‘Wait for the stroke,’ he said, repeating the words of a warning notice fixed to the wide door.
He bent forward and peered through a small glass inset panel.
‘Yes, all right.’
He opened the door and preceded Ghote into the room.
It was totally unoccupied.
There was just one table, its bare, once brilliant green baize noticeably faded under the light pouring down on it from a long fringed shade. Round the walls more animal heads looked down on the silent scene, great horned bison and a score of other lesser creatures brought down by the guns of white sahibs long ago. There were pictures here, too, mostly scenes commemorating feats of arms in distant days and very distant places.
Stepping further in, Ghote saw ‘The Battle of Tel el Kabir’, ‘The Defence of Rorke’s Drift’, ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’.
‘Yes,’ said His Excellency, catching him peering at this last in which all the blood and mess of long ago had been turned into a never-changing scene of military glory. ‘Yes, some pretty historic things in here one way and another. You know that it was in this very room, on this very billiard table, that the rules of Snooker were finally hammered out, to be passed on through the years and over the world for ever?’
‘No,’ Ghote said. ‘No, I was not at all knowing.’
‘Yes, yes. It was here, on this self-same spot, that one Lieutenant Neville Chamberlain, later as Sir Neville to be Prime Minister of Great Britain, the man who tried to stem the tide of war by coming to an agreement with Hitler at Munich, it was here that he named his version of a primitive game called Black Pool as Snooker.’
He seized Ghote by the arm, swept away by enthusiasm. ‘Come over here. It’s all written up and framed.’
Ghote found himself propelled towards the long cue-rack- two of the cues in it were broken and others bent - where His Excellency read out for his benefit Sir Neville’s account of the historic moment.
‘ “One of our party failed to hole a coloured ball close to a corner pocket, and I called out to him ‘Why, you’re a regular snooker’.” You see, my dear chap, at the Royal Military Academy in England first-year cadets were called snookers. It all fits in.’
‘Most interesting,’ Ghote said.
The lack of interest in his voice apparently did not impinge on His Excellency.
‘I tell you what, old chap,’ he said. ‘You must play a few shots on the table here and now. Just so that you can say you’ve actually put cue to ball on the very table on which Snooker was invented. Tell your grandchildren.’ Ghote, though he had no doubts about acquitting himself with a billiard cue, since an eye for a ball was one of the gifts he had been luckily endowed with from birth, prickled violently at His Excellency’s suggestion.
It seemed to him to be all a part of an attitude of airy frivolity which he had had hints of already. It went with looking on murder, not as the killing of a living person, but as a reason for writing concocted tales.
‘No, excuse me, sir,’ he said firmly. ‘As of today’s date I am investigating a most serious crime.’
‘Quite right, quite right, my dear fellow,’ His Excellency somewhat unexpectedly replied. ‘No doubt the secret of your success. Unremitting concentration, what?’
Ghote turned away and looked at the billiard table, as bare and monumentally still as when he had first seen it.
‘And the body of the marker, Pichu, was at the exact centre?’ he asked.
‘Saw it with my own eyes, before they took the poor fellow away. Lying there on his back, stab wound in his chest, little patch of blood on his white jacket. In the very centre of the table. He can’t have been put there for any other reason than the murderer, so to speak, saying “He deserved to die.” It’s a case of revenge against a blackmailer all right, take my word for it.’
‘But how was it that Pichu was in this room in the middle of the night only?’
‘Ah, forgot to explain that. Simple really. You see, he slept in here.’
‘In here?’
Ghote looked round. There were certainly the benches from which in past days no doubt groups of eager sahibs had watched thrilling games. There were some comfortable wicker chairs, too, if now dry and broken here and there. Near him there was even a sturdier affair in dark wood, with on it a brass plate recording that it had been presented in the year 1875 by Captain Winterbotham of the Madras Sappers. Pichu could have slept in moderate ease on any of them.
‘But you were telling that the Club has quarters for all servants,’ he said. ‘That none of them could have had access to the scene of the crime.’
‘Quite right, my dear fellow. Can see there’s nothing much gets past you. Ha. But Pichu was an exception to the rule. Slept in here to guard the Club trophies. Had done for countless years. Lay down on the shelf in front of that cupboard there where they were kept. You can see where the murderer forced the doors to make it look like a dacoity and deceive that idiot, Inspector Meenakshisundaram.’
‘These silver trophies were most valuable?’ Ghote asked.
‘Well, my dear fellow, they did have a certain value, yes. But that wasn’t why old Pichu slept here to guard them.’ Ghote felt puzzled.
‘Not because of the value of those objects?’
‘No, no. Or only because of their sentimental value. You see, some of them had the names of competition winners engraved on them, on little silver shields, you know, going back a hundred years or more.’
‘They were rolling trophies?’
‘Yes, yes. You kept the one you won for six months or so, and then it came back to the Club to be contested for again. Some historic names on some of them, you know. Major Jago, for one, after whom the Jago Room here’s named. Lots of others.’
‘Major Jago?’
‘You haven’t heard of Major Bob Jago?’
For a moment His Excellency looked as if he was beginning to doubt the brilliance of the man whose skills he had used all his influence to acquire, and Ghote felt a tiny leap of relief. But the moment did not last long.
‘Well, suppose a chap from Bombay side might not know about Jago,’ His Excellency conceded. ‘Was Master of the Nilgiri Hounds. One of the great hunting men of all time.’
He threw back his head and broke into a curious sort of chanting. Ghote realized, just in time, that it was verse.
‘Oh, it’s jolly to hunt with the Nilgiri pack, Major Bob with the horn and a straight-going jack.’
‘Please,’ Ghote said, after a properly reverent pause, ‘what is a straight-going jack?’
‘Oh, a jackal, old boy. Jackal. Can’t hunt the fox here, you know. But hill jackal’s always made a pretty good substitute. Not like his brother of the plains, nothing sneaky about your hill jackal.’
Ghote did not feel he had any comment to make.
His Excellency grunted.
‘Not that there’s all that much hunting nowadays,’ he said. ‘Not with the factories they’ve put up on the Downs, and nobody much with the money either except a few Army wallahs from the barracks over at Wellington.’
He sighed deeply for a past that had gone, days of leisured regularity and ordered existence.
Ghote, anxious to get down to some proper police work, moved away from him and went to the window which, from its still empty panes, must have been the one the thief had broken. Or the one that had been broken in order to lay a false trail.
He looked hard at the damaged area. But all the remaining pieces of glass had been removed and every trace of any splinters swept up. Nothing to be gained.
He then moved on to the cupboard from which the trophy with Major Jago’s famous name on it and the others had been taken.
‘If you want to grasp the real sentimental value of what’s gone,’ His Excellency said, joining him, ‘you ought to talk to old Bell. His name’s been on a trophy ever since he won the snooker contest back in the early fifties, though that was in a damn poor year actually.’
A gleam of gossipy malice
lit up his leathery features.
‘Yes,’ he went on, ‘lot of chaps still away after the war then. Why, I don’t suppose anybody even saw his triumph right through to the last frame. And old Ringer’s never put cue to ball since. Daren’t, I suppose.’
But Ghote was busy examining the ravaged cupboard. Would it be possible to tell whether any damage had been caused by a real dacoit, or by some amateur imitator?
It was a sturdily-built piece with glass doors on its top section and a broader bottom half forming a wide shelf. Certainly it was clear that the top doors had been recently levered apart. The wood round the lock was splintered and still light-coloured and fresh. It looked, too, as if some sharp, pointed instrument had been used.
But, again, it was impossible to tell whether the harm had been done by a determined thief or an ingenious faker.
But could it really be true, Ghote thought, that the theft had been a subterfuge only? After all, despite what His Excellency had said, silver was actually valuable. It was by no means unlikely that some local dacoit would have heard of the rich haul to be made here: if firewood looters could steal a whole tree, then trophies at the Club could no longer be considered safe.
And His Excellency’s theory, looked at in a calm light, was surely too fantastic. To murder an old man for some reason and afterwards to break open the cupboard of trophies, pretend to force the window and take away all the silver cups and bowls just to make it look like a killing in the course of a dacoity. Really, there was too much of elaboration there.
So could it be - the idea slipped traitorously into his head - could it be that His Excellency simply wanted there to be a mystery here at the Club? A mystery for a Great Detective to come and solve?
‘You can see the grease mark where old Pichu laid his head,’ His Excellency said abruptly, causing Ghote to give a little jump of surprise. ‘No amount of polish will ever remove that, I dare say.’
Ghote, recovering, turned to face him.
‘The cupboard is cleaned every day?’ he asked.
‘Oh, yes, definitely. The Club still keeps up its standards, you know. Damn great army of sweeper women come up from the lower town at crack of dawn each day.’
‘Then there will not be much of clues remaining.’
‘Well, no. No. Dare say not.’
Then His Excellency’s face brightened again.
‘But it’s the psychology we’ve got to rely on here,’ he said. ‘Unless of course, you yourself have already noticed something the significance of which has escaped everybody else?’
Ghote turned to his wistful companion and looked him straight in the eye.
‘As you have said yourself, sahib,’ he replied. ‘The Great Detective is never giving away his thoughts. Not even to such a person as you were calling his Watson.’
5
For half a second His Excellency had looked disconcerted at such a sign of rebellion from the Sherlock Holmes that, Watson though he was, he had had summoned here to solve the mystery. A tiny flush of anger had begun to come up on his leathery cheeks. But it was quickly suppressed.
‘Well,’ he said mildly, ‘that seems to be about all then, for the time being. I dare say you’re tired, Inspector. Travel and all that.’
Ghote, though well knowing that an excuse was being made for barely acceptable behaviour, realized that he was in fact extremely tired. Worn out. Being a Great Detective was decidedly a strain.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I would very much like to sleep early.’
But he did not get to bed in the enormous room he had been allocated - the contents of his suitcase were ridiculously put to shame by the two huge almirahs he distributed them between — before he had admitted at a knock on the door a salaaming servant saying ‘Hot-water bag, sahib’ and had watched that object being carefully placed in the wide, white-sheeted, blanket-covered bed.
Nor did he finally secure peace and privacy without being presented by His Excellency with a copy of Agatha Christie’s Mrs McGinty’s Dead.
‘Thought this would be best for you to begin on,’ the old man said. ‘Poirot in top form for one thing, and then there’s a remarkable similarity to the present business. In both, you see, the vital question is: what was the weapon that was used?’
Ghote had almost replied that here in Ooty there was no question at all about what the murder weapon was. In all probability it would be whatever the dacoit who had broken in and stabbed Pichu had happened to be carrying. But he was too exhausted to risk venturing into a dispute.
‘Weapon?’ he said simply.
‘Yes, old man, the sharp instrument. As opposed to blunt instrument, ha. That fool Meenakshisundaram kept going on about the crime having been committed with a sword. Had to say that, of course, just to back up his absurd notion of a dacoit being responsible.’
Ghote smothered the groan that rose up inside him.
‘But I prefer,’ His Excellency went bouncing on, ‘to think of that weapon simply as a sharp instrument. A sharp instrument of as yet some undetermined sort. Something that the murderer had to have immediate access to, and could equally hide away rapidly once it had been cleaned of blood.’
To this Ghote was too tired to do more than offer a temporizing reply.
‘Then tomorrow it would be most important to look into the matter.’
And he had ushered His Excellency out, clambered up into the big, blanket-covered bed and, with a grimace, opened Mrs McGinty’s Dead. But he was able to get through only its first two pages before, his head filled with Hercule Poirot’s lamenting the lack of order and method in the world, sleep welled up over him.
The next thing he knew he was being wakened by a soft-footed servant bringing him - wholly unaccustomed luxury- bed-tea. And it was not any thoughts about what unlikely weapon might possibly have been used to kill the Club billiards marker that came into his mind then but the simple necessity of seeing as soon as he could Inspector Meenakshisundaram, local representative of the rough simplicities of everyday police work. A few hard facts from a fellow professional might well send all His Excellency’s speculations sky-high.
The earliness of the hour, and the chance of consuming an enormous English breakfast, a little delayed the consultation. But before long Ghote set off for the Urban Police Station, fortified by a steaming bowl of porridge (peculiar, and darkly reminiscent of a fact learnt at detective school, that it was the only substance in which white arsenic could be concealed), followed by fishcakes (less peculiar and scarcely needing the Dipy’s Tomato Ketchup thoughtfully provided) and a large rack of freshly made toast, served with thick marmalade from somewhere in the UK called Dundee (demolished in its entirety).
The Police Station, another British-looking building not far from the ornate and impressive Collector’s Office, had each of the pitched roofs of its three sections studded by a high round window set in solid white stone. They seemed to Ghote, as he stood outside gathering himself together, like three watchful benelovent eyes looking out over the calm and quiet order of the town around.
Would Inspector Meenakshisundaram in his office behind one of them be somehow equally Ooty-like and British-patterned? Not, of course, a British police officer of the old days, but a true Indian successor, reserved, just, dignified?
Two minutes later he found out.
Meenakshisundaram, seated at a table in front of the Crime Board found in all police stations, with its disposition table of Personnel Available, Personnel on Casual Leave, Personnel on Annual Leave, Vehicles Available, Vehicles Under Repair, Dogs Available, Dogs in Kennels, all carefully enumerated, proved to be a big, sprawling man running noticeably to fat.
And an enthusiastic greeter.
‘Wah, a Bombay wallah. It is good to see. You boys up there know how to run things.’
Ghote wagged his head deprecatingly.
‘Oh, I have heard the stories,’ Meenakshisundaram boomed, throwing himself back in his heavy chair. ‘Handouts and hafta on a super-class scale. A son to educat
e, a daughter to get married, and what trouble is it to you fellows? Money from above is seeing to it in one minute only. Colour TV right from the beginning. Video also. Foreign liquor like buffalo milk only to you fellows.’
‘No,’ Ghote exploded. ‘No, no, I am telling you.’
‘Oh, with me there is no need to hide, man. I am doing all right myself. But it is the opportunities that you have I am envying. All those criminals needing to keep you sweet, and all the money-punny in Bombay. Crime capital of India, isn’t that what they are calling?’
‘Well, criminals we have I am not denying. And, yes, bribes are offered and bribes are taken also, that again I am not denying. But officers who will not take are there. That also I am stating.’
Inspector Meenakshisundaram gave a rich laugh.
‘Well, well,’ he said, ‘it is taking all sorts to make one world, that is the old British saying, isn’t it? But you, I am sure, Inspector, you are not standing back when there are chances put at your feet.’
Ghote’s immediate reaction was hotly to deny the specific suggestion. But at once it occurred to him that he needed to be on friendly terms with this fellow. He needed to find out man to man, with nothing held back or concealed, the full strength of the dacoity explanation of the murder. He would hardly succeed in doing that if Meenakshisundaram regarded him with contempt.
So he wagged his head ambiguously once more and produced a little smile which he hoped looked somehow sly.
‘But tell me, man,’ he said quickly before the subject of bribes and bribe-taking could go any further, ‘what is this I am hearing that the murder in the Ooty Club was not at all a dacoity?’
Meenakshisundaram gave a deep belly laugh.
‘You have been talking-palking to that Surinder Mehta fellow, I see,’ he said. ‘Crackpot-whackpot if ever I saw. He was telling, isn’t it, that the billiards wallah was victim of blackmail attempt that was coming unstuck? That one of those sahibs at the Club is secret-weekret murderer? I ask you, man, what more of nonsense could be there?’
‘Yes, certainly that is sounding a nonsense story,’ Ghote said tactfully. ‘And you have good evidences for dacoity, Inspector?’
The Body in the Billiard Room Page 5