Cheating Death

by H. R. F. Keating

  Victory to Inspector Ghote. Was that what they wanted? Were insisting on?

  Then abruptly Dean Potdar himself came to his rescue.

  ‘Arrest me?’ he said, stepping half a pace forward and glaring at Ghote. ‘And just why do you think you can do that, Inspector?’

  Now, Ghote thought. Now I can get him. He has laid himself open to interrogation. And, after all, I do have witnesses. Twenty-thirty of them.

  ‘Mr Potdar,’ he said, ‘I have reason to believe that you were offering to one Bala Chambhar, student at this college, a quantity of shrikhand into which you had put a certain poison.’

  ‘Somnomax Five,’ the Dean shot back, with a look of piggy triumph. ‘And how are you going to prove I ever had any of that?’

  Then Ghote smiled.

  ‘It is altogether simple,’ he said. ‘I have told no one whatsoever until now that I had reason to believe the substance used to attempt the murder of Bala Chambhar was Somnomax Five. But you are knowing it. Mr Potdar, I am arresting you on a charge of attempted murder.’

  TWENTY-FOUR

  It was only when Ghote was seated at his desk at Headquarters, with Dean Potdar safely lodged in a cell, that he began to have a new attack of doubts about what he had so impulsively done.

  Had he really got enough evidence to take to court? He had no proof of any link between Bala Chambhar and the Dean, beyond the Dean’s remark that he had had the boy up before him on a disciplinary matter. True, he could probably obtain some sort of evidence that at least that had happened. But he would never be able to get evidence that at that interview the stolen question-paper had been put where Bala was likely to see it and steal it in his turn. Nor had he a scrap of evidence that the Dean had entered Principal Bembalkar’s chamber. True, he might be able to get the Dean’s secretary to remember that he had left his office during the time the question-paper had been taken. But that was far from being proof that he had taken it. Again, he might find some gumasta at that branch of Monginis who might recognise the Dean and recall that he had bought shrikhand at about the time he must have done. And perhaps he could find where the Dean had obtained his supply of Somnomax Five, unless that had been smuggled goods as it well might have been. No, the chain of proof had appalling gaps in it.

  Despite catching Potdar out with that admission that he knew Somnomax Five was the poison used on Bala Chambhar, he was still far from being sure of eventually obtaining a conviction. What he needed was for Bala never to have impulsively eaten that tub of shrikhand. Without the boy’s evidence of having seen the stolen question-paper in the Dean’s office he was never going to have a case that was other than damn leaky at every joint.

  Yet he was as certain as could be that the Dean, not letting ‘I dare not’ wait upon ‘I would’, had snatched up that paper from Principal Bembalkar’s desk when with his monkey curiosity he had gone poking and prying into the chamber that should have been locked. No doubt about it, he had seen an opportunity of gravely wounding the man he disliked so much and, without weighing the consequences, he had acted. And, once he had passed that paper on to Bala, he had again suddenly realised what he had laid himself open to. Then, without much thought, he had simply bought a sweet treat he knew the boy would like, crushed up some of his sleeping tablets into it and had put it in the boy’s way.

  That was what had happened. A series of spur-of-the-moment actions. They had happened. But without Bala there was no proof of any of the vital links in the chain.

  Damn it, damn it, damn –

  His telephone rang. It was the Additional Commissioner.

  Slowly he pushed himself to his feet. He would have one hell of a lot of explaining to do, and he very much doubted if any of his explanations would be accepted.

  But at least he now had a good account of what had happened to the Statistical Techniques question-paper, and the Centre, while it would be no doubt delighted to learn there was no possibility of any political fallout, would not want the sort of proof of his account a court of law would require.

  He snatched up his report, which he had typed with extraordinary care. And, he said to himself, this is a hell of a lot fatter, and better thought-out, than that single sheet the CBI wallas produced. There was that. Perhaps it would be enough to check the Additional Commissioner’s wrath.

  But he went up the spiral staircase to the great man’s cabin with leaden steps.

  ‘Sir,’ he said the very moment he had clicked heels in front of the huge sweep of a desk. ‘Sir, I beg to hand over my report on one missing question-paper, Statistical Techniques.’

  The Additional Commissioner looked up at him with a faint air of surprise.

  ‘Ah, that,’ he said. ‘Did no one tell you, Ghote, that the Centre no longer requires any report?’

  ‘Sir, no. Sir, but why? Why?’

  ‘Inspector, it is not for you – it is not for any of us – to question the decisions of the Centre. I dare say they had their reasons. Let us leave it at that. And, now, Ghote, what is this business of the arrest of the Dean of that college out there, whatever it’s called?’

  ‘Oceanic College, sir.’

  ‘Yes, yes. Oceanic College. But what I want to know is why was that fellow arrested and charged without a word to myself? I am not here, Ghote, just to play games with pieces of paper. I am here to –’

  The ringing of his telephone had interrupted him.

  ‘Haan? Haan? What is it?’

  The great man listened.

  ‘But why are you telling me this, Doctor?’ he said after a few seconds. ‘Do you know who you’re speaking to? I am the Additional Commissioner, Crime Branch. I hardly think you can want me.’

  A jabber of disclaimer at the far end.

  ‘Ghote?’ the Additional Commissioner snapped when it had come to an end. ‘You want Inspector Ghote? Well, I suppose he’s here, so you had better get on with it. But be damn quick about it.’

  He thrust the receiver across to Ghote.

  ‘It is Inspector Ghote?’

  ‘Yes, yes. Who is that?’

  ‘Dr Shah here, Inspector. KEM Hospital.’

  ‘Dr Shah? Oh, yes. Yes?’

  What could this be?

  ‘Inspector, I am thinking, since you were showing so much interest in that boy in Bed 52, you would be glad to know we have succeeded to deal with that poison. A technique I myself am inventing. Tip-top results.’

  Ghote thought.

  ‘You are saying Bala Chambhar will live, Doctor?’

  ‘Yes, yes. Of course. My treatment. Already he is speaking a little. Just now only he was muttering some words. Not distinguishable, of course. Something like Potdar shrikhand. Something like that. But significant. Altogether significant, medically speaking.’

  Ghote put the receiver back and began happily explaining.

  One more telephone call came through for Ghote before he left his cabin at the end of that day. It was from Principal Bembalkar.

  Ghote was surprised.

  ‘What it is I can do for you, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing, Inspector, nothing. I simply wanted to tell you my news. To tell somebody somehow sympathetic. And, besides Mrs Cooper who has gone to her child who is sick, I find there is no one.’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘Yes. You see, Inspector, I have made up my mind at last and resigned as Principal of Oceanic College. From now on I am going to devote myself entirely to Hamlet. I shall call my book – it is an interpretation of the play as a study of the vice of indecision – I shall call it The Pale Cast of Thought.’

  ‘Sir, that is most interesting,’ Ghote said.

  It was all he could think of to say.

  Then one more thing came into his mind.

  ‘Sir, I am sure you are altogether happy to have put aside those responsibilities you were having. Sir, congratulations. And, sir, can you please be telling me: is it Professor Kapur who is to take your seat? He was saying once such is written in his stars.’

  ‘No, no,
Inspector. I do not think Kapur was ever really considered. Mrs Rajwani thinks he is too – but, never mind that. No, this is just between us for the time being, you understand.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Well then, it seems Mrs Rajwani has recently made the acquaintance of one of the college staff she had not hitherto met, and she seems to think he will suit her – That is, she believes he is eminently suitable for the post.’

  ‘Oh, yes, sir? It is …?’

  ‘A fellow called Furtado, Inspector. Victor Furtado. I don’t know if you met him.’

  So at last Inspector Ghote made his way home, still revolving in his mind all that had happened to him since the time he had been called to the Additional Commissioner’s office to learn that a question-paper in Statistical Techniques had been sold in the streets of Bombay in advance of the day when the examination was to be held.

  But it was not until he was standing outside his own door that it occurred to him that this, once more, would be an evening when Ved would be busy with the affairs of the Regals cricket club.

  An evening when he could accomplish what he had made up his mind he had to do just before that first summons to the Additional Commissioner had come. To beat his wife.

  He stood there for a moment, for several long moments, thinking.

  Then he tapped at the latch.

  Protima was quick to open to him.

  ‘For once,’ she said, ‘you are in good time. But how hot you are looking. Come inside, come inside. Sit. I will fetch you a cold Mangola. I know that is what you are most liking.’

  ‘No,’ Ghote said. ‘No, I am always preferring Limca. Please get me that.’

  Protima dipped her head in assent, little Hindu wife.

  ‘In one moment only,’ she said.

  Ghote stepped in and kicked off his shoes.

  Yes, he thought to himself, it is as I was thinking just now before coming in. That is the way a man and his wife should be. There is no need for all those hasty measures, all that beating and so forth some fellows are boasting about. But neither is there any need for shilly-shally. It is just only a question of stating calmly what you are wanting, and you would get same. To one hundred percent.

  And besides, he added to himself, if you are listening to your wife in a reasonable way, then you would accept it when she is offering one sensible suggestion. Like, for example, that there could be some other reason than wanting to succeed to a college principalship for anyone to have taken a question-paper from the Principal’s chamber.