For a moment he thought he was not going to get an answer. It could be that Gauri had not come this morning. She might have fallen ill. She might have died even. Or just have vanished into the teeming masses down below in the plains.
But, no.
From the group an old woman stepped forward, wary but proud. She was a gaunt, age-battered creature, her hair grey-streaked and combed back hard to her head, her skin dark - how much must her parents years and years ago have fought against facts in naming her after the goddess famed for her fairness - her arms almost fleshless and sinewy, her neck corded and scrawny where it emerged from the faded orange choli she wore under a creased and sleep-crumpled cheap purple cotton sari.
He went up to her.
‘Gauri,’ he said, ‘I have only a little Tamil. Do you speak English?’
‘I speak, sahib. To work at Club is good to have.’
‘Very well. Then let me tell you I have come from Bombay-side to investigate the death of the man Pichu. You were the first to see him dead, yes?’
‘Oh, yes, sahib. I saw that old devil on billiard table, dead, dead,’ Gauri replied, with an unembarrassed grin. ‘Just like he drunk again, face pink-pink like flowers only and mouth all full up of spit-spit.’
With a warm rush of relief, Ghote realized that here was someone he could talk to with ease, despite the language difficulty, someone simple, cheerful and life-accepting.
But would she have anything for him worth hearing? ‘Old devil you are saying?’ he asked. ‘You were knowing Pichu well then?’
‘Oh, that one. When I was coming to billiard room always-always he would be snoring in front of silver-cups almirah. From all his drinking-drinking.’
Pleased to have at least gained this much confirmation of Pichu’s bad character, Ghote plunged on.
‘Yes, this drinking. You are knowing where in dry Tamil Nadu State he was getting drink to drink?’
Gauri wagged her grey-streaked head.
‘Oh, no, sahib. Who can say where such fellow is getting drink? From Club stealing? Or buying-buying in Bazaar where they make out of rotten fruit and dead dogs only?’ ‘You saw him just in the mornings? Or did you see him at other times?’
‘Oh, I am not being in Club after the burra sahibs are waking and walking up and down. No, no. It was in the morning only I am seeing that devil. Finishing sleep and wanting to put his stinking mouth to my face.’
‘Oh, he was that sort also, was he?’
‘He was all bad sorts, sahib. Goat-goat, thief, drunkard man, all-all.’
‘And when you were finding him dead it was on the billiard table, not where he was always sleeping in front of that almirah?’
‘Yes, sahib, that day he was not in that place. But I saw. In middle-middle of billiard table. Like this only.’ And the lively, gaunt-faced old woman threw up her arms and spread them wide, jumped her legs astride,opened her mouth and stood there in front of Ghote in the crisp morning air.
Their twin breaths in long plumes met and mingled. Ghote felt he had almost seen now with his own eyes the body in the billiard room.
‘And you saw the wound that killed him?’ he asked, as Gauri brought her mime to an end.
kYes, yes, sahib. I saw. On white-white coat one little ring of red-red blood.’
‘And the weapon? The knife, the dagger, whatever it was, did you see that also?’
‘Gone, sahib, gone.’
Well, it had been only the chanciest of hopes that His Excellency’s famous ‘sharp instrument’ might still have been in the body when Gauri had seen it, or even somewhere in the room, and that she had in pure ignorance simply tidied it away.
If the missing weapon was indeed that sharp instrument and not the ordinary dacoit’s sword the murderer-thief had taken away with him in Inspector Meenakshisundaram’s version of the crime.
‘So there was just only that patch of blood on poor Pichu’s jacket?’ he asked for confirmation.
‘Poor-poor, no, no, no. A devil fellow, I am saying. Good he gone. Bad rubbish.’
And, yes, there was something to be said for this sharp view of violent death. It was certainly more real, more down-to-earth, more to do with life than the murder with paper blood that His Excellency saw as having happened, that Dame Agatha Christie put into her books.
‘Now, in that room you are sweeping every day, did you see any single thing different that morning?’
‘But, yes, sahib.’
‘Yes? Yes?’
‘Pichu on billiard table, not on almirah.’
‘No, I was meaning . . .’
But, as he had been putting these last routine questions, from which he had expected to learn nothing more, he had been obscurely aware of the sound of a car engine growing louder and louder. And at this point it had increased to such a roar that his attention was completely distracted.
He looked away and saw, coming racing up towards them like something in a film, a police jeep with Inspector Meenakshisundaram at the wheel leaning out and waving like a crazy man and a pair of uniformed constables clinging on hard behind him.
Meenakshisundaram brought the vehicle to a halt just beyond the group of curious sweepers who had been watching Ghote as he had talked with Gauri. Its braking tyres sent the stones of the driveway spurting.
‘Inspector!’ Meenakshisundaram yelled. ‘Jump in. That dacoit, he is just here. Two — three minutes and we will nab.’
Ghote ran across, no time to think, and jumped up beside Meenakshisundaram. With a fearsome howl of the engine they shot away.
16
To Ghote’s surprise Inspector Meenakshisundaram did not sweep the jeep round and go roaring back towards the Club entrance. Instead he charged straight up on to the grass and drove them bumpily along beside the extended stretch of the building itself.
Behind, Ghote saw, the frost-white grass was wealed by two broad black tyre tracks.
He turned and leaned closer to Meenakshisundaram’s jowly face.
‘Where are we going?’ he shouted.
‘Round to back. Pick up one informant.’
Informant? What informant? And what could he have informed about? At this dawn hour of the day?
Ghote wondered whether it was worth trying to yell these questions at Meenakshisundaram above the roar of the jeep’s engine. And decided it was not.
In any case they were very soon answered, and altogether unexpectedly.
As they rounded the Club building, standing there in the pale morning light was Mr Habibullah, looking not unlike a circular white tent propped up by the thick black pole of his ever-present silver knobbed cane.
‘Ah,’ Meenakshisundaram shouted, ‘now we would see.’
He brought the jeep to a jerking, forward-thrusting halt.
‘Get in, sir,’ he called to Mr Habibullah. ‘Get in damn quick and say where to go.’
Mr Habibullah, moving with surprising rapidity and lightness, hoisted himself on board, to sit like a giant puffball between the two squat, tough-looking constables in the back.
‘In the churchyard, Inspector,’ he shouted into Meenak-shisundaram’s ear above the still thunderously vibrating engine. ‘I spotted him there.’
‘Can we get the jeep through?’ Meenakshisundaram shouted back.
‘No. no. I am afraid not.’
With a look of boiling fury, Meenakshisundaram turned to his two burly constables.
‘Get over there on foot,’ he yelled. ‘At the double. Cut the bastard off. We’ll go round by road and get him the other way.’
The constables tumbled out as Meenakshisundaram slewed the jeep round. Bumping and lurching, he hurtled back to the front of the Club again, leaving two more dark cuts across the whitened surface of the grass.
In another couple of moments they were thrumming down the slope towards the lane leading to St Stephen’s Church. On the better surface the vehicle made less noise and Ghote felt reasonable speech might be possible.
He leant back towards Mr Habibullah
.
‘How was it you were spotting this fellow only?’ he asked.
‘Oh, my dear Mr Ghote, I have become in my retirement something of a birdwatcher. It is my hobby. I like to see the little creatures hopping here and there at their own sweet will.’
‘And you have a binocular?’ Ghote said. ‘You observed this fellow at the place where they unearthed the Club silver?’
‘Exactly so. The Great Detective sees all.’
Ghote lapsed into silence. Sulky silence.
Meenakshisundaram swerved and skidded the jeep along, and within two minutes they swung into the wide stretch of road leading up to the church, squat-towered and pinnacled against its background of densely green trees.
Then, just as Ghote had begun to wonder if Meenakshisundaram was going to drive headlong through one of the pairs of neat wooden gates in the churchyard wall ahead, a man dressed in khaki shorts and a white singlet came haring down the slope beyond and jumped clean over the low wall.
‘By God, it’s him,’ Meenakshisundaram yelled. ‘And I think I know the fellow.’
As the runaway pounded along the edge of the road towards the small white chapel outside the churchyard built originally for native servants, he seemed more aware of the distant pursuing constables behind than of the approaching vehicle. Meenakshisundaram gave a furious twist to the wheel and headed straight towards him.
‘Got the bastard.’
He nearly had, too. Just at the corner of the wooden fence surrounding the chapel he touched the dodging, darting man — the jar was plain to feel — but immediately had to make a violent swerve to avoid crashing into the solid chapel wall beyond.
Their quarry did not seem much injured, however. As Ghote turned to look back, he saw that the fellow was still able to run and was heading down towards the tall shape of the Nilgiri Library.
‘Next time, yes,’ Meenakshisundaram bayed, flinging the jeep into reverse and backing off ready to launch forward once more.
‘No,’ Ghote shouted, almost without knowing he had done so.
An instant later he found himself down in the dusty road, pelting off as hard as he could go in the direction of the fleeing man.
The chase was not long. The runaway, it soon appeared, had been more hurt than it had looked. He kept going, but he was leaning hard to his left and Ghote had little difficulty in drawing up to him before he turned the corner.
‘Stop,’ he panted. ‘Stop, if you don’t want to be hit again.’
Whether the fellow understood or not, Ghote did not know. But he certainly dragged to a halt, turned and stood, head hanging, mouth wide and gulping for air, face streaked with sweat, blood oozing from the place on his thigh where the jeep had struck him.
Ghote decided there was no need to take hold of such a wreck.
In a moment he heard the jeep draw up behind him and a thud as Meenakshisundaram jumped to the ground.
The Tamil inspector plainly had different ideas about apprehending suspicious characters. He came straight up to Ghote’s captive, knocked him flat with one swipe of his arm and at once bent down, grasped him by his singlet and hauled him to his feet again.
‘You I am knowing, you bastard,’ he yelled. ‘Name? What is your damn name?’
The panting, dust-covered captive, his left cheek now grazed bright red, struggled to produce a word.
Clack.
Meenakshisundaram brought his open palm smacking across the fellow’s face.
‘Name I am asking.’
This time, eyes white with fear, the captive managed to answer.
‘Balakumar.’
‘Balakumar, sir.’
Another heavy slap.
‘Sir. Sir. Sir. Balakumar, sir.’
‘Yes, Balakumar. Balakumar, that’s it. One on my Bad Character Roll, by God. Now, you stole many silver cups from Ootacamund Club. Yes?’
‘No, Inspector. No.’
The slap that followed sent Balakumar reeling to the ground again. At once to be lifted bodily up once more.
‘You stole that silver.’
The hand was raised again, clenched now into an all too threatening fist.
For an instant Balakumar was silent. But his eyes flicked towards Meenakshisundaram’s clenched hand.
‘You are saying it, Inspector,’ he muttered. ‘Yes. Sir. Sir. Sir.’
‘I am saying, yes. I am saying you stole, and I am saying you killed a servant there.’
‘No—’
But the protest was hardly out of his mouth when Meenakshisundaram brought his knee sharply upwards.
Balakumar gasped in agony and doubled up. Meenakshisundaram reached forward and jerked him upright.
Ghote, a silent spectator, knew that this was no time to intervene. Interrogation was in progress. Perhaps not interrogation according to the strict limits of the Criminal Procedure Code, laid down first long ago in British days. But interrogation according to the rough-and-ready ways of life. And it might be producing the truth, or some of the truth. And if it was, then how much did it matter that the wretched fellow at Meenakshisundaram’s mercy was having a bad time? Did it matter a little? A lot? Very much? To some extent?
There was nowhere to draw an exact line.
‘Yes,’ Meenakshisundaram growled, putting his heavy face to within an inch of Balakumar’s sweat-stained, fear-filled one. ‘Yes, you killed the servant there.’
It was hardly a question. But it demanded an answer.
‘Sahib, sahib. Sir. Yes. Yes, if you want.’
‘Not if I want. You killed that servant. Say it. Say it before these witnesses here.’
Ghote became aware that Mr Habibullah had clambered down from the jeep and was standing somewhere just behind him. He wondered what he might be thinking.
Perhaps, freed now of the railway rules and regulations that had dominated his working days, he was freed, too, of all concern.
But Meenakshisundaram was pursuing the answer he wanted with unswerving determination.
‘You killed that servant. Say it. Admit. Murderer.’
The knee which had already once come up into Balakumar’s groin with such crippling force twitched in anticipation.
‘Sahib, I killed. I killed her.’
‘Enough.’
Meenakshisundaram seized his victim by one arm and almost threw him into the jeep. He turned to Ghote and Mr Habibullah.
‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘in due course I shall want signed statements in strict accordance with all procedures. You are wanting lift back, yes?’
‘No,’ said Ghote.
‘Oh, no, no. No, thank you,’ Mr Habibullah echoed.
Standing together they watched in silence as Meenakshisundaram roared off in the jeep, his battered prisoner collapsed on the back seat. In a little while the constables who had flushed the fellow out from the churchyard came plodding by. Still neither Ghote nor Mr Habibullah said anything.
But when the two exhausted pursuers had eventually limped out of sight round the corner of the Library building Ghote turned cautiously to his balloon-like companion.
‘You were hearing what that fellow Balakumar was saying?’ he asked.
Mr Habibullah sighed. A great drawing in and puffing out of breath, still turning to vapour in the chill morning air.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘My dear Mr Ghote, I heard.’
‘Just what were you hearing?’ Ghote asked unbendingly.
Another sigh, not sending out this time quite such a puff of vapour.
‘I was hearing what you were hearing.’
Ghote recognized that his attempt to get the retired railways officer to make an unprejudiced declaration was not going to succeed.
‘The man Balakumar was saying her,’ he stated. ‘He by chance assumed the servant Meenakshisundaram spoke of was a woman. Was it not so?’
‘Yes. Ah, yes, my dear fellow. And we know, do we not, that the victim was by no means a woman.’
It was Ghote’s turn to sigh now.
‘
But Balakumar confessing to same does not one hundred per cent mean that he was not truly killing Pichu in the billiard room,’ he said. ‘With such methods of interrogation the fellow might have said, I think, almost anything.’ ‘Well, yes, one has heard that the police—But, my dear fellow, perhaps I am rushing in where I should not. You, too, are, are you not, a police officer? But then you are more than that, of course, also. You will have other ways of finding out the truth of things.’
For a moment, for perhaps the hundredth time since his arrival in Ooty, Ghote thought of vehemently rejecting the mantle put on his shoulders. But he realized that, once again, it would be little use. Instead he asked Mr Habibullah another question.
‘When you were spotting this fellow just only now, you were, you say, using a binocular for the purpose of some birdwatching activities. But what exactly were you seeing?’ ‘Well,’ Mr Habibullah said, ‘I like to rise very early on some days now, and on others very late. And today happened to be a day for earliness. But I had scarcely left my bed when it occurred to me to wonder what my little friends the birds did at this most early hour. So, still in my nightwears, I took those glasses you so cleverly deduced I must possess and looked out at the white, frosted world.’ ‘And you saw?’ Ghote asked with some sharpness.
‘I saw in the churchyard, not quite at the tomb sacred to the memory of Annie, wife of Captain Henry Browne, but not altogether far away, the individual now in the hands of the formidable Inspector Meenakshisundaram. And that individual was behaving in a suspicious, not to say definitely surreptitious, manner.’
‘What suspicious?’
Mr Habibullah paused for thought.
‘In a stooping, peering, looking hither and thither manner,’ he said.
‘But he could have been, for instance, just only searching for some edible berries or suchlike?’
Mr Habibullah sighed yet more heavily than before. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, that could be so, though at the time the thought did not at all occur to me.’
‘I see. And you were at once then telephoning to the Urban Police Station?’
‘Yes. Yes, I thought this was something that called for resolute action. Yes, resolute action. And that I took.’ ‘Yes. Yes, you did that.’
The Body in the Billiard Room Page 17