Inspector Ghote Breaks an Egg

by H. R. F. Keating

  PENGUIN MODERN CLASSICS

  Inspector Ghote Breaks an Egg

  H. R. F. KEATING was born at St Leonards-on-Sea, Sussex, in 1926. He went to Merchant Taylors, leaving early to work in the engineering department of the BBC. After a period of service in the army, which he describes as ‘totally undistinguished’, he went to Trinity College, Dublin, where he became a scholar in modern literature. He was also the crime fiction reviewer for The Times for fifteen years. His first novel about Inspector Ghote, The Perfect Murder, won the Crime Writers’ Association’s Gold Dagger and an Edgar Allen Poe Special Award. He lives in London with his wife, the actress Sheila Mitchell, and has three sons and a daughter.

  ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH is the author of several series of novels and is best known as the creator of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency books.

  H . R . F . KEATING

  Inspector Ghote Breaks an Egg

  Preface by ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN CLASSICS

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  First published by Collins 1970

  Published in Penguin Books 1974

  Published in Penguin Classics 2011

  Copyright © H. R. F. Keating, 1970

  Preface copyright © Alexander McCall Smith, 2011

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of both the author and the author of the preface has been asserted

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  ISBN: 978-0-14-196288-7

  Contents

  Preface by ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH

  Inspector Ghote Breaks an Egg

  Preface

  A perfectly loveable inspector

  I went to Bombay, as Mumbai then was, as an incidental literary pilgrim. I was an incidental pilgrim in the sense that I had to pass through the city on my way elsewhere, but even so I was aware from the moment my plane landed that I was on hallowed turf: I was in the city of Inspector Ganesh Ghote of the Bombay C.I.D. Others feel the same way, no doubt, when they first set foot on the pavements of Baker Street, or find themselves outside one of the houses associated with Jane Austen. Pilgrims, of course, may go to the places of their pilgrimage in awe, but must be ready for a let-down. Bombay, though, did not disappoint: there were the Ambassador cars in which Ghote might travel; there were the street characters; there were the buildings and alleyways into which some suspicious character – some goonda perhaps, a thoroughly bad hat – might vanish. The whole intriguing world of this remarkable city, so brilliantly caught in Keating’s little gems, was there for the savouring. And yet, we might remind ourselves, the first nine Inspector Ghote novels were written before the author had actually visited India.

  H. R. F. Keating began work on the Ghote novels as a deliberate attempt to give his fiction a more international tone. The Perfect Murder, the first of the series, was intended to broaden the appeal of his work, particularly in the United States. Something his earlier crime novels had failed to do, being considered ‘too British’ to appeal to American taste. And it would not have been surprising if novels set in a country the author had never visited ended up reflecting the author’s culture, rather than that of the country in which they are set. Yet in Keating’s case this did not happen. These books are not embarrassing portrayals of an idealized India; they have an authenticity that has been recognized, even in India. As such they fall into that small – very small – category of novels: those that are works of pure imagination but that nonetheless convey a valid sense of place and culture.

  It would be easy, of course, to dismiss these novels as being classic examples of post-colonial assumption of voice, and no doubt there is a body of critical writing that does just that. Such criticism, however, is not only somewhat predictable, but misses the point that an accomplished piece of fiction can perfectly easily transcend the circumstances of its creation. It does not matter who wrote it and what the author’s personal credentials are: the story can soar above all that, revealing truths about what it is to be human. So the fact that Keating, at the beginning, had no direct experience of India matters not one whit. If he could make his books feel Indian; if he could step into the shoes of an Indian detective inspector and make it sound credible, or at least highly enjoyable, then that was merely testimony to a rich and creative imagination, a tribute to his ability as a novelist. After all, historical novelists do this all the time: they write about places they have never been and cultures of which they cannot, by definition, have personal experience. If one wants the contemporary blood and sinew of Mumbai, then one can read Vikram Chandra’s magnificent epic, Sacred Games; if one wants something more picaresque, something lighter and more comic, something that has the elusive quality of fable to it, then Inspector Ghote can be called to hand.

  The real charm of the Inspector Ghote novels lies in the characters who populate them. Ghote himself is one of the great creations of detective fiction. Unlike many fictional detectives, who are often outsiders, possessed in many cases of difficult personal demons, Ghote is utterly loveable. His rank gives him some status, but not very much. He has his own office, with some personal furniture and effects, but we are always aware of his superiors, and of the barely disguised contempt that many of them have for him. In Inspector Ghote Trusts the Heart, for instance, not only is there the coldly dismissive Superintendent Karandikar, known as ‘the Tiger’, who is only too happy to belittle a mere inspector, but we also meet the Commissioner of Police himself, a being so elevated as to inspire quite understandable awe in Ghote’s breast. What visitor to India over the last few decades – although less so now – will not have caught a glance of the chauffeur-driven cream or white Ambassador cars of such personages – complete with flags and curtains to exclude the common gaze.

  Ghote, then, is the small man, the man who has made enough of himself to be given a position of responsibility, but who is always at the mercy of those more powerful than he is himself. If one were to read these books with no knowledge of India, one would conclude that it is a society of egregious inequality. And that, alas, is the reality of modern India, in spite of vastly increased wealth and the rise of a much larger middle class. Keating has an intuitive understanding of this feature of Indian society, and of the way in which the rich and powerful work. The wealthy Mr Desai, in Inspector Ghote Trusts the Heart, is typical of the rich b
usinessmen who crop up in the novels. He has made his money and is not at all apologetic about the comfort and power it brings. He is surrounded by servants, just as is Mr Lala Varde in The Perfect Murder, and these servants are treated with a haughty lack of consideration, not as people with feelings. Overstated? If one were to be tempted to say that the master–servant relationship in the Ghote novels is unrealistic, then one might simply read that remarkable fictional portrayal of exactly that issue in Aravind Adiga’s Booker Prize-winning The White Tiger. Keating, it seems, has got it spot-on.

  Ghote’s dignified acceptance of his perilous status makes us want so much for him. We want him to remain on the case when influential people further up use every weapon they possess to have him taken off. We want him to be heard when he is ignored or deliberately silenced. We want him to find domestic contentment, and we want happiness for his wife, Protima, and his son, Ved. They deserve it so much more than the spoiled and over-indulged families with whom Ghote comes into contact. The picture of the ghastly child, Haribhai Desai, in Inspector Ghote Trusts the Heart is utterly toe-curling and, one fears, very realistic. I remember once visiting a cloyingly luxurious safari lodge in East Africa and meeting fellow guests, a very rich Indian family (surely related to Keating’s Mr Desai). Their young son was with them – a pampered and overfed child dressed in a beautifully cut miniature safari suit. How the rich so obligingly set themselves up to be preserved in aspic by the novelist, and how skilfully, and with what relish, does Keating perform this task!

  But it is not just finely pitched social observation that makes these novels so good, it is also Keating’s engagement with issues of corruption and integrity. Keating has often expressed his interest in broad philosophical issues, and his writing, although entertaining and amusing, frequently engages us in an examination of how we understand the world and work within it. This, perhaps, is the single quality that gives to the Ghote novels their timelessness. They are about how the good man, the honest man – the man who is sufficiently self-aware to allow himself a lot of room for self-doubt – preserves his integrity in a world of false values, greed and rampant injustice. Ghote’s struggles, like the struggles of the powerless and downtrodden people whom he sees in his day-to-day work, are universally recognizable. In these books they are presented in such a way as to engage and amuse us; that is Keating’s skill. That is what confers on these vivid and lovely little books their status as classics of detective fiction. That is what gives these novels their lasting appeal.

  Keating’s overall contribution to crime fiction has been a major one, but we should be particularly grateful to him for what he has given us in his marvellous creation of Inspector Ganesh Ghote, Bombay C.I.D, solver of mysteries, agent of such justice as an imperfect world can muster, or expect.

  Alexander McCall Smith, 2011

  1

  Inspector Ghote nearly broke his eggs before he had been in the little town two minutes.

  He was leaving the station in a hurry, determined, despite his weariness after a long night in the train from Bombay and despite the onset of yet another heavy shower of steamy rain in this end-of-monsoon period, not to waste an unnecessary moment before seizing hold of the slippery-seeming facts of his task.

  From the moment that he had been landed with the business only the afternoon before, he had raged at the lack of anything he could get his teeth into, and now that the chance was near he was going to let nothing delay him.

  He had been cosily immersed in paperwork in the warren of Bombay C.I.D Headquarters with all the familiar objects of his stuffy little office comforting him – his desk whose every scored line and varnish whorl he knew and loved, the narrow brass tray in which he kept his pencils, the non-issue set of bamboo-edged shelves with its screwed-on plastic labels saying ‘Songs’, ‘Dance’, ‘Piano’, ‘Sacred’ and ‘Various’ and, above all, in its place of honour on top of these shelves, Hans Gross’s Criminal Investigation, mildew-stained but masterly. And then the summons had violently broken into his peace.

  First, Deputy Superintendent Samant had jerked open the door and barked at him to be ready to receive a telephone call from ‘an eminent figure in our public life’. And hardly had the DSP gone, with a parting warning that the call would mean dropping all other work for an indefinite period, coupled with a sharp request to supply him with his criminal statistics ‘without delay’, when the call from the Eminent Figure himself had come.

  The orders Ghote had received from him, though well wrapped up, were simple enough. Fifteen years ago, he had been told, the wife of an ambitious young politician in a distant town near the State border had died quite suddenly in extremely suspicious circumstances. And soon afterwards the rising politician had married the only child of the Chairman of the town’s Municipal Council, to inherit within a year a considerable fortune and, what was more important, considerable local influence. He in his turn was now Municipal Chairman and had ten thousand votes depending on his word alone.

  Very little appeared to have been done to investigate the first wife’s fatal illness at the time, the Eminent Figure had said.

  It was only when he went on to mention that this same Municipal Chairman had recently been so incredibly foolish as to abandon his long-held political allegiance that Ghote had begun to realize what lay in store for him: an investigation fifteen years old with one suspect only, a man vested with something like absolute powers in his own domain, and a result, one result only, to be obtained as quickly as possible. It was a decidedly tricky business.

  And the trickiness of the whole affair was what accounted for Ghote arriving in the little town with the eggs.

  They were a dozen fresh eggs, quite extraordinary in size, and they reposed, each preserved in a layer of smearily shining grease, in a soft cardboard box of a glaring orange colour with bold blue lettering all across it: ‘Grofat Chicken Feeds Pvt. Ltd’.

  The Eminent Figure had been responsible.

  ‘I have given some thought to the guise in which you should go about when you get there tomorrow,’ he had said. ‘It would be best for as few people as possible to know of your mission.’

  Ghote had promised his wife and small son to take them next day to see a certain smash-hit film, ‘the greatest suspense thriller the screen has ever seen – 23rd colourful week – set to haunting music’, and now he would have to catch a train before night fell.

  ‘You will go,’ the Eminent Figure had continued silkily, ‘under the appearance of a salesman, a salesman for a new chicken-feed product. The average size of the Indian egg, did you know, is disgraceful as compared with the American and the British egg. It is nothing less, indeed, than a national disaster.’

  He had left such a pause at this that Ghote had felt obliged to speak.

  ‘Yes, sir, I have no doubt.’

  ‘Now it so happens that a young nephew of mine has recently purchased a mill for the manufacture of a product guaranteed to increase the size of an egg by as much as forty per cent, and I have been able to secure for you one of the samples with which he equips his salesmen. I will have it dispatched to C.I.D Headquarters immediately. It will be exactly what you require.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Thank you.’

  Ghote had rejected the notion of explaining to the Eminent Figure that, although within a reasonable distance of Bombay there were egg farms, often run as a hobby by wealthy film-stars, in the remote part of the state to which he was being sent chickens were just one more set of scavengers feeding where they could on what they could find.

  After all, one did have a duty to look after one’s family. There could be no gainsaying that.

  But he hoped profoundly, now that he had arrived, that the disguise the bold orange box provided would be sufficient.

  In front of him as he paused in the station entrance there stretched a large area of nondescript muddy ground, diversified by huge puddles which heavy drops of rain were converting into so many miniature boiling and bubbling lakes. A big tamarind tree stood
about thirty yards away to one side with a sad-looking hut of a shop near it, now apparently deserted. To the other side, the road leading into the main part of the town began an uncertain existence. Just at the point where it finally made up its mind it would have to be a road after all there was a small tamarind tree and under its doubtful shelter two tongas waited, the tonga-wallas hunched over their dashboards looking down at ribby horses with coloured head-plumes drooping sadly in the damp and the heat.

  Ghote fixed his eyes on them and prepared to run across and take the first that offered.

  And, at the very moment he started out, it happened. A miserable-looking figure whom he had scarcely noticed crouching beside him in the station entrance took it into its head to go forth into the world at that same instant, and Ghote tripped near-sprawlingly over a foot or a knee or an elbow. For a second he skeltered over the much-trodden muddy ground outside the station entrance, with the thought vivid in his mind just how furious the Eminent Figure would be if it ever came out that a box of extra large eggs prominently labelled with the name of his nephew’s firm had been smashed to sticky fragments within minutes of their arrival at their destination.

  In the end he saved them and stood, his heart thudding and the heavy rain splashing copiously over him, trying to regain the determined calm he had possessed only moments before.

  He turned to see what or when or whom it was that he had stumbled over.

  It was an old woman, a hopeless wretched outcaste creature, dressed in a sari that must once have been gaudy indeed but was now through years of wear reduced to the drabness of dust. She was scrabbling to her feet, a look of venomous rage on her scimitar-nosed face with its scattering of thick curly grey hairs randomly sprouting.

  She must have been travelling on the train, Ghote thought.

  All her possessions were with her, half in an enormous glass jar – which once, according to its still intact label, had contained ‘Ovax the Egg Drink of the Night’ – and half in an earthenware pot that had been tipped over by the collision between them and had had most of its contents scattered over the slimy, foot-trodden mud.