‘Your mother-in-law, madam,’ asked Nagarajan, ‘did she not spend the afternoon up here sleeping?’
Durga lapsed into thought. ‘She may have been. She was playing chess with Uday in the morning, but then he fell asleep, so she may have gone to sleep herself.’
‘You didn’t see her?’
‘No, sir, I had a bit to eat at lunch and went to sleep myself. I woke up only at two-thirty or so, when Gauri came up to do my clothes. By then my mother-in-law had left.’
‘When was the last time that afternoon that you actually saw her?’
‘When I was walking back to the kitchen after I saw Grandmother walk to the well. I peeped into the room they were playing chess in.’
‘You did not invite your mother-in-law to lunch?’
Durga shook her head. ‘No, sir, she does not eat during the day.’
‘So theoretically speaking, she could have stolen out of the house without you realising it.’
‘Oh yes, most definitely.’
‘But then,’ said Nagarajan, ‘maybe she was sleeping and you stole out’.
She took it with equanimity. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That is also possible.’
Nagarajan stood up and gave her a curt nod. ‘Thank you for your time, madam. You have been most helpful.’ And with Hamid Pasha limping in tow, he stalked out of the room.
10
THEY WALKED ALONG the balcony to the other wing of the house, past the central landing, and Hamid Pasha said, ‘I wonder who that man was—do you not, miyan?’
‘Which man?’
‘Ah, so you did not notice. He was standing by the side gate when the lady was showing us her kitchen. I dare say the lady saw him too, and gestured to him to go away.’
‘I saw nothing.’
‘Of course, miyan. She was subtle. Did you not notice how quick she was in shutting the window of the kitchen? I managed to get a peek out of it just before she shut it.’
Nagarajan said, ‘Then why are we up here? We should be down there. He might still be around.’
Hamid Pasha shook his head impatiently. ‘No, miyan! You will only scare him off. Let us, for the moment, just observe. Let us keep in mind that the doctor’s wife may or may not be seeing a young man when her husband is away.’
‘What was he like, this man?’
‘Hain? He was too far away, but he was tall—and dark—and here we have come to Master Venkataramana’s part of the dwelling. Knock, will you, miyan?’
Nagarajan did. A schoolmasterly man opened the door. Thick, black, square glasses, a trimmed, well-taken-care-of moustache, a light kurta and pyjama, and an old, round, white watch. The only incongruities in a scholarly man lay on the man’s left hand, two fingers of which sported emeralds of slightly differing shades of green.
‘Oh,’ the man said, ‘please come in. Kamala was telling me you were here, but I did not think you would like to talk to us again.’
Hamid Pasha almost forced his way into the room ahead of the Inspector, and waved his arm towards a side door. ‘Your wife is in the kitchen, I see, miyan. Shall we use this room to talk in for a little while?’
‘O—of course. Of course.’
Hamid Pasha waited until the door had closed, and asked in a straightforward, even abrupt way, ‘Do you see a lot of strangers around the place, miyan?’
Venkataramana adjusted his glasses and lowered his head. ‘Well—I would not say “strangers”... ‘
‘People you do not know?’
‘Yes,’ said Venkataramana, looking around. ‘I am sorry there is nothing in this room for you to sit on—yes, I— well, it is a big family, you know.’
Hamid Pasha glanced at the computer desk, the solitary chair pushed in against it, and the shelves of legal books that lined the wall opposite. Nagarajan remembered Venkataramana’s younger son was a lawyer. This must be his room, then.
Hamid Pasha was saying, ‘So you do not mind seeing people you do not know in this area?’
Venkataramana looked distinctly inconvenienced. ‘Oh, sir, it is not as bad as you make it sound. We know the man. We see him drifting around the place every now and then. But he never comes into the house, I must give her that.’
‘Her, miyan?’
‘Oh—yes—yes—I meant Durga. She makes sure she goes out and meets him. He never comes past the gates—always stays outside. And there is only one other person that comes now and again—Gauri’s sister, I think it is.’
‘Ah?’
Venkataramana looked up to face Hamid Pasha. ‘She comes every now and then—I don’t know exactly when— but now and then I see her walking around with the broom in her hand—she looks a lot like Gauri—must be her twin or something.’
Hamid Pasha asked, ‘Has she ever come to work in your house, this sister of Gauri’s?’
‘Oh, no, she hasn’t. I have only seen her in the compound once or twice—let me see, yes, three times in all. She walks around the place, apparently on some errand or the other, and covers her head with her pallu like old-fashioned women do, you know? She is not harmful at all, that one; comes once every often to ease the burden on Gauri, I expect.’
‘Very interesting,’ Hamid Pasha observed.
‘Not very.’ Venkataramana broke into a nervous smile, and Nagarajan could now see a glimpse of the brotherhood this man shared with Swami. The way the cheekbones lifted, and the way lines appeared on his forehead when he smiled, brought to mind, if fleetingly, an image of Swami saab, smiling.
‘I bring my own friends here now and then,’ he said. ‘I suppose they seem like strangers to the rest of the people in my family.’
‘What I think is interesting, miyan, is that not one person has alluded to Gauri’s sister so far—none but you.’
‘Oh, she might be her sister, she might not be. I really don’t know. I am just guessing. I don’t really take much interest in what happens around the house, sir.’
‘Ah, indeed. Then what do you take an interest in?’
There was a pause, and a bit of fidgeting. ‘I have my land to take care of. It sometimes requires me to go away for days on end. I am not around much to notice anything, you know. My wife will be a much better reporter of what is going on here because she stays around the house, literally, all day, every day.’
‘You have land in which village, miyan?’
‘Er—It is called Puthoor, forty or so kilometres from here.’
‘And you cultivate it?’
Venkataramana nodded and said, ‘We are doing cotton this year.’
‘Ah, and how goes the cultivation? Do you get by well enough?’
‘Well enough, sir. I don’t make crores, but I do well enough to support my family.’ He looked around the room. ‘And since I don’t have to pay for my accommodation, it’s easier to save money.’
‘No doubt.’ Hamid Pasha paused, turned to Inspector Nagarajan, and inclined his head, as if to say, ‘All yours’.
Inspector Nagarajan said to Venkataramana, ‘Sir, we would like to hear more about what happened on the day your mother died—what you did, where you went, that sort of thing—as closely as you can remember.’
Venkataramana said in a hollow voice, ‘There is not much to remember. I—I was in my room the whole afternoon. I went to Puthoor in the morning, and I returned around lunchtime—saw the boy working on the compound wall—had lunch and retired to my room.’
‘Hai Allah,’ said Hamid Pasha, to no one in particular, ‘another sleeping man’.
‘Er—I was not sleeping, sir. I had some paperwork to attend to. There is some—er—complication with the land I own.’
‘And when did you go into your room, exactly?’ Nagarajan asked.
‘Must have been after twelve but before twelve-thirty. I returned home around noon, and I stopped at the gate for a little while to see how the boy was getting on.’
‘And how was he getting on?’ Hamid Pasha asked, smiling faintly.
Venkataramana shrugged. ‘He was doing okay, I
suppose. It is not that hard a job, sir. I am not sure why my brother had to pay good money to get that wall repaired. Ellayya would have done it for an extra ten rupees or so. Why, even Lakshman or Praveen—hell, even I—could have done it quite easily.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Well—er—I suppose the important thing is getting the job done.’
‘So you came back home at noon,’ Nagarajan said, ‘and at what time were you up for lunch?’
‘Couldn’t have been much longer than fifteen minutes later, so, around twelve-fifteen. And lunch was served almost immediately. I could hear Gauri in the balcony washing clothes.’
Hamid Pasha’s eyes darted quickly to Nagarajan, who wrote down the time with a little blue star next to it.
‘Or it could have been—er—her sister,’ Venkataramana said.
‘And after lunch you went to your room?’
‘Yes, straight after lunch. We have a little study adjoining our bedroom where I usually go when I need some quiet. People don’t usually disturb me there.’
Nagarajan wondered if anyone in the family ‘disturbed’ Venkataramana at any time, anywhere. He looked like a man who had been so thoroughly ignored all his life that he had long gotten used to it. He was the middle child, Nagarajan recalled. He was probably ignored by his mother too; did it ever make him resentful? Was there cold blood somewhere beneath the dithering exterior?
Out loud, he asked, ‘And you stayed in your room until—when?’
‘Until—er—the very end. Prameela was here in the evening—and she was calm as ever. Prameela never gets excited, you know—well, not when the situation merits excitement. She gets excited over the little things, though, when nobody around her is—you know, one of those women—but, er—you asked me how long I was in the room until—yes, must have been six or even later than six.’
‘You were in the room for close on five hours?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s an awfully long time to spend on your papers.’
Venkataramana smiled. ‘It was an awfully complex set of documents.’
‘Can anyone verify that you were indeed in your room the whole time?’
‘Of course,’ said Venkataramana immediately, and then paused. ‘I was going to say my wife, but you probably meant somebody other than my wife. Yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘Gauri was here when I went into the room, so she should be able to verify that. However I do not know how long she was around. Maybe you can ask her.’
‘Anyone else?’
Venkataramana thought for a minute. ‘Lakshman was in the house. But I suppose his evidence won’t count either.’
Hamid Pasha said smoothly, ‘It is not that it will not count, miyan, but shall we say that we will take whatever he tells us about your whereabouts with a certain amount of salt?’
A strange sound came out of Venkataramana then; something like a scoff. ‘I doubt Lakshman would say anything to protect me, sir,’ he said. ‘So I might insist on you taking his words with salt.’
Nagarajan heard the pain in his voice now. So he had been a lonely child, probably a lonely teenager; a sensitive soul—men such as he were always sensitive—and most likely a doting but undemonstrative father. And such men always had wives who think they are useless and sons that pretended they did not exist. Even without meeting them, Nagarajan could guess what Kamala and Lakshman would be like. For a second or two, he found himself pitying Venkataramana.
Not too much pity, though, he thought, stopping himself. He knew that such sensitive, aching men were also unpredictable in thought and action. They had their own sense of justice, and their own way of imparting it upon others.
Hamid Pasha was asking the man, ‘Indeed? That is most interesting.’
‘Er—perhaps not, sir. Fathers and sons don’t get along very well these days.’
‘Ah, miyan, you are so right. You are so right.’
Nagarajan said, ‘What happened when your sister visited you in the evening, sir?’
‘I heard her voice downstairs and I came out of my room. Kamala sounded quite excited—I would not say griefstricken, but excited—and I caught some words— ’Mother’, ‘wet’, ‘Praveen’, ‘downstairs’—funny, I did not hear the word ‘dead’ but somehow I knew that Mother was. I called to Kamala, saying I would be right down, and I went back inside to dress—I—I did not know what I was doing. But I somehow thought I had to be well-dressed—I put on a fresh pair of pants and went downstairs.
‘They were all there; Prameela, Karuna, Kamala— Lakshman had come down before me, so he was standing there, hands folded. Praveen was by the body and he was weeping. Raja was crawling from his room towards the body yelling some abuses at Mother—he was yelling at her to give him some food or something—and Swami was there, standing and looking into the distance, as he does. I think all of us were affected in some way or the other. We were all in shock—except Prameela—maybe she was in a shock of her own. But she seemed perfectly normal; perfectly in control...’
He had left the words hanging, and Nagarajan expected more words to come tumbling out, but none did. The three of them stood in silence, and Nagarajan saw that the man’s face was quite serene though his speech reminded him of one of those keyed-up toy clowns.
Hamid Pasha asked him, very softly, ‘And what did you do then?’
‘I don’t remember, sir. I must have sat down and I must have wept. I don’t really remember. Maybe it is one of those things—the mind knows some things are best forgotten—maybe this is one of those things.’
There was a recurrence of silence at that, and Nagarajan saw that Hamid Pasha was giving Venkataramana a little time to ruminate upon his thoughts. Presently he asked, ‘You do not think it is possible that your mother was killed, miyan?’
Again that scoff-like sound came from Venkataramana. ‘Do I not think it is possible? I know for sure that she has been killed, man! The woman hated the water!’
‘And who do you think would want to kill her like that?’
Venkataramana broke into a laugh, which started soundlessly, just as a shaking of his shoulders, but then developed into a series of guttural sounds that varied from snorts and sighs to grunts and coughs. In the midst of it he removed his glasses with great difficulty and dried his eyes of tears. Whether they were induced by his laughter or not, Nagarajan could not guess.
At length, the attack subsided, little by little, and Venkataramana returned to his over-serious, hesitant self. ‘It is funny you should ask that,’ he said, ‘because it is only after you have asked me that question did I realise I asked myself the same question many times over the last few days.’
‘And do you know the answer?’
‘Oh yes,’ he said simply. ‘My wife.’ He looked from one to the other, as if expecting a response, and when he got none, he shrugged. ‘Why hide something that the whole town knows? If you don’t hear it from me you will hear it from someone else.’
Nagarajan was about to say that they had heard it from someone else, but something in Hamid Pasha’s forbidding glance stopped him. He kept silent.
Venkataramana went on. ‘It is the sort of resentment that builds over time, sir. Kamala has lived her whole married life in the expectation of money to come from Mother. Mother was already quite frail when we got married, you see. There was no reason to imagine she would live as long as she did—and some would say Kamala only married me because of my mother’s wealth. I daresay she had dreams of being a queen; and she sowed those dreams in Lakshman too...’ His voice trailed off, and he slipped into a reverie.
‘He—he never studied—why would he, with his mother dreaming her dreams out loud, declaring that we were all just about to get wealthy beyond measure? Thank God, Praveen did not turn out that way—he—er—he had always looked up to Kotesh, and Kotesh is the most educated in the family—he is the pride of our family, in fact—er—he is someone who is carrying on the legacy of Dasaratha Rama Rao.’
‘
You were telling us about your wife, miyan?’
‘Yes, well, if you ask me who the person is who most wanted my mother dead, I will have to say my wife. I remember the day Prameela came up to tell us; I could see the muscles of her face straining, sir. She wanted to cry out and weep out of relief. There was absolutely no sign of grief on her face—after all that my mother had done for her—’
‘Did your wife look after her well, the old lady?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Venkataramana, nodding forcefully. ‘She is the only daughter-in-law of the family, after all. Swami and Raja—er—did not get married. Kamala got all the attention, and good attention too. Maybe I should have done something about that—maybe I should have stopped it in some way—be a little authoritative—maybe she got the feeling in those early days of marriage that things were going to be quite easy for her.’
Nagarajan heard the note of defeat in the man’s voice, and thought it typical. Venkataramana was not the kind of man to stamp his authority on anything or anybody. He was the kind of man that got stamped upon—no, allowed himself to get stamped upon—and then later looked back and wondered whether he had been too lenient. This was a house ruled by women, he thought suddenly, thinking of Kauveramma, Prameela, Karuna, Durga, and now hearing of Kamala; and contrasting that with the weak, ineffectual lives of the men—Swami, Raja, Venkataramana—and yes, even Koteshwar Rao to an extent. It was the way of the house, the way of the family, to let women rule, and if anyone was going to change that, it was definitely not going to be Venkataramana, however much he wished he could.
‘God knows how many temples she has visited in the last thirty years, sir,’ Venkataraman said, smiling. ‘She tells me she is praying for me and for the boys, but I know what else she has been praying for.’ His mouth twitched, and the lines of his jaw hardened. ‘Her prayers have now been answered.’ And just as suddenly his voice mellowed, and he looked up at them with a beseeching glance. ‘Tell me, sir: is there anything more wretched than rejoicing at another person’s death?’
Hamid Pasha protruded his lips and scratched his beard. He appeared to be deep in thought, and gave no indication of having heard the man’s question. Nagarajan said hurriedly, ‘Do you have anything in the way of evidence to suggest that it was your wife that killed her?’
Banquet on the Dead Page 10
