Inspector Ghote's Good Crusade

by H. R. F. Keating

  With a sigh Ghote walked over. He caught a glimpse of a couple of old fruit juice bottles half filled with reddish brown liquid. He did not need to ask what this was: too much bhang processed from hemp leaves into a sweet drink had come under his eyes in the past for there to be any doubt. However in the quantity the boys had, though illegal, it was much less dangerous than standing in a busy roadway.

  ‘Hey, you,’ Ghote shouted.

  The boys looked up. Edward G. stuffed in a leisurely way the bottle he had been holding into the one remaining practical pocket of his battered jacket.

  ‘Hi,’ he said.

  Ghote looked at him sternly.

  ‘That is no way to behave,’ he said. ‘You are causing traffic congestion and also risking injury.’

  The boys looked at him in silence, all except Edward G. himself, who showed true leadership by taking absolutely no notice whatsoever.

  But Ghote was in no mood to appreciate such qualities. He felt a spasm of sharp irritation and stepping forward caught hold of the boy’s arm and shook it hard.

  Edward G.’s appallingly crinkled face remained eloquent with total boredom.

  ‘Listen to me,’ Ghote said with all the emphasis he could put into the words, ‘listen to me. This is dangerous. Do you want to see one of you getting killed?’

  Edward G. turned right round to face the inspector and put a friendly arm round Tarzan’s bare shoulders.

  ‘This one’s pretty dumb,’ he said. ‘He could go all right.’

  FIFTEEN

  To Inspector Ghote’s surprise, in spite of Edward G. Robinson’s limited attitude to road safety, a minute or so later the boys began to drift back into the half-heartedly cared for front garden of the Masters Foundation. But beyond this concession they ignored him and wandered over to settle down contentedly under the shade of a peepul tree. Tarzan swung easily up into the branches and hung upside down above the others like a half-naked, wiry bat and the two bhang bottles appeared again.

  Ghote looked at the group for a moment and then turned and faced the steps of the Foundation and the tall front door.

  Faced them without pleasure. The fact was that he was still entirely undecided about what he would do. Whom should he ask to see? There was really no point in questioning anybody. He had asked everything long before. He had seen every cranny in the big bungalow. He had made every test he could think of, taken every measurement.

  As much to force himself to come to a decision as for any other reason, he went up the wide steps at a run and put his forefinger firmly and definitely on the bell push.

  But he still had time to make his decision and unmake it. The die was cast, but the dice was still toppling over and over with its number yet to come up. He seized on the notion of asking to see Krishna Chatterjee again. It was all that was left: battering away at an unyielding surface in the mere hope that in spite of all the signs something would crack, that little Mr Chatterjee would let something slip and settle it one way or the other. Either the killer, or the innocent one.

  The bell remained unanswered. Ghote decided not to press it again. There might still come to him a last-minute flash of inspiration for some other way of breaking the dilemma.

  ‘Hey, mister, what you going to do?’

  He recognized the voice without needing to turn round. Edward G. Robinson again. As usual hitting the nail exactly on the head and driving it painfully home.

  ‘Come on, mister, what you going to do in there? Who you going to see? Going to make the big arrest?’

  Ghote decided to turn round.

  From the slight height of the doorstep he looked over at the group under the peepul tree. They were happily and completely at ease. One of the bhang bottles was just finishing its round. It had come to Tarzan. Ghote watched fascinated for a moment as the boy contrived to take a long, cool swig of the sticky liquid while still remaining hanging from his branch. Then he turned to Edward G. Robinson’s wrinkle-interlaced face. It semaphored an expression of simple, impudent questioning.

  ‘What a police officer is going to do at a private institution can be of no possible concern to you,’ Ghote said in a loud and clear voice.

  ‘If the police officer is going to bully poor old swallow-all Chatterjee it is of concern,’ came the reply.

  Edward G., expert in film American, had also caught the inspector’s tone, to a nicety.

  Ghote bit his lip.

  ‘If I wish to question, I shall question,’ he said. ‘Mr Chatterjee, or anyone else I like.’

  He saw that Tarzan was flapping his arms up and down in a highly agitated way. Another comment. And, true enough, it was the way he felt.

  Edward G. took a lazy swig of bhang. He was lying on his back with his left knee raised and his bare right leg swinging idly across it.

  ‘Listen, mister,’ he said, ‘why you bothering about this case any more? So you ain’t cracked it? So what?’

  ‘So the death of the great benefactor of the children of Bombay is still a mystery,’ Ghote answered. ‘Does that mean nothing to you? You would not be here at this moment if it was not for Frank Masters coming from America and spending his money to help you. You.’

  He came down two of the steps and glared over at the reclining form of Edward G. Robinson across the hot afternoon sunshine.

  ‘Mister, did you ever think I might like not to be here?’ Edward G. said, gently twirling the bhang bottle. ‘Did you ever think I might want to sleep on the pavement instead of in that great, big, warm and dry house?’

  He squinted through half-closed eyes in his wrinkled old man’s face at the solid whiteness of the bungalow behind Ghote.

  ‘What nonsense is this?’ Ghote replied.

  He came right down the steps and strode across to the idle group under the peepul.

  ‘What nonsense is this?’ he repeated, facing them. ‘Are you hungry? No. Are you wondering every day whether you will starve to death before long? Or catch some illness? No, you know you will get treatment here from the money that good man did not hesitate to give.’

  ‘You know what he felt when we got better?’ Edward G. said.

  He drained the last of the bhang. There was a rustle of protest at this from the other members of the gang. Edward G. ignored it.

  ‘You know what good Frank Masters felt when his good money had saved our lives?’ he asked Ghote. ‘He felt “I have got another boy to be mine for ever.” He felt mighty fine.’

  The cowboy drawl might have come from the lips of the Lone Ranger himself.

  Ghote drew breath to reply. What infernal impudence, he thought. What gratitude. The man who had come from America to look after these boys, and had got killed for his pains. And now this. All right, he would tell them a thing or two. It was all very well for a thug like Amrit Singh to put out opinions like that, but for a boy, a mere boy, and one who had actually benefited from Frank Masters’s great kindness. It was appalling, truly –

  He stopped himself.

  What was he doing? Dictating what someone else should think.

  Just because the boy had expressed an opinion that did not echo the respectability of every schoolmaster that had ever lectured a delinquent, he was accusing him of all the crimes in the book. And it was not even as if the picture of Frank Masters he had put before the boy was a true one. It did not square up really with what he had learnt from Krishna Chatterjee. It was almost as distorted as Amrit Singh’s view of him. Or, come to that, as the view Dr Diana had put when he had questioned her about Frank Masters in her English-looking room in this very house.

  No, he would stop it.

  He looked down at the boys.

  ‘If you go on drinking bhang,’ he said, ‘in the end you will suffer worse than any pleasure you get. But perhaps you knew that.’

  He turned and walked back to the front door. His ring on the bell had remained unanswered. He climbed the steps and rang again.

  ‘Well, mister, what you going to do?’ Edward G. sang out.

&n
bsp; Ghote turned round.

  ‘I am going to investigate a most curious discrepancy,’ he said.

  As Inspector Ghote approached the dispensary hut, where he had been taken by the solemn, weighty bearer who had eventually opened the door to him, he found that the burst of courage and curiosity that had sprung up in him at the moment he had realized there was a curious discrepancy to investigate was oozing fast away.

  Dr Diana, he said to himself, Dr Diana. Was he really going to tackle her successfully? Would he actually manage to make her account for the fact that she had praised Frank Masters to the skies while Krishna Chatterjee, apparently with the best of intentions, had painted a very different picture when he had been questioned at headquarters?

  He licked his lips and contrasted the two portraits that had been given to him.

  Little Mr Chatterjee had convincingly spoken of the man whose immense wealth was a disadvantage leading him all too often to be kind rather than useful, a fallible mortal subject to mortal failings such as gradually declining interest in the face of un-success. Dr Diana, on the other hand, had talked about a man who saw what was to be done and did it. She had said Frank Masters was no sloppy sentimental fool.

  And somehow, Ghote realized now, what she had said had not rung true. It had been too much delivered as a challenge. While Mr Chatterjee had seemed to speak with instances in mind.

  Ghote was aware that he had failed to answer Dr Diana’s challenge. Probably he had not realized earlier that the two views of Frank Masters were in such contrast because he had been hiding from himself this very failure.

  The bearer threw open the door of the hut, the rough wood hardly measuring up to the treatment.

  ‘Inspector Ghote, Bombay C.I.D.,’ he announced, apparently unconscious of the fact that the last time he had used such words had been to usher in Ghote to the dead body of Frank Masters.

  Ghote, well remembering the first occasion, stepped inside. Once again Dr Diana had her back to him. But this time she was not standing looking fixedly into the mirror on the cupboard face. She was bending over the sink in the corner with a whimpering eight-year-old boy propped up on one knee.

  She glanced round for an instant.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘you again. Well, you can see I’m busy.’

  ‘I regret,’ Ghote said. ‘I was not informed you were engaged.’

  Dr Diana turned the high chromium tap of the sink on full blast.

  ‘When one of the kids gets bitten by a piedog,’ she said, her voice for all its clarity hard to hear above the spluttering of the water, ‘I don’t get time to go round warning everybody. I’m too busy to bother with trifles.’

  ‘I perfectly understand,’ Ghote said. ‘I will return when you are free.’

  ‘Oh, no, stay now you’re here,’ Dr Diana answered. ‘You can talk to me while I see to this chappie. I dare say I’ll be able to spare you enough attention.’

  She turned back to the boy.

  ‘Here, let me look again,’ she said. ‘Now. Steady on.’

  The boy’s whimpering became louder.

  ‘What do you want anyhow?’ Dr Diana called over her shoulder.

  Ghote hesitated. Was he really going to let her get away with giving him the fag-end of her attention like this? And then he decided that he was. He would not let a sense of his own dignity interfere on this case.

  ‘I want to talk to you about Mr Masters,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ said Dr Diana. ‘That doesn’t look too good to me.’

  Ghote realized that she was not talking to him. He waited.

  ‘Here,’ the doctor went on, ‘let me see the finger.’

  She glanced round at Ghote.

  ‘Thought we’d been into all that,’ she said.

  She took hold of the boy’s hand, bent low over it and put the blood-covered finger to her lips. She sucked hard.

  ‘Yes,’ Ghote said. ‘I thought that also. But a certain discrepancy has come to light.’

  Dr Diana took her mouth away from the boy’s finger, and spat slappingly into the sink.

  ‘Discrepancy?’ she said contemptuously, as she put her lips to the small brown hand again.

  ‘Yes, discrepancy,’ Ghote replied firmly.

  The single note of contempt had done its work. In a moment all the courage that had seeped away, and the curiosity, sprang up again. He went on.

  ‘You told that Frank Masters was never kind only. You told that he saw what had to be done and did it. I think that was not true.’

  Dr Diana spat out another mouthful of the boy’s blood. She spared time to give Ghote a steady, appraising look before she bent to her work once more.

  Ghote waited.

  At last Dr Diana took her mouth off the boy’s finger again. She examined the wound.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that looks a bit more like it. Now, come over here.’

  She led the boy, moaning quietly to himself and shaking a little, over to the glass-topped table.

  ‘Stand there a moment,’ she said, turning to the cupboard with the mirror front.

  As she opened it and ranged over the rows of bottles, jars and packets inside, she gave Ghote her answer.

  ‘All right. I dare say I did gloss over one or two things. I can’t see that it matters.’

  She found the bottle she was looking for and put it on the table. She turned back to the cupboard.

  Ghote ignored the fact that he was having to speak to her white-coated back.

  ‘I am investigating Mr Masters’s death,’ he said, with an edge of controlled anger. ‘And when I ask questions about him I expect to get told the truth.’

  Dr Diana turned slowly back. She was holding a blue paper packet of cotton wool. She looked at Ghote expressionlessly.

  ‘Yes,’ she said at last, ‘yes, I see that I shouldn’t have done that.’

  She pulled a lump of cotton wool off the roll from the packet. Then she went over to the table and tipped a plentiful quantity of mercurochrome on to the neat wad she had made.

  ‘Now, laddie,’ she said, ‘I’m afraid this is going to hurt.’

  She reached down and picked up his hand.

  The boy looked up at her with wide eyes. His teeth were chattering hard.

  ‘Then I would like to hear from you what Mr Masters was truly like,’ Ghote said.

  The boy screamed as Dr Diana firmly pressed the red-soaked pad on the wound.

  ‘Frank?’ she said when the boy was quieter.

  She took a dressing from the cupboard and began strapping it round the boy’s finger. Ghote watched. And waited.

  But for some time Dr Diana was too occupied to add anything more. She finished tying the dressing into place, took a hypodermic from the cupboard and went quickly into the inner part of the hut.

  For an instant Ghote wondered whether he should follow her. But he recollected the grilles on the windows and the fact that there was no other door to the whole hut and decided to stay put. Dr Diana returned a second or two later. The hypodermic was half full. She went up to the boy.

  ‘Now, nearly finished,’ she said.

  Ghote could not help noticing that, though brusque, her voice was clearly comforting. The boy looked up at her, still shaking.

  ‘Have to get an anti-rabies shot into him as quickly as possible,’ Dr Diana said.

  She addressed her remarks to the top of the glass-covered table but Ghote interpreted them as a sort of apology for not answering more quickly.

  He stood looking at the fine, gleaming needle held steadily in the thin flesh of the boy’s arm while Dr Diana firmly squeezed the shot home.

  ‘There,’ she said, taking the needle out, ‘now we’ll just put you down somewhere comfortably and then you’ll begin to feel better.’

  With one swoop she picked the feather-light boy up and deposited him on the hard, white examination couch. Ghote wondered if it had been used since Frank Masters’s body had been removed from it. Dr Diana took up a coarse, red blanket from the foot of th
e couch, shook it out and placed it over the boy.

  ‘That’ll warm you up,’ she said.

  She turned to Ghote.

  ‘Well now, Frank. As he really was. I suppose you have a right to know.’

  She went over to the sink, stooped, picked up a small kettle from underneath it and filled it with water. Not until she had taken it to the electric boiling ring in the inner half of the hut did she give Ghote her full attention.

  ‘I’ve a notion,’ she said, ‘that you got your picture of Frank from that credulous idiot Krishna Chatterjee.’

  Ghote kept his face blank.

  Dr Diana grunted a half-laugh.

  ‘All right, protect your sources of information. I don’t mind. But let me tell you one thing. Chatterjee is a nice fellow and all that, but he’s simply too good. It isn’t that he won’t see people’s faults, but by the time he’s finished finding excuses for them he’s forgotten the faults are still there.’

  Again Ghote made no comment. Dr Diana, hands thrust into the patch pockets of her white coat, went on.

  ‘Did he tell you that Frank was a damned bad administrator?’ she asked. ‘If he did, I bet he found so many excuses for not doing administration that in the end you thought it was a positive virtue to go about wasting what resources we have.’

  ‘Being a bad administrator is hardly a grave fault,’ Ghote said. ‘I am not going to be satisfied so easily, you know.’

  Dr Diana’s eyes flashed.

  ‘I wasn’t trying to fob you off, as a matter of fact,’ she said. ‘When I make up my mind to tell someone something, I tell them. So you can just listen.’

  Ghote made no reply.

  ‘No,’ Dr Diana went on, ‘I’m not making out a lack of administrative talent is a crippling moral defect. What I am saying is that Frank was not only a bad administrator, but that he wouldn’t realize it. He thought that whatever way he tackled something was the right way.’