Cheating Death

by H. R. F. Keating

  ‘No, sir. Well, sir, not to one hundred percent, but –’

  ‘Then get out there to that damned college wherever it is, Inspector, and find out. Do nothing else. Understood? If you’ve come across some evidence of a murder being committed – and it doesn’t sound to me more than damned guesswork – then tell the victim’s mother, if that’s who it was you saw, to register a case with her local PS. Let them get on with it. But, as for you, what you tell me about an attempt to force the Principal of that place out there to resign may have something in it. Do I gather, however, that you’ve questioned neither of the damn professors involved?’

  ‘Well, no, sir. No. I was following the line of Somnomax Five, sir, and –’

  ‘Inspector, I do not want to hear one word more about that Somno-whatever-it-is. I want you to do what you have been told to do. Find out precisely how that blasted question-paper was on sale throughout Bombay. That and nothing else.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Ghote returned to his cabin, hollow with dismay. He had known the murder case he had built up against Mrs Gulabchand was, at this stage, thin. But it had not somehow occurred to him that the Additional Commissioner would find it so weak. Or that he would be so enraged that it had delayed discovering what had happened to the Statistical Techniques question-paper.

  But, damn it, he said to himself, a death, even of a harijan riff-raff like Bala Chambhar, is more important than satisfying someone in Delhi that no breath of scandal attaches to any partyman here in Bombay.

  He knew, however, in higher circles different priorities existed. And he had been given orders, crystal-clear orders. So he must obey.

  Yet even as he swallowed that sharp dose, a small hard bead of determination formed itself in his mind. If Mrs Gulabchand really had, simply in order to prevent her wretched plot against Principal Bembalkar coming to light, all but killed the boy Bala Chambhar, then she must not go unpunished. Yes, the Additional Commissioner had said Bala’s mother ought to register a case. One hundred percent correct. In theory. But what would happen if she went to the local police taking with her no more than his own suspicions and conjectures? Even if she was capable of doing so much. Nothing. Nothing would happen.

  No, if Mrs Gulabchand was to be brought to justice he himself was the person who would have to see that she was. And if that enmeshed him even more in some adage or other, well, let it.

  So what to do now? Go back to the Gulabchands’ flat and, if Mrs Gulabchand was there now, question her? Find out what she had been doing during the time Principal Bembalkar’s keys had been dangling in his chamber door? The Additional Commissioner had been right to reprimand him for not having investigated that, though if his theory about murder had been accepted then surely he had been right to have done what he had.

  But, no sooner had he seen what his first step should be than he realised he was not going to take it. In that bedside table in Mrs Gulabchand’s flat there was the packet of Somnomax Five, the very substance used to poison Bala Chambhar. If he were to let her know this evening that he suspected her of taking the question-paper, the first thing she would do would be to get rid of that incriminating evidence of murder. No question any more of leaving the packet in its usual place so that its disappearance would not alert her husband, who since she had not taken all the tablets must be the one who used them. No, now she would seize the first opportunity to get rid of the whole pack. She would have to, at any risk.

  Nor would he himself be able to prevent her. He had been specifically ordered not to pursue the case of attempted murder. Even if he succeeded in getting Mrs Gulabchand to confess on the spot to having taken the question-paper, and he doubted very much whether he would be able to do that without better evidence to confront her with, that crime was hardly so grave that he could march her off straightaway to a cell.

  But, he thought, he would not strictly be disobeying the Additional Commissioner if he omitted to question Mrs Gulabchand tonight. He had been told to investigate both contenders for Principal Bembalkar’s job. So if he happened to go to Professor Kapur first that was a matter of simple chance. Mrs Gulabchand could, in fact, safely be left till tomorrow when he could tackle her at the college. Then she would not find it so easy to rush back home and dispose of those tablets.

  He hauled his copy of the Bombay telephone directory up on to his desk and riffled through the pages till he came to the long list of Kapurs. But eventually he found Prof D.R. Kapur. The address was in far-off Malad not far from Oceanic College. It would be another long, hot miserable journey with the rush hour now well under way. But he would have to go.

  And, besides, he thought fleetingly as he left his cabin, though this was an evening when he could expect Ved with his new responsibilities as captain of the Regals not to be at home, he had not yet settled in his mind just how he was to set about the business of beating his wife. So it was as well to postpone all that.

  Professor Kapur’s flat, when at last he reached it, though it was in a block not outwardly much different from the Gulabchands’, was very different inside. The servant opened the door on to a noticeably bare hallway. Its single table bore only a single battered-looking book, evidently left there and forgotten. A row of chappals was lined up against the opposite wall. Nothing else. The servant was, equally, quite different from the Gulabchands’ smartly dressed if thick-headed fellow. This young boy – he was perhaps no more than twelve or thirteen – looked as if he had come straight from the melon fields.

  However, after he had hastily joined his shoes to the row of chappals, the boy succeeded in announcing him to his master well enough. The professor’s room had, like the Gulabchands’ drawing-room, a good many books in it. But with the preponderance of ancient, wide-leaved astrological works and the absence of chairs and anything resembling a television set it was in no way western.

  Nor was Professor Kapur himself, a burly squat figure in all-white kurta and dhoti, the grey hair on his bullet head cropped almost out of existence, chin and cheeks covered with a bristly grey stubble, anything of a western figure like Dean Potdar or Principal Bembalkar.

  At Ghote’s entrance he had contented himself with just glancing up from the low takht on which he sat cross-legged.

  ‘Inspector Ghote,’ he said. ‘Potdar Sahib was explaining to me that you had been sent to the college. But I can tell you all your good endeavours will come to nothing.’

  Ghote stiffened.

  ‘Thorough investigation will always uncover the truth,’ he said. ‘So why should you state and claim I will not succeed.’

  ‘The stars, Inspector. There it is written. There is a fate which cannot be avoided.’

  A bristle of irritation went through Ghote. His feelings about astrological predictions were, he knew, mixed. He had never seen them as a substitute for good, hard, scientific police work. He even tried always to ignore them in his daily life, although Protima relied on them in conducting much of her affairs, and his. But then, too, he had never been able quite to push aside the residue of all that he had learnt at his mother’s knee and from the stars-guided life of the village in which he had spent his earliest days.

  He was damned, though, if he was going to accept a prediction handed out to him as Professor Kapur’s had been. One based on no knowledge of his date of birth or the lines on his hand or any other of the factors an astrologer was supposed to work with.

  ‘Stars or not at all stars, sir,’ he said, ‘I must continue the inquiries it is my duty to make.’

  Professor Kapur gave him a tiger-like grin.

  ‘Continue, continue, Inspector,’ he said. ‘But you would be better, I am telling you, to surrender.’

  ‘Surrender?’

  Ghote felt himself at once in battle position.

  ‘Yes, Inspector, to surrender. Surrender to destiny, to the timeless pattern. It is there. You cannot escape it.’

  ‘Are you saying, sir, you will not answer the questions I am here to put? May I remind it is an offence aga
inst Indian Penal Code, Section 179 itself, to refuse to answer a public servant authorised to question.’

  ‘No, Inspector, put each and every question you are wishing and I will answer if I can. All I am saying is you will be altogether wasting your breath.’

  ‘That we would see. First, please, where were you yourself on Monday last between the hours of 12.30 and 2 p.m.?’

  He had not intended to put a question as challenging as this. Thinking about what he would say on his way out, he had seen himself conducting what he was convinced, in view of what he knew about Mrs Gulabchand’s Somnomax Five, need be no more than the merest formality of an interview. He would begin with a few general queries about the routine of life at Oceanic College at midday. Then he would ask if the professor had happened to be in the vicinity of the Principal’s office round that time and had by chance noticed anyone there. But the stifling blanket of astrology that had been thrown at him had driven all such polite nothings from his mind.

  And, to his surprise, his question appeared to catch Professor Kapur at a disadvantage. He blustered.

  ‘I was – I – What for are you asking me this? Are you attempting to say that I was the person who stole that question-paper or whatever it was from the Principal? It is well known that that was done by that harijan boy, Chambhar. How dare you try to accuse me of that.’

  What was this? Why was the fellow suddenly so defensive? Why had he taken that question as a direct accusation?

  The thought of what Dean Potdar had called out from the doorway of the Gulabchands’ flat came back. It was, after all, not against strict logic for more than one person to have a supply of Somnomax Five. However much it was against probability that each of the two contenders for Principal Bembalkar’s seat should possess this particular brand of foil-wrapped, blue-printed American sleeping pills. So could Professor Kapur just possibly be, not a person he was duty bound to go through the formality of interviewing, but a genuine suspect?

  Yes. Just possibly, yes.

  He thought rapidly.

  ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘I am not at all accusing. But it is the duty of an investigating officer to consider each and every possibility. So I am asking once again: where were you between 12.30 and 2 p.m. last Monday, the time when that question-paper was removed from Principal Bembalkar’s chamber?’

  Professor Kapur glared up at him.

  ‘I can assure you, Inspector, I was not anywhere near that chamber.’

  ‘I am pleased to hear. But kindly tell where it was that you were?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No, Inspector, I am not going to tell you. It must be sufficient that I have said I was not in or anywhere near the Principal’s office.’

  Ghote drew in a breath, and, without thinking how much it would be wise to say, plunged in.

  ‘No, sir. That is not sufficient. Let me explain. That question-paper – it was in Statistical Techniques – was not stolen from the Principal’s chamber by the student Bala Chambhar although he was known to have sold copies in many places in Bombay. It could not have been. Of that I have made certain. The paper was taken by some other person, and that person later made sure it fell into the hands of Chambhar. That person’s object can only have been to discredit Principal Bembalkar. Sir, this was in order to make certain Dr Bembalkar would resign, resign to make way for someone else.’

  He saw a look of calculation come on to the astrologer’s heavy round face in place of the contemptuous anger that had shown itself there till now.

  ‘You are thinking, Inspector,’ he said slowly, ‘that I am that person? That I took that paper so as to discredit that westernised fool Bembalkar and step into his seat where I could bring to Oceanic College more of respect for the ancient art I teach and practise?’

  ‘Yes, sir, I have to take such into account as one possibility.’

  Professor Kapur gave a grunt of acknowledgement.

  ‘Well, to this extent you are right,’ he said. ‘I will become Principal of Oceanic College. Such is written in my horoscope.’

  For an instant Ghote quite failed to take in what Professor Kapur had said. The words had been spoken with no more emphasis than the astrologer had put into anything he had previously said, though he had been vigorous enough. But after that instant the full enormity of the statement came home. The man had stated that nothing could prevent him succeeding Principal Bembalkar because such was written in his horoscope. Because of some scratchings and scrawlings on a palm leaf based on abstruse calculations stemming from the position of the distant circling stars at the time of his birth he simply believed that the post would become his. It was monstrous. Monstrous. However much some things he himself had known to be foretold had come disconcertingly to pass.

  He swallowed. Once. Twice. And then brought himself to speak.

  ‘Sir – Sir, I am asking once again: where was it that you were on Monday between the hours of 12.30 p.m. and 2 p.m.?’

  A glint of anger seemed to be the only response.

  But then, after a moment’s silence, the astrologer produced an answer.

  ‘Inspector, why cannot you understand? It is no use you asking such a question. It is my fate to become Principal of Oceanic College, so what for should I plot and plan to achieve it? It is written. It will happen. It is good for me, but that is unimportant. I cannot change it, any more than men who writhe and twist under a bad fate can change that. It is there. There in the pattern above.’

  Ghote felt as if a huge wall of rock had appeared in front of him. Immovable. Here was this man who simply believed, mistakenly or not, that sooner or later he would become head of Oceanic College. He had needed, so he had said, to take no decision to seek the position. He had not needed to weigh up what he should or should not do. He had only to stay still and let the giant wheel of fate move on till he had reached what he saw as his destiny to achieve.

  So would such a person put into action a plan to discredit the man who held for the time being the post he was, so he believed, sure to inherit? Would he even, faced with the sudden opportunity of taking that question-paper and discrediting the man whose duty it was to keep it under locks and keys, have acted on impulse, as whoever had taken the paper must have done? The answer could only be no.

  But could that claim of his be accepted at face value? To that the answer was much less clear.

  And why was he refusing to say where he had been at the time of the theft?

  ‘Sir,’ he said yet again, ‘you would be making my task much easier, yours also, if you would say where you were when that question-paper was stolen.’

  ‘Private business, Inspector.’

  Was the fellow saying that he had been behaving in some disgraceful manner sexually? Was it written in his horoscope that he was allowed all sorts of depravities at that certain hour?

  Only one way to find out. Ask.

  ‘Sir, I am a police officer. I am very much well acquainted with all the things that – that certain appetites can lead men into wanting and doing. Sir, you may be speaking freely in front of me.’

  He stopped. Had he said enough?

  A moment later he knew he had. Or had said too much. The look of bull-like rage that flooded up into the astrologer’s grey-stubbled face as he came to understand what had been said to him made that altogether clear.

  ‘Get out. Get out of my house. I will not sit and hear such abuses. Leave at this instant.’

  Damn. Utterly defeated, whichever way you looked at it. Either he had succeeded truly in insulting this professor of astrology, an innocent and perhaps influential man, or he had been put in a position whereby he could not get an answer to his hundred percent legitimate question.

  Only thing now to leave. With whatsoever of dignity he could manage.

  ‘Very well, sir. If you are continuing to refuse to answer, I would let matter rest. But I must be warning you. I shall come back.’

  He walked out. The servant boy was not in the bare hallway. He stoope
d to gather up his shoes. But then, suddenly seeing himself crouched down on the floor with the astrologer perhaps coming suddenly out to make sure he had left, he rapidly straightened up and with a foot slid the shoes over towards the table where he could stand upright and have something to lean on as he slipped into them.

  He got his right foot safely into its shoe and then began to ease his left foot in, all the while keeping half an eye on the door of the room behind him.

  So it was only as he wriggled the second shoe comfortable that he took note of the old book lying on the table in front of him. Something silvery had been used as a mark in its pages. It seemed somehow familiar.

  But he dismissed it from his mind. He hardly wanted Professor Kapur to come out and find him apparently peering at one of his astrological works.

  He turned to the flat’s door. And, as he did so, it came to him just what that silver of a bookmark was.

  A piece of blue-printed foil such as he still had in his pocket. Foil from Somnomax Five.

  SIXTEEN

  For a moment Ghote stood still at the door of Professor Kapur’s flat, transfixed by what he had just seen. Then, on an almost involuntary impulse, he shot out and slammed the door behind him. On the landing he came to a halt again, heart thumping, and thought.

  So, had the logical but highly improbable possibility proved true? Was each of the apparent heirs to Principal Bembalkar in possession of a supply of the poison that had all but ended Bala Chambhar’s life? Plainly they were. With his own eyes he had seen that packet of Somnomax Five in the bedside table in the Gulabchands’ flat. One of the full foil slips was in his pocket at this very moment. Equally with his own eyes he had seen what looked to be the foil wrapping from a sheet of Somnomax Five used as a bookmark in a neglected astrological volume belonging to Professor Kapur. And if he had failed to take a sample of it, that was perhaps all for the best. He could not go on flouting the rules of investigation at every turn. It was enough that he knew evidence of Professor Kapur having been in possession of Somnomax Five existed.