Inspector Ghote Draws a Line

by H. R. F. Keating

  The old mans narrative had bit by bit slowed. It was as if, even though he had made the decision to embark on his fifty-year account, he had found himself increasingly reluctant to let the kernel of it see the light. Even such limited light as in this intimate talk that had so suddenly come to be.

  Ghote wondered briefly whether he ought not simply to stay silent for a little and then to murmur some excuse and creep away leaving the rest of the story untold. It would perhaps be a kindness to an old man who had been betrayed by pressure of circumstances into bringing into the open something he had for years kept within the bounds of his thoughts. He would slip away, leaving the lamp on the table still casting its golden cone in the feathery darkness of the musty-smelling room, and in a few minutes Sir Asif would drop into sleep again and perhaps when he woke he would not know whether or not he had simply dreamt that he had made his confession. If confession it was going to be.

  But those sunken eyes were fixed on his own. And they were still glittering with awareness. Asking not for any blurring of things, but only for a little not-to-be-spoken-of-aloud help.

  “Yes, indeed, sir,” Ghote said. “I very well understand that type of case. I am country-born myself. Evidence in a matter which is confined within the boundaries of a single village is always liable to receive such additions and what we call embellishments.”

  “Exactly, Inspector. Embellishments.”

  The old man’s eyes glinted briefly.

  “And so it was in the affair I am telling you of. Though in fact only to quite a limited extent. However, these were the circumstances. The accused—it was a case under Section 302, you understand, a murder trial—was an elderly man, a God-fearing person of the old sort, by religion a Vaishnavite Hindu. He had a little land and was also the recognised singer of holy songs in the village, always in demand for funeral ceremonies and at the various seasonal festivals. The victim, however, was a very different type. Whereas the old singer had been content, as were his fellow villagers, to stay in his own station in life from his earliest days, this fellow had by no means been so. He was born the son of a day labourer, but he was scarcely out of childhood before he had made himself some sort of assistant to one of the more prosperous farmers in the area. Then, with savings he had acquired heaven knows how, he bought a cow or two, at first in partnership and then on his own. Later he acquired land. And, as evidence was adduced to show, he became adept also in increasing his holding without payment, by subtly altering long-acknowledged boundaries, by moving small heaps of earth by a few inches at a time, by digging a ditch a little more broadly. You are village-born Inspector, you will know what I mean.”

  Again Ghote recognised an appeal, a plea to him to nudge the account forward once more, even though its teller would like fate to halt the telling.

  “Yes, sir,” he said, “I know the type of person you are describing very well. An altogether deplorable sort of individual.”

  “Yes, you are right, Inspector. Deplorable. The breaking of long-established laws, even though they are concerned only with the most trifling issues, and perhaps just because the issues are so small, ought to be regarded in the gravest light when it comes to the attention of the judiciary. But, you will understand, that in the case to which I am referring nothing had up till then come before the courts. If challenged over some covert increase he had made to his land holding, the fellow would raucously deny the facts. He in his turn would challenge his accuser to take the matter to judgement, and of course his fellow villagers feared legal process. They were quiet, naturally law-abiding people: he was aggressive and dominating. He had, for instance, married outside the village and the wife had gone so far as to introduce fish and onions into the customary strictly vegetarian diet.”

  Again a slackening in the narrative, a counter-current.

  “But the fellow’s course of conduct led to worse than onions, sir? It came eventually to murder?”

  “Yes, Inspector, to a murder of which he was the victim. And it was not in any dispute over land, but over a more unpleasant business. The defendant, the singer, had a daughter, married and living in the family house of her husband, but the husband’s parents had died and the man himself was away for a considerable period during the tea-picking season when he worked as hired labour. Now, one morning, very early, as the old father was on his way to his small plot of land, he saw coming out of the house where his daughter was all alone this very land-thief, Balaidas by name. There could be no doubt in his mind what had been happening, and in simple fury he attacked the man Balaidas with a mattock and left him for dead. As I say, it was almost an open-and-shut case. Except that an aged female cousin of the defendant, the Vaishnavite singer, persisted with evidence that he had not left his house, where she herself lived, until after the time that the body of the deceased was discovered.”

  He thought then that he could guess what was coming.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Well, this was, of course, one of those crimes in which one feels a good deal of sympathy for the offender, sympathy which one ought never to allow to influence one. However, I was then a comparatively young man and I decided to take advantage of the fact that some of the evidence led by the prosecution had undoubtedly been—what was the word you used?—embellished. So, taking into account the principle of Jalsus in uno, falsus in omnibusthat is ‘false in one particular, false in all/ I preferred the evidence of the nearly blind and extremely aged relative and discharged the singer of holy songs. Inspector, the man, having possessed himself again of the mattock which had been produced in evidence, returned directly to his village where with that instrument he at once did to death his offending daughter.”

  The old judge gave a little cough, hardly more than the softest clearing of his throat.

  “Inspector, that woman’s life has been on my conscience from that day to this.”

  5

  In the high, almost totally dark library, sharp with its odour of monsoon-mildewed leather bindings, a long silence fell at the end of the judges story. Ghote was at a loss to know what comment to make. He could see what it was that the old man had meant to tell him. He could appreciate that anyone, having had at the outset of his career such a lesson as that, might well for the rest of his life be adamant in keeping to the least letter of the law. Part of him wanted then to say, “Yes, sir, I see now you are right to draw the line against inquiries which infringe your legal rights, that you were right even to have sentenced the Madurai Conspirators as you did.” But to do that would be simply to surrender. It would be abandoning the task he had been sent here to carry out. His duty.

  The judge, his resurrection of those events of fifty years ago draining him more perhaps than even he had anticipated, sat with chin dropped to breastbone, almost as if he had fallen asleep once more.

  At last Ghote brought himself to break the silence, well aware that the old man was not sleeping.

  “Sir, I have been sent here under orders. You yourself, sir, have not the authority to countermand them. But, sir, without your co-operation I cannot carry out the duty that has been assigned to me.

  At the edge of the cone of yellow light from the lamp he saw the old man shake his head.

  Yet perhaps in the gesture there was the smallest hint of doubt. “Inspector, I have nothing to say to you.”

  “But, sir, yes. Sir, those notes you received have been invariably typewritten, haven’t they?”

  “Oh yes, Inspector, they have been. They have.”

  “Very well then, sir, that can mean one thing only. That the person responsible is what I may call a typewriting individual, sir, and English-speaking also. Well, sir, there are not so many people of that category within this house. And, as you very well know, no person could have placed this latest communication here just in the short time I was out of the room and you, sir, had your eyes closed to refresh yourself without that person being also an intimate member of the household or a regular visitor to the house.”

  He paused.
The judge said nothing.

  “Sir?”

  A long, long sigh.

  “It would seem so, Inspector.”

  “Then, sir, surely you should tell me everything you know about those individuals so that I can add it to what I am able to find out and eventually come to a conclusion, sir?”

  “No, Inspector.”

  “No, sir?”

  “No.”

  Another pause. Another stretching out and out of the silence. But this time it was the judge who broke it.

  “Inspector, there is much I know about each of the individuals who fall within the limits you have indicated. Naturally, more about some, less about others. But there is nothing in my knowledge of any of them, whether to their detriment or not, that is more than marginally relevant at most to your inquiries. Even postulating that those inquiries are not ultra vires in any case.”

  Ghote felt a dart of pleasure. He knew what ultra vires meant. Beyond his powers. It had come in a lecture on law at training school.

  But what good was that small piece of knowledge in face of the once more repeated refusal to co-operate?

  “Sir,” he pleaded, “anything concerning those individuals may be of use. Sir, you must know that from the accounts of police work that have come before you.”

  “No, Inspector. Impressed as I am with the sincerity of your argument, I cannot admit its validity. Yes, a fact that is relevant but which a limited or ignorant person could not see to be relevant, so much you may legitimately lay claim to. But I tell you, Inspector, there is nothing that I know, nothing, that is properly relevant to your inquiries. You must allow me to use my discretion. I do not have to tell you how often a police officer needs to exercise discretion in order not to clog the mainstream of his existence with mere trivia. De minimis non curat lex.”

  He felt a swift wave of shame. Ultra vires, yes. But those last words of the judge’s were sheer mystery. Nothing else for it but to eat dust and ask.

  “Please, sir, what is the meaning of that?”

  The judge grunted, pleased with his little victory.

  “Latin, Inspector. Latin. ‘Concerning the very smallest things the law does not care.’”

  But it had not been just a little victory. Behind it had stood all the judge’s philosophy. There was the law. It laid down its limits. Within them there was no reason to budge by one inch.

  He straightened his back and turned to go.

  “Then I will see you later, sir.”

  “Yes, later, Inspector. Doctor.”

  But before he had reached the heavy teakwood door, flanked by its two tall blue vases, the judge spoke again.

  “There is something you could do for me, my dear chap.”

  “Yes, Sir Asif?”

  A wind-touched cinder, believed dead, glows again?

  “Raman, my dear chap. If you can rout him out, would you send him to me? The damn fellow’s been with me more than thirty years and he is still never where he’s wanted when he’s wanted.”

  The old man ended the request on a note of spiralling anger. It hurt. More almost certainly than it was going to hurt shyly darting Raman when he had found him and sent him to attend to the judge’s wants. The fellow must get a dozen such shellings a day.

  And at that moment the orderly appeared, evidently having been waiting within the sound of Sir Asif's voice. His sudden-come, sudden-gone horseshoe grin as they passed in the tall, dimly lit passage seemed to show already a bland unconcern at the rage awaiting him.

  Walking still a little sadly away, he heard the unreasonable old voice raised again in as yet unquenched anger. “You will never learn, will you . . . ? Why has this hookah been left here? Did I give orders . . . ? And don’t you attempt to give notice ever again . . . Why do I have to put up with such appalling lack of intelligence?”

  Ghote sighed.

  But there was no time to indulge in feelings of disappointment. With Raman out of the way and all the other servants at this time of the evening securely in the kitchen or in their quarters, with Begum Roshan and the other two almost certainly sitting together in the drawing room, now was as good a chance as he was likely to get to carry out that search of the house he had earlier promised himself.

  If Sir Asif was not going to co-operate, then he must once more take matters into his own hands. And though perhaps the most useful thing now would be to ask a few questions about what exactly had taken place during the time that the last note had been delivered, this was something a guest Doctor of Philosophy could hardly do with all the people he wished to interview together in the one room.

  No, he must seize the opportunity and carry out that search.

  With each of the four possible typewriter users in a different way unlikely as the person threatening Sir Asifs life, the notion of there being under the wide-spreading flat roof of the big old house someone else, for some reason hidden, became more attractive. Say there was some member of the household whom the judge did not want him to know about. Nothing was easier than to put him in some isolated room upstairs, perhaps in the apparently disused wing parallel to the one where his own room was, and to have Raman, faithful Raman, take him meals as long as he, Ghote, was there. And, come to think of it, the day before, when the routine of the house had been less familiar, he had actually seen the orderly carrying just such a tray. A large tray covered with a draped white cloth.

  And, he realised, there was now a moon to search by. Its light was shining clearly in through the barred windows on either side of the wide double doors. He would be able to go from room to room above without needing to switch on any electric light, if there were any lights in some of the remoter parts.

  Silently as he could, he went up the wide carved staircase. Best now after all to avoid Begum Roshan and the others.

  At the top he made straight for the door leading to the part of the house he had understood to be no longer in use. Had it formerly been the forbidden zenana quarters? Perhaps in her young days Begum Roshan had been confined there with the other women of the household, peeping out at the goings-on below, whispering, surmising, giggling? It was likely enough.

  Certainly the rooms here now would be empty and deserted, to go by the number of whitey-yellow flakes of ceiling plaster lying on the floor in front of him, looking in the broken moonlight filtering through the stone-traceried upper windows like so many fallen petals from some great waxy flowering shrub.

  He came to the first of the rooms leading off the long passage. He looked at its door. There was not a trace of electric light at its edges. He stepped up close and put an ear to one of the panels. A minute passed. Another half minute. Not a sound from inside.

  Gently he tried the doorknob. It turned, a little stiffly. Very quietly he eased the tall, heavy door forward. There came the beginnings of a grinding squeak. He froze into stillness.

  But the room beyond the slit-open door was clearly empty. He took a quick look along the high moonshiny corridor. No one. Nothing.

  He pushed the door wide—there was a long grating groan—and stepped inside. By the dim light coming in through the shuttered window he was able to make out a bed, similar to the one he had spent all the afternoon on under the reiterated errr-bock of his fan. Its white-covered mattress was bare. Against a wall he saw a big dark old almirah, its front intricately carved. He moved across to it over the stone floor and tried its doors. They swung open with a lurch; there was only blackness inside.

  Opposite there was another door, probably, he thought, leading to a bathroom, if the arrangement of his own room was anything to go by. He crossed over and, still taking careful precautions, slowly opened it. It was harder to see inside the small cubicle, but he waited patiently till his eyes had adjusted to its darkness. There was nothing to see, however. No figure clamped in hiding up against the wall, only a tin bath with a wooden stool in it on which, in some far past day, the bather had sat while a servant had poured water over him. That and a heavy-legged dark teak commode.

 
Well, it was unlikely that anyone had been concealed in the room nearest the door cutting off the old zenana quarters.

  So he would try the next room along.

  Again he looked for any telltale line of light at the door edge. Again he listened. Again there was no sign of any human presence. With rather less caution he swept the door wide. The room he saw was the exact fellow of its neighbour. Except—he paused in the dimness. Except that it smelt different.

  Yes.

  He stepped further in. And then, down on the floor, not far from the window, he saw what had caused the high, faintly unpleasant odour. It was the body of a long-dead squirrel. The broad black stripe down its back was clearly visible in the light coming in where one of the shutters was broken.

  He took a quick, conscientious glance into the bathroom and moved on. No one was going to inhabit a room with that little corpse for company.

  But in each of the other rooms that he went into, taking each time the same precautions, the answer was the same: no one. Nothing. Some, he found, were totally bare. Most still had beds, each of them carved differently, and an almirah, and little else. All but two had bathrooms. As he progressed along one passage and then down another the air of neglect grew stronger. Once, where evidently the roof had some long-unrepaired crack in it, the mattress on the bed, perhaps drenched year after year in the monsoon downpours, had rotted right away in its centre. In the very last room for one moment he had stiffened in alarm when the creak of the door opening had produced a swift movement inside. But it had been only rats, disturbed in the nest they had inhabited for generations in a long sausage-shaped bolster that had been left on the bare bed frame.

  Never anywhere did he see the smallest trace of recent human occupation.