It was at about this time that he became fully aware of his first live mini-skirt. In the preoccupation of making sure he got on the right train going in the right direction he had had eyes for nothing but illuminated notices. Then he had been too jammed tight to see anything. But now as the train cleared a little, he found himself looking straight down the long carriage at two girls with skirts showing four long plump stretches of nylon-covered leg above four soft rounded knees.
For perhaps two minutes he regarded the phenomenon earnestly. Then he found that his mind was made up. He did not approve.
But already the station names were getting dangerously near to the ones immediately before the Bank, where his briefing had told him to alight. He concentrated his full attention on being absolutely ready to jump from the train the moment it reached his destination.
He made it with colours flying.
He negotiated the tricky circular exit from the station without a hitch. Out in the street, he paused long enough to be absolutely sure he had got his bearings and then set off following the directions in his briefing, happily confident that he was not putting a single foot wrong.
He found each turning exactly where he expected it to appear. He noted with a comforting feeling that the walk from the Tube to Wood Street was taking not a moment longer than he had thought likely. He spotted the tall, strikingly modern building that he guessed would be the newly-built model police-station which the briefing had described well before he got to it. And when he arrived at the broad flight of entrance steps, sure enough they proved to be those of the building itself.
The only trouble was that he had arrived one hour and twenty-seven minutes too early.
Ghote walked hastily round the corner so that no one coming out of the building should spot him as a conference delegate who had made the mistake of turning up so ridiculously long before necessary. And there he stood and considered.
He felt annoyed with himself, not so much at the ridiculousness of his early arrival, which had its funny side, but because of all the things he could have done with a full hour to spare towards fulfilling the promise he had made himself the night before about the missing Peacock.
He could have gone over some of the clothes and personal possessions she had left behind. Although no doubt the policewoman who had visited the Tagore House would have checked, there still might be something to find. Experience counted in such matters. Or he could have paid a call on the local police-station. That would be an essential preliminary.
But now the time was simply going to waste.
He looked round at the hurrying crowds of office workers and at the sedate but impressive buildings on all sides, quietly contriving to make it clear that they occupied an inner centre of the commercial undertakings of all the wide world.
It was certainly something, he reflected, even to be standing where he was. And then a notion flitted into his head.
For a minute or two he pored over the pages of his paper-covered guide. And, yes, he should be able to do it. From where he was standing it could not be more than fifteen minutes’ walk to the Tower of London.
He would go now, and see with his own eyes those hallowed stones where Queens had knelt at the block and Kings had died at the hands of murderers. All that he had been told as a boy, when Anglo-Indian Mr. Merrywether, his teacher of long ago, had hammered out to a cowed, attentive class the facts of the glorious and ancient history of England, would come suddenly to life.
He set off at a brisk pace, along the street called London Wall, along Wormwood Street, across Bishopsgate, along Houndsditch. The very names were deeply evocative of the crowded, tumultuous past. They sang to him of proud City liverymen, of time-honoured traditions. And the intent, jostling passers-by spoke of the vigorous pursuit of the business of to-day, still carried on in these same greyly dignified streets.
Only the sight of a middle-aged shop assistant, long-faced and lugubrious in a grey overall reaching to below his knees, sweeping steadily and methodically at the floor of an ironmonger’s, made him pause momentarily. At home the sight would have been almost impossible. There sweepers swept and shop assistants held fast to their ordained task of serving customers with due and proper ceremony. Did this man find his broom shameful? He looked mournful, but hardly ashamed. If this was the custom, he must be used to it.
He hurried on. And then, as he climbed a slight ascent going along the oddly-named Minories, he saw it—the Tower. Its outline was unmistakable. He had looked at it a thousand times in advertisements, in newspaper articles, on calendars. And beyond it was Tower Bridge, the one that could be raised to let ships pass. And there must be the mighty Thames itself.
For a second he was surprised, shocked almost. The water of the great river was not, as it had been on a hundred brightly coloured maps, a crisp and inviting blue. It was instead plainly a dirty brown, indistinguishable by and large from the familiar dirty waters of Bombay Harbour. But soon, as he looked a little longer at the broad river sweeping by, he was able to reassure himself that it was indeed a truly incontrovertibly majestic sight.
He made his way round the wide emptied moat of the dark-walled Tower looking for the public entrance.
How green the grass was in that huge ditch once filled with water to protect the ancient fighting-men who had guarded the old City from their grim bastion above him. And how ordered and dignified now were the people of this latter age as they streamed past this great monument of the past on their way to the demanding and complex tasks of to-day.
Even when at the sober blue-painted ticket offices he discovered that the building did not open to the public till ten o’clock his enthusiasm was not diminished. He crossed the broad street, sat down on a bench in the little public garden opposite and drew in a long breath of admiration.
There it all was before him, like a gigantic and succulent meal waiting to be devoured. And it would wait. It would still be there, its ancient history-soaked stones unviolated, whenever he chose to come back and take his fill of them The grim old building seemed at that moment to hold for him in one graspable whole all the past centuries of this noble, sea-girt isle.
The huge black and grey walls rose up massively in front of him. Beyond them the pinnacled inner towers stood out against the softly grey sky. Which one of them was the Bloody Tower, he wondered. Never mind. When he made his proper visit he would find out for certain and savour its rich associations to the utmost.
For a brief moment he caught a glimpse on a high inner gallery of a Beefeater, a sudden richly coloured figure lighting up the sombreness all around. And, he thought, in due time he would see such figures by the dozen. And the ancient ravens that haunted the place. And the very axe under which Queens had bowed their necks. And the glowing splendour of the Crown Jewels, symbols of the proud and ancient monarchy of this proud and ancient land.
He gazed and gazed.
Yet, oddly enough, at the very moment when he got up to go back to Wood Street police-station, leaving himself a decently reasonable amount of time for the return walk, he found suddenly that he was overwhelmed almost to drowning point, it seemed, by a totally unexpected and desperately acute attack of home-sickness.
It was stupid, but abruptly he wanted to be back in India. He wanted the brightness, the noise, the easy-goingness. He wanted, he found to his simple astonishment, to be standing looking at peacocks.
Peacocks. Nothing else. He wanted to see the gaudy plumage, the bright, light-reflecting jewel colours of the proud birds.
He shook his head angrily.
What nonsense was this? It was obviously connected with the extraordinary name Mrs. Datta used for her niece. But it was absurd to be thinking of peacocks now, thinking of peacocks strolling in the wide terraced gardens of the great Bombay houses up on Malabar Hill, when at this moment he was in the heart of London. Here he was truly and actually treading the streets of the great city he had wanted to see ever since he was a boy, and had never imagined he would even get near to, and he could do not
hing better than think about a lot of tawdry birds.
He squared his shoulders under the loose mantle of his huge checked coat and tramped stern-faced off towards Wood Street.
There he found that all was ready for the conference. An extremely polite, short-haired, eager police-cadet showed him where to hang his coat and led him along to the hall where the conference itself was to take place.
It was a spacious, high-ceilinged, extremely imposing room, very modern-looking but not neglecting the traditional. All the way down either side were tall windows set in deep wooden frames, standing impressively out against the white of the walls. At each end huge curtains dropped from ceiling to floor in a great dignified sweep of deep rust colour. At the top was a shallow platform with a single table on it and a few chairs. Facing this rows of other chairs were ranged, elegant and glossy in black leather.
Behind these there was a clear space where the first arrivals were standing, mostly chatting with each other. More delegates were being shown in at every moment.
Ghote knew that, for the honour of the Indian police, he ought to go up to one of the people standing there and make good conversation. But somehow he kept putting the moment off.
He noticed a smiling, busily talking Japanese whose confident English gave him a considerable qualm. There were several broad-shouldered, attentively polite Americans. There were various Europeans whom he could not precisely place, and there was a tall, bearded Pakistani.
Surely he could talk to him about something. He made up his mind to dart forward. But at that very instant the Pakistani was eagerly buttonholed by one of the European delegates, evidently an old acquaintance, and Ghote felt it would be impolite to barge in.
Then over at the far side of the hall he caught a glimpse of his sergeant friend of the evening before. Here was someone it would be quite easy to go over and talk with, to thank him for his help at the airport. But was this just taking the easy way out? It would be hiding under the skirts of one of the organising staff when he ought to be engaging as an equal with the other delegates. He stayed put.
The minutes went by.
Then abruptly he was seized with a fury against himself. If this was the best he could do, he ought to go back to the Tagore House and do something about finding out what had happened to that poor girl.
He straightened his back and marched across to the nearest disengaged figure, a somewhat dapper man with large rimless glasses set squarely across a puggish nose.
“Good morning,” he said, “may I introduce myself? Inspector Ghote, Bombay, representing India.”
The words sent a shiver of pride through him as he pronounced them.
The dapper man with the rimless glasses bowed slightly and smiled.
“Commissaris Goedhuis, Netherlands Police.”
They shook hands with great heartiness.
“Well,” Commissaris Goedhuis said, “do you find it altogether too cold for you here?”
It was an innocent and friendly enough question. But it almost undid Ghote. Because he realised suddenly that he had not felt it in the least cold, that he had even unconsciously opened the buttons of his huge overcoat as he had hurried back to the conference. And this was England in November.
Luckily, he had hardly begun to stammer out an answer when there came a sharp burst of extremely martial music from two big loudspeakers at the back of the hall. Everybody looked up. The music stopped in mid-phrase as abruptly as it had started. There was some mystified laughter, during which a man in uniform rapped sharply on the table up on the shallow stage.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “if you will be so good as to be seated, the Commissioner of the City of London Police will say a few words.”
Everybody moved to the precisely arranged rows of black leather chairs. The commissioner stood. He hoisted up the microphone in front of him. From the loudspeakers came a protesting grinding noise. There was a hush. The conference had begun.
Ghote listened with close attention to the commissioner’s speech of welcome, but after a little he felt relaxed enough to give some attention to the little group seated up on the platform. They were presumably the morning’s various speakers. With a tightening feeling in his stomach, he realised that the time would come when he himself would sit in one of their places with Superintendent Ketkar’s prepared paper in his hand. He tried to remember the exact emphases the superintendent had indicated he wanted made at certain key points. He felt hot. Only the sight of his elderly sergeant friend of the night before sitting all by himself at the edge of the platform did something to reassure him. If someone like that could take a place up there, no doubt with some organisational duties, then he in his turn could surely sit at ease under the scrutiny of his fellow delegates.
The commissioner began bringing his speech to a conclusion.
“And now,” he said, “I have only one duty remaining, a most pleasant one. And that is to introduce to you, as convener of this conference, a person known by repute, I am sure to all of you, Detective Superintendent Smart of the Metropolitan Force.”
There was a solid pattering of applause. The commissioner sat down. And from the side of the platform there walked modestly forward the elderly detective sergeant.
FIVE
Ghote sat there on his smart black leather chair and wished that the glossy parquet floor of the loftily imposing hall would open up and swallow him completely. Or that one of the glass crystal globes of the impressive hanging lights would crash instantly down on to his offending head.
How could he have done it? He had actually called him “Sergeant” to his face. He had leant out of the car and said “Thank you, Sergeant.” To Detective Superintendent Smart, Smart of the Yard, one of the leading police authorities on dangerous drugs in the world, and a particular friend of his own Superintendent Ketkar.
He sat stunned.
And meanwhile up on the platform Smart himself was modestly and simply outlining the main plan of the conference. Ghote hardly heard a word. How totally unassuming the great man was, he thought dazedly. Look at the way he had simply picked up that abominable suitcase and lugged it to the car. A full-blown superintendent doing that for a mere inspector and a much younger man. Really it would have been impossible to tell he was a person held in the highest regard all over the world. What simplicity, what modesty. How utterly British.
Even when Smart sat down, to sustained applause from every part of the hall, Ghote still remained bemused by the enormity of the mistake he had made. How would he ever face him when they met again, as in the close-knit group of the conference they must?
He paid no attention at all to the delegate who stood up to deliver the first paper of the conference. It was more than half over before he realised that he had failed to take a single note. He snatched up his brand-new notebook and flicked it wildly open.
It was the one thing he had promised himself: he would deliver back to Superintendent Ketkar a full and complete account of every word that had been said at the conference. And already that ambition was incapable of fulfilment.
Desperately he began to scribble.
So it was in a mood of angry determination that Ghote arrived back at the Tagore House after his first day at the Smuggling of Drugs Conference. His prompt failure to reach the ideal he had set himself for his conduct there was rubbing at his mind, he felt, like the knobby shaft of a bullock-cart might rub at a sore on an animal’s flank. But it made him all the more resolved to conquer this other task that had been thrust upon him.
With the key to the back door which Mrs. Datta had given him that morning, he let himself quietly in, hung his vivid green-and-yellow coat on its hook, and went quickly up to the top of the house without attempting to see host or hostess.
He would start straightaway by making the thorough check he had promised himself on every item the Peacock had left behind her. Later, if there was time, he would get in contact with the local police and find out precisely what inquiries they had already made.
A programme lay ahead.
He was not to get far with it. Scarcely had he opened the cheap, old wardrobe and turned a fresh page at the back of his notebook when a sharp knock sounded on the door behind him.
He turned round. The door was already open and Mrs. Datta was standing there.
“Well, Cousin,” she said, “you are back.”
“Yes. Yes, I am back,” Ghote said.
He waited to be asked how his day had gone. He would make some not too precise reply, he decided.
“If you wish to eat before you go,” Mrs. Datta said, “I will tell them down in the kitchens to serve a meal at once.”
“Go?” said Ghote.
“To Johnny Bull.”
Ghote felt a flood of hot rage. Damn it all, he was doing what the wretched woman wanted. Against his better judgment, he had undertaken to set to work tracking down the missing Peacock. He even wanted to find her, to restore her to her proper home. And the obstinate she-devil was telling him how he ought to set about it, ordering him off to see this Johnny Bull before he had even begun to get his bearings in the case.
And, down below the flood-tide of his rage, there lurked the uneasy thought that he did not in truth in the least want to go and see the famous Johnny Bull.
“At present I am conducting a search of the girl’s remaining possessions,” he said with iron calm.
“But they are what she has left behind only,” Mrs. Datta replied.
“I think you do not understand. What a missing person has left behind often provides most valuable indications to their present whereabouts.”
“She is with Johnny Bull. Everybody knows.”
Ghote sighed.
“If that was certain,” he said, “the local police would have taken action against Mr. Bull. But the note the Peacock left did not mention him by name. The girl may have had some other person she called her lover.”
Mrs. Datta shook her head in total negative.
“She did not.”
“But how can you be so sure?”
Inspector Ghote Hunts the Peacock Page 5
