Cheating Death

by H. R. F. Keating

  Principal Bembalkar looked a little uneasy.

  ‘Well, yes, of course,’ he said, ‘one’s secretary has to know things that one would not necessarily wish … wish all and sundry to have knowledge of. There are letters to be typed et cetera. Files to be kept in order. But nothing that I am told in strict confidence goes beyond these four walls, Inspector. Nothing at all.’

  Principal Bembalkar looked round at the wood-panelled walls of his chamber with an air of rectitude.

  ‘Not that I do not have complete confidence in Mrs Cooper,’ he said. ‘She has been with me ever since I was appointed to my position, and I have never had a moment’s doubt about her. But there are certain matters which even the most discreet of secretaries should not be privy to. Mrs Maya Rajwani would be – well, there are these matters, as I have said.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I am sure Mrs Cooper is just as you are saying. She is a widow, is she not?’

  He felt a little lift of delight at the adroit way he had reached that point.

  ‘Yes, yes. She is, poor woman. She was left a child, a small child. That is why she needs to work.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I am sure she is having a very hard life. Is she fit and well, sir? Does she have sleepless nights and so forth?’

  A bloom of pure pleasure welled up in him at the neatness with which he was pursuing the subject.

  ‘Sleepless nights, Inspector? I am sure I don’t know. With a small child … I suppose she must have done at times. But she has never mentioned anything like that to me. Not that I remember.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  A disappointment. If Mrs Cooper had had access to Somnomax Five, it clearly had not been through her boss. Nor did it seem he knew too much about his secretary’s life. Perhaps there was nothing after all in that malicious suggestion of Dean Potdar’s. No doubt many of the things that fellow said were nothing more than malice.

  He drew in a breath, took a quick decision.

  ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘I must ask you this. It is my duty, as you know, to find out who it was who was coming into this chamber and taking that question-paper. It is a duty even to the extent of sending my report to the Centre itself. So, sir, there is no getting past this. One of the people who could have come in here and done that must be your trusted secretary, Mrs Cooper.’

  He saw from the look on the Principal’s long, lugubrious face that this thought had never for a moment entered his head.

  But what did that mean? That he was altogether an academic with no knowledge of the world and its ways? Or that he did know Mrs Cooper well and was certain she could not be the question-paper thief? Or that she had been cunning enough herself to have deceived him? Yet surely, however vague he was, he must be aware Mrs Cooper had that soft corner for him. She must over the years have done so many things for him above and beyond her duties that he could not but have noticed. So would he have been able to see that Mrs Cooper might, just, have suddenly acted apparently against his interests in order that he could at last resign and write that book? And, if he had worked this out, what would he do? Even now as he sat in silence, beginning to suck a little at the pipe he had stuck in his mouth, was he starting to work it out? Then would he, seizing on the opportunity she had perhaps attempted to make for him, defend her with whatever lies came into his head?

  ‘Inspector, what you suggest astonishes me. I do not think you can be right.’

  The Principal shook his head in bewilderment.

  ‘No, Inspector,’ he went on, laying his pipe down beside the rack, ‘I cannot believe it. If Mrs Cooper was so disloyal, she would have shown signs of it before. And she has not, not in all the years she has worked for me.’

  ‘I am sorry, sir, that I have had to ask,’ he said eventually. ‘But you will know an investigating officer has to think of each and every possibility.’

  ‘Yes, yes, Inspector, I quite understand. But I think you can really take my word for it that Mrs Cooper simply would never have done anything so disloyal as to steal an examination question-paper. Oh, no, no.’

  And, Ghote thought, he really should take the Principal’s word for it. Mrs Cooper was not a suspect.

  Or … Or was she, despite everything?

  The only absolutely definite thing that had emerged from this interview, really, was that the trapping coils round an adage could go on and on winding out.

  But could he ask Principal Bembalkar, who, Mrs Cooper had told him, frequently used the phrase about the poor cat, just what ‘an adage’ was?

  No, he could not. He did not see how he possibly could.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘You have been most helpful.’

  But that was not at all true.

  SEVENTEEN

  Standing beside Mrs Cooper’s desk, Ghote at once put the only question he felt was left to him in the matter of the missing Statistics Techniques paper. Questions about Somnomax Five and the use that had been made of it, however much they were at the forefront of his mind, had to be kept rigorously locked away. Additional Commissioner’s orders.

  ‘Please,’ he said to the now friendly rakshas, ‘I have been thinking very much about the time there was nobody here itself to stop that question-paper being stolen. Can you kindly tell if Principalji had any appointments last Monday just before he was usually taking lunch. You are knowing he went early that day?

  ‘One moment,’ she replied, ‘I will look at his book.’

  From the drawer in front of her she produced a heavy leather-bound engagement diary. She flipped through its pages.

  ‘Ah, yes, here.’

  Ghote felt a flicker of hope. And would not let it flame up too high.

  Mrs Cooper read.

  ‘Yes, at that time Principalji had arranged to be seeing Dr Mrs Gulabchand. Proposal to add to Modern Poets course. Thomas Hardy.’

  Mrs Gulabchand. Ghote allowed that flame to take a little leap. So one of the people who had access to Somnomax Five, had actually been in this very room, had been here alone, just beside the Principal’s door at the time his keys were dangling invitingly in it.

  He almost turned that instant and left at a run.

  But he had learnt something about adages and the way their coils multiplied and multiplied. Was it going to turn out now as encoilingly as before that, however unlikely it seemed, other people, Professor Kapur, even Victor Furtado, had also had appointments with the Principal at that exact time?

  ‘Please, who else was due to see Principalji then?’

  ‘But no one, Inspector. If Principalji was going to discuss important subject like extension of Modern Poets syllabus he was going to give plenty of time for same.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I suppose that must be so.’

  He had never heard of this Hardy Thomas, Thomas Hardy, but presumably adding the name of some modern poet, possibly a political subversive, to a course was a matter requiring much discussion.

  However, the main thing now was that Mrs Gulabchand was the only person who had had any reason to come into this outer office, to see the keys in Principal Bembalkar’s chamber door, at that time.

  Now he did let hope blaze up.

  He hardly thanked Mrs Cooper before yet again he was marching along the veranda outside, clattering down the deserted stairs and hurrying towards the wide open doors. In his haste he just knocked into the blackboard stating that this was a Day of Mourning.

  Or, no, he realised just as he was about to step into the sun-blazed open. Someone – probably Dean Potdar himself – had put a new message on the board. He turned back for an instant.

  Founder’s Day Holiday Cancelled Owing to Day of Mourning All classes will be held as usual on Thursday

  Well, that would seem to be fair, he thought, settling the board square on its easel again. Students had had one day without classes. They could not expect another so soon.

  He ran out into the compound.

  In less than twenty minutes he was ringing the bell of the Gulabchands’ flat in the Ramaprakash Ho
using Society block down at Dhake Colony.

  The simpleton servant with the white uniform and golden yellow cummerbund opened the door.

  ‘Mrs Gulabchand? She is inside?’

  ‘Ji haan, sahib.’

  ‘Say, it is Inspector Ghote, Crime Branch.’

  The fellow drifted away.

  And returned after three long minutes had passed.

  ‘Please come.’

  He led Ghote out, once again, to the balcony where the swing with the red plastic seat stood idle and Mrs Gulabchand sat in the wicker armchair that Dean Potdar had occupied while he himself had found the foil sheet of Somnomax Five in the flat’s bedroom. She was a lady in full middle age, solidly stout in a plain cream-coloured sari with a dull red border. Her face, which was large and soft, was set in an expression of immovable placidity.

  She had been reading, and on a cane stool beside her the pamphlet she had put down lay next to a pair of heavy horn-rim spectacles. Ghote took a quick look at the thin booklet, hoping that whatever it was might give him a further clue to the lady’s personality.

  All-India Blind Faith Eradication Committee Annual Report.

  Yes, that was a clue, surely. The reader of such a report would very likely be determined to get for such views the very maximum influence. And what better position of influence was there for her than to be principal of a college where young men and women formed their ideas? Mrs Gulabchand must very likely have been ready to go to the length of stealing a question-paper in order to get rid of poor Dr Bembalkar.

  As ready – the thought struck him like a sudden blow to the stomach – as Professor Kapur almost certainly was for his own altogether different ends.

  Another length of tough creeper whipping round to thicken the trap, the adage, the add-age.

  Yet Mrs Gulabchand or her husband had had, in that bedside table, Somnomax Five. Damn it, the third foil sheet of the stuff he had taken from it was still in the back pocket of the very trousers he was wearing. There had been nowhere else safe to keep such irregularly obtained evidence.

  ‘Madam,’ he began, urging himself with every syllable to be cautious, to remember the Additional Commissioner’s order. ‘Madam, you are most probably aware that I am investigating the disappearance from the chamber of Principal Bembalkar of one question-paper, Statistical Techniques.’

  Mrs Gulabchand slightly inclined her head in acknowledgement.

  Ghote was suddenly reminded of the statue of Queen-Empress Victoria he had seen once years ago when he had taken Ved to the Victoria Gardens. There they had regarded for some time the corpulent figure, removed long before from its place of honour in the city to rest, ignored and noseless, but still firm with majesty and unassailable dignity, in a scrubby neglected corner.

  ‘Perhaps you are not aware, however, madam,’ he said, ‘at what period it was last Monday when that paper was –’

  He balked at the word stolen. Somehow, in the face of the solid pillar of respectability he had seen Mrs Gulabchand as being, it did not seem right to produce as blunt an expression. Not even if she was, possibly, probably, the thief and in consequence a murderer at least by intention.

  ‘… when that paper was removed.’

  ‘You will tell me, Inspector.’

  Mrs Gulabchand’s voice was calm assurance itself. Could it really be he was interrogating, if in the most roundabout way, someone who had nearly sent to death young Bala Chambhar?

  ‘Madam, it was between 12.30 p.m. and, at latest, 2 p.m.’

  ‘Very well, Inspector.’

  Again Mrs Gulabchand inclined her head.

  ‘Madam, I am informed that you yourself had an appointment that day at 12.30 p.m. itself with Principal Bembalkar.’

  ‘And what if I did, Inspector?’

  Was that an evasion, the little give-away wrongness he hoped to detect in interrogating any suspect? Even if this placid answer was very different from the sliding away from an inconvenient question he was used to dealing with with riff-raffs like the city’s anti-socials. So was he getting nearer?

  He went into the attack again. Still with unremitting caution.

  ‘Please, can you kindly tell me what occurred when you went for that appointment?’

  For a long moment Mrs Gulabchand did not answer.

  What is she doing? What is she thinking, Ghote asked himself. Is she preparing some lie? Is she wondering whether she has been brought suddenly to the point where she must confess? Am I at the end of it all? Have I weaved and wriggled my way out of that damn adage after all?

  Then Mrs Gulabchand spoke.

  ‘Inspector, I wonder why you are asking me this? Is it because you have got it into your head that I myself had something to do with that question-paper being taken? Dean Potdar was telling me you believe, for some reason, that the boy Bala Chambhar was not responsible for the actual theft.’

  ‘Yes, madam, that is so. Bala could not have taken the paper itself.’

  ‘Inspector, I asked you a question.’

  Once more Ghote swallowed. His throat was dry.

  ‘Madam,’ he said, ‘it is my duty as investigating officer to ask each and every person who was in the vicinity of Principal’s office at the time in question what exactly it was they were doing at the said time.’

  ‘So you are making no accusation?’

  There was something triumphant in her voice. Not any loud and noisy triumph for the whole world to hear, but instead a quiet satisfaction. The satisfaction of someone who had got their own way. More, the satisfaction – Ghote felt sure – of someone who was very much used to getting their own way, eventually. Someone who had found in the course of their life that quiet and unyielding persistence served to achieve their ends, time and time again.

  ‘No, madam,’ he said, ‘I am not at all making any accusation. I am merely hoping to learn if you were seeing any other individual in or near the Principal’s office at that hour.’

  ‘Then, Inspector, I am able to say to you that I did not. There were some students below in the courtyard. There had been some jape or disturbance going on. But that was over, and they were departing. But when I found Principal Bembalkar was not present to keep his appointment with me I left.’

  ‘I see. And, madam, were you by chance noticing one thing?’

  ‘Yes, Inspector?’

  Mrs Gulabchand was retaining all her solid calm. All Queen-Empress Victoria’s solid authority.

  ‘Madam, were you noticing some keys in the door of the Principal’s chamber?’

  ‘Yes, Inspector. They were there. It was when I saw them I realised Dr Bembalkar had left. As his secretary was also absent I went to Dean Potdar’s office and learnt there that Dr Bembalkar had gone early to his lunch. I was surprised, but there was nothing to do but to leave in my turn.’

  She had remained absolutely unmoved while she had spoken, clearly and softly, about the keys.

  If instead of looking only, Ghote asked himself, she had turned that key in the lock, had gone into that chamber, had seen the question-papers and had suddenly realised what she could do by taking just one and getting it sold round entire Bombay, would she have been able to keep up such an appearance of calm?

  Probably, yes, she would have been capable of that. A woman of that slow and undeviating persistence would tread like a gentle elephant over even such an obstacle.

  So he had come up against a wall too high to climb, too thick to break through.

  There was nothing else for it but to acknowledge that. If there was evidence against Mrs Gulabchand, there was not a shred of definite proof. The evidence against Professor Kapur was as strong, in fact. The astrologer had as good a reason, exactly as good, as Mrs Gulabchand’s for taking advantage of Principal Bembalkar’s lapse. He, too, had had access to Somnomax Five. And, if he had not admitted to being at the scene of the theft at the time, he had refused to say where he was.

  Even Victor Furtado was not established as impossible, even though he apparently had no Somnomax
Five. Someone intelligent enough to have become, despite appearances, a college lecturer surely would have had the sense to have got rid of the evidence of having used sleeping tablets if he had somehow acquired them?

  Mrs Gulabchand, if she was lying about that visit to the Principal’s office, had had, of course, to keep the remains of her supply because her husband might have asked about the pack had she thrown it away altogether, and Professor Kapur could well have forgotten using, perhaps months before, that strip of foil as a bookmark. Neither had there been anything to prevent Victor Furtado going into Principal Bembalkar’s empty outer office after Mrs Gulabchand had left, if it was the simple truth she had been telling. There must have been some time when the question-papers inside remained there for the taking.

  So he was no further forward, either in producing a report on the question-paper to be sent to the Centre, or in gathering hard evidence about who had attempted to kill Bala Chambhar.

  And, he realised with a new thump of dismay, there was nothing more he could do immediately about getting that report for the Centre. This was Oceanic College’s Day of Mourning. He had seen no one about out there except Dean Potdar, Principal Bembalkar and Mrs Cooper. There was, it had been altogether evident, no one else in the whole place to see. Security Officer Amar Nath had not been there. Krishna Iyer MA Madras had not been at his post at the cycle stand. Not a student had been there, not a teacher. There was no one. No one. No one to see. No one to ask. Anything.

  EIGHTEEN

  There was nothing Ghote could do now. His report, already much more delayed than the CBI wallas’ one he had hoped to show up, would have to wait at least for another twenty-four hours. If he managed to unravel the business even then.

  The only thing left was to go back to Headquarters and get on with any routine work on his desk. But at Headquarters what was more likely than that the Additional Commissioner would ask what progress he had made? And to say in reply that he was at a dead end because of Dean Potdar’s cunning notion of declaring a Day of Mourning and emptying Oceanic College would be to put his head right into the tiger’s mouth.