PENGUIN MODERN CLASSICS
Inspector Ghote Trusts the Heart
H. R. F. KEATING was born at St Leonards-on-Sea, Sussex, in 1926. He went to Merchant Taylors, leaving early to work in the engineering department of the BBC. After a period of service in the army, which he describes as ‘totally undistinguished’, he went to Trinity College, Dublin, where he became a scholar in modern literature. He was also the crime fiction reviewer for The Times for fifteen years. His first novel about Inspector Ghote, The Perfect Murder, won the Crime Writers’ Association’s Gold Dagger and an Edgar Allen Poe Special Award. He lives in London with his wife, the actress Sheila Mitchell, and has three sons and a daughter.
ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH is the author of several series of novels and is best known as the creator of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency books.
H . R . F . KEATING
Inspector Ghote Trusts the Heart
Preface by ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH
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First published by Collins 1972
Published in Penguin Books 1976
Published in Penguin Classics 2011
Copyright © H. R. F. Keating, 1972
Preface copyright © Alexander McCall Smith, 2011
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The moral right of both the author and the author of the preface has been asserted
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ISBN: 978-0-14-196285-6
Contents
Preface by ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH
Inspector Ghote Trusts the Heart
Preface
A perfectly loveable inspector
I went to Bombay, as Mumbai then was, as an incidental literary pilgrim. I was an incidental pilgrim in the sense that I had to pass through the city on my way elsewhere, but even so I was aware from the moment my plane landed that I was on hallowed turf: I was in the city of Inspector Ganesh Ghote of the Bombay C.I.D. Others feel the same way, no doubt, when they first set foot on the pavements of Baker Street, or find themselves outside one of the houses associated with Jane Austen. Pilgrims, of course, may go to the places of their pilgrimage in awe, but must be ready for a let-down. Bombay, though, did not disappoint: there were the Ambassador cars in which Ghote might travel; there were the street characters; there were the buildings and alleyways into which some suspicious character – some goonda perhaps, a thoroughly bad hat – might vanish. The whole intriguing world of this remarkable city, so brilliantly caught in Keating’s little gems, was there for the savouring. And yet, we might remind ourselves, the first nine Inspector Ghote novels were written before the author had actually visited India.
H. R. F. Keating began work on the Ghote novels as a deliberate attempt to give his fiction a more international tone. The Perfect Murder, the first of the series, was intended to broaden the appeal of his work, particularly in the United States. Something his earlier crime novels had failed to do, being considered ‘too British’ to appeal to American taste. And it would not have been surprising if novels set in a country the author had never visited ended up reflecting the author’s culture, rather than that of the country in which they are set. Yet in Keating’s case this did not happen. These books are not embarrassing portrayals of an idealized India; they have an authenticity that has been recognized, even in India. As such they fall into that small – very small – category of novels: those that are works of pure imagination but that nonetheless convey a valid sense of place and culture.
It would be easy, of course, to dismiss these novels as being classic examples of post-colonial assumption of voice, and no doubt there is a body of critical writing that does just that. Such criticism, however, is not only somewhat predictable, but misses the point that an accomplished piece of fiction can perfectly easily transcend the circumstances of its creation. It does not matter who wrote it and what the author’s personal credentials are: the story can soar above all that, revealing truths about what it is to be human. So the fact that Keating, at the beginning, had no direct experience of India matters not one whit. If he could make his books feel Indian; if he could step into the shoes of an Indian detective inspector and make it sound credible, or at least highly enjoyable, then that was merely testimony to a rich and creative imagination, a tribute to his ability as a novelist. After all, historical novelists do this all the time: they write about places they have never been and cultures of which they cannot, by definition, have personal experience. If one wants the contemporary blood and sinew of Mumbai, then one can read Vikram Chandra’s magnificent epic, Sacred Games; if one wants something more picaresque, something lighter and more comic, something that has the elusive quality of fable to it, then Inspector Ghote can be called to hand.
The real charm of the Inspector Ghote novels lies in the characters who populate them. Ghote himself is one of the great creations of detective fiction. Unlike many fictional detectives, who are often outsiders, possessed in many cases of difficult personal demons, Ghote is utterly loveable. His rank gives him some status, but not very much. He has his own office, with some personal furniture and effects, but we are always aware of his superiors, and of the barely disguised contempt that many of them have for him. In Inspector Ghote Trusts the Heart, for instance, not only is there the coldly dismissive Superintendent Karandikar, known as ‘the Tiger’, who is only too happy to belittle a mere inspector, but we also meet the Commissioner of Police himself, a being so elevated as to inspire quite understandable awe in Ghote’s breast. What visitor to India over the last few decades – although less so now – will not have caught a glance of the chauffeur-driven cream or white Ambassador cars of such personages – complete with flags and curtains to exclude the common gaze?
Ghote, then, is the small man, the man who has made enough of himself to be given a position of responsibility, but who is always at the mercy of those more powerful than he is himself. If one were to read these books with no knowledge of India, one would conclude that it is a society of egregious inequality. And that, alas, is the reality of modern India, in spite of vastly increased wealth and the rise of a much larger middle class. Keating has an intuitive understanding of this feature of Indian society, and of the way in which the rich and powerful work. The wealthy Mr Desai, in Inspector Ghote Trusts the Heart, is
typical of the rich businessmen who crop up in the novels. He has made his money and is not at all apologetic about the comfort and power it brings. He is surrounded by servants, just as is Mr Lala Varde in The Perfect Murder, and these servants are treated with a haughty lack of consideration, not as people with feelings. Overstated? If one were to be tempted to say that the master–servant relationship in the Ghote novels is unrealistic, then one might simply read that remarkable fictional portrayal of exactly that issue in Aravind Adiga’s Booker Prize-winning The White Tiger. Keating, it seems, has got it spot-on.
Ghote’s dignified acceptance of his perilous status makes us want so much for him. We want him to remain on the case when influential people further up use every weapon they possess to have him taken off. We want him to be heard when he is ignored or deliberately silenced. We want him to find domestic contentment, and we want happiness for his wife, Protima, and his son, Ved. They deserve it so much more than the spoiled and over-indulged families with whom Ghote comes into contact. The picture of the ghastly child, Haribhai Desai, in Inspector Ghote Trusts the Heart is utterly toe-curling and, one fears, very realistic. I remember once visiting a cloyingly luxurious safari lodge in East Africa and meeting fellow guests, a very rich Indian family (surely related to Keating’s Mr Desai). Their young son was with them – a pampered and overfed child dressed in a beautifully cut miniature safari suit. How the rich so obligingly set themselves up to be preserved in aspic by the novelist, and how skilfully, and with what relish, does Keating perform this task!
But it is not just finely pitched social observation that makes these novels so good, it is also Keating’s engagement with issues of corruption and integrity. Keating has often expressed his interest in broad philosophical issues, and his writing, although entertaining and amusing, frequently engages us in an examination of how we understand the world and work within it. This, perhaps, is the single quality that gives to the Ghote novels their timelessness. They are about how the good man, the honest man – the man who is sufficiently self-aware to allow himself a lot of room for self-doubt – preserves his integrity in a world of false values, greed and rampant injustice. Ghote’s struggles, like the struggles of the powerless and downtrodden people whom he sees in his day-to-day work, are universally recognizable. In these books they are presented in such a way as to engage and amuse us; that is Keating’s skill. That is what confers on these vivid and lovely little books their status as classics of detective fiction. That is what gives these novels their lasting appeal.
Keating’s overall contribution to crime fiction has been a major one, but we should be particularly grateful to him for what he has given us in his marvellous creation of Inspector Ganesh Ghote, Bombay C.I.D, solver of mysteries, agent of such justice as an imperfect world can muster, or expect.
Alexander McCall Smith, 2011
1
Inspector Ganesh Ghote looked quickly over his shoulder. No one. As far as he could tell there was no one in sight who knew him. This would be the moment.
‘Sahib, sahib,’ the new young beggar on the far side of the gateway into Bombay C.I.D Headquarters called again. ‘You are my father and mother. All I have is you. Give, sahib, give.’
And, despite the pleading tone, there was an underlying note of cockiness. Of happy certainty.
Ghote crossed the five yards of pavement in front of the gate and stood close beside the boy. Looking down at him as he sat he could see every detail of the withered right leg stretched out on the dust-engrained paving-stones. It was like the small branch of a dead tree, shiny with many careless brushings-by. A thing of no account.
‘Why should I give?’ he said to the upturned face beneath him. ‘Many are giving to you already, and it is the start of the day only.’
‘Sahib, none give, none. You are my father and –’
‘Nonsense. I can see there are coins under where you are sitting.’
Abruptly the boy grinned, quite unabashed, his eyes sparkling with dancing, cascading enjoyment.
Ghote pushed his hand into his trouser pocket and gripped with sweat-sticky fingers the wavy-edged two-paise coin he had marked out for just this purpose when he had taken up his money as he had dressed. It was the life in the boy that got him, as it had done every day for the past six weeks, ever since the lad had come to this pitch when its former occupant had died. He pulled out the two-paise piece and pressed it hastily, stealthily, into the boy’s thin-fleshed, hard, little, expectant hand.
There. It was done.
Freed of a burden, he swung sharply away and prepared to enter the compound at a brisk walk.
‘Ah. It is Ghote. Inspector Ghote.’
A cold lurch of dismay froze him into stillness. Spotted. Found out. A hard-headed inspector of the Bombay C.I.D seen falling for the totally transparent wiles of a mere boy of a beggar.
Slowly he turned round.
And it was worse, far worse, than anything he could have imagined. There standing on the pavement just beyond the beggar boy and looking across at him with a cold, authoritative gaze was none other than the Commissioner himself.
Behind him, drawn up to the kerb, was the quietly magnificent car that is the privilege of the man who heads the Greater Bombay police force. Its driver sat, dark-capped and bolt upright, at the wheel. Its engine was purring softly as the workings of time itself.
‘Yes, Inspector Ghote,’ the Commissioner said, as if he was coming quietly and decisively to a conclusion. ‘You don’t look very much like a policeman.’
Ghote felt the phrase as being the final condemnation. And he saw that it was just, down to the last syllable. No, he did not look at all like a policeman. And could there be anything worse? It was his whole aim to be a policeman. And the Commissioner, there on the broad pavement barely three yards from him, standing with feet just apart, balanced, calm, was the very idea of the policeman carried to its highest point. The link that had been between them had in a flash become a yawning gap.
‘Right,’ said the Commissioner with quick authority.
This would be the sentence. Permanently condemned to work in Records? Sent away to the Traffic Department?
‘Now listen carefully, Inspector. There’s not a great deal of time. I’ve just had a most urgent telephone call from a personal friend of mine, Mr Manibhai Desai. His small son has been the subject of a kidnapping attempt. Thank God the men took the wrong child, the son of a tailor. But it looks as if they don’t know they did, and in the note they left they threatened to kill the boy if Mr Desai got in touch with the police. But we must have a man in the house for when they make telephone contact, someone who doesn’t have “Police” stamped all over him. So, Ghote, you’re just the fellow.’
*
Less than two minutes later Inspector Ghote was sitting, small and crouching, alone in the back of the Commissioner’s car. Ahead the enmeshed morning traffic of Bombay seemed to melt away before the high gleam of their polished radiator. In Ghote’s ears the Commissioner’s final words still rang. He had told him to take the car and had said that he himself would make arrangements for him to be relieved of all other work. And then, as he had ushered him in, holding the door open himself, he had made a swift parting comment.
‘Inspector, this is a job that may well require the utmost tact. It needs a man of feeling. I saw you giving to that beggar boy as I drove up: I’m glad to find at least one of my officers hasn’t let his duties rub away all the heart in him.’
A glow lit Ghote up from the inside like a warm lantern hung in the dark night.
But what of the task that awaited him when the big car’s driver had brought him to the Cumballa Hill home of Mr Manibhai Desai?
He leant yet further forward and pushed to one side the smooth-sliding heavy glass panel that separated him from the driver.
‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘do you know Mr Desai? Does the Commissioner visit him often?’
‘Not very often, Inspector sahib,’ the driver answered. ‘I think I must h
ave taken him about three times only in the past year. It is more a friendship of the memsahibs, I am thinking.’
Ghote thought he understood now why the Commissioner had come driving down to Headquarters. When a man is urged on by his wife, even if he is the Commissioner of Police for Greater Bombay himself, it is likely that he will go to extravagant lengths to appear to be doing what he is asked.
‘And Mr Desai?’ he said to the driver. ‘What do you know about him himself?’
‘He is the man who is making Trust-X,’ said the driver simply.
It was all he had to say. Everybody knew about Trust-X Tonic Tablets. Trust-X was ‘the tonic you owe to your loved ones’; everybody knew this from the big advertisements on the screaming hoardings, on the radio and in all the newspapers. And everybody, it sometimes seemed, acted on that call that could not be ignored and paid out for the sheets of tablets with those days of the months printed in scalding red against the pocket for each pill. Ghote bought them himself for his Protima. They cost him rather more than he liked paying and there were times when he dared to doubt that she really was less tired for taking them. But when one month’s supply neared its end he always sent away for a new one, and if the solid, white, foursquare envelope – ‘Trust-X comes to you under plain cover’: what unspoken promises of sexual renewal – did not arrive in good time he always worried.
No wonder they were heading for Cumballa Hill and its great blocks of new luxury flats, centrally air-conditioned, surrounded by greenery, looking out over the blue stretches of the Arabian Sea. The man who had invented Trust-X was bound to be living in such conditions.
What were the other circumstances of his home life?
Ghote leant forward again on the firmly sprung seat of the Commissioner’s car and addressed the driver once more.
‘Mr Desai has many children?’ he asked.
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