Inspector Ghote Draws a Line

by H. R. F. Keating

  He had turned to look. Any small disturbance in the slowly turning day attracted disproportionate attention, not as a relief from boredom since now that he had accepted the life it was no longer boring, but as something marking pleasantly the passage of time.

  It was one of the boy servants, a tousle-headed little fellow dressed only in a pair of ragged khaki short pants, half hiding behind the end pillar of the terrace. And the scratching noise was made by his bare foot.

  Raman hurried over to him, making shooing gestures. The boy promptly disappeared round the corner. Raman followed him, reappeared a few seconds later, and made his way over to Sir Asif.

  “Judge sahib, there is a person.”

  “What person? Where? What on earth are you saying? For heaven’s sake try to make sense when you have occasion to address me.”

  “Yes, sir. Oh yes, sir. Sir, it is a person come with a message.”

  “A message? What message? Why hasn’t whoever it is been brought round here if it is a message for me?”

  Was it another note? There had been none, so far as Ghote was aware, in the time since he had ceased to regard himself as on duty. But this might be a new one. Though, if so, it was being delivered in a very public manner.

  But in any case that was something for the judge alone now.

  “Sir, it is not.”

  “Not? Not what, man? Speak up, speak up. Don’t stand there like an idiot. What not, for heaven’s sake?”

  “Not for you, Judge sahib. Message for Dr. Ghote, Judge sahib.”

  Sir Asif darted a look of strong disapproval at him, and he felt a flare of resentment—how could he have prevented this altogether unexpected interruption?—which quickly died away. The merest ruffle on the day’s calm surface.

  He got to his feet.

  “Perhaps I had better go and see who it is.”

  “Yes, yes. In the middle of tea.”

  The judge took a long drink from his cup as if this enormous event might prevent his ever tasting tea again.

  Round the corner of the house he found that the messenger was a constable, carefully not wearing a uniform, and that he had brought a letter from the district superintendent of police.

  I regret to have to inform you that a quantity of gelignite, intended for blasting operations on the bund at the extreme end of gardens of Sir Asif Ibrahim (operation postponed owing to legal action) has been misappropriated. Further regret to inform that said gelignite is reported to be in unstable condition.

  For a moment as he read, the soft-wrapping time haze was whipped away by a quick wind and his mind was instantly full of thoughts of actions and consequences, of trains of logic. If gelignite really had been stolen, had it been taken for the purpose of killing Sir Asif? That death by explosion for the man who had sentenced to death the explosives conspirators of Madurai? And if that was so, then which of them seated round the tea table there was most likely to have been the thief or arranged the theft? And did the fact of such a theft mean that any one of them was automatically cleared?

  But then the thought of that other teatime, not so many days before, came back to him. Sir Asif had shown then that he was no Farqharson-Wetherby, mind made up from earliest youth. He had shown then that he had earned the right to die in the way he had chosen.

  So he stuffed the letter into his pocket, thanked the constable, and returned to the group on the terrace.

  “Raman, Dr. Ghote’s cup is empty. What in God’s name do you think you are here for, man? It is to look after people’s cups and see whether they need more tea. That is your duty. Do you understand? Your duty.”

  And he saw Raman’s shamefaced horseshoe smile coming and going.

  The incident began to seem no more than the most casual of eddies on the slow stream of their daily life. Tea took its course again. He ventured on a cake, although its icing under the heat had dripped to the very edge. And then the full significance of that letter erupted in his mind.

  Said gelignite is reported to be in unstable condition.

  The stuff was dangerous. Highly dangerous. And not just to its intended victim, nor simply to whichever one of them it was who had got hold of it. It was dangerous to everybody in the whole of the old house.

  19

  Ghote made himself wait until tea was over, until the last second cup had been drained, the last little cake had been refused. And then when the judge in his customary fashion had risen to his feet with the aid of his silver-topped stick and had begun to move slowly off to the library where he invariably spent the time after tea, Ghote made his way over to him as soon as he was on his own, pulling from his pocket as he did so the warning message.

  “Sir,” he said in a low voice, “I think you also ought to see the communication I received.”

  The judge looked at him with a small frown of disapproval. “Really, Doctor? I thought we had agreed that I need be no further consulted over those wretched—ahem—memoirs.”

  It took a small effort to continue confronting that stone visage. But he made it.

  “Sir, I think you would find that the situation has changed. Please read this, sir.”

  Sir Asif took the sheet of paper Ghote had thrust out, coarse-tex-tured and buff in colour, more than a little crumpled from having been crammed into his trouser pocket. The judge smoothed it out. He read.

  “Unstable condition, sir. It means that it might explode on a slight impact only, or from a mere spark, or anything.”

  The judge said nothing, stood sombrely regarding the creased sheet in his hand.

  And at last answered.

  “Very well. Be so good, then, as to accompany me to the library.”

  Slowly they progressed through the dim drawing room, down the long passage into the entrance hall, down the equally long passage that took them to the library, and at last into that tall, book-lined room, the judge's stick tapping an irregular, maddening rhythm every step of the way.

  And at every step Ghote found himself back once more fiercely resenting the terribly slow pace of existence in the old house. Here now was something urgent, something to be dealt with at once. Something calling for immediate questions and immediate answers. And the old man was insisting on installing himself in his customary fashion in the library before he would give the matter any attention at all.

  And when he did bring his mind to it, what would he say? Would he realise that the situation had changed? That it was vital to find out who had got hold of the gelignite—he saw it in his mind's eye, yellowish muddy bars oozing an oily sweat—and to take it from them before some tiny chance split wide the whole old house in a roar of scarifying orange flame?

  The judge lowered himself into his customary chair.

  Mind now alert and rapid-moving, Ghote glanced immediately at the ivory-inlaid table beside it for yet another warning note. And there was one there. The familiar thick sheet of folded white paper tucked just under the base of the tall lamp, a sheet that could have been placed there with ease by any one knowing the invariable routine of this routine-chained house. By any one of them.

  "Excuse me, sir,” he said.

  And he leant across the old man's thin legs under their white silk trousering and tweaked the folded sheet from its place.

  “I expect this is for you, sir,” he said.

  Ghote made no attempt to unfold the note. The judge glanced up at him and took it with a little grunt of acknowledgement.

  He waited to see what the old man would do. If he were to read it and at once put it in his pocket as he had done before, or, worse, not to read it and to put it away, then Ghote would know that he was still clinging to his obstinate belief that the whole affair was an entirely private matter.

  “Inspector, I think you should examine this with me. It may be helpful to you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The judge unfolded the sheet.

  I therefore sentence you.

  “Well, Inspector,” the old man said, “my communicant certainly practises a comme
ndable economy of style.”

  “Your communicant, sir?” he said. “Does that mean that you have not already put a name to this person?”

  Yet had he secretly done so? And was he now still determined not to reveal that secret?

  “Alas, no, Inspector, I have not. His identity is unknown to me, completely. And, be sure, I would tell you if I knew it. The situation demands no less.”

  “Yes, sir. And do you then wish me to make inquiries?”

  “I do, Inspector. We cannot have innocent persons killed simply because some unknown is conducting a vendetta against myself.”

  “No, sir. Of course not, sir. But, sir, would you still agree that the number of persons about whom I have to make inquiries is very much limited?”

  “Oh yes, Inspector. Limited to typewriter-using individuals with access to this table.”

  And the judge’s veined hand reached out and tapped sharply once—a little dull thud—on the table beside him.

  “Yes, Inspector. Let me name them. My visitor, Father Adam, priest of the Roman Catholic Church, citizen of the United States of America. My occasional visitor, Mr. Dhebar, in whose minimally circulating journal I have chosen to publish my obiter dicta. My old friend, now turned into peripatetic holy man, the self-styled Anand Baba. And, not to neglect any possibility, my own daughter, despite her having insisted, wisely as it now proves, on your own presence here, my dear fellow.”

  “Yes, sir. I do not see how the person I am looking for can be any other than those. With one possible addition, sir.”

  He hesitated. And the judge spoke before he had gone on.

  “Ah, I see, Inspector, that you must be aware that Anand Baba visits my poor Sikander. And you suspect some sort of collaboration. Very well, add Sikander to your list.”

  “Thank you, sir. And, sir . . .”

  ‘"Yes, Inspector?”

  “Would you kindly tell me now everything that you know about each of these individuals? To help me in my—”

  “Of course, Inspector. Could you believe otherwise?”

  “No, sir. No, I could not.”

  “Very well then. What is it exactly you wish to know?”

  He thought rapidly.

  “Well, sir, Shri Anand Baba. How is it that he comes to be here at all, sir? Is it true that he was utterly opposed to you at the time of the Madurai Conspiracy Case?”

  “Yes, Inspector, that is perfectly true. Anand Baba, as he is now called, was in my young days a fellow student. And, let me say it, the only one among them who was my better. Yet we were friends, close friends despite our difference of religion. But later our ways divided. He took to politics; I cleaved to the law. He became indeed what is nowadays called a terrorist and eventually took poor Sikander, then already nearly deranged, under his wing. So we were as opposed one to the other as it was possible to be. But then, when with the passing of the years Anand Baba abandoned violence and took to preaching, why we became reconciled. He visits me now whenever he is nearby. For the pleasure of my company, I believe, and in an endeavour to make some amends for Sikander, whose final disintegration he feels some responsibility for.”

  “I see, sir. And the matter of collaboration between them, do you find that likely?”

  “No, Inspector, I do not. But then in my days on the Bench I was frequently faced with incontrovertible evidence of behaviour that no one would have called likely. The human being has an almost inexhaustible capacity for committing acts of unmitigated folly.” “Yes, sir.”

  Ghote thought again.

  “Sir, your daughter?”

  “Ah, yes. Begum. Did she insist on your presence here in order, so to speak, to disguise what she herself was doing? And will she, if that is so, continue to the point of parricide? I tell you, Inspector, I do not know. Many years ago I saw it as my duty to prevent her marrying a young Hindu. It seemed to me then that marriages across the religious boundary were fraught with potential disaster. I suppose that nowadays there have been enough such unions for people to have learnt a little how to conduct themselves. Though I often doubt it. So I still believe that I was right to do what I did then for my motherless child. But, even if she has not borne me all these years a grudge—and I am by no means sure that she has not— it is plain that her life has been deeply affected by her failure ever to marry. And so, yes, I suppose she might be capable of parricide, or of anything.”

  “Even, sir,” he said, conscious of great daring, “of marrying Mr. Dhebar?”

  Sir Asif gave him a single quick look and then burst out into laughter. Soon tears were running down his leathery cheeks, glistening at the sides of his curiously flattened nose.

  “Sir. Sir. Please, sir.”

  If the old man went on longer he would exhaust himself.

  “I—I—oh, excuse me, Inspector. I—I am sorry. But does that— does that intolerable fool really nurture an idea of that sort?”

  “Yes, sir, he does. And, sir, I know very well what you are meaning when you say ‘intolerable fool' but nevertheless, sir, Mr. Dhebar is a person of great determination.”

  Sir Asif wiped the last tear from his chin.

  “Yes, Inspector. You’re right, of course. A person of enormous determination. How else with his abilities would he have reached even where he has got to? So, therefore, I grant you, a potential murderer. Yes, you must look out for Dhebar, Inspector. Though I do not think I shall ever have the pleasure of attending my daughter’s wedding to him, provided, that is, that we find this dangerous stuff of yours.”

  “Very well, sir. And that leaves only Father Mort Adam, sir. He is here, isn’t it, because your cousin at the Pakistan Embassy in Washington asked you to look after him in his illness, sir? But is there more to it than that? Sir, is he truly a Roman Catholic priest?”

  Sir Asif laughed again then. But it was no more than a short and sharply contemptuous bark.

  “Yes, Inspector. Extraordinary though it may seem to you, and to myself, that man is a priest. As well, of course, as a stick-at-nothing socialist, a fellow who has been in trouble both in America, which was why he was sent to India as some sort of medical assistant, and to some extent with the authorities here. Oh yes, there’s another one to watch, Inspector.”

  He felt a rapid sliding-down of depression at these last words. They meant that between them they had come to the end of their list of possibles. And somehow he had expected that something which the judge had been keeping secret about one of the people on that list—but the old man had not been keeping secrets, only not gossiping to a stranger—would be a piece of hard information that would lead him at last to the writer of those threatening notes. But there had been nothing.

  And next day that still unreachable person would attempt to put the stolen gelignite where it would kill Justice Sir Asif Ibrahim “by means of an explosive detonation.” And in all probability in making the attempt would blow up more than one innocent person in the house.

  I therefore sentence you. He glanced down again at the warning the judge had just received where it rested open on the ivory-inlaid table. Yes, its few words sounded the note of finality well enough. He could almost hear Sir Asif, or, no, another judge, saying them in a hushed court as he finished pronouncing a Guilty verdict. Those would be the exact words.

  The exact words.

  Feverishly then he tried to recall with complete accuracy the wording of the other two notes he had known about. Of course, the one Begum Roshan had seen might have got considerably distorted before it had come to him. But the other one, the one he had read for himself here in this very room before Sir Asif had put it in his pocket, that one he could surely remember letter for letter.

  Judge. 12 days only remaining. May the Lord have mercy upon your soul.

  Yes, that was it. And it was in just the same sort of wording as the note there on the table now. Wording that could have come from the very lips of a judge.

  “Sir Asif,” he burst out, his voice rising with excitement. “Sir Asif, can you
confirm something for. me? The language of this note here, sir, it is the language of a judge passing a sentence, isn’t it?”

  “Why, yes,” the old man said. “Yes, it is.”

  “And, sir, the other notes you have received, were they in similar language also?”

  Sir Asif thought for a little.

  “Yes, Inspector, they were. Each one of them. I had not realised it till this moment, but they were. They might all have been written by a judge.”

  The old man frowned.

  “But, surely, Inspector, no judge could possibly have left any of the notes here in this house? We had agreed that the person responsible must be someone with easy access to myself. I suppose that in a way Anand Baba might have—”

  “No, sir, no,” he interrupted, swept away on the flowing tide of his logic. “Sir, it is not a judge we are looking for. We have altogether drawn the line in the wrong place, sir. We have said that no one in the household was enough educated to use a typewriter except for those on our list, sir, and we have drawn the line underneath those names. But, sir, we were wrong. It is not too difficult just to press down the keys of a typewriter, not at all difficult. Not to use a typewriter to copy with only, sir. Anyone with a minimum of education could do that, with a minimum of English even. If they had the right words to follow. A judge’s words, sir.”

  He took a wild gulp of air.

  “As a judge’s orderly would have,” he said.

  20

  But Raman, when Inspector Ghote hurried out to look for him, was nowhere to be found.

  For hour after hour afterwards the judge sat in his tall chair in the library, keeping his erect posture only with obvious effort, and directed every servant and gardener he could summon in a search of the whole of the house and the dark gardens. But from the first it was clear that Raman must somehow have got wind of the possibility that he had been discovered—could he have been listening standing up against the wall just outside the tall library windows? Had he found out from the police constable messenger that a warning about the stolen gelignite had been delivered?—and that he had taken good care to hide himself somewhere where it was very unlikely that he would be found. The gardens, with their tall growths of dried grasses, their little-tended old bushes, their once elegant sunken areas here and there, their tall ancient trees, were made for hiding in. And the handful of gardeners and their boys, beset by fears of the ghosts said to haunt the old fort, were hardly the most diligent of searchers.