‘I am sorry,’ he said, ‘but it seems we have not got to Yeshwant here any more than we were getting to him at Pappubhai’s showroom. It may be, you know, the end of the road.’
Ghote stood there in the thin rain and let thoughts run through his mind.
Then he in his turn spoke.
‘No, Axel, my friend. I am not thinking we have reached end of road. If the long-time loving mistress of one night is not telling Yeshwant what he is needing to know, then there must be one only person who is. Axel, I know now who that must be.’
TWELVE
‘Dad! Dad! Your dinner’s ready.’
Miss Ivy Cooper’s voice rang out across the dark, empty compound. But Ghote would not let his companion linger to see if the old man’s thick shell had been penetrated by his daughter’s strident call. He had too much to say.
‘Axel, listen, as we were coming down the stair itself I was thinking. Now all the possible people who could be telling Yeshwant are eliminated. Full stop, yes?’
‘But, no, Ganesh, my friend. Listen to me. If Mr Pappu has taken one mistress, isn’t it possible, as you were saying, that he has taken more? And to any one of them he may have let slip his secrets.’
For a moment Ghote felt his heart sink. Could this bloody Swede have hit on a whole flood of new possibilities? But then common sense reasserted itself. No. Just think about Pappubhai Chimanlal. He was not a man to go telling secrets to each and every woman he was seizing on to make love to. Far from it.
‘Ah, Axel,’ he said. ‘If you had just only heard Mr Pappubhai Chimanlal telling about his love exploit with Miss Ivy Cooper, you would know that it is to she herself and no other mistress-pistress he is telling his secrets. He is not at all putting all eggs into many baskets. No, he would not tell any of those other women one single thing.’
‘Well,’ Axel Svensson said, sounding almost apologetic, ‘I expect you are right, my friend.’
‘Yes. Definitely. So when I had said to myself all possible people have been eliminated and all possible answers have been proved wrong, then I stated whatsoever is remaining, even if it is seeming impossible, must be right. And next, in one flash, I was remembering something, something pointing to that impossible itself. It was just only a few words Mr Pappubhai Chimanlal was saying to me. It was before he was telling why I must not interview Miss Ivy Cooper. What he was saying was this. I am able to remember his six-seven words exactly. He was saying, She is coming next to my wife. Axel, to his wife.’
‘His wife? His wife? But, Ganesh, are you really trying to say Mr Pappubhai’s wife is the one informing Yeshwant? On the strength of those few words alone? And their meaning not at all clear.’
‘Well, there is more. A little. Pappubhai Chimanlal was saying also that the wife he was marrying was of a good Gujarati family in same line. She was, he was saying, knowing jewels. Now, that may be meaning— I am not trying to say more than this. It maybe meaning he is sometimes talking with her, not about accounts-this and profit margins-that, but about some particularly fine jewellery he may have sold that day. He is talking, remember, to one who is coming above his long-ago mistress. So I am thinking it is the one and only remaining way, yes? Yes, Axel?’
Axel Svensson stood where he was, thinking.
Then he spoke.
‘Yes, Ganesh. Yes, I suppose so. After all, what other explanation is there?’
‘Then at least we may try to see if I am right. But not tonight. At this late hour Mr Pappubhai Chimanlal may well be at home, having some dinner or watching television alongside his wife of twenty years. But tomorrow … Tomorrow, Axel, he will be all day in his showroom, and she will be at home, all alone except for servants. Tomorrow, Axel, we will go and visit.’
Pappubhai Chimanlal’s flat at Breach Candy was in a block along a semi-private lane almost at the tip of the promontory known from a hundred years ago and more as Scandal Point. A flat in such a situation, Ghote knew, could well cost as much as would be needed to acquire a small company. The Gujarati jeweller must, with the business knowledge of Miss Ivy Cooper to aid him, have done extraordinarily well.
What would his wife, who had watched him rise up and up in the world, have felt about his success? Would it have been simple pride, despite the mistresses that, according to his secretary, he had felt able to take at his sweet will? Or would the wife have resented such rivals? And at last decided to do what he had thought Miss Ivy Cooper might have done: take revenge. But, if so, who was it she had persuaded actually to steal those expensive objects?
And how had she done that? How could she have even known of a badmash who would at her instruction climb high, high up and get through some open window into whatever flat she had told him held rich loot? And, again, how had she persuaded a man like that to take only the jewelleries she had told him about? What hold could she have over him that had made him leave untouched the silver objects in the glass-fronted cabinet in Mrs Marzban’s flat, the gold cigarette-lighter in the Mehtas’ filmi drawing room? Why, when the one lady who, so it appeared, had had sense enough to put her necklace in her safe had foiled him, had he not made good his loss by taking some other small but costly object? And then, another thing even more odd, why was it, if this woman truly was the one directing Yeshwant, that she had put in his way only jewellery that he had to climb and climb to get?
It seemed there was a whole flood of unanswered questions still, even if Mrs Pappubhai Chimanlal was somehow made to confess to having betrayed her husband’s secrets.
For a moment, standing at the opening of the lane, a breeze from the sea below bringing a welcome touch of freshness, Ghote thought of consulting Axel Svensson. With his experience in the Swedish Ministry of Justice could he find some answers to the seeming illogicalities that had suddenly now occurred to him?
What a fool I was last night, he thought, to go home and enjoy the quiet company of my wife, with Ved out seeing a film, and not to think at all about where I had got to in tracking down Yeshwant. I should have been thinking and thinking about each and every complication behind the idea that had come to me. And what was I doing? Watching something stupid on television. And liking doing-doing same. Liking not having to think. I was too happy to be mesmerized by those flickering, pointless colours on that fourteen-inch rectangle of glass. I was content and content to be lost with Protima in that silly world, in my Northern fastness. Safe.
So, now, now should I discuss all that with this man from winter-cold Sweden? No. No, he is – what? – one visitor from a distant, distant land. And I? I am what? One police detective with my job to be doing.
‘Come, Axel,’ he said abruptly. ‘Let us talk with Mrs Pappubhai Chimanlal.’
The block, Lakshmi Mahal, well named after the goddess of wealth, was more luxurious than any he had visited so far. A Gurkha chowkidar paraded up and down outside. Inside, the liftman wore a distinctly smart khaki uniform with brass buttons on the jacket. Doubly isolated by the lane in which the building stood and by the atmosphere of deadened-down quiet, Lakshmi Mahal’s very walls seemed to Ghote to be saying aloud to him, and even to the Swede, What do you want intruding here?
Nevertheless, he marched up the flight of broad stairs to the first floor where the Chimanlal apartment lay. Outside its door, however, he could not prevent himself hesitating once again. Keep out, it seemed to say. Keep Out. It was a massively heavy affair, its solemn polished teak crossed with bands of copper. Between two of these a small peephole door, protected by a black-painted iron grille, stood guard. In the centre, golden letters cut into the teak stated formidably Pappubhai Chimanlal.
‘Nearly as well guarded as that Shanti house of Mr Amjani’s, I would say,’ Axel Svensson commented.
‘It is Ajmani.’
And we are to go behind Pappubhai Chimanlal’s back, Ghote thought, making an effort to ignore his companion. We are seeking to thrust police questions at Pappubhai Chimanlal’s wife.
Nevertheless, he raised his hand and firmly pressed the bell
-push beside the formidable door.
In a moment the small panel above the golden name opened. A servant’s face appeared behind the iron grille.
‘To see Mrs Chimanlal,’ Ghote said. ‘It is Inspector Ghote, Crime Branch, and Mr Axel Svensson, observer from Sweden.’
The little door shut.
They waited.
Ghote wondered if it had been a mistake to tell Pappubhai Chimanlal’s wife that the police wanted to ask her questions. If she was guilty of being the person who was controlling Yeshwant – but how could she do that? – she might simply refuse to see them. Or she might take time to think up dozens of explanations of why it seemed she had betrayed her husband’s secrets.
They waited outside the heavy door. A minute passed. Another. A third.
What was happening inside? Was Pappubhai Chimanlal’s wife even now going down out of the flat by some back way? Or was she standing, desperately contriving how to cover up her wrongdoing? Or telephoning her husband to beg him to come to her rescue? Or telephoning, even, Yeshwant himself?
But at last the big ornate door swung open, and the servant ushered them in. He led them along a wide softly carpeted corridor with at its far end a tall clock in an elaborately carved long case, loudly ticking. Ghote, fighting off the sense of intimidation all the surrounding weighty luxuriousness induced in him, looked almost wildly from side to side. Photographs. Deeply framed photographs, hanging at regular intervals. Some seemed to be of a schoolgirl in sports clothes, perhaps the Chimanlals’ daughter. She was posed with various athletic objects, a badminton racket, a hockey stick, once in a swimming costume holding a large silver cup. But most were of Pappubhai Chimanlal with distinguished patrons of his showroom. Was that the Commissioner and his wife? Yes. No. No, thank goodness, not. But there was Mr Anil Ajmani and his wife. And, yes, there was the Minister for Home, Mrs Latika Patel’s father-in-law.
Then they were ushered into yet another rich family’s drawing room. This one was dominated by a piece of furniture much loved by Gujaratis, a massively ornate swing-seat in dark polished seesun wood hanging from the ceiling, with beside it a gold-shining statue of Lakshmi in a wall shrine. But Ghote had time to take in no more. He was face to face with Mrs Chimanlal.
Herself also very typically Gujarati, he thought, small, neat, well-fleshed body in a quiet green silk sari, its pallu pulled up to cover her head and its colour echoed by the half-dozen plain green bangles on her bare forearms. What he could see of her face was notable for the squarish Gujarati chin and the deep brown, kohl-rimmed eyes. She wore only small gold earrings and her thin gold necklace was half lost in the sari’s folds.
‘Madam, good morning,’ he said.
He paused and licked at his lips.
‘Madam, may I introduce Mr Axel Svensson from Sweden. He is studying our Indian police methods, and I— I trust you would not have any objection to his presence.’
‘No, Inspector.’ Her voice was quietly demure. ‘No, Mr Svensson is welcome.’
‘Mrs Pappubhai,’ Axel Svensson said. ‘It is most good of you.’
Mrs Pappubhai, Ghote thought in sudden fury, why cannot the idiot get it right, just once?
But immediately he had to admit to himself that his anger was caused as much by the doubts and dilemmas he felt floating in his own mind as by his Swedish friend’s not unreasonable mistake.
Axel Svensson thrust out his hand to be shaken. And, instead of fending off this uncouth foreigner with a hands-folded namaskar, Mrs Chimanlal extended her own hand – it was stubby rather than small and soft – and took his.
‘How can I help you, Inspector?’ she asked, turning to Ghote with a certain quiet directness. ‘You are sure it is not something my husband could tell you? If so, you must go to his showroom. He is all the day there.’
‘No. No, madam. No, it is yourself I am wanting to speak with. To— To ask some questions only.’
‘Then ask, Inspector,’ she said, quietly smiling. ‘I am ready to do what I can to help.’
Was this timid woman guilty of encouraging Yeshwant’s daring and discriminating thefts? She hardly sounded like someone able to cow down a climbing badmash.
He felt at a loss for an immediate reply.
But Axel Svensson was not.
‘Mrs Pappubhai,’ he said, ‘can you tell us, please, how it comes about that all the robberies of the man they call Yeshwant are of valuable objects sold by your husband’s firm?’
Well, Ghote thought, now it has been said. The challenge issued.
‘Inspector,’ Mrs Chimanlal said, with what might have been an underlying touch of steel, ‘have you come here believing that the person who has been informing this thief Yeshwant is myself only?’
Then, in the half-moment while Ghote was deciding how to take up this counter-challenge, she turned away, quite slowly, and went and sat herself down on the seat of the big looming swing.
‘Let me tell you a tale, Mr Svensson,’ she said. ‘Perhaps as a foreigner you will not know it. It is one every Indian child is told as soon as they begin to beg Tell me a story, tell me a story. We call it The Sparrow and the Crow.’
‘Madam?’ Axel Svensson said, plainly puzzled.
Ghote was as puzzled. Not because he did not know the tale. His mother had told it to him almost every night at the time before she had started on the days-long Battle of the Pandavas and the Kauravas. But he could not work out why on earth this woman, who might or might not be the person ordering Yeshwant to climb here and climb there, could want to be telling the tale to Axel Svensson now.
Or is she telling it to myself? And, if she is, why is she?
‘It goes, my story, like this,’ the demure little woman said as she began gently to swing herself forwards and backwards. ‘There was once a sparrow and a crow, and each of them decided to build a nest. The sparrow built hers of wax. But the crow, who was a foolish, thoughtless bird, built hers of dung. Then the monsoons came. The nest made of wax let the rain run off it and came to no harm. But the nest made of dung fell to pieces just as soon as the rains began. So then the crow, her feathers all this way and that, went to the sparrow and cried, Sister, sister, let me in. But the sparrow who knew what a noisy, nasty, pushful bird the crow was, replied, Just wait, just wait, my baby has woken up. So the crow waited, and got more and more sodden and sad. Sister, sister, let me in, let me in, she cawed again. And the sparrow called back, Wait a minute, wait a minute, I am feeding my baby. So the crow waited and got wetter and wetter. But at last the sparrow opened her door and let the noisy creature in. Oh, you poor thing, she said, and she pointed to her stove, where she had just been making chapattis. Warm yourself there, she said. Warm yourself there. So the foolish crow hopped up on to the hot, hot stove. And was burnt to death.’
With a single last vigorous backwards and forwards swing she jumped down.
And now Ghote realized why she had told her children’s story.
I have been warned, he thought. She may have been telling a firinghi one of our Indian tales. But she was telling myself something more. You noisy, nasty crow, she was saying, I may seem to be no more than a little sparrow but I have a hot, hot stove behind me, a stove not fed with a handful of sticks but with all the wealth and connections my husband has. So do not come poking and pushing into my affairs. Jump back. Turn away.
He drew in a deep breath.
But I am not going to turn away.
THIRTEEN
‘Madam,’ Ghote said, looking unyieldingly at the storyteller in front of the swing. ‘I am sure my friend from Sweden was liking our Indian tale. But, let me remind, we are here on police business. So, madam, I must inform you, I have been making fullest inquiries this past one week and I have to tell you that each and every one of Yeshwant’s thefts was of just only one single valuable piece purchased from your husband’s showroom. Madam, are you able to account for this?’
He looked at her with all the solemnity of a judge on the bench.
‘Why— Why should
I be able to account for it, Inspector?’
For one instant there had been a tremor in her voice as she had answered.
Can it be, Ghote thought, can it really be that I am right? Was that story truly directed at myself to warn me away? And has she taken notice now I am not going to be warned? So it is true, is it, that this typical rich Gujarati housewife has somehow – but how? – succeeded in persuading that daring thief Yeshwant to go out stealing? And to steal only jewellery she is telling him about?
He saw there were more questions, many more, that he still had to thrust in.
‘Madam, I am thinking it is only yourself who can account for this because my inquiries have shown no one else is able to. Madam, you are knowing Miss Ivy Cooper?’
‘Yes, Inspector, my husband’s secretary.’
She seemed at this less directly intrusive question to regain the calm she had, by just a flicker, shown she had lost.
He leant towards her.
Thrust deeper. If she is in cold fact the one who is instructing Yeshwant I must, at any cost, make her admit it. If she is not, then I must be ready to risk whatever penalties may come from insulting the wife of a man of influence like Mr Pappubhai Chimanlal.
‘Miss Cooper was at one time, I am sure you are knowing this, your husband’s mistress?’
He paused for one instant to see what her reaction was. There was none. He could have sworn to it. So, this was something that over the twenty years and more of her marriage she had come to accept. The docile wife.
‘Madam,’ he went on, inexorably. ‘Miss Cooper for all the years she has worked for your husband has been altogether in love with him. She is knowing also every detail of his business. Yet my inquiries have shown she cannot be the person who is informing Yeshwant where he may steal these rich jewelleries. So, madam, if someone like Miss Cooper, the only person in your husband’s showroom fully in his confidence, is not Yeshwant’s informant, I must ask again: how do you account for Yeshwant knowing where he can find such fine loot?’
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