minute more or less?’ So as soon as the clock hand touches five-fifty-nine, I rise. What could be more ridiculous than that?”

  Ghote found it hard to answer. Though, dimly, he could see how a time-bound ritual could come about, might one day come about for him.

  But at least they had got away from discussing his humiliating encounter with the bus starter.

  And after a silence that threatened to become almost equally embarrassing, he managed to see how to wrench the talk back to his main preoccupation.

  “D’Sa sahib,” he said, “I suppose you were not having some second thoughts about anyone who was following Ramrao Pendke last Tuesday when you were seeing?”

  “No, no. I have told you, young Ghote. That man was not being followed when I saw him, and he was certainly not walking with any person whatsoever. I would have reported same if he had been, long before I
happened to see you there. I know my duty.”

  “Yes, yes, well I am believing it.”

  He gave a somewhat groaning sigh.

  “Well,” he added, “I must be getting on now. You know, I am still not at all satisfied with the confession that has been got out of the shop owner here. What I am hoping to do is find one witness who saw Ramrao Pendke enter this shop in company with some person of mala fide intent.”

  “Yes,” old D’Sa answered sagely. “Yes, that is the way to go about it, young fellow. Slow but sure, that was what I was always saying in my day.”

  And the old boy looked so yearningly miserable at the recollection of his former active life that a terrible possibility at once presented itself to Ghote. Should he ask D’Sa to share his task? He could do with any help he could get. The more passersby who were questioned—he had already knocked at every possible door—the better the chances of finding a witness before he had to report to the D.G.P. at 1419 hours next day. But, no getting past it, D’Sa was the biggest bore in existence. And once given a toe-hold, he was likely to be insufferably patronizing.

  No, he would not do it. He could not do it.

  “D’Sa sahib,” he found himself saying the next moment. “I am wondering, could you spare some little time to assist me tonight?”

  Old D’Sa pondered for a little. Or, as Ghote clearly realized, put on a show of pondering.

  “Well,” he said at last, “I do not see why not. It is true I have nothing particular to do tonight. It would be a time-pass. Yes, a very good time-pass.”

  So, after D’Sa had gone back to his home to collect the copy of Mid-Day with Ramrao Pendke’s picture in it—“I am always filing my newspaper. You never know when such may come in handy”—they began their joint operation. And, if working with the old detective did not prove quite as exasperating as Ghote had feared, it did not fall far short.

  “We must go about this with some system,” D’Sa said as soon as he had returned with his paper. “That is the key to successful police work, Ghote. System, system. I am always saying it.”

  “Yes, yes, I agree to one hundred percent.”

  He watched, leadenly, D’Sa pull out the little spiral-backed Sweety Pad that he kept for noting the times postal wallas emptied letter boxes. With a green ballpoint the old boy then solemnly divided up a clean page into three columns.

  “We will take one half hour at a time,” he announced. “Myself going in one direction, you, Ghote, in another. Then we will meet here outside the Tick Tock Watchworks itself and compare notes. After that I will go the other way, and you will go where I was, and so forth.”

  “Very well, D’Sa sahib.”

  “What time do you make it now?”

  Ghote looked at the various dials of his imitation Seiko Sports 100. After a moment he made out the time. “Ten-twenty-seven,” he said.

  “Yes. I have the same. Now, let us wait till ten-thirty exactly and then begin.”

  Solemnly they stood there in silence for three minutes. Then D’Sa took his folded Mid-Day from under his arm.

  “Right,” he said. “Go.”

  Off Ghote went, trying not to feel too thankful to be out of the old idiot’s way.

  And precisely thirty minutes later he came back to the shuttered Tick Tock Watchworks to find D’Sa arriving there on the dot.

  “No luck, Inspector.”

  “No luck, Inspector.”

  D’Sa put one tick in each of their columns in his Sweety Pad and entered the time of the next period in the third.

  At 11:30 exactly they met again.

  “No luck, Inspector.”

  “No luck, Inspector.”

  But then, just as Ghote turned dispiritedly to go off once more, he spotted, coming smartly up toward where they were standing, a familiar figure. Mr. Saxena.

  What could he be doing here at this hour of the night? Surely with those four watches strapped to his forearm he must know what o’clock it was.

  He caught hold of old D’Sa’s arm and pointed out the oncoming figure.

  “Do you know who is that fellow, the one with that moustache like a brush only?” he said. “It is one S. K. Saxena, the individual who was discovering the body. What can he be here for at this time of the night?”

  A sudden pouncing gleam came into D’Sa’s eyes.

  “Young Ghote,” he said, keeping his voice low with evident difficulty. “Young Ghote, have you never heard of the saying ‘The criminal is always returning to the scene of his crime’?”

  “The crim— My God, D’Sa sahib, you are stating that Mr. Saxena . . . that Mr. Saxena is, after all, the Tick Tock murderer?”

  “Well, you know, he is the person who was discovering the body,” the old detective answered. “And that is another good old maxim, young Ghote. Very often the murderer is the one who has purported to be finding the body. He is, after all, a person who was definitely on the scene.”

  Ghote felt a sharp flick of chagrin. Why had he not remembered that piece of special knowledge, less often a fact though it was than D’Sa had made out? And another thought came into his head then. S. K. Saxena had twice before come to look at the Tick Tock Watch works. That was hardly because he was revisiting the scene of the crime—that theory was surely nonsense only—but because he, as he had openly said, was wanting to take over the business when Rustom Fardoomji was no longer there. And, one other thing, had not the fellow shown altogether too much of indignation about Fardoomji not taking any H.M.T. watches? Was that the indignation of someone going beyond the bounds of reason? Of someone at least half mad?

  So S. K. Saxena had not one but two motives. Motives which D’Sa did not even know about. So was the old boy more right than he knew? And, when inside the shop behind them, Saxena had gone into that play-acting business of being Fardoomji battering at his victim on the floor, had he been attempting to convince himself and A.I. Lobo beyond doubt that Fardoomji was the murderer?

  But before he had time to consider more deeply Mr. Saxena was upon them.

  “Good evening, Inspector,” he greeted Ghote, with no trace at all of the discovered criminal in his cheerful tone.

  “Good evening,” Ghote answered with caution.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw D’Sa sidling round so as to be in a position to pinion his suspect at the first sign of attempted flight.

  “It is late to be seeing you here, Mr. Saxena,” Ghote said. “Do not be telling me you of all people are not knowing the time.” He attempted a little laugh.

  Mr. Saxena laughed in his turn. More heartily.

  “Oh, Inspector,” he said. “You have caught me out.”

  Fully behind him now, old D’Sa raised his hands ready to seize his man by both elbows.

  “Yes,” Mr. Saxena went on, “you have caught me in the act. I was coming to have one last look at this shop.”

  “One last look?”

  Mr. Saxena puffed out a brisk sigh.

  “Yes, yes,” he said. “I realized this very morning that, in truth, there is no chance of taking over here. Poor Rustom will find some relative to have it. These Parsis are always sticking together, you know. And why not? So I will never get to have such a place for myself. And, do you know, I realized too this morning that I am not wanting. No, a life on the road for me. That is what is suiting to my temperament. I was a fool to think anything else.”

  So Ghote saw this momentary miracle of a discovery vanish in front of his eyes like a cinema screen image when the projector fails. And he realized that, in fact, the idea that anyone would commit murder on the doubtful chance of being able to take over a business like the Tick Tock Watchworks had been never very likely. While the notion that someone as brisk and cheerful as Mr. Saxena was half mad had been purely ridiculous. Fit only for old D'Sa and his “The criminal is always returning to the scene of his crime.”

  “Well, good night, Saxena sahib,” he said. “And good luck with your H.M.T. watch sales.”

  “Thank you. Thank
you, Inspector. They are once more picking up, I am glad to tell.”

  Briskly Mr. Saxena walked off. Less briskly Ghote turned and left old D’Sa to tramp away on their renewed hunt.

  At the stroke of midnight they met once more.

  “Listen, Inspector,” Ghote said, as D’Sa made two more neat ticks on his Sweety Pad, “there is hardly anybody about now. I am thinking we should give up until tomorrow.”

  D’Sa shook his head gravely.

  “Oh, yes,” he said, “I am fully granting this line will not be yielding many results just now. But we must not give up. Never give up, Inspector. What I propose we should do now is return once more to those addresses you were visiting earlier. People may have reached home who were not there before. One of them may have seen something.”

  “But, Inspector,” Ghote said, appalled, “it is midnight. Each and every person there will be asleep. We would get one hot reception if we start to knock at doors now.”

  “Hot reception or cold,” D’Sa answered, “duty is duty. It is our duty to find any person or persons who saw one Ramrao Pendke in this vicinity last Tuesday at or about the hour of eleven-forty a.m. We should carry out that duty to the utmost.”

  “But, Inspector—”

  “No, no, Ghote. That is the trouble with you young officers. You are shirking anything that is not going to be easy. Look at the way you were letting off that fellow earlier.”

  “What fellow? I was not letting off any fellow.”

  Then Ghote remembered the mad bus starter. It was true he had let him go eventually without getting any answer out of him about the photograph of Ramrao Pendke. The whole mortifying episode was something he had pushed to the far back of his mind.

  “The mad fellow you are meaning?” he asked. “But what answer would I have got from him?”