Banquet on the Dead

by Sharath Komarraju

  9

  WHEN THEY CAME OUT of the guest room and were about to make their way to the staircase by the front door, Nagarajan felt Hamid Pasha’s grip on his elbow. ‘Come, miyan!’ he commanded, and pulled him close to the edge of the wall, as though wishing for them to slink in its shadow. Hamid Pasha’s tread was soft and nimble, despite the limp in his left leg. Once a thief, always a thief, Nagarajan thought dourly, trying to keep his own movements equally stealthy.

  Hamid Pasha pushed open the first door to the right, peered in, shook his head and moved on. ‘Men’s clothes,’ he whispered over his shoulder. ‘Probably Swami saab’s room. Come!’ He tiptoed to the next room and weighed his palm against the door. As it opened he looked around him. Right opposite, on the other side of the dining table, was the kitchen. Sounds of utensils being washed and water being boiled came from within. ‘This must be it, hain?’ He escorted Nagarajan first into the room and followed close behind. ‘Now look, miyan,’ he said in a sharp whisper.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Ah, I do not know! For anything!’

  That was how these people worked, thought Nagarajan, without any order or method. There was no process, no planning; they just go with the flow and do the first thing that come to their minds. Muttering under his breath, he looked around the dimly lit room. The frosted windowpane cast only just enough light for them to be able to make out shapes of things in the room. Nagarajan saw a single bed resting against the wall, and towards the foot of the bed there was a three-door wooden wardrobe built into the wall. He opened each door in turn and peeped inside.

  ‘Just clothes,’ he whispered, and just as he did so he wondered why they were being so secretive about looking around the old woman’s room. Surely they only had to ask Swami saab and he would arrange for them to feel free to look through it thoroughly?

  ‘Look under them—under the newspapers.’ Nagarajan heard Hamid Pasha open the door to the inner room, and soon enough a prickly, unknown odour tickled his nostrils. ‘Hai Allah,’ he heard the old man exclaim. ‘This room is brighter than the bedroom. And smell that, miyan. It is not an easy thing to get used to, I think, hain?’

  Nagarajan lifted the saris and groped the newspapers underneath. He touched only the smooth surface of the polished wood. ‘There is nothing here.’ When he turned around, his nostrils itched. ‘Close the door, Hamid bhai. The room needs to be treated.’

  Hamid Pasha closed the door and made his way to the head of the bed. With deft, sure hands, he fingered the pillow and checked under the bedcovers. He pointed Nagarajan to the other wardrobe. ‘Check in that. Check!’

  Nagarajan followed his cue and opened the door to the wardrobe. In front of the clothes there were three small plastic jars. ‘There is something here. They look like medicines.’

  ‘Pocket them.’

  After Nagarajan had done so and turned around, he saw that Hamid Pasha was holding in front of him, up to the window, a pair of glasses. Two big, rounded squares and two wobbly arms made up the frame. Even from seven feet away Nagarajan could see that the glass was thick, and two semicircles were visible at the bottom of each lens. Hamid Pasha, one eye closed, was moving each lens up and down, then sideways.

  ‘She was quite near-sighted, the lady,’ he murmured. ‘I wonder if—’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ The sharp voice of a lady came from the now open door, and even without turning around Nagarajan could guess it belonged to Karuna Mayi.

  Hamid Pasha directed a grimace at the woman, as though irritated at being interrupted in conversation, but he broke into a smile almost immediately. He turned around and spread his hands. ‘We were just having a look around, memsaab. I hope we have not acted above ourselves.’

  ‘I think you have,’ Karuna said tartly. ‘You do have to understand we need some privacy here, Inspector,’ she said, addressing Nagarajan but facing Hamid Pasha. ‘If you need to look at the room you will need a search warrant—or at least you should have asked for permission, out of courtesy. But barging in here like this—’

  ‘I am sorry, madam,’ Hamid Pasha said in his most apologetic tone. Nagarajan noticed that in the process of lifting his arms in the conciliatory gesture he had dropped the spectacles into the pocket of his waistcoat. ‘We are both very, very sorry. It was not our intention at all to infringe upon you in any manner, but I see that we have, and for that I must beg your forgiveness.’

  Karuna did not answer, more out of disorientation at the elaborate apology, no doubt, thought Nagarajan, and seeing that Hamid Pasha was taking the opportunity to sidle out of the room, he followed with his own mumbled apology. Once they were out of the room, Hamid Pasha picked up speed and made for the exit.

  ‘Just a few more minutes in there would have been good, miyan. Just a few more!’

  ‘You don’t think we found all we could?’ Nagarajan asked, catching up with the older man. ‘Why did we have to go there all secretive and unplanned?’

  ‘If we had asked them for permission, miyan, don’t you think they would have had time to arrange the room so that we would only find what they wanted us to find?’ They turned left and made for the staircase. Hamid Pasha jumped up the first two steps in the manner of a horse, with a snort. ‘I am forever indebted to you, miyan,’ he said, with acrid irony, ‘for giving me this wound. You are forever on my lips, thanks to this.’ He caught the railing and looked out to the compound wall. ‘What building is that?’

  Nagarajan said, ‘Looks like a communist party office. I heard Swami saab had given them this land to build on.’

  ‘All this land, hain? I wonder if that comes out of his share of the property?’

  ‘That’s what I thought about too. The old lady could not have been too happy with that arrangement. From what I’ve heard she was quite tight-fisted.’

  Hamid Pasha said, ‘If I had sons and daughters like these, miyan, I would be too.’ And he started up the stairs again. Nagarajan bent his head and followed him, trying not to take too much notice of the snorts and grunts of effort. He did not know if it was Hamid bhai’s advancing age that was causing it or if it was the wound. He hoped it was the former. He wondered idly if he had ever apologised to Hamid bhai for that day, but then he stopped himself. What was there to apologise for? He was a policeman; the other man was a wanted criminal. He had to shoot, and he had done it. It was not like he had come out of the incident unscathed himself. Was he not stuck with this pain in the right shoulder? Had Hamid bhai ever apologised for that? No, he hadn’t.

  ‘Why should I, then?’ he asked himself.

  They came to the second landing, where the stairs broke off into a right angle and led to the first floor. Hamid Pasha stopped there, panting, looking out at the path that led to the bushes and to the well. ‘This thing is all wrong, miyan. Look at that path to the well. Everyone in the house has a view of it. Everyone! They all see the woman, but none of them see the murderer. Hain, it is wrong, that.’

  ‘Unfortunate, perhaps.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hamid Pasha softly. ‘Perhaps unfortunate— but tell me, miyan, if you were planning the murder of the woman, why would you do it at the well, and that, too, in the middle of the day when everybody in the house was present? Why would you choose to do it at a time when you run the highest risk of being seen?’

  Nagarajan said, ‘But that person was not.’

  Hamid Pasha shook his head. ‘That is not the point. If the killer was not seen, it was probably only good fortune on his or her part. Or maybe somebody out there is lying...’ He lapsed into thought, and Nagarajan saw his hand rise to caress his beard. ‘But if your plan was to lure the lady to the well and push her over, surely she would have come at night as willingly as she would have come by day?’

  ‘Depends on how the killer convinced her to go there.’

  ‘Hain. Hain. But keep in mind that the murderer must have known that Ashok was working on the compound wall just by the well. Why take her to a place where you know there is a witness?
’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t know Ashok was going to be there.’

  ‘I suppose it is possible... ‘Hamid Pasha said, but then he slapped his hands on the railing. ‘Ah! Miyan,’ he resumed, ‘I tell you, this is all wrong. I wonder if Ellayya might not be right after all. Maybe the old lady just went out there without her glasses on and fell in. Maybe there was no killer there waiting for her.’ He started up the stairs quickly and unexpectedly, now moving with purpose and less effort. When they got to the top and stopped next to a door, he shook his head again and said, pointing at the door, ‘She is one of them, is she not, who has seen the lady go towards the well?’

  Nagarajan nodded.

  ‘But what is the use of that? We already know the woman was at the well, so she must have walked by here. What is the use of anyone having seen something we already know has happened? Hain? Why can’t they have seen the killer walk by as well?’

  Nagarajan said, ‘Maybe one of them has—we will never know.’

  Hamid Pasha shook his head, much like a petulant child, Nagarajan thought. ‘No, miyan, this is all wrong. What horrid luck that no one saw the person that mattered, hain? Or did they see him and are they all protecting him?’ He looked in Nagarajan’s direction and knitted his brows. ‘Hmm, maybe that is a workable hypothesis. In that case I must tease it out of these people. I must talk to them.’

  ‘Doctor Koteshwar Rao is not in,’ Nagarajan said, nodding toward the window. ‘He must be at his clinic.’

  ‘That does not matter,’ said Hamid Pasha. ‘In fact, that might suit us just fine, because I am very eager to see what the doctor’s wife has to say about this matter.’

  Durga was a stocky, authoritative woman of around five-foot-four, in her late twenties. Though the immediate effect on Nagarajan was not one of witnessing beauty, the way she received them—with a kindly, welcoming smile and a cup of coffee each—warmed him to her so that he thought of her as pleasant. There was something very motherly about her, thought Nagarajan, and then he heard the commotion of a young kid playing on the balcony outside.

  Durga called out to her son in a firm voice to quieten down. The command was immediately obeyed.

  ‘Kotesh is not here, Inspector,’ she said, and her voice suited her general demeanour; it was soft and soothing. ‘But I have the feeling you have come for me and not him.’

  ‘That is so, madam,’ said Nagarajan.

  ‘You can call me Durga,’ she said, but Nagarajan knew he would still continue to call her ‘madam’. ‘People don’t seem to like using my name,’ she said, smiling. ‘No one calls me by my name in this house.’

  ‘Not even the elderly ladies?’

  ‘None of the older people calls me by my name. They just call me “girl”. And my husband—well...’ she coloured and looked down at the table.

  Nagarajan cleared his throat. ‘Let’s make a start, madam. You, of course, know why we are here?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said, and her colour vanished. ‘Why else would you be here?’

  ‘Good. I was wondering if you could give us a short account of what happened during that day. When did you first come to know of the lady’s death?’

  She twisted a finger around in thought. ‘It was in the evening. I had been sleeping that afternoon. I’d just woken up to some commotion downstairs, and just when I was wondering what it was about, Ellayya came up here and told me.’

  Hamid Pasha sipped at his coffee appreciatively and asked, ‘Were you close to her, memsaab?’

  ‘She felt close to me. And yes, I—I reciprocated.’ She sat straight and rigid in front of them, hands clasped together. She inclined her head slightly and said, ‘She was the only one in his family to have accepted our marriage, sir.’

  ‘Ah, indeed?’

  She added hurriedly, but with no change in inflection, ‘Don’t get me wrong. They all love me now. But she was the only one to have supported our marriage back then.’

  ‘How long ago must it have been, memsaab? Ten years, hain?’

  ‘Nine,’ she said. ‘I’ve never forgotten that token of support that she gave us. I don’t think I ever will, either.’

  ‘So this death is a cause of sorrow to you?’

  ‘Of course it is!’ she said. Nagarajan detected the faint edge in her voice as she said that.

  ‘Please, madam,’ he said, ‘please tell us what happened on the day as closely as you can remember.’

  ‘It was a regular day, Inspector, nothing out of the ordinary happened. I woke up slightly later than I usually do because my son is on vacation from school. I cooked breakfast and we ate. Kotesh left for the clinic, and around ten-thirty I went back into the kitchen to make lunch.’

  ‘You did not meet any others in the family up until then?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, sir. I could hear some sounds from downstairs—as usual. I think I heard Gauri and my mother-in-law in the kitchen.’

  ‘Did you hear voices?’

  ‘No, not voices, but I’d seen Gauri come from her house to ours early in the morning when I was making breakfast, so I knew she was downstairs. And my motherin-law usually does the cooking with Gauri, so I guessed it was both of them.’

  Hamid Pasha looked past her into the kitchen. ‘So your kitchen window looks out onto the front of the house?’

  Durga got up and invited them into the kitchen. She opened the window behind the sink and gestured towards it. ‘It opens onto the side of the house, sir. That is Ellayya’s house right there. Gauri sometimes comes along this path here and knocks on the back door. You see, Raja sleeps next to the front door, so Gauri prefers not to wake him up. My mother-in-law’s room is the one right next to the back door, so she only needs to tap on it to wake her up.’

  Hamid Pasha nodded. ‘So you saw the now dead woman leave the house and walk all the way down the path towards the front gate.’

  Durga started to nod, but then said, ‘I was in the middle of making breakfast, sir. I must have just looked up and seen her making her way to the back door. It couldn’t have been more than a casual glance.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Hamid Pasha. ‘Of course.’ He led the procession of three back to the dining table and sat down on his chair. ‘Please go on, memsaab. You were making lunch at ten-thirty, you said.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Durga. ‘I was making lunch and then Uday— my son—called me out to the hall to get his toy car out from under the television cabinet. I left curry on the stove and came down here’—she pointed to her right—’by this window. And I knelt and retrieved his car for him, but just when I stood up, I saw Grandmother walking along the path towards the well.’

  Hamid Pasha murmured, ‘Not towards the gate?’

  Durga frowned in thought. ‘No,’ she said decisively. ‘She had already passed the fork in the path and she was making her way to the well.’

  ‘And you did not wonder why?’

  Durga said, ‘I did, but just then the whistle blew on my rice cooker and I had to rush back to the kitchen. And then I forgot all about it, sir, until that evening—’

  ‘Tell me something, madam,’ said Nagarajan. ‘When you saw Kaveramma walk towards the well, were her steps steady or unsteady?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  Nagarajan said, ‘We think there is a possibility that the old woman may not have had her glasses on, and therefore she accidentally took the path to the well. From your memory of what you saw, do you think that was possible?’

  Durga paused and twisted her mouth thoughtfully. At length she said, ‘I suppose it is possible. It would certainly explain why she went in that direction. But surely once she realised she was on the wrong path, she would have come back? She could not have just walked into the well directly.’

  ‘Yet, that is what everyone is suggesting—an accident.’

  ‘Accident or no,’ Durga said, her eyes serene, ‘she knew where she was going. She was going there to either meet somebody or to pick up something.’

  ‘Who do you think wa
s waiting for her on the other side?’

  The woman shrugged. ‘It could have been anyone, couldn’t it? It could so easily have been Lakshman, or his mother.’

  ‘Not his father?’ Nagarajan asked in a helpful voice.

  ‘His father? Oh, Venkatram Mamayya—no, I don’t— well, it could have been him too, I suppose.’ She trailed off, then picked up her train of thought again. ‘But in that case it could have been anyone. Swamannayya, my motherin-law, Raja...’

  Hamid Pasha swayed forward. ‘Raja too?’

  ‘Oh, yes, for sure. It would have been hard for him to go all the way down to the well, but I’ve seen him move on his crutches, sir. He has got powerful hands, that man.’

  Nagarajan and Hamid Pasha exchanged a second-long glance. Then the inspector said, ‘Who else?’

  ‘Ellayya—I’ve never trusted that old man. He tells everyone what they want to hear. Or even Gauri. It could have been any of those people.’

  ‘What about your husband?’ Nagarajan asked.

  For a moment the woman held her glance. When she spoke her tone was icy. ‘My husband was at the clinic at the time, Inspector.’

  Nagarajan shrugged and smiled good-naturedly. ‘The curse of being a policeman, madam. I have to suspect everyone until I get corroboration of their stories.’

  ‘You have my corroboration that he was at the clinic.’

  Nagarajan said, still smiling, ‘With due respect, madam, you were not at the clinic with him, so you do not know for sure where he was.’

  ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘But my husband had no reason to kill her, you understand? None whatsoever.’

  ‘The question is now not one of who killed the woman, madam. It is about who she went to meet at the well.’

  Durga’s face changed momentarily, and a frown of curiosity appeared on her face. ‘You expect them to be different, then?’

  ‘Who knows? They might be different; they might be the same person. I am just thinking out loud, madam. Please, go on with your story.’

  ‘There is not much more to my story, sir. I was at home all afternoon until my mother-in-law came up and told me about what had happened.’