Inspector Ghote Breaks an Egg

by H. R. F. Keating

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I could see from the moment I entered your station here that there was no question of that sort of thing.’

  The superintendent bestowed on his braided cap a little tap of congratulation.

  ‘However,’ he said, ‘grave problems nevertheless exist. Picture this town, my dear Inspector. We are a little society, in many ways cut off from everywhere else. We have our workers in our cotton mills and our ginning factories, etcetera. And we have our higher reaches of society. Our professional men, our men of wealth. But – and this is my point, my dear Inspector – there are not so many of us here.’

  ‘And so you all know each other well?’ Ghote said.

  The superintendent wagged his head in vigorous agreement.

  ‘Precisely, precisely. That is exactly it.’

  His long fingers stretched out towards the cap again, but desisted inches away.

  ‘So, you see,’ he went on, ‘it was not easy for me to conduct an investigation myself into a possible crime committed by the leading figure in the little group to which I belong, as it was not easy for my predecessor fifteen years ago – now dead and gone, poor fellow.’

  He raised a large palm.

  ‘Not that I myself have flinched from carrying out inquiries since they had to be made,’ he said. ‘But where could I get? I could question the person we are talking of, certainly. Most rigorously I could question. But I would get nowhere, and then I would need to put questions also to the people he knows. How about that, eh?’

  ‘You would be up against great difficulties questioning your own friends, and they would do their best to hinder you from making things difficult for their friend,’ Ghote said.

  ‘I could not have put it better myself, Inspector.’

  Superintendent Chavan puffed out a long sigh.

  ‘So that is why I am glad you are able to conduct the investigation henceforth,’ he said. ‘Frankly, I felt myself tied at every turn.’

  Ghote wondered, too, how much the superintendent had felt himself restrained by the presence of the fasting holy man. But he foresaw decided difficulties in broaching such a subject.

  ‘It is not going to be easy work for me,’ he began tentatively.

  ‘No, my dear Inspector, I know well that it is not. But rest assured of one thing, any assistance I can give as one police officer to another I will give to my level best.’

  Ghote straightened his shoulders and sat more upright.

  Perhaps he would wait to find out for himself just how effective the holy man’s crusade was being before he tried to mention the matter. The sense of comradeship he felt with the superintendent was not lightly to be broken.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘there is much you could do. I was giving the matter consideration in the train last night. I did not sleep very well.’

  ‘And what is this we can do?’ Superintendent Chavan said, reaching out to his cap again.

  ‘There must be a Case Diary of the matter from fifteen years ago,’ Ghote replied. ‘Can you find that for me? And there would be other material also, reports of interviews, a carbon copy of the First Information Report and much else.’

  ‘But these are reports only of what was done fifteen years ago,’ the superintendent objected.

  And Ghote felt a little spurt of triumph. Here was confirmation that Bombay experience was worth something. No one here had conceived of the possibilities that might lie in these old papers but he was certain he would not get to the end of them without finding something of use.

  ‘I would need to read them all over, every single one,’ he said firmly. ‘A really thorough check would almost certainly reveal something that has been missed.’

  The superintendent looked more than a little crestfallen.

  ‘I can see this was a matter I ought to have had put in hand already,’ he said. ‘But I will make certain now that every scrap of paper in connection with the case is ready for you first thing tomorrow.’

  ‘No,’ said Ghote.

  ‘No?’

  ‘I will begin work now,’ Ghote said, rising to his feet.

  ‘But, my dear Inspector, already you have said that you slept little in the train last night. A good hearty meal, an hour or two of rest, and then perhaps a start could be made today.’

  ‘No,’ said Ghote obstinately. ‘I wish to begin at once.’

  The superintendent sighed and picked his cap up off the desk. He put it on and went over to a mirror hanging by the door to make sure it was squarely on his head.

  ‘Very well, my dear fellow,’ he said. ‘If you are insisting I will see what can be done. But we are faced with a problem here, I do not mind telling.’

  ‘What is this?’ Ghote asked, with some sharpness.

  ‘It is a question of accommodation, my dear fellow. Tomorrow by a stroke of good luck my Inspector Popatkar goes on leave, and then you are welcome to his office. But it would be quite unfair to make him move out today. He is up to his ears in clearing up. I insist always, you know, that no one goes on leave till he can show me a clear desk.’

  ‘Very good,’ Ghote said. ‘But a question of office accommodation need not stop me getting down to work. Are all your cells full?’

  ‘Cells? Cells?’

  For a moment it sounded as if the superintendent had not the least idea what a cell was. Then enlightenment broke.

  ‘But, my dear Inspector, you cannot work in a cell.’

  ‘Why not?’ Ghote asked. ‘Are they in dirty condition?’

  ‘Certainly not.’

  The superintendent was shocked.

  ‘My dear Inspector, you could eat a meal off the floor in any cell in this building with prisoners in it or not, I promise you that.’

  ‘Then shall we go and select one as office for me?’ Ghote said. ‘And perhaps you could see that a stronger than regulation electric light bulb is found for it. I expect I shall be working all night.’

  ‘All night?’ the superintendent echoed hollowly. ‘My dear fellow … ’

  He took off his cap and clutched hard at it with both hands as if he badly needed the reassurance of knowing that it existed in a world gone suddenly somewhat mad.

  *

  Ghote did not in fact spend all the rest of that day and the night that followed at work on the pile of papers that, item by item, had been brought to the cell – an isolated one used for solitary confinement which the superintendent had found for him. The superintendent, once he had been put on the right path, was certainly unflagging and his searching constables brought in not only the Case Diary and the copy of the First Information Report, but in addition countless curling and crumpled official forms that had been issued in connection with the fifteen-year-old case and dozens of dog-eared copies of the lengthy depositions that had been taken from various possible witnesses like the servants at Vinayak Savarkar’s former home. Then there were such things as the report of the town’s pathologist on the steps that had been taken with the body of the deceased and the voluminous, and ill-ordered, records of the Coroner’s Committee that had deliberated the matter from its origins to a final permission for the body to be burned ‘according to Hindu rites’.

  So Ghote had spent hours pondering the significance of such things as the quantity of lime pickle eaten by the dead woman shortly before her demise, and what weight to put on a remark doubtfully alleged to have been made to Vinayak Savarkar by his now long since dead father-in-law, the former Municipal Chairman, regretting that he was already married and could not become his heir. Or there was the matter of why Vinayak Savarkar had suddenly visited Bombay shortly before his wife had been taken so unexpectedly ill. These and a hundred and one other things preoccupied him.

  But by about three a.m. that night, after having had only two short breaks for meals, he had been so gummy-eyed with tiredness that he had simply lain down flat on the bare wooden bench that ran along one wall of the cell and had slept.

  He would have abandoned his task earlier, in fact, had it not been for t
he workings of his conscience. Because it had not been only his determination to outwit the Municipal Chairman by the sheer violence of his attack that had provoked his announcement that he was not going to sleep until he had read through every sheet of paper that the case had given rise to. There had also been the fact that he was most unwilling to spend the night in the place where he had been instructed to find a bed.

  The Eminent Figure who had so coldly given him his orders over the telephone in Bombay had, besides arranging that by way of disguise he would be a walking advertisement for a family concern, also told him what arrangements he ought to make for his stay in the town.

  ‘You must take a bed in the retiring-room at the station,’ that naggingly clear voice had said.

  Unthinkingly Ghote had objected.

  ‘But, sir, it is forbidden for people who are not bona fide travellers on the railway system to make use of such places.’

  ‘It is an excellent retiring-room,’ the voice had continued as if he himself had never spoken. ‘You will be extremely comfortable there, and your expenses will not be a great charge on public funds.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘I myself spent several nights there when I was in the area during the election campaign. I can thoroughly recommend it.’

  ‘Very well, sir.’

  Ghote had known he ought to have refused. If a police officer was not going to obey the rules, who else would? He felt he ought to have risked the violent denunciation from the Eminent Figure that a stand on this issue might provoke.

  And he had shirked it. He had allowed the comforting little thought that he could always find a hotel room for himself when he got to the town to act as a sop to his conscience.

  ‘There will be another advantage also,’ the clear voice had added. ‘I shall know where to find you if I have to get in touch during the night hours.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  But here at the police-station the chance of putting off the actual illegal act anyhow for one night had seemed too good to miss. And now overwhelming tiredness after the hard day’s work and the poor night’s rest in the train had taken their toll and Ghote had slept flat on his back on the prisoner’s bench.

  He had however been awakened after less than a couple of hours by a particularly violent shower beating down on the tin roof of a small lean-to shed in the yard just outside the little open barred window of the cell. And after a refreshing sluice-down with a bucket of water he had set to work again.

  By seven o’clock he had mastered the bulk of material the affair had generated. It had seemed at times that the now deceased District Superintendent of Police fifteen long years before had made up his mind to compensate for an evident determination not to get anywhere with the matter by the quantity of paper he had caused to be amassed. But his very protective industry had undone him: out of it Ghote was certain that he had now obtained at least two lines that even after this lapse of time ought to yield results.

  He decided that the moment had come, early in the day though it was, to make a telephone call to Bombay. The Eminent Figure had been most insistent on being kept in touch with every development. Now there was something to tell him.

  After some thought about where it would be safest to make this tricky call from he fixed on Inspector Popatkar’s now meticulously cleared-up office. Since in all probability every call from the town to Bombay would be monitored by some hireling of the Municipal Chairman’s in the telephone exchange, he reasoned, it did not greatly matter where he set himself up and in the inspector’s little room he could at least have privacy.

  So sitting on the inspector’s hard wooden armchair and confronting a large wall chart headed ‘Pickpocketing Offences’, he asked for the number of the Eminent Figure’s private residence.

  It took a long time for the connection to be made. Ghote registered that this could be because someone at the exchange was alerting somebody else who had been detailed to listen in on the call, or it could be only the customary delay all calls were subject to.

  But at last the number was answered, and almost as soon as Ghote had said guardedly to the servant who had taken the call that ‘a person’ speaking from his present whereabouts wished to talk with his master the familiar over-precise voice was in his ear once more.

  ‘This is a very early call, Inspec –’

  Ghote interrupted brutally.

  ‘Excuse me, sir, but I consider no names ought to be employed on an open line.’

  ‘No names?’ the voice said querulously.

  ‘Sir, it is possible that someone at the exchange may be listening, and this is confidential matter.’

  There came a series of crackingly loud clicks in the earpiece. Ghote briefly considered their significance, but decided that they could mean anything. Now he was able to hear the voice at the far end once again.

  ‘ … must impress upon you the absolute need to speak in the most general terms.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Well, have you got enough evid – Have you got that which I asked you to acquire?’

  ‘I have some useful lines to pursue, sir.’

  ‘Good, good. What are they?’

  ‘I have seen a great number of documents, sir. I have been up all night studying, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Well, well, what is it you have learnt?’

  The voice was impatient.

  Ghote resumed with care.

  ‘There is first of all, sir, one serious omission. Certain objects should have been dispatched to a certain official in Bombay. I can find no receipt from him for their arrival, although there is an official form for such transactions, and neither can I –’

  ‘Inspector, Inspector. I cannot understand a single word of all this rigmarole. What object is this? Who should have given a receipt for them? Is this some piece of culpable negligence? Could we bring a charge –’

  ‘Sir,’ Ghote broke in, desperate protest allowing all the outrage he felt to enter uninhibitedly into his voice.

  He thought like lightning.

  ‘As regards charges, sir,’ he said with deliberate slowness, ‘I think that an account should be rendered in the ordinary course of business. A sum of about Rupees 20 should be in order.’

  ‘Rupees 20? What Rupees 20 is this? Do you think I want the fellow fined a miserable Rupees 20, Inspector?’

  Ghote gave up.

  ‘It is the organs of the deceased, sir,’ he said as rapidly as he could. ‘They appear never to have been sent to the Chemical Examiner in Bombay. If this is so it is greatly significant, I believe. Why should they have been withheld if there was nothing to fear?’

  ‘Nothing to fear, man? Of course there was something to fear.’

  The outrage in the Eminent Figure’s tones was only a little marred by a single loud pinging click from somewhere on the line. Ghote decided that this really was some listener being connected to the conversation. It was probably the Municipal Chairman himself.

  ‘Are you there?’ said the querulous voice.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Then I repeat, Inspector, you are not trying to tell me, are you, that the fellow did not murder his wife?’

  3

  Ghote almost expected to hear the voice of the Municipal Chairman himself commenting sharply on this outrageously explicit statement that had just been made at the far end of the line. But no sound came.

  Then the querulous voice resumed once more.

  ‘And is this business of the missing organs the full extent of your discoveries, Inspector?’

  ‘No, sir,’ said Ghote grimly. ‘There are a number of people I should like to interview also.’

  ‘Who, man? Who?’

  ‘I think it is better not to give names, sir.’

  There was a long icy pause at the other end. During it a tiny voice could just be heard on another line talking rapidly in Marathi, a woman who seemed angry over something.

  Then the Eminent Figure spoke again.

  ‘Perhaps y
ou are right, Mr Chaudhuri,’ it said carefully.

  Mr Chaudhuri? Who did the old fool think –

  Then light dawned. But it was a bit late to start playing games like that now.

  ‘Yes,’ Ghote said slowly and clearly. ‘I always feel, sir, that in a commercial matter of this sort the utmost discretion is necessary.’

  ‘Yes, yes, Mr Chaudhuri. The utmost discretion.’

  And the old fool, chuckling with enjoyment, rang off.

  Ghote found that large drops of sweat were standing on his forehead. Outside he could see that another heavy shower had begun. He got up and went out towards the outer office. He felt the need for a large cup of coffee.

  But this was something he was destined not to get.

  Hardly had he entered the front office than the tall heavy figure of Superintendent Chavan came in through the outer doors wearing a uniform more dazzlingly ironed, if possible, than that of the day before.

  There was an immense flurry of heel-crashing as the three constables on duty greeted him with vibrating salutes.

  He acknowledged them smartly if less noisily, and then turned to Ghote.

  ‘Good morning, my dear Inspector. I see that you have kept your promise of being up and about at this hour. I came in to see if there was anything you wanted. Inspector Popatkar’s office should be at your disposal now.’

  ‘It is indeed, sir,’ Ghote answered. ‘Perhaps you would care to step in there for a moment to hear how matters have gone.’

  He retraced his steps to the office ahead of the superintendent, unlocked its carefully closed door on which already a card bearing his name had been inserted in the brass holder, and returned to the file-laden desk.

  ‘Well, sir,’ he said, ‘certain lines of inquiry do appear to be open.’

  ‘Good, good. What have you found?’

  ‘First of all, sir, that the organs removed at the post-mortem do not appear to have been sent to the Chemical Examiner in Bombay. There is no report from him, and not even a returned receipt Form J stroke 804.’

  The superintendent’s eyes shone.

  ‘It looks very much then, Inspector, as if there is something to suspect. And that someone also has been wilfully irresponsible. Of course, the onward transmission of the organs is not a matter for the police, as you know.’