Murder at the Happy Home for the Aged

by Bulbul Sharma

  As soon as Maria thought about the trees, the dead woman’s face rose in front of her again. How long had the poor creature been hanging there? She must have died at night while they were all sleeping peacefully in their beds.

  Suddenly, a terrible fear filled Maria’s mind. She felt like a child once more, hiding from punishment. Would the police think she had anything to do with this death? She had never seen the woman before in her life, but would they believe her? After all, the body had been found in her garden, hanging from her mango tree. Inspector Chand might be friendly and kind now but if he suspected her he would certainly change his attitude. All his friendly attempts to get close would disappear and he would clamp a pair of handcuffs on her.

  Maria rose from her chair and went and stood near the window. The trees in the garden were bathed in a grey light, as if in mourning. Inspector Chand did not seem concerned about the identity of the dead woman and kept asking Maria unrelated questions. What did she think about Hindu gods? Would she ever change her religion? What did she think of mixed marriages? Maria wished he would go away. She had still not planned the menu and Leela was waiting for her in the kitchen. Today was market day at Mapusa and if they did not go early they would not get any fresh fish. ‘I don’t like that fat policeman. He keeps looking at you as if he is your boyfriend,’ Leela had told her earlier, watching him from behind the door.

  ‘Inspector, I need to go out. If you have any more questions I can talk to you in the evening,’ said Maria, picking up the empty cups and putting them on a tray.

  ‘Evening? Evening would be best,’ said Inspector Chand, a wide smile lighting up his sweaty face. A picture of Maria in a revealing long evening dress rose in his mind and he could feel his heart racing.

  ‘You can talk to the others now if you wish. Shall I call them?’ asked Maria.

  ‘No need. Why bother the old people? They can hardly hear or see anything so what will they know, poor things. Let them rest in peace.’ He looked around. If I marry Maria I will turn this massive house into a five-star hotel. I will take early retirement from the police force and become a hotelier. I know I will do an excellent job, he thought, staring at the cobwebs on the ceiling.

  ‘Why isn’t he talking to us? I have been waiting all morning,’ muttered Prema angrily as she watched the inspector get into his jeep.

  ‘Maybe he thinks we’re too old to be of any help,’ said Cyrilo.

  Rosie glanced at Cyrilo. He was looking very smart this morning after combing and brushing his hair. She too had worn her best dress and put a black velvet ribbon in her hair. Yuri had woken before noon for once, and had even taken a bath and worn a clean shirt. Deven had not gone out for his early morning walk. All for nothing. They were not needed. They had waited all morning but the inspector didn’t speak to them.

  ‘He said we can hardly see or hear so what is the use of asking us anything. He said this to Maria. I heard him. He sat for hours drinking tea and gobbling up our precious almond biscuits,’ said Prema.

  ‘He is not interested in finding out anything. He just wants to spend time ogling Maria. He has a crush on her, I am quite sure.’ Rosie was wishing she had not worn her best silk dress. It was all crushed and sweaty now and she would have to get Leela to wash it.

  ‘Are you sure the woman committed suicide? You are a good judge of all these things,’ Rosie asked in a serious voice, turning to Deven.

  For once, Deven did not turn away. He looked at her thoughtfully and said, ‘No one will commit suicide in such a hidden place. They will usually go to a place filled with people, where people they know will find them. They always want to send a message to friends and relatives even in death. Make sure they know they are dead. People who kill themselves want attention even in death.’

  ‘I think that’s a cruel thing to say,’ said Prema, glaring at him. Rosie could see she was upset because Deven had not spoken to her though she was sitting right next to him on the bench. The five of them had been waiting in the courtyard, hoping to speak to the inspector. But he had left and they were left with nothing to do but wait till lunch was served. Leela had also insisted they sit there since she wanted to clean the drawing room and the dining room.

  Rosie looked around her. Cyrilo had started plucking the dead flowers off the marigold plants. He could never sit still and do nothing. Deven was writing something in a notebook. Prema was leaning close to him and trying to read what he had written. How rude of her. Yuri was strangely quiet and had shut his eyes, but she knew he was awake because his fingers were tapping the bench restlessly.

  Were they really too old to be useful? How was the inspector so sure of that? They could have seen something, or heard something. One of them could have looked out the window and seen the woman come into the garden at night and climb the tree to hang herself. And how did he know for certain that she had killed herself and not been murdered and put there? Rosie often got up at night to drink water and go to the bathroom around 2 a.m. but last night when this woman was busy hanging herself or being hung right outside her window she had slept through and missed it all. But the inspector did not know that. She could have easily seen the murder/suicide happen. She always sat by the window and knew what was going on in the village because people often stopped and spoke to her, telling her all the gossip.

  ‘I will tell that inspector what I saw whether he asks me or not,’ said Cyrilo, getting up suddenly, almost knocking Prema off the bench.

  ‘What did you see?’ asked Deven, not looking up from his notebook. Rosie thought he looked just like a detective in a movie. He was very alert this morning, his eyes roaming as if he was a fox out on a hunt. And as she watched him, an idea slowly formed in her head. An idea that would break the tedium of their lives, make them feel alive, and shame the inspector. They would show everyone that they might be old, but they were as clever as anyone younger. They would solve this mystery and prove to that arrogant Inspector Chand that they could still hear and see as well as anyone else in Trionim. Their collective age totalled almost 400 but their eyes were sharp and their ears worked very well and their brains were far superior to his.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  MARIA FELT SORRY for the ‘sweet oldies’ as she secretly called them. They were sitting around dressed in their best clothes looking dejected. Inspector Chand could have asked them a few questions just to make them feel important. Poor things. She would make bread and butter pudding tonight to cheer them up.

  Just then, she saw Rosie move her wheelchair towards the bench and all of them huddle together. That was odd. She had never seen them act so friendly towards each other. Most of the time Prema and Rosie were not on talking terms, and Deven would ignore them all. ‘They talk nonsense. I have no time for them,’ he had said to her the other day. Deven was quite abrupt with her too sometimes and she could see that he had been an arrogant and bad-tempered man in his former life.

  Where had he come from? Maria wondered as she looked at him. She did not know much about any of them because she did not like to pry into their affairs. They were like guests in her house. She only knew that Deven had once held a high-powered post in the government, but nothing else. He never got any letters or visitors.

  Rosie, who was twice widowed, had no children but many of her nieces and nephews often came to visit her at the Happy Home. ‘Hoping I’ll leave them something in my will,’ she would say and laugh.

  Prema had retired as a school headmistress in Pune and come to live at the Happy Home just last year. She never mentioned any relatives and no one ever visited her.

  Cyrilo had once lived in a large family house in the village with his wife but after she died and his son emigrated to Australia, Cyrilo decided to move here. A builder from Delhi was very keen to buy his old house, but Cyrilo had not made up his mind yet. Yuri kept urging him to sell it and invest the money in a business Yuri was setting up in Russia. Maria wanted to warn him to do no such thing but Cyrilo had just laughed at her. ‘Don’t worry your pretty h
ead over such things. I know what Yuri is up to. I know a fool and his money are soon parted. I am old but not a fool, Maria.’

  Maria was a bit suspicious of Yuri and hoped he would leave next summer. She did not trust his charming, reckless manner and was wary of his drinking binges with his Russian friends. She wished she had not allowed him to rent the room on the top floor. But she needed the money and he was paying cash.

  Meanwhile, in the courtyard, Rosie cleared her throat, turned her wheelchair and said, ‘Come closer. I want to talk to you all.’ They all looked at her in surprise. Cyrilo smiled and leaned forward, Yuri winked lazily, shifting his long legs, and Deven gave her a serious look as if he knew what she was going to say. Prema sniggered but she moved a bit closer to Deven.

  All five of them now formed a closed circle. A pigeon suddenly flew down, so close to their bowed heads that Rosie almost screamed. She controlled herself and said, ‘We will find the person who killed that woman. I am certain she did not commit suicide. We will show Inspector Chand that we are not silly old fools, sitting around dribbling into our food as we wait to die. We will catch the murderer and then he will listen to us. He will know that we are very much here, alive and alert, and we are not invisible like everyone thinks old people are.’ She stopped to take a deep breath.

  For a moment no one spoke and Rosie thought they were going to laugh at her, but then Prema, her arch-enemy, said, ‘Rosie. You are quite right. Let’s show them. Yuri, Cyrilo, Deven and I can go out and catch that bastard who killed the woman. The four of us will put that fat inspector to shame,’ she hissed, showing her missing front tooth.

  ‘Four of us! What do you mean? You can’t leave me out. It was my idea,’ cried Rosie.

  ‘Good idea, Rosie. I was thinking the same as soon as I saw that woman hanging from the tree,’ said Yuri, picking a scab off his finger. His hands were stained with paint and lined with old scars.

  ‘Shall we tell Maria? I don’t want to hide anything from her.’ Cyrilo looked towards the house. They could see Maria in the veranda with Leela, sifting through a large basket of vegetables.

  Rosie didn’t say a word. She was still hurt and she couldn’t believe that the others were going to leave her out. She didn’t care. She would do her own snooping and find out much more than they could. She would show them. Just because she couldn’t walk didn’t mean she was helpless. She had her own ways and means and was much better than them. She had a network of spies in the village and could find out things much faster. Four of us. How dare Prema say that. Rosie felt tears welling up in her eyes and turned her face away.

  Cyrilo saw her do this and moved forward to pat her hand gently. ‘Of course, Rosie, you will be with us. You can be our chief detective. We will gather information and report to you. You have better brains than . . . most women.’ Prema leapt up at once, shouting, ‘Better brains. Of course, all women have better brains than you lot. Even a cockroach has better brains than you, Cyrilo.’

  ‘No need to be so rude, Prema,’ said Cyrilo, getting to his feet. Yuri jumped up too, as if to show support for his friend, but bumped his toe on the bench and began to howl with pain.

  ‘Sit down. Be quiet, all of you.’ Deven spoke in a low, commanding voice they had never heard him use before. All of them fell silent and sat down like obedient schoolchildren. Rosie moved her wheelchair slightly away as if declaring her independence from the group. Cyrilo’s kind words had mollified her a bit but she did not want to beg to be included. They should plead with her to join them and then she would give in gracefully.

  ‘I propose that we tell Maria. She may want to help us. After all, that woman practically died on her doorstep. It’s her moral duty to find out how and why such a terrible thing happened. She will regret it all her life if she doesn’t. The shadow of this unnatural death will always hang over the Happy Home if we don’t catch the murderer. The dead woman will haunt us forever,’ said Deven.

  * * *

  Rana Hooda stared at the sea, his eyes unfocused and blurred. He could not remember much from the previous night, but his head was throbbing with pain and his mouth felt as dry as sandpaper. So he must have had a good time, probably drank a whole bottle of wine. Olga and her friends had decided they had had enough of spicy Goan food and needed to give their Russian palates a rest. ‘My stomach is grumbling, grumbling all day. Saying to me no more chillies, no more cardamoms or cinnamons,’ she had cried, rubbing her stomach. How beautiful she looks even when she is complaining of a stomach ache, Rana thought, shutting his eyes to block the sunlight streaming into his room.

  So the girls had gone out and bought a huge chunk of meat—it looked like an entire goat—and cooked it on an open fire in the garden. None of them could cook so they had just poured brandy and oil on it and set the meat on fire. Rana couldn’t remember what it had tasted like; anyway, he was too drunk to notice anything by the time they took the charred meat off the fire. The entire garden was stinking of burnt flesh, and brandy fumes floated in the air, even making the wasps drunk, but the girls were thrilled. They had screamed with delight and clapped their hands, like cannibals celebrating their first human victim of the day. Olga did behave quite madly sometimes but that was part of her charm. She was a child, a wild, wilful child from Russia, though she claimed her ancestors were from Kazakhstan and ate horse meat for breakfast.

  Rana got up from the bed and picked up his phone. He was surprised to see there were no messages or missed calls from his wife. She had left the previous night for Mumbai—that was why Olga had moved in. That was why they were celebrating. ‘The old cow has gone,’ screamed Olga as soon as she rushed into the house, spraying air freshener. Olga could not stand Rani’s rose perfume and always tried to get rid of the strong smell as soon as she came into the house.

  It was not easy to keep them away from each other. He had got Olga an apartment near the beach but she said it was too small and did not have a pool. She kept nagging him to get her a villa but Rani would get suspicious if he bought another villa for himself. It was tough to ensure their two worlds never collided, and he was glad Rani had finally gone to Mumbai to visit her friends. He checked his phone again. No calls from Rani. She must have landed by now. She called him at least twenty times a day and sent endless messages, giving him every tiny detail of her day like a commentary in a cricket match. She also gave him instructions on what to do, what to wear and what to eat. ‘I’m going to the market. Now I’m at the hairdresser getting my hair dyed. Black streaked with a brown shade this time. I am buying a new fridge for the Goa house. I am having lunch with Rita, she talks too much and now I have a headache. Don’t forget your BP medicine. Wear that new shirt I bought you from Armani. Wipe your shoes before you step on my new carpet.’ It went on and on like this day after day. Her voice was like a defective tap, dripping non-stop all day. She often even called him late at night and spat abuses at him for no reason. Rana often wished that the mobile phone had not been invented; then his wife would leave him in peace. The good old landline hardly ever worked now but it kept you safe and hidden from prying eyes and ears. Fortunately, she did not know about FaceTime or else he would have had to stare at her angry, scowling face all day. She had once been quite pretty but the cosmetic surgeries she had had done at great expense abroad were losing their effect and her face now looked like a swollen, distorted mask.

  Rana glanced at his phone again and wondered why she had not called him yet. I hope her phone has got lost at the airport. I hope she herself is lost and is never found, he thought viciously as he threw his phone back on the table and walked out into the balcony.

  He knew Olga would be by the pool and that was the sight he longed to see first thing in the morning. Her blonde hair rippling in the sunshine, her young, perfect body stretched out languidly. What a change from Rani’s clumsy yoga poses and loud breathing exercises. At the moment there was no one in the pool except for a few doves that were noisily cooing as they drank water from the edge. The waves roared
in the sea in the distance, reaching up like walls of foam and mist, and then fell silent. As Rana gazed out at this serene and peaceful landscape, he felt a cold hand touch his spine. He turned around quickly.

  There was no one.

  Rana came back into the room and sat on the bed again. His heart was racing for no reason and he knew something terrible was going to happen to him that day. A cloud of anxiety now covered his face, its clammy fingers touching his skin. Maybe he had taken too many of those little pink pills Olga had given him. ‘Make you feel great. You will be flying in the air. All your tensions, your gloomy thoughts, will vanish,’ she had said, waving her hands in the air as if she was a fairy with a magic wand. Rana tried to breathe slowly but another wave of anxiety flooded through him. His hands began to tremble and he reached for his phone again. There were no calls from his wife.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE RUGGED WALLS of the Chapora fort, black with age, protect nothing except for a few grazing goats and several oddly shaped boulders. One expected to find an ancient sea mariner perched on the ruined walls, looking out at the sea, waiting for his ship to arrive. The vast blue-grey view of the open sea on one side and the mouth of the Chapora river on the other was the perfect place for a fort, and the paranoid Portuguese had built several such forts along the coast. Aguada, Alorna, Tiracol and Chapora stood on the edge of the land like giants made of stone, guarding Portuguese territory from their neighbours, whose favourite pastime was to attack their settlements. They constantly feared an attack from the sea and kept watch from these vantage points to make sure no hostile ships sneaked into their ports, like they had themselves done not so long ago in the past.