Inspector Ghote Breaks an Egg

by H. R. F. Keating

  So she had found out. Damn.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he answered, ‘I am Inspector Ghote, but I have no time to be talking now. If you have business with me you should tell to the constables round at the front, they will say when I can talk, if I can talk at all.’

  He saw now with pleasure that a constable was coming across the compound at a smart double. Superintendent Chavan may have let him down, but there was no doubt he knew how to run an efficient force.

  ‘Inspector Ghote,’ the old woman lisped out again, seeming almost content simply to be repeating this magic name.

  The constable unlocked the gate, came out and seized the bicycle’s handlebars with eagerness. Ghote stepped smartly towards the gate after him. The old woman put a tentative, talon-nailed hand on to his sleeve. Almost without having to make any conscious effort he pulled his arm from the feeble grasp and entered the compound. There apparently the old crone did not dare follow him. He turned his head to shout to her again to go around and tell the desk what her business was, but abandoned the attempt before he had begun it. There was no time to waste in an effort destined from the start to be abortive.

  Inside, in Inspector Popatkar’s office he eagerly picked up the telephone receiver and gave the magic sequence of the Bombay number.

  Delays of every sort harassed his call this time. He was left for nearly ten minutes by the operator listening to two different intermingling tiny faraway conversations, one in Hindi about a new-born child, and the other in Gujarati about a fatal traffic accident in Bombay. Then, when abruptly his connection was made, it was as abruptly cut the moment the far end had spoken the number. He set to to obtain the connection again and was put through quickly this time, only it was to a number which turned out after a prolonged misunderstanding to be none other than that of the Palace Talkies. It took more than a quarter of an hour to disentangle the consequences of that.

  And then finally when he did get through to the Bombay number and succeeded in asking for the Eminent Figure without suddenly being clicked into utter silence, the line he had been given proved to have some defect in it which meant that the voices at the far end were fainter if anything than the voices he had heard earlier excitedly discussing a birth and a death.

  ‘Is that you, sir?’ he bellowed.

  ‘Yes, yes, it is me. Speak louder, if you please,’ the Eminent Figure, though querulous as ever, bellowed back.

  ‘Have you had results of inquiries in distant parts?’ Ghote counter-bellowed, shouting each word separately and convinced that in all the time he had been trying to put the call through there had been ample opportunity for one of the Chairman’s men to have been set to listen.

  ‘In distant parts?’ came the predictably querulous answer.

  ‘Nagaland,’ Ghote said in one quick shout.

  ‘I cannot hear. You are extremely faint.’

  And suddenly another voice, deafeningly loud to Ghote’s ears, broke in.

  ‘He is saying “Nagaland”, caller.’

  It was the operator, all eagerness to he helpful.

  ‘Yes,’ said Ghote wearily, ‘Nagaland.’

  ‘Certainly I have had results from Nagaland,’ the faint, faint querulous voice said next.

  Ghote’s spirits shot up.

  ‘What have you heard?’ he almost demanded.

  ‘The results have only just come to me,’ the Eminent Figure said with a complacency which the tininess of his voice did not conceal.

  Just, indeed. Most likely twelve hours ago, Ghote thought boilingly.

  ‘I am completely satisfied with their thoroughness,’ the Eminent Figure added.

  ‘And you found?’ Ghote yelled.

  ‘The person in question became a hopeless addict of alcoholic liquor within three years of his arrival there,’ the Eminent Figure shouted censoriously. ‘He was well remembered by many people whom the person conducting my inquiry spoke with. But, although the man remained in the area for a considerable time, a virtual wreck of a creature, it is five years now at least since he was seen.’

  ‘You are hearing, caller?’ asked the operator in his cheerful voice of a thousand thunders.

  ‘I am hearing.’

  ‘In the circumstances,’ came the faint voice of the Eminent Figure again, ‘I think you can presume the fellow is dead. I have too often spoken of the ills excessive consumption of alcohol brings in its train –’

  ‘And the other inquiries?’ Ghote shouted out, feeling that the appalling line at least gave him the opportunity of cutting into a lecture.

  ‘Other inquiries?’

  ‘Bombay caller, he is asking about “other inquiries”.’

  ‘You mean the inquiries you asked me to have made here in Bombay?’

  ‘He means –’

  ‘I have heard,’ Ghote screeched. ‘And yes, I do mean those inquiries.’

  ‘There have been delays and delays,’ the tiny querulous voice said. ‘But I am hopeful that quite soon we shall have something for you. And in the meanwhile what progress are you making at your end?’

  Ghote leant back from the telephone and deliberately banged his palm violently down on the rest. If the Eminent Figure decided they had been cut off while he still had something worthwhile to say he could put in a fresh call himself.

  In the meantime he had better things to do. Something was tickling in his mind. It had begun while the Eminent Figure was launching into his lecture on the evils of alcohol. Something in the way he had said that Hemu Adhikari must be dead had triggered off recollections of the manner in which the pathologist’s old schoolmaster father had expressed the same idea.

  The very words came, by an effort of will, back into his mind now. ‘There is no Mr Adhikari Junior.’ Had that been it? And ‘I had a son: he no longer …’ It was ‘no longer’ something. ‘No longer is in this world’ or ‘No longer exists.’ More or less that. In any case whatever the exact form of the words there had been something curious about them. That much he was certain of.

  Suddenly he jumped up from Inspector Popatkar’s hard chair.

  That was it. The upright old man’s words had been just those of someone who made it a practice never to tell a lie and who yet wanted, for important and urgent reasons, for once to conceal the truth.

  To conceal the truth. Then there was a truth to be concealed about the pathologist. And since what everybody was being led to believe was that he was dead, the truth could only be that he was alive.

  Ghote ran down the passage and out to the bicycle rack in the compound. Half-way to the iron gate he realized he had forgotten his egg-box, but this was no time to go back for it.

  Pedalling through the town at a fearful rate, swerving round puddles, sending scavenging chickens scuttling and squawking, attracting various barking pi-dogs to yelp at his heels for as long as their breath lasted, sweating like a waterworks in the damply humid air but happy that at least the rains with their way of blotting out all possibility of progress seemed to be slackening off, Ghote at last came to the sedate district of minor officials’ homes where the little old upright ex-schoolmaster, Mr Adhikari, lived.

  His house kept the same tranquil air as it had on his first visit. The long front wall was as neatly blank, the narrow front door as tightly closed as ever. Even the same wreck of a beggar slept propped up against the wall as he had slept before, lacking even the vigour to pursue his essentially unvigorous profession.

  Yet, Ghote observed automatically as he got off the bicycle, here was a slight change. The man today was much nearer the house door than he had been before. Indeed he was so close to it that in one direction he would prevent anyone going straight up to it. Would the severe old schoolmaster fly into a rage when he opened the door and discovered him there?

  Ghote propped the bicycle against the wall on the opposite side of the door. It seemed that the slight scraping clatter he made had disturbed the old wreck’s sleep. He stirred and muttered a few barely decipherable words.

  Ghote, with his h
and raised to knock on the front door, stopped abruptly.

  Egg-white. He thought he had heard the old beggar muttering something about egg-white of all things.

  He shrugged.

  He must have got eggs on the brain. Thank goodness, at least he had not got that confounded box with him now.

  He knocked briskly at the door.

  It opened almost at once. Little Mr Adhikari also looked exactly as he had done on the previous occasion. Again he wore only a white dhoti and again its pleats fell with wonderful neatness from his thin waist. Again his gold-rimmed pince-nez rested squarely and severely across the bridge of his nose.

  He gave the slumped beggar a single swiftly suspicious glance but reserved his full attention for Ghote.

  ‘Good morning,’ Ghote said to him quickly. ‘I have come to talk about your son.’

  The little old man perceptibly stiffened.

  ‘You have done that already,’ he said. ‘I have no more to tell.’

  ‘You told that he no longer exists,’ Ghote answered, ignoring the old schoolmaster’s sharpness.

  ‘Yes, yes, that is what I said.’

  The little old man made as if to close the door.

  ‘But what exactly did you mean by those words?’ Ghote asked.

  ‘I meant what I meant. And I have no time to be all the day talking.’

  ‘Sir, I must remind you I am police officer. I am not talking only. I am investigating.’

  ‘Then you choose a most extraordinary way of carrying out your duties,’ Mr Adhikari retorted sternly.

  ‘Sir, you choose a somewhat extraordinary form of expression to talk about your son.’

  ‘What is it to you what form of words I use, if you please?’

  ‘I am anxious only to know exactly what you were meaning.’

  Little Mr Adhikari glared up at him furiously through his gold-rimmed spectacles.

  ‘Young man,’ he said, ‘my meaning was perfectly clear.’

  ‘Did you mean that your son is dead?’ Ghote asked plainly.

  For an instant the old man looked trapped, and Ghote felt positively sorry for him. But it was an instant only.

  ‘What has come over the police force nowadays I cannot think,’ the old man resumed almost at once. ‘In my young days under the British a certain minimum standard of education was required. But I suppose all that has gone by the board now.’

  Ghote declined the challenge.

  ‘I was asking about your son,’ he said firmly.

  ‘Yes, you were asking. And I was answering. And you have heard my answer, so now go.’

  ‘I have not yet heard your answer.’

  ‘I have said. My son no longer exists.’

  ‘And I am asking: what exactly do those words mean?’

  ‘I was once a schoolmaster, as perhaps you know. And in those days I was quite prepared to explain to dunderheads the meaning of the simplest sentences. Now, however, I am retired, and I must be allowed some indulgence in my old age.’

  ‘Sir, that is not adequate answer.’

  ‘But that is all the answer you will get.’

  ‘Sir, I would be most reluctant to invoke Section 179 of Indian Penal Code, refusing to answer a public servant authorized to question, but if necessary I shall do so.’

  ‘I tell you, young man, I have answered. Are you deaf also?’

  Ghote looked down at the little old man. He was standing ramrod stiff, glaring up at him, obdurate as a stone.

  Was there any way of breaking such an object? Certainly nothing within the regulations he felt himself obliged to act under.

  ‘You are quite unwilling to assist?’ he asked at last.

  ‘I have assisted in every manner I am able.’

  Sadly Ghote turned away. Behind him the narrow door of the house shut with a quickness that betrayed the relief of the thin old arms pushing it.

  But he had kept it up to the last, Ghote reflected. Those final words ‘in every manner I am able’, they were just the same sort of answers the old man had produced all along, expressions designed to keep within the strict truth yet convey an untruth. And although they betrayed that the old man had something to conceal, what it was he was hiding remained locked impenetrably in his rib-marked chest.

  For a long while Ghote stood with his back up against the narrow closed door, letting the words of the conversation go round and round in his head like a tree-rat on a treadle in a cage, convinced he was bound to get nowhere.

  ‘Raw egg – broken in two – white allowed to escape – passing yolk from one half of shell to other – white is then whisked for ten minutes – half a pint of cold water is then added.’

  Suddenly Ghote awoke to the fact that the words that seemed to have added themselves to the treadmill in his head were not simply figments of his own imagination. He was actually hearing them.

  He looked round at the narrow street in real alarm. A brisk rivulet of muddy water was chuckling its way along the drain in front of him. Two dogs rolled over and fought some distance away. But there was no one else.

  The beggar. The beggar had been muttering those words. Words in, of all languages, English. And moderately technical words, too.

  With a shiver almost of disquiet, Ghote realized that in fact he had himself long ago heard the words, or something very like them. He would not have been able to repeat them if asked but, hearing them, they became again immediately familiar. They were the directions for making something called albumin-water. It was an antidote for arsenical poisoning, and had other uses such as providing an excellent source of swiftly digestible light nourishment. He had learnt about it during his training.

  He stood up more straightly and squared his shoulders. A faint smile crept on to his lips.

  He bent down and put his hand firmly on the slumped beggar’s shoulder. A strong reek of alcohol assailed his nostrils.

  ‘Hemu Adhikari,’ he said, ‘I require you as pathologist formerly attached to the hospital in this town to accompany me to the police-station for questioning in connection with the death of one Sarojini Savarkar.’

  16

  It proved in the event not such an easy matter to get the drink-sodden pathologist to the police-station, and it certainly became evident in the process that questioning him was going to be no easy matter.

  The man was a wreck. That was all there was to be said about it.

  Ghote’s efforts to get him to his feet had quickly enough brought old Mr Adhikari back to his door, and in the course of a good deal of argument and shouting certain facts had emerged. It had become clear that Hemu Adhikari had been deeply depressed in his forced exile. His wife had died, his only son had run off and had never been heard of since. He had taken to drink. But when he had lost his pathologist’s post in Nagaland he had not, as had been generally supposed, gradually drifted into a state of idiocy and then died unnoticed. He had, just before it was too late, travelled home and put himself under the protection of his old father.

  His father had hidden him in the house as well as he could, but he had been unable to cure him of his addiction. And eventually he had taken to allowing this human wreck, who looked in many ways more like an old man than he did himself, to sit outside the house anywhere within call and sun himself and sleep. And sun himself and sleep he had, and every now and again he had woken and remembered what it was that had been the cause of his downfall.

  So the mutterings about poison and its antidotes and scraps of pathology had become a regular feature of his existence, heralds generally of yet another drinking bout. The old man had tried depriving him completely of any means of getting hold of alcohol, but the grimly unpleasant sight of his worn-out son in the grip of delirium tremens had been too much for him and after only two experiments in sternness he had let things slide. At least the shambling creature who was part of his household had ceased to attract any attention and had been safe from any further persecution at the Chairman’s hands.

  Poor devil, Ghote thought, as at last
they got the slumped form that had once been a skilled pathologist into a tonga and were about to set out for the police-station. Poor ramrod old devil, it must have been a nasty moment for him when the Chairman’s messengers called and began asking about his son just before his own visit.

  The tonga set out, with Ghote cycling slowly after it through the criss-crossed muddy streets of the town.

  As Ghote rode he allowed himself to jump the necessary gap of time in which steps would have to be taken to get Hemu Adhikari fit to talk. But when he was … Then they were bound to learn exactly what had happened at the autopsy and exactly what steps had been taken about the vital evidence of the removed organs. It was even possible that they might discover that they were still in existence. And arsenic would be found in them as surely now as it would have been fifteen years before.

  They had entered the main street now. Ghote began to pedal harder, overtook the quietly jogging tonga with its slumped burden and went ahead to the police-station.

  By the time Hemu Adhikari had arrived two constables were waiting for him. They picked him up, each with a broad hand in an armpit, and swung him like a half-filled sack across the forecourt and inside. Ghote, watching the operation with pleasure, paid the tongawalla and ran across to go in. The sooner he could get to work the better.

  But he was not to have the broken pathologist under his hands as soon as he had hoped.

  Just inside the doors of the police-station a figure planted itself full in his path and, stopping short, he found himself looking down at the lean and leathery hair-sprouting face of the old outcaste woman who had last accosted him as he had returned earlier that morning from his successful attempt at getting hold of the concealed Ram Dhulup.

  He began plucking away the two scrawny, feeble arms which were clutching at him.

  ‘I have already told,’ he said, ‘if you want to see me you must apply at the desk.’

  ‘Inspector Ghote, I cannot tell those men this.’

  In his anxiety to get down to the cells where the constables were putting the wreck of Hemu Adhikari he scarcely heard what she was saying. He succeeded in getting one arm clear and turned his attention to the other, as yet no more than brusquely firm but feeling anger gathering inside himself ready to break out into violence which he later no doubt would regret.