by Monabi Mitra
He said nothing.
‘But of course, I saw you last night, at the party, Nikki Kumar’s! Can you imagine that? What a coincidence! How nice of you to come! Really, Toofan should have told me! Tea or coffee, or maybe some lemonade?’
‘Thank you very much,’ said Bikram as equably as he could. ‘That’s not necessary.’
‘Oh, but it is, what would Shona say …’
Even as Bikram sought to soothe her excited trilling with calm refusals he felt a tightening rage inside. You win, Toofan, he said to himself, you brute. You’ve sent me here like any ordinary thana constable just to show me my place.
Nisha Bose’s voice trailed away and they now looked at one another, aware of the delicate nature of the situation. Then the ever-faithful Ghosh cleared his throat and broke the spell.
They were served coffee in gold-bordered china cups and delicate biscuits on matching plates. Bikram left the biscuits alone but Ghosh reached out and unabashedly took two. Then Nisha Bose waved the maid away and leaned back in her chair. She turned her head to look out at the garden, presenting a perfect profile to her guests. Her skin gleamed in the half-light and her lips formed a perfect pout. Her long arms stretched alluringly and the folds of her sari seemed to slip ever so little over her tight chest. A sort of electric charge enveloped the room and, all at once, cops and robbers seemed far away. Bikram was aware that the whole show was being put up for him. Then Nisha turned round and began to talk.
‘Somebody’s been pilfering money,’ she began, ‘and I suppose it must be one of the servants, but I can’t quite pin down who. We have quite a number of them and most have been around for many years.’
‘How much money?’ asked Bikram.
‘I don’t know the exact sum because it’s been dribbling out for some time. The maid used to come back from shopping and I would be busy and ask her to put the change on the dressing table or by the bed. Then I would forget about it and the next time I looked for it, it wouldn’t be there, so I would suppose I had put it away. Fifty rupees, seventy, perhaps even a hundred.’
‘How long ago was this?’
The lovely forehead creased itself into thought. ‘One month, or I suppose two. I really can’t be sure. Then, one day, I asked Buro—he’s the man who looks after Robi, my husband—to withdraw five thousand rupees from the bank. I needed to pay the chap who comes in to help Robi with his physiotherapy. Buro put the money on top of the bureau in the bedroom and left. I was having a bath and when I came out, the phone rang and by the time I finished the call, Masterji, he’s the tailor, came for some orders and finally Reeta, my masseuse, arrived. What with all this, I forgot about the cash and only remembered when the physiotherapist wanted his payment. That’s when I found that the money was gone.’
‘Did you question anyone?’
‘Oh, I did. I asked Buro and Mithu and the woman who sweeps and cleans. Mithu said she had been too busy to notice and Buro swears he saw it on the bureau when he came in to give Robi his bath. Of course, the cleaning woman had gone away and we asked her the next day, but she didn’t remember seeing it at all. She was terrified when we asked her about the money. She’s quite old and we keep her on out of pity.’
‘Do you think she did it?’
‘That’s what we all thought at the time. Robi wanted me to ask the police to search her house. Buro disagreed with him.’ A slight smile played over Nisha Bose’s face. ‘I told Buro to leave it to me. I called her to the thakur ghar and made her stand in front of the gods and swear to tell the truth. She fell at my feet, crying and begging me to believe her. I decided to leave the matter as it was. Then, two days ago, something similar happened, only this time, it was much more money. Ten thousand rupees, in fact.’
‘Where was the money kept?’
‘Very safely, in Robi’s drawer. It’s always locked.’
‘And the key?’
‘On my dressing table, of course.’ Nisha Bose turned a pair of limpid eyes on Bikram.
‘From where anyone could have taken it?’
‘Oh, but they wouldn’t dare!’
‘How can you be so sure? From what I gather, anyone, from Buro to Mithu to the daily maid, not to mention the masseuse and the physiotherapist and Masterji, could have sneaked in.’
‘Because,’ said Nisha Bose, elegantly spreading her hands and raising her eyebrows, ‘they all love me and would probably give their lives for me. No one would dream of robbing us.’
The visit ended with Ghosh and Bikram being paraded through the spacious and beautiful rooms of the Bose residence. They went through a dining room to a pantry with built-in racks containing an assortment of table napkins, dish towels and other delicately embroidered pieces of cloth whose uses Ghosh could only wonder at. The kitchen shelves gleamed in marble and granite and a door covered with heavy mesh led out to the shade of a jackfruit tree. The maid, busy at an enormous steel sink washing the coffee cups, flattened herself against the wall and stood with her head down. From outside, the sound of water splashing on pots told them that the other maid was also hard at work. The time, thought Bikram, was chosen well, mid-morning, when all the staff were busy with various household chores and would not fail to miss the police. He wondered how many more faithful servants there were and how their mistress paid for them without any ostensibly remunerative job. He reminded himself to ask where they lived and how many came and went during the day and how many lived in at night.
Then they went up a polished wooden staircase to the ‘upstairs rooms’ as Nisha described them, where three rooms opened out from the landing. From the first one, they could hear the chatter of a television through a half-closed door. In the second, they could see some chairs and gym equipment. The door to the other room was shut. Nisha Bose hesitated. A troubled look appeared on her face which only heightened her beauty, now giving it an effect of innocence and helplessness.
‘I must warn you, my husband may appear to be unpleasant; it’s the effect of the medicines he takes. Also, do leave whenever you have to, he gets bored sitting around and can go on talking without noticing the time.’ She said all this to Ghosh, addressing him for the first time and deliberately looking away from Bikram. She paused with her hand on the door handle. ‘I’ve told him about the money and that I’ve asked Toofan Kumar to help out informally.’ Then she squared her shoulders and went in.
Bikram stood back for a moment, looking at the door with interest. It was painted ivory, as all the others in the house were, but there was one small difference. All the other doors had round brass doorknobs of the old-fashioned variety, without any locking mechanism. This one had a round knob set in a rectangular frame, with a great sturdy bolt that could be locked from the outside. He wondered if Robi Bose was a prisoner of a malignant destiny in more ways than one.
Robi Bose was forty but seemed much older. He was leaning back in a folding chair. His feet, shod in rubber slippers, were pale and swollen. His face hung heavy and puffed under the onslaught of a range of medicines that had preserved the body but rent the mind. The right hand was clutching a television remote control while the left arm lay twisted across the chair arm. He was clad in a pair of Bermudas and a striped half-sleeved blue linen shirt. Beside him squatted a young man of twenty-two or so, clean shaven, hair cropped stylishly, wearing a pair of denims and a T-shirt with a motorcycle print. A faint fragrance of eau de cologne wafted from him. When the visitors entered, he rose hurriedly and positioned himself behind Robi’s chair, hands folded demurely, head bowed low. Nisha Bose sashayed in and stood before her husband, looking down at him for a moment before speaking. ‘They’re here,’ she said simply.
Robi Bose screwed up his eyes and stared at Bikram and Ghosh and the two stared back. For about ten seconds all four in the room, with the exception of the boy behind the chair, inspected one another. Then, in a low drawl, the words slurring occasionally, Robi said: ‘Why aren’t you in uniform? You’re supposed to be on duty here.’
‘This was an i
nformal call, Mr Bose. We didn’t want to frighten anyone.’
‘But if you’re policemen you have to. How can you find out who took the money otherwise?’
Beside Bikram, Ghosh shuffled uneasily and Bikram knew what he was thinking. He himself looked at Robi with the gathering interest of a man who was waiting for a dreary movie to end, only to find that it plumbed unexpected depths.
‘I told Buro to put in a case at the thana.’ Robi stressed the word ‘told’ and tried to look around at the young man standing behind him. ‘Didn’t I, Buro? You just don’t listen to me nowadays. We could have asked for police protection and have had a couple of armed guards posted here free of cost. All we needed to do was feed them some tea and the occasional scrap from the table.’
Nisha, silent all this while, now moved over to stand beside Robi and put a warning hand over his forehead. At her touch, Robi closed his eyes and leaned back. ‘Ahh! How cool your hand is, Nisha.’
His wife looked down at him and said in a soft tone, ‘Did you have your medicine?’
‘Umm.’
‘And the juice?’
‘Rancid. I told Mithu she must have left the carton open but she only laughed and went away.’
‘I’ll get you some more. Don’t worry.’
A faint flush spread over Nisha’s face. As Nisha stood beside her husband, Bikram could sense in her weariness and beyond it, embarrassment. He wondered whether Nisha Bose was pitied and laughed at by all the wives whose husbands followed her with their eyes as she entered a room. Then he remembered another woman who also dragged men’s eyes towards her and felt a kinship with Robi’s plight.
From behind the chair, where her husband couldn’t see him, Nisha pointed to the door and signalled the two policemen to follow her. Bikram, still unsure about his responses to her, felt this created an intimacy between them and against her husband, which he was not sure he liked.
As his wife turned towards the door, Robi opened his eyes and looked at Bikram. ‘I know who took the money.’
‘Would you like to tell us, Sir, or do you want us to find out for ourselves?’
A slow smile contorted Robi’s face. ‘You are clever and handsome. And not the usual corrupt variety. I’m impressed.’
‘Robi!’ Nisha Bose almost ran back from the door. ‘How can you, he’s Shona’s friend. You met him and Shona last night at Nikki’s, remember?’
‘No, I don’t! Who’s Shona?’
‘Oh, never mind. Leave it. Let them go.’
‘But they’re here for an investigation.’
‘No, they are not. I told Toofan Kumar about all this and he said he’d send someone to look around but I didn’t think it would be him, I mean, and … whatever, its finished now.’
Robi turned back to Bikram. ‘She’s too innocent for the real world. Someone’s always got to protect her, see? She’s scared of the consequences and that’s why she won’t let them tell you. But I know. It’s Gopal. He’s the durwan.’
‘Stop it!’ Nisha darted a quick look at Buro. ‘How can you say such things without proof? Gopal’s at the gate, how can he get into my bedroom so easily without being seen?’
‘Oh, come on, my good wife, all kinds of men can get into this house without being seen. Have got in too, I’m sure. As for proof, that’s for the inspector to get.’
‘You’re tired,’ said Nisha. ‘The party last night, and then this!’ Her voice had changed from attack to the kind of soothing persuasion one uses with a petulant child. It had the desired effect on her husband. He said, ‘It’s my fault, I’m always thinking of myself, I forget how much you go through, all alone in this house without any children. Buro, where are you? I need to go to the bathroom.’
The young man sprang forward and bent over Robi. ‘I’ll get your walking stick, wait a minute.’
Nisha turned towards the door. ‘I’ll just see them off. Buro, give him his medicine, it is late already.’
When they were on their way, Ghosh asked, ‘What do you think, Sir?’
‘Think of what?’
‘Oh, everything. The house and the lady and the husband.’
‘And the crime?’ Bikram asked in reply.
‘The crime? Nah, who’s interested in the crime? Very amateurish. It’s probably Buro, with the maid, what’s her name, Mithu. Did you see how fine and sleek he looks? I wonder what they’ll do next. Drive up in a car for work, as they do in America, I’m told.’
‘He has his mistress’s backing, though,’ said Bikram slowly. ‘She didn’t ask him to leave the room when we went in, though, in the drawing room, she waited for the maid to go away before she began. I imagine he’s not just a servant. Probably a friend and confidant, in which case he wouldn’t steal money.’
‘You never know with this sort,’ objected Ghosh. ‘Around for years and then, bang bang one night and, in the morning, a dead body.’
‘I hope there won’t be a body here, Ghosh. You always make jokes about things which come true.’
But Ghosh was not so easily deflected. ‘She’s beautiful, though. I haven’t seen such a beautiful woman in a long time. Like the goddess Lakshmi herself, as my mother would say. It’s tough luck really, to be given everything in life—money and beauty and an adoring husband—only to be saddled with an invalid now. Though I must say, unwell or not, he didn’t look at all dim-witted.’
But Bikram seemed to have lost all interest in the Bose household and was already flicking through a luxurious looking faux leather-bound diary marked APPOINTMENTS.
Ghosh, looking out of the window, the whiff of Nisha Bose’s perfume in his nose and the savour of the cookies she had served still in his mouth, made a mental note to ask Bikram for a similar leather-bound diary as a New Year present.
Tara Bose sat on the edge of her bed and tried to look away from the table beside her. It was an ordinary bedside table, with a bottle of water and a melamine glass on a ceramic coaster along with a jar of cream. The charger was plugged in and the cell phone was being charged while the day’s newspaper sat dishevelled underneath. Tara’s hands were shaking.
Outside, it was hot, and the heat clung to the faded drapes on the windows and the few pictures on the walls. The fans whirred sadly, having given up all pretence of rendering any coolness. Tara’s face was swollen for she had been upset, and her eyes were rimmed red for she had been weeping, and her hair hung limp and defeated over her shoulders. Then she took a deep breath and, opening the drawer of the table, took out an old leather bag. The bag was full of medicines. She shook them out on the bed and carefully selected four tablets. Though her hands were still shaking, there was a nimbleness to them, a newly-found agility as if they had been spurred on to some secret inner life at the sight of the items before her. She dropped the tablets into the glass, filled it with water and swallowed. Then hiccupping slightly, she opened the drawer again, extracted a bottle from the innermost depth, uncorked and drank noisily from the bottle itself.
The smell of brandy filled the room.
It took half an hour for the pleasure to rise. It took time now, and wasn’t at all quick like earlier.
Tara felt the numbness creep into her shoulders, her thighs, the pit of her stomach, her legs. The room was far away already. She wondered on which side of the bed she was lying and she hoped she would not miss the floating sensation. It was good.
She was dropping out of consciousness already.
She would have to get some more tablets soon. Panic at running out of stock, at being left alone, defenceless, having to face a grim world each day without them, was always her last thought before the blessedness of oblivion.
5
Dr S. Pyne, earnest and young, looking almost like a student with his tousled hair, ‘I Love Bangkok’ T-shirt and drawstring pyjamas, stretched out his hand towards the telephone and answered it grumpily. He knew he should expect these late-night calls, but still. Also, every time the phone rang at night, he’d be worried about his mother, ailing and fretful i
n the next room, being unnecessarily awakened. Dr Pyne loved order, dedication, hard work and his mother.
‘Sudip? Chopra speaking. Go to 17B Bailey Road. That’s off the Silver Mall in Ballygunge, down the lane, opposite a shop called Chutput Savouries, and look up a man of about forty who had a cerebral a few years ago. He seems to have died in the last hour or so. Probably a coronary case, so speed it up. He was alone except for his wife. Ask her if she needs anything.’
‘Why me?’ As Sudip Pyne struggled to wake up fully, his grumpiness became annoyance. ‘There must have been a regular GP or neuro attending on him. I’ve never treated this chap before.’
‘Oh yes, you have. He is, or was, Geo Sen’s patient. Family friend too. I rang Sen up in London and he told me to get in touch with you. Or do you want Sen to speak to you personally? The way you young ones are, you might need phone calls from the President of India himself to get you going!’
Dr Pyne hesitated. He could, of course, refuse and ring off. But Dr Geo Sen was another matter. Pyne had been lucky enough to be noticed by one of the most eminent practitioners in the city and to be included on the fringe of the shadowy group that encircled him. Dr Pyne had a career wishlist which only Geo Sen could fulfil, so he heard himself tamely muttering that he’d be on his way. As he groped for the light switch in the bathroom, Dr Pyne hoped he could be back before 3 a.m. That was when his mother needed to use the bathroom, assisted by a sleep-sodden maid, with her only son glaring in the background.
The dead man was lying on his back on an enormous bed. His right arm was thrown across the bed. Sudip Pyne picked up this arm, felt for the pulse, put the lifeless arm down carefully and examined the face. There was a thin film of foam tinged reddish-orange around the nostrils and the mouth. The man’s lips seemed black. Dr Pyne used his stethoscope on the man’s chest perfunctorily and then bent down to look at the feet, following which he picked up the arm and scrutinized the fingers. As he had expected, they were blackish blue too. The doctor examined the arm again, then the other arm, then the rest of the body, paying special attention to the thighs and the area between the toes. Then he straightened up and looked around him.
