The Body in the Billiard Room

by H. R. F. Keating

  On the other hand, the hours of darkness had now come, and if he was to get out to Sunnyside Cottage before the Maharajah he ought to be on his way at once. He had already left it a little late.

  But, equally, the questions he had for the watchman ought not to be kept any longer. They might alter his whole view of the murder.

  Reluctantly he branched off to greet the old man.

  ‘Good evening, Watchman Sahib.’

  In return he received a tremulously thwacking salute on the lathi, held up at somewhat of an angle.

  ‘There is something you could tell. It is about the night poor Pichu was killed.’

  A look of sudden distrust came on to the watchman’s face, as far as in the rapidly gathering darkness Ghote could make out.

  Had he been mistaken? Or was the distrust due to something other than the mention of Pichu’s death?

  ‘Perhaps,’ he hazarded, ‘Inspector Meenakshisundaram has already asked about what was happening on that night?’

  ‘No, sahib. Inspectorji was not seeing myself.’

  But the distrust - it was plain in the fellow’s voice now had not lessened. So it could not be that Meenakshisundaram - one more inefficiency - had in that bullying way of his set up any resentment.

  Ghote thought for a moment.

  Then he decided that there was only one way to tackle the matter.

  He took half a pace nearer so that the watchman’s face was as visible as possible.

  ‘There is something you have not told,’ he said.

  A statement. One not to be denied.

  There was a long silence. The scent from a nearby heliotrope bush sweetly assaulted Ghote’s nostrils.

  Then at last the old watchman uttered a short, deep groan.

  Ghote waited.

  ‘Sahib,’ the watchman said, his voice so low that it was almost inaudible. ‘Sahib, I was failing in my duty.’

  But for all the pain in the fellow’s voice Ghote knew that he could not let his grip on him go.

  ‘You must tell all. Every detail.’

  Another silence in the odoriferous air.

  ‘Sahib, when that dacoity was happening I heard. I heard the sound of glass-pane breaking.’

  Then a stop.

  ‘Yes? You heard. You are the Club watchman and, it is true, you should have heard any strange sound in the night. That is why I came to ask you questions.’

  ‘Yes, sahib. But after Meenakshisundaram Sahib was asking me nothing, I dared to hope no one would know what I had done.’

  ‘What you had not done, what you had not done,’ Ghote said implacably. ‘Well, what duty was it that you failed in?’

  ‘Sahib, I am an old, old man. Many years have I been watchman at Club. In old days the watchman before me was given retirement at age sixty years. While he was still hale and hearty. But, sahib, they were not giving me retirement.’

  No funds, Ghote thought. No funds now, when the Club has so few members, to do what is proper. So this old man had been let go on as watchman until long past being able to carry out his duties as they should be done, until the lathi in his hands is no longer upright when offered in salute.

  ‘Yes, you are an old man,’ he said to him, unbending still. ‘But nevertheless you were not doing what is right. When you heard that noise of the window of the billiard room breaking it was your duty to go there.’

  ‘But, sahib, I was fearful and I did not.’

  ‘And so you failed to seize the dacoit who was stealing the Club silver which it was your duty to protect.’

  Only, Ghote thought, was it a dacoit the old man had failed to seize? Or was it someone from inside the Club, a member, laying that false trail His Excellency believed in so strongly?

  ‘Sahib, I did not. But. . .’

  ‘Yes? What is it? What is it?’

  ‘But, sahib, I was not altogether disgraceful. Sahib, after some time I was recovering my fighting spirit, in so far as I was able.’

  ‘Yes? And then?’

  ‘Then, sahib, I did set out to see what was that noise of a breaking glass-pane.’

  ‘Ah. And you found? You saw?’

  ‘Sahib, I saw that a dacoit had entered the Club and had afterwards left.’

  ‘You saw this dacoit? You got a good look at him?’

  So Meenakshisundaram was right. So the crime at the Club was, after all, an ordinary affair, a simple dacoity, if one that had gone terrifyingly wrong. So, all that detective-story nonsense was just that, nonsense.

  ‘No, sahib, I was not well seeing.’

  Ghote felt a cascading descent of disappointment. For a moment he had had the pleasure of thinking that he would be able to go to His Excellency and report without any reservations that it was beyond doubt that Pichu had been killed in the course of an ordinary dacoity. That the affair was one that Inspector Meenakshisundaram was perfectly capable of dealing with, indeed with his local knowledge was the only officer fit to deal with it. And then he himself could have left Ooty, the treacherous paradise, and have gone back down to a world he knew, with all its difficulties, its half-answers, its muddles and mess. And there he could have got on with doing the best he could.

  But after that one happy moment it had all been shattered.

  ‘You were not well seeing?’ he questioned the old watchman with dull hopelessness. ‘Then just what were you seeing?’

  ‘Sahib, in the dark I knew there was a man who was pushing through that hedge on the far side. But this I was more hearing than seeing.’

  ‘And you stayed where you were even then?’

  ‘No, sahib, no. When I was certain a dacoit had robbed the Club silver I was doing my level best to stop.’

  ‘And what level best was that?’

  ‘Sahib, I was calling and shouting. I was calling for others to come and start up hue-and-cry.’

  ‘I see. And they came? Who came? Why was I not hearing of this hue-and-cry? Did anyone else see the thief?’ ‘Sahib, no one was coming.’

  ‘No one? Of course. No one. So what next?’

  ‘So next, sahib, I was myself going after this bloody dacoit.’

  ‘But you saw no more of him?’ Ghote asked, knowing what the answer was bound to be.

  ‘No, sahib, no more. It was all dark and I was seeing and hearing nothing. Then, after, I began to hope no one would think I had heard one thing even.’

  Ghote simply turned away then, for all that a tiny something inside him told him that he ought not to leave the watchman like this. He ought, he felt deep within himself, to say something. Whether it was to excuse the old man on the grounds of his age and feebleness or to rebuke him for dereliction of duty, it hardly mattered. But he ought to round off the business.

  And he just did not have the strength of mind. Because it had all left him exactly where he had been before the thought had come to him that the watchman might all along be holding the answer to the whole mystery. But now he was back to the start once more. Back to it being as likely that the affair was some sort of detective-story murder as that it was a decent, messy, ordinary crime to be cleared up or not as chance and a thousand odd circumstances dictated.

  Sapping gloom swirled and settled within him.

  15

  Drearily Ghote supposed that there was nothing else to do now but set out for Sunnyside Cottage to see if he could prove that the Maharajah, perhaps His Excellency’s Number One suspect, was having that illicit affair with Sarla Kumar. And, he thought, I shall have to take a taxi after all, if I am to get into hiding before that fellow comes roaring and racing up in that jeep of his.

  He set off leaden-footed to see if he could find a taxi, barely taking in that, night or no night, the yogi was there in his customary place, rigid as the Club signboard beside him.

  As he passed he heard the sound of a vehicle coming towards him and a moment later saw its dim headlights poking through the darkness. Would it be a taxi he could hail?

  A short distance away the car - it was a taxi - came to
a sudden halt. Its rear door was pushed sharply open, and out of it stepped the Maharani, flinging a note back towards the driver.

  To Ghote’s surprise she came marching straight up to him.

  ‘Good even—’ he began.

  She cut him short.

  ‘The one man in Ooty I’d most like to see.'

  ‘Please?'

  Why, for heaven's sake, was this rich, Westernized, voluptuous creature, who less than twenty-four hours earlier had left him in anger to make his own way back from Sunnyside Cottage, why was she saying now he was the one man she most wanted to see?

  ‘You were there with me yesterday,' she said, her voice ringing out in the cool night. ‘You were there. You made me leave then before I'd done what I wanted. Well, you can be the first to know I did what I wanted tonight. I learnt just what I hoped to.'

  ‘You mean . . .'

  ‘Yes, the bastard had told me he didn't want any dinner. So I guessed what his idea was. And I rushed out and got a taxi and made the man drive out there hell for leather. So I was just in time, kneeling behind that bush again, to see Vikram go prancing up to the door and ring at the bell. And the bitch answered it.'

  ‘The auntie?'

  ‘Auntie, my foot. The bitch herself, bloody Sarla Kumar. Opened the door and flung herself round his neck. The whore.'

  ‘Oh, I am most sorry. But, you know—'

  ‘Sorry? What the hell is there to be sorry about? I've got him now. Got him wrapped up, tied hand and foot, just where I want him.'

  ‘Where you are wanting him?'

  Ghote was only half-following.

  ‘Oh, yes. Now that I know for certain he's gone back to that bitch, sniffing round her like a pi-dog, he can't do a damn thing to me. Now there can't be any more of his talk about divorcing me without a rupee, not whatever I choose to do.’

  ‘It is Mr Amul Dutt you are choosing?' Ghote said boldly.

  ‘Yes. All right. It's Mr Amul Dutt. And, by God, I'll be down there with him in just the time it takes me to change into some clothes that haven’t been contaminated by the sight of that swine and kneeling in that bitch’s disgusting garden. So goodnight, Mr Ghote, and wish me everything I wish myself.’

  She swung away to march back up to the Club.

  But Ghote was not going to let her go without learning as much as he could that might help him.

  ‘Madam! Madam!’ he called out. ‘Madam, stop. There is one thing I must be asking.’

  The Maharani did stop, turning impatiently to face him in the dim starlight.

  ‘Madam,’ he said, going up towards her, ‘kindly tell me this thing. If your husband is having this illicit affair with Miss Sarla Kumar and taking each and every precaution so that you yourself would not know, then why, if he is a truly ruthless individual, is it that he did not remove the billiards marker Pichu from his path like a fly or an insect only?’

  He heard her give a short angry puff of a sigh.

  ‘Really, you’re just damned obsessed with that frightful Pichu. Of course Vikram wouldn’t kill him. I told you; he’d have bought him off if he had to and thought nothing of it. And, besides, Vikram isn’t exactly your ruthless type, believe you me. No, sneakiness is Master Vikram’s way, and don’t I know it.’

  ‘Very good. Thank you, madam.’

  Ghote stood and watched her go striding into the dark. He shivered in the cold.

  And felt at once fiercely irritated with himself. All his life he had cursed heat and humidity, and now when as if by a miracle he was up here in the delightful cool of the hills he was shivering and miserable.

  Well, at least, he consoled himself, he no longer need keep a watch out at Sunnyside Cottage. Because one thing was certain: the Maharajah was the lover of Sarla Kumar. His wife, vengeful as well as voluptuous, would not have been lying about that, even if perhaps, keen to retain that meal-ticket of hers, she had not been telling the truth about the sneakiness or otherwise of his character.

  So what to do? Go back and sit at dinner with His Excellency? After having filled himself up in any case with cucumber sandwiches?

  No. He would certainly not do that.

  What he would do - it came stealing over him like the spicy odour of rich food on a stove - was to creep back into the Club and go to bed. And, if he could not sleep at this early hour, he could always try reading Mrs McGinty’s Dead after all.

  Then tomorrow . . . Tomorrow after a long night’s refreshing sleep he would be up very early and get hold of the other witness Meenakshisundaram had failed to interview, Gauri, the sweeper woman who had actually been the first to see the body in the billiard room. She might or might not have any new evidence. But at least some work on the case would have been done in the proper manner.

  And he found, warm and happy beneath the blankets of his Ooty bed, even though getting into it so early he had had to forgo the hot-water bag a servant would have brought him, he had no difficulty once he had begun again on Agatha Christie in getting through his task. The words slipped by. Incident followed incident. There were glints of humour that made him smile but never caused him to pause in his reading. And all the while he could not stop himself wanting to know the answer to the simple question: who had killed the harmless charwoman, Mrs McGinty?

  Somehow, sitting in the broad bed with its blankets drawn up to his chin - at home he never needed even one blanket - this cardboardy question seemed more gripping, more demanding, than the real question posed by the actual dead body that had been found in the billiard room under this same roof just a few days earlier.

  And, it appeared, as he read on and the hours ticked away, that the harmless Mrs McGinty had not been so harmless after all. She had been, like Pichu, a blackmailer. Yet her blackmail, Ghote felt, was blackmail made out of moonlight. Shimmer stuff. Not touching anything or anyone.

  In the smooth flow of it all none of the awkward queries that might have ripped at the surface of his mind like jutting sharp-edged rocks ever quite rose up. He read of Superintendent Spence wagging a heavy forefinger at Hercule Poirot and saying he had never seen an innocent man hanged and did not now intend to, and never a thought arose that Inspector Meenakshisundaram might be busy at this moment seizing on some dacoit, innocent at least of this crime, and preparing to beat a confession out of him. Or, worse, that His Excellency might push himself into getting charged under Section 302 some member of the Ootacamund Club who had not in fact committed any diabolically clever murder.

  Poirot told his cher Spence that since Mrs McGinty was just an ordinary charwoman the murderer must be the one who was extraordinary, and, deep under the spell, it did not even occur to Ghote that His Excellency, who had probably read these words half a dozen times over the years, might have got his whole ridiculous notion into his head because of them.

  One of the suspects remarked cheerfully that what he liked in detective stories were the clues that meant everything to the detective but nothing to the reader until the end when one kicked oneself for not seeing them. And Ghote knew that, yes, he too already, in flicking through the pages longing to know who had done it, had passed over half a dozen such clues. But he did not even for a moment rebuke himself, an officer of Crime Branch, Bombay Police, for being so stupid. He was in a world where the facts of ordinary existence counted for nothing.

  Then, at last, Monsieur Poirot was taking off the shoes that pinched - the ones he had been upset to find dirtied with English mud - and was easing on the slippers which would allow him to enter undistracted into a state of trance. A state of trance, Ghote thought, just like the ones Professor Godbole had mentioned, except that his examples had been of Great Detectives who had reached not for slippers but for tobacco pipes. Shortly, then, Poirot would know.

  Shortly indeed Poirot did know, and Ghote duly kicked himself.

  But, to his mingled disappointment and relief, he found that the answer to the riddle of Mrs McGinty’s death had not after all shed any light on what had happened in the billiard room at the Ootacam
und Club.

  And the time was 2 a.m.

  A momentary panic swept up in him. He had pledged himself to be up before dawn to get hold of the sweeper woman, Gauri, at the hour which, as His Excellency had mentioned once, an army of sweepers came up from the Bazaar to keep the Club spick and span. Would he be able now to wake early enough? But he told himself sharply he would wake when he had to. Then he dropped His Excellency’s book on to the floor and within two minutes was fast asleep.

  He woke while the sky through the high windows of the room had in it hardly a trace of grey-white light. He got up, hurried into his clothes and let himself quietly out of the building.

  To be astonished to find the springy grass of the wide lawns all round covered in white.

  Frost, he thought. This is frost. It transforms everything. It makes Ooty into a fairyland from Western stories. As it is, as it surely is. A fairyland. An altogether unreal place.

  Just like the book he had devoured before falling asleep.

  That, too, had been something frost-transformed. On to the dull shapes of ordinary life a magic net of white crystal had been thrown. While he had been under its spell he had been wholly willing to believe there were people who did the things Dame Agatha Christie made them do. He had wanted to accept the circus hoops she held up for her people to jump through and the tangle upon tangle of mystification, no doubt in accord with some strict rules, she had arranged for them. And it was indeed a circus, her world. A circus where every trick came off.

  But there was another world, he thought, his own world where very few tricks came off and where, when they did, something usually went messily wrong afterwards. A world where there was no transforming frost.

  Then, looking up, he saw the raggedy band of sweepers approaching across the grass, and noticed that behind them it was no longer frost-glinting but a muddled trodden black.

  He scrutinized the group as they got nearer.

  ‘Gauri?’ he called out when they were close enough to hear without his having to raise his voice and disturb the dawn hush. ‘Which of you is Gauri?’