Inspector Ghote Breaks an Egg

by H. R. F. Keating

  For a little while Ghote nurtured the thought of slipping out of the window, lurking among the branches of the margosa tree, finding out somehow where the servants’ quarter was and then making a foray into it and getting hold of the old blind nurse. It was, after all, not impossible that she knew something about what had taken place in the Chairman’s first home on that day fifteen years before when Mrs Sarojini Savarkar had suddenly died in pain. Perhaps she would not have anything amounting to proof of the Chairman’s guilt. If she had, she would no longer be anywhere within reach at all, that was certain. But she might still know something that would give a pointer to something else. Probably it was for this very reason that she had been introduced into an already servant-crammed house and had been kept on there, blind and useless and complaining, all this time.

  But the practical difficulties of getting to see her at this moment were really too great. Ghote got up and began walking up and down, through the patch of weak orangey light, into the darkness, turn, through the patch of light, into the other area of darkness, turn and back.

  When at last he permitted himself one more look at his watch he realized that so much time had passed that there was a danger that in the middle of his interview with the Chairman, if he ever got it, Superintendent Chavan would come blundering in, intent on rescuing his made-off-with police colleague. He must telephone him at once.

  And, he thought with a little puff of rosy pleasure, here was an excellent reason for leaving this terrible room.

  He went over and opened the door briskly. He could see no one. Where would the telephone be? Would there be two or more in this big house?

  He set off, jaunty as a schoolboy with an unexpected day’s holiday, down the corridor in the direction of the entrance hall.

  And, as he stepped clear of the end of the passageway, a voice spoke sharply, accusingly, at his elbow.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  A long pause and then ‘Sahib, please.’

  It was the head bearer.

  Ghote reflected that he would not have got far if he had attempted to contact Sarojini Savarkar’s old nurse.

  ‘I am looking for a telephone,’ he said. ‘I did not expect to be here this long and I told my colleagues at the police-station that if I did not return they should come to find out where I was.’

  No harm, he thought, in letting this fellow know he had taken his precautions, And, it seemed, this put a little respect into him too, because he answered in a plainly more subdued manner.

  ‘There is only one telephone, sahib. It is in the hall. Be so good as to follow me.’

  Ghote went with him to the black-and-white chequered hall, where Moti indicated the telephone standing on a small dark wood table inlaid with ivory. Ghote picked up the receiver. He noticed that Moti had made no attempt even to move a little out of hearing. He got hold of the police-station.

  ‘Please inform Superintendent Chavan that my interview with Mr Savarkar has been delayed,’ he said. ‘Please tell that I do not know how late I shall be returning.’

  He managed to inject a satisfactory degree of bitterness into these last words and laid the receiver down again feeling decidedly better.

  Silently Moti led him back to the little waiting-room. And once again he sat for as long as he could endure on the yellow sofa. Then he paced, endlessly it seemed, in and out of the patch of orangey light once more. Finally in an excess of boredom he even explored the almirah with the sagging door.

  It contained nothing but a Teddy-bear with a torn ear, doubtless left there by the unlikely offspring of the Chairman and his ugly wife.

  It was more than an hour later that Moti appeared again.

  ‘Mr Savakar will see you now, sahib,’ he said.

  9

  The room in which Vinayak Savarkar received Inspector Ghote was on the first floor of the big house. It was evidently the office he used when he worked at home, a big heavily furnished room with a long balcony of intricately carved wood outside, visible to Ghote through the uncurtained windows against the dark backdrop of the night.

  The Municipal Chairman himself sat, teeth clamped on a long thin cigar, at a large desk, on which there were a few papers, a large silver tray containing an array of sweetmeats, a silver cigar box and a big glass ashtray half full of squashed and mangled butts as well as an inlaid box containing all the equipment necessary for making luscious and expensive paans – though when he would find time to chew one of these what with his cigars and his sweetmeats Ghote could not imagine.

  ‘Sit, sit, Inspector,’ the Chairman said as Ghote was ushered in.

  Ghote looked round about. In the immediate vicinity of the desk there was only one low cane-work stool. He glanced backwards to see if there was a chair he could boldly march over and collect. The only other seats in the room were great heavy leather armchairs, all far away.

  ‘I prefer to stand,’ he said.

  ‘Sit, Inspector, sit when I say.’

  Ghote decided that, rather than find himself in an argument over a triviality, he would sit. He lowered himself on to the drum-shaped stool. It was a long way down and his head when he was seated at last seemed to come only just to the top of the Chairman’s desk so that he was forced almost to crick his neck even in order to be able to look the Chairman full in his birth-marked, teeth-flashing face.

  ‘Mr Savarkar,’ he said sharply, ‘you know why I am here.’

  ‘No,’ the Chairman said, leaning back suddenly in the leather-padded chair of his desk. ‘No, I do not know.’

  Ghote fought back his anger.

  ‘When I met you in your car two days ago,’ he said, ‘you knew well.’

  The Chairman, his cigar back again between his teeth, said something in such a mumbled way that Ghote could not be sure what the words were.

  ‘What was that, Mr Savarkar?’ he asked tartly.

  Now the cigar came out.

  ‘I am saying you never met me in my car.’

  ‘But I did. You know that is so.’

  ‘It is not so.’

  ‘But your driver, he was there. The tongawalla was there. They were witnesses to that discussion.’

  ‘You may ask my driver, Inspector. You may ask the tongawalla also. Ask all you want. They will tell that that talk never took place.’

  Ghote realized he had to concede defeat.

  ‘Very well,’ he resumed, ‘let me tell you that I am here to investigate the death of your late wife, Sarojini. And that I wish to question you with regard to the circumstances of that death.’

  ‘But that is fifteen years ago. What should I remember?’

  The cigar was removed again. The crocodile teeth flashed.

  ‘Even after fifteen years have passed,’ Ghote said, ‘you must remember the way in which your wife died.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ the Chairman said with sudden solemnity. ‘That I remember. It was so sudden. She was in agony, poor woman. It was bad food she ate, you know.’

  ‘The cause of her death was never properly established,’ Ghote retorted. ‘I have been examining the papers of the case.’

  ‘And the papers are not saying it was bad food? Then they are making mistake.’

  ‘No,’ Ghote persisted. ‘The question is considered to be open still because not enough evidence has been produced. And now I am seeking that missing evidence. And there are various matters I wish to draw to your attention.’

  ‘Inspector, you are saying that it was by foul means my wife died?’

  ‘I am saying there is every reason to suspect.’

  ‘Then, Inspector, you must find the person who did this. Justice must be done, Inspector. If my money can help you, it is there for you to ask for.’

  ‘It is not your money I am wanting,’ Ghote retorted, ‘it is the truth from you.’

  ‘The truth? If that helps to find this murderer you shall have the truth, Inspector.’

  ‘Then,’ said Ghote, pressing himself up an inch or two on his low stool and leaning for
ward, ‘will you tell me for what purpose it was that you made air journey to Bombay and back on the day of your wife’s death?’

  This was his long shot. There had been only one chance reference in the reports to the Chairman’s having returned from Bombay earlier on the day of the death, a mere phrase. But it had struck Ghote that if he was responsible for the death then it was very likely that he would have preferred to get hold of the poison in Bombay rather than locally.

  It looked as if the shot might have gone home too. The Chairman slowly lowered his cigar and tumbled it still alight into the big ashtray.

  ‘In Bombay?’ he said, rather gropingly. ‘But how do you know I was in Bombay on that day, Inspector?’

  ‘It is in evidence,’ Ghote said firmly.

  ‘So you are certain?’

  ‘I am certain.’

  The Chairman leant back in his chair.

  ‘Then let me tell you that I went to Bombay to buy a sari. To buy a sari for my much-loved wife, Inspector. Something very special, of nylon. You remember fifteen years ago, Inspector, a sari of imported nylon was something special. It was as a special present for my wife that I wanted that sari from Bombay.’

  ‘Why did you want to give special present?’ Ghote demanded, still clutching hope.

  ‘But, Inspector, because I greatly loved her.’

  ‘Then what happened to that sari?’

  ‘Inspector, when the woman I greatly loved died suddenly in horrible circumstances you expect me to remember what happened to a sari?’

  ‘The woman you greatly loved,’ Ghote retorted. ‘But six months after her death you were married again already.’

  ‘Yes, Inspector, it is so.’

  ‘And you still say you greatly loved her?’

  ‘But, Inspector, when one has known the joys of a good marriage, what would you expect one to do but to try to find again, and as soon as possible?’

  The crocodile grin flashed down on Ghote on his low stool with brazen insolence.

  Wearily he took up another thread.

  ‘Mr Savarkar,’ he said, ‘if, as seems likely, your wife died by arsenical poisoning can you suggest when the said arsenic would have been administered?’

  ‘By arsenical poisoning, Inspector? Is this so?’

  ‘I believe it is.’

  ‘You believe, only, Inspector. But you have proof also?’

  ‘No,’ Ghote admitted grimly. ‘I have got no absolute proof. Yet.’

  ‘But you will try to obtain, Inspector. Even though the body was unfortunately burned. For my sake you will try to obtain, yes?’

  ‘I will try to obtain,’ Ghote promised with ferocity.

  ‘Good, good.’

  The Chairman reached forward and began concocting himself a paan, carefully spreading out the betel leaf and taking from his paan-box a careful pinch of this and a judicious measure of that. He continued to do this while Ghote put his next questions.

  ‘Mr Savarkar, let us assume that death did take place from arsenical poisoning. Your wife died at 2125 hours on the day in question. At about 1900 hours she had ingested according to the pathologist’s report a large meal consisting of mutton, rice, curry, spices, and lime pickle. She ate this meal, according to witnesses from your household at that time, in the old-fashioned manner after her husband had finished eating himself.’

  ‘That is so, that is so,’ the Chairman agreed. ‘My late wife was a lady of most old-fashioned principles.’

  ‘And you yourself had finished all the lime pickle laid out at the beginning of the meal, and insisted that your wife fetched more before she ate?’

  Ghote banged in the question sharply.

  The Chairman paused to masticate smackingly his paan before answering.

  ‘Such details I am not remembering, of course, Inspector,’ he said. ‘It is all long ago. But if you say, if you say. Certainly I am extremely fond of lime pickle.’

  ‘I could ask your present wife if this is so, or your servants? I could ask this evening?’ Ghote snapped, taking a small risk.

  For a moment the Chairman did not answer. Then his teeth, now red-stained with betel juice, flashed again.

  ‘Very fond of lime pickle I was formerly, Inspector,’ he corrected himself. ‘But no one makes like my late wife. You understand?’

  ‘I understand,’ Ghote replied.

  He felt entitled to allow himself this small consolation of irony. He knew, however much longer he kept pressing the Chairman, that he had shot his bolt.

  *

  Standing outside the tall carved gates of the Chairman’s house as the turbaned chaprassi scrapingly closed them, a new and very uncomfortable thought attached itself abruptly to the load of misery Ghote felt he already carried.

  His attempt at approaching the house earlier in the evening in the full majesty of the town’s most impressive taxi had left him without any means of transport back. He could, at the end of his interview, have asked the Chairman’s permission to telephone for the taxi again. But that would have been a final drop of humiliation that he could not have brought himself to swallow. So now he was faced with a long walk through the darkness.

  Not too much to complain about in that, though he was feeling tired enough. What had, however, really upset him was the thought that perhaps the long delay he had been subjected to before he had got to see the Chairman had not simply been designed to put him at a disadvantage. Perhaps it had been designed to make certain that it was as late and as dark as this before he left the house.

  What had the Chairman’s exact words been at that first encounter of theirs? ‘Men who would not hesitate to set upon a perfectly innocent man in the street at night and beat the day-lights out of him’? Something like that.

  He looked up at the sky. There was not a star to be seen. The thick grey blanket of cloud must be hanging unbroken all over the town. And only behind it, to judge from the faint light that allowed him to make out looming objects here and there, was the moon shining brightly and serenely.

  Resolutely he set out along the softly muddy road.

  It was a rare experience for him nowadays to be out at night in a deserted area. Darkness itself he was well enough accustomed to. The law-breakers of Bombay carried out many of their activities after dusk and anyone wishing to catch them was used enough to being up all night. But in Bombay there were street lights, and even in those areas where the municipal blessings had been withheld there was always the occasional Petromax lamp as well as the glow the sky reflected from the pulsing neons and bright bulbs in the rest of the city.

  Here there was nothing.

  Only shapes emerging blackly from the almost as thick blackness all around them. And noises. Noises that it was not easy to account for.

  That distant, but not very distant, howl. What was it? Ah, it was an owl. He remembered the sound they made quite clearly from his boyhood days.

  It was not that he was afraid. Just uneasy.

  Something plopped sharply and abruptly on to the muddy surface of the road just ahead, and involuntarily he came to a dead halt, his hands spread to either side of him ready to battle off he knew not what enemy.

  And then he half-heard, half-saw the rapid movement of big wings and realized that it had only been a fruit bat, a flying fox, sweeping close overhead and letting fall some mangled fig or other fragment.

  He walked forward more briskly.

  After a little he found he was whistling a film song through his teeth. Well, did it matter? Surely a person was allowed to whistle?

  Ahead in the darkness he thought he saw a tiny glimmer of light. It could be anything, he told himself.

  It could be a lantern or an electric torch held behind a thick horny hand, another inner voice told him.

  He found he was not walking anything like so fast, and that he had stopped whistling.

  Then a sudden sweat of pure relief broke over him. Fireflies. There was a pulsating cluster of fireflies hovering over a roadside patch of what might be kika-th
orn bushes. Had he forgotten what fireflies looked like? Was his boyhood all that long ago?

  So why was he standing stock still?

  He drew in a deep breath preparatory to setting out again. And at that moment, in the stillness, he heard them. And this time there could be no mistaking. On the road behind him a number of people, certainly two, perhaps four or even five, were advancing in his direction and taking great care not to make too much noise about it.

  He found he was suddenly walking forward at a nice easy pace, looking from side to side as he went to see what advantages there might be for him in the lie of the land. He was still fairly far out of the town. Soon his heightened senses told him that a darker mass rising up to his right was the containing bund of the town water tank, which he had noticed on his way out when the taxi had broken down.

  So he had a fair way to go before there were many houses about and the possibility of some help from the occasional street lamps which the town rose to. Should he try and run till he got to this comparative safety? Or should he chance breaking off somewhere?

  Unfortunately he knew nothing of what lay in the darkness to either side, while the goondas following no doubt knew every inch of the country round about. But, on the other hand, if he kept to the road, they would know too just how long they could leave him before trying something.

  The tank bund was a solid shape directly to his right now.

  Quite suddenly he decided to take advantage of it. It provided a slight hill in an otherwise flat piece of countryside. By running quickly up the earthen slope of the bund to where, as he could now make out, a wire protective fence ran round the long and narrow shape of the tank he could get a good view of the men coming after him on the road below. To know just how many he had to deal with would be something.

  No sooner said than done.

  He took a few more paces along the road, carefully not altering his step. And then he swerved quickly to the right and ascended the steep slope of the bund at a crouching run.

  At the top he flattened himself on the grassy earth close up against the wire mesh of the fence and looked downwards. He found he was able to make out at once the party that had been following him. There were four of them. Big men, as far as he could judge, and probably dressed only in shorts or loincloths. Two of them had white headcloths as well. The other two seemed to be bare-headed.