Inspector Ghote Breaks an Egg

by H. R. F. Keating

  ‘Cannot you go and take it from them by force?’ Ghote asked.

  The Sikh grinned.

  ‘More than my life’s worth once it got out, old boy,’ he said.

  Ghote fell silent.

  But only for a moment. An idea, a wonderful, monstrous idea had come to him.

  He looked up at the bushily bearded Sikh calculatingly, and then he began.

  ‘Listen, if it so happened that some nourishing substance had been left in here, or had got into here, without those old women having any idea at all about it. Would you take it on yourself to administer in those circumstances?’

  ‘What’s this, old boy, moral debating?’

  ‘No,’ said Ghote, taking the egg-box from under his arm and flipping it open in front of the Sikh’s astonished eyes. ‘It is not joking. It is fact.’

  It seemed like two whole minutes at least while the doctor stood there looking down at the box with its dozen, enormously large, grease-preserved eggs nestling inside it.

  Then at last he spoke.

  ‘Give me a hand, old boy, and we’ll have something in him in a jiffy. We’d better mix it with a bit of water, digests easier that way. And I’m allowed a chatthi in here for hygienic purposes.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ghote, a gleam in his eyes. ‘You take a raw egg, break it in two, allow the white to escape by passing the yolk from one half of the shell to the other and the white is then whisked for ten minutes, and half a pint of water is added.’

  The Sikh looked at him, his eyes widening.

  ‘Albumin-water,’ he said. ‘How on earth did you know that?’

  ‘It was one of the pieces of information I had to learn at detective school,’ Ghote answered. ‘And, God forgive me, I thought it useless only then. But just recently, as it so happened, I was reminded of it.’

  ‘Well,’ said the Sikh, ‘you’d better crack the egg then. Look, here’s a little lota, we’ll whisk it in that. But not for as much as ten minutes. My nerves wouldn’t stand it.’

  He picked up the small brass pot and held it between his broad palms.

  Ghote selected the biggest of the big eggs from the box. He took it between the first two fingers and the thumb of his right hand and with one sharp tap on the edge of the pot he broke it.

  The Sikh plunged his bearded face downwards and sniffed.

  ‘Smells fresh enough to me,’ he said.

  In heart-pounding excitement Ghote juggled with the two halves of the broken eggshell, plopping the pale yellow yolk from one to another, allowing the sticky white to trail in long tapering drains into the little brass lota.

  Quite soon it was done. The Sikh dipped the tip of his stethoscope into the fluid and whirled it vigorously around.

  ‘Not just what our wives would use, old man. But it’ll serve.’

  And a few minutes later – they had stopped the whisking by mutual consent – they were adding a stream of water from the earthenware chatthi to the froth the Sikh had created. He swirled the lota round a little.

  ‘Should do,’ he said. ‘Let’s try. You keep a look-out. I’ll administer.’

  Ghote darted across to the low doorway and peered out. The praying old women were praying still. He drew into the shadow and watched them. Behind he could hear faint sounds from the Swami’s pallet – murmurs of encouragement from the Sikh, the tiny chink of teeth against the edge of the brass lota.

  And then he heard the Sikh’s heavy breathing being deliberately retained while he put the stethoscope – ‘Clean handkerchief, thank God’ Ghote heard him murmur as he wiped it – to the fasting man’s chest.

  The examination took a long time. But at the end came the voice of the doctor again, incredibly robust.

  ‘Well, that went down all right. Got to wait a bit of course. But I’ll bet my best scalpel he’ll rally round all right now.’

  19

  Ghote waited an hour more in the temple and by the end of that time he was able to see for himself that there was a clear improvement in the Swami’s condition.

  So he set off for the police-station again with the comfortable feeling under his belt that at the very worst he had gained a good length of time. If all went well over the last push, he dared to think, he would have the Chairman in gaol awaiting trial before the beneficial effects of the albumin-water ceased to sustain the Swami any longer.

  And, examine his conscience how he would, he could not really find any trace of remorse over the violence he and his cheerful accomplice had done to the old man’s beliefs. After all, the Swami had been attempting to gain his ends by taking a life, even though it was his own. All he himself had done was to use equally strong counter-measures. And they had saved the old man and there was nothing that could be done about that now.

  And when he reached the area at the rear of the police-station he found that, thanks perhaps to advance notice of the improvement in the holy man’s state, or thanks simply to the fall of darkness, the attack on the compound wall had melted away. There was no one about in the lane, and, although he gave his torch signal as in duty bound, there was really no need for it.

  So within half an hour of leaving the temple he was confronting Dr Patil once more and inquiring about the state of another patient.

  ‘Yes, Inspector,’ the bland-faced doctor replied, ‘we have had some success. I think I can say that. More success, indeed, than we might have done.’

  ‘Then I can resume my interrogation?’

  Dr Patil raised a dignified arresting hand.

  ‘Oh no, no. My dear sir, I did not say that.’

  ‘But you told you had had success.’

  ‘Yes, indeed. Success we have had. But the treatment must be allowed to take its full course. Tomorrow morning perhaps …’

  ‘I regret then, Doctor,’ Ghote said with unaccustomed hostility, ‘but I shall have to see the prisoner and form my own judgement. Such a long delay is inadmissible.’

  Dr Patil looked offended from the tips of his well-polished black shoes to the crown of his domed and balding head.

  ‘Very well, Inspector,’ he said, ‘if there is so much urgency, then perhaps you could take a risk and resume your questioning at …’

  He paused and consulted his gold-banded wrist-watch at solemn length.

  ‘… at, shall we say, midnight.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Ghote said stiffly.

  *

  So it was a few minutes after midnight that night, when Dr Patil had re-examined Hemu Adhikari and had somewhat reluctantly agreed, that provided he himself was on hand, the pathologist might be fit for questioning, that Ghote got down to work again.

  He found, however, that he was tackling an altogether different figure both from the man at the mercy of the yellow monkey he had come back to after his terrible telephone call from Bombay and also from the alcohol-bemused creature he had originally tried to get some sense out of. Dr Patil’s treatment had been every bit as succesful as the tall Gujarati had claimed: Hemu Adhikari was a changed man, alive, alert, aware.

  It came out in his answer to Ghote’s first cautious question.

  ‘You remember what we were talking about before?’

  ‘I remember nothing, Inspector Ghote. Why are you keeping me here?’

  ‘So you know my name?’ Ghote said, when he had recovered from the unexpectedness of it.

  ‘Yes, I know your name, and I know also why you are here. And since I can in no way help you I am asking why you are keeping me in this cell.’

  ‘I am keeping you here because I believe that you can help me.’

  ‘You will find not.’

  And for a long time it looked, indeed, as if Ghote would find not. He kept pegging away at the pathologist as he had done before, but this time the man fought back. He fought back like a piece of resilient rubber, pushing outwards every time Ghote pushed in and ending always just where he had been before.

  Once again Ghote went over every aspect of his case against the Municipal Chairman, looking for the least op
ening in the rubbery armour of the man in front of him. He told him in so many words that he could prove that the Chairman had manipulated the Coroner’s Committee so that, not only would its members bring in a verdict that meant that no action need be taken, but also that the body, the main piece of evidence for the poisoning having taken place, would be conveniently destroyed.

  Hemu Adhikari, still fat with the effects of much drinking but with a skin that no longer hung too slackly from the folds of his flesh, constantly asked what it all had to do with him, constantly pressed to be allowed to go free.

  Ghote was constrained simply to pretend the words had not been said. He tried a new tack.

  ‘Very well, perhaps the proceedings of the Coroner’s Committee were not your direct concern. But something else was.’

  He darted a quick look at the pathologist.

  ‘Inspector,’ Adhikari replied with brightness, ‘all this was many years ago and I will remember nothing.’

  ‘You will remember performing the first stages of an autopsy on the body of one Sarojini Savarkar.’

  ‘No, Inspector. Many, many such autopsies I have performed. How can I remember one from another?’

  ‘You remember this because of what you were asked to do with the organs you had removed to send to the Chemical Examiner in Bombay. You told with your own words yesterday.’

  ‘I told? Inspector, then I was ill. I did not know what I was saying.’

  With flogged-on patience, Ghote went on to his next area of attack.

  ‘Do you know that on the day that man’s wife died he returned from a sudden trip to Bombay?’

  ‘Inspector, what have I to do with trips to Bombay?’

  ‘Because if a man in this town was wishing to acquire a supply of arsenic then he would do well to go to Bombay where such things may be obtained at cheap dispensaries in the suburbs with no one to ask questions.’

  ‘If you say it is so, I will believe you. But all the same it is nothing to do with me.’

  ‘It is to do with you. I have reason to believe that the arsenic obtained that day was administered that evening and that you were the one who removed the organs in which the substance was contained, and still would be contained today.’

  ‘Inspector, there are records up at the hospital. If you wish to know what happened to those organs you have only to consult.’

  ‘I have consulted. The arrival of the body for dissection is there, and its departure under an order from the Coroner’s Committee is noted also. Nothing is noted about the dispatch of the organs.’

  ‘Often such records are incomplete.’

  ‘You were a most conscientious keeper of records. I have the Medical Superintendent’s word for that.’

  ‘Then for once I must have made a mistake. It is so long ago I cannot possibly remember.’

  ‘I think you remember well what you did with those organs.’

  ‘Inspector, after fifteen years.’

  ‘I think also that those organs are still at the hospital. There are many jars of such things stored there, even some with no labels or with labels with numbers on only. I think those organs are among them still. You were a man, they told me, who was always writing letters but not sending. I think that with those organs you did the same. They are still at the hospital, isn’t it?’

  Hemu Adhikari shrugged his well-fleshed shoulders.

  ‘Inspector, it may be so.’

  ‘Ah.’

  Ghote pounced.

  ‘Now where are they? Tell, tell. You have only to tell and I will give you again the assurance I have given already: you will come to no harm in this town.’

  ‘Inspector, I am saying it may be so because I cannot tell otherwise. It is fifteen years since I have been in that hospital. How can I know what is there or not there?’

  And he had the impudence to smile.

  But Ghote restrained his violent desire to take the fellow and trounce him as he deserved. There might still be a chink in this armour of his, and that would not be found by battering. The time for violence would come when other hopes had been exhausted.

  The night wore on. Ghote kept up his questions. Adhikari kept up his rubber-bouncing replies. And of the two, Ghote suspected he himself was becoming the more tired.

  ‘When it comes to prosecution,’ he said at some stage, wearily hunting for the words, ‘police will have no difficulty in showing motive. We are going to have cast-iron case, make no mistake about that, if you please.’

  ‘Whatever case you have, Inspector, it will be case without me.’

  ‘It is not so much you,’ Ghote replied, searching for a quarter inch of leverage somewhere. ‘It is not so much you. It is the material evidence of the organs. They exist still, isn’t it? Isn’t it?’

  ‘Inspector, how can you expect me to know? All those events were so long ago.’

  ‘Yes,’ Ghote said, ‘those events were in the past, but there will be events in the future also. I ask you to think of them.’

  ‘In the future?’

  Adhikari looked a little upset at this new line Ghote had hit on.

  ‘Yes, in the future,’ Ghote pressed quickly in. ‘Let me show you a little of the future in this town. In a few minutes from now you are going to give me the information I want. It will be almost the last item my case needs. And when that case is complete to my satisfaction I shall make arrest.’

  He delivered the words with all the force he could bring to them. But he had to acknowledge that so far he was making no impression.

  He resumed.

  ‘And what follows that arrest? Oh, a great deal of legal palaver, of course. A great many attempts to suborn witnesses, to show that I myself am corrupt, to obtain bail. A hundred and one things. But they will all fail. And do you know why?’

  ‘Inspector, all that will be of no interest to me.’

  ‘I will tell why. Because when the people here see their Chairman is behind bars all the support for him will melt away. And it will have somewhere to run to, I can assure you of that. A certain eminent figure in State Politics is waiting only for his chance to take over here. One weakness from the Chairman and the tide will turn one hundred per cent.’

  Ghote looked hard at the swollen figure beside him. Was this prospect he was holding out, of a town no longer dominated by the flashing crocodile grin of Vinayak Savarkar, was it opening new horizons for this man?

  It seemed not, although his expression was at least no longer actively opposed.

  Stolidly Ghote set out to paint in the details of his imagined new world.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘there will be a new set-up in the town altogether. It will mean many changes. That ugly daughter of the former Chairman – you knew her? – she will no longer as Chairman’s wife be laying down the law to all the ladies of the district. And her son –’

  He thought suddenly, not of the idealized picture he was painting for the purpose of transplanting Hemu Adhikari into a clime where a confession of his past misdemeanour would seem an easy matter, but of the real Vasant Savarkar, aged fourteen and condemned to marry no doubt for strictly dynastic reasons.

  ‘Did you know the Chairman had a son called Vasant, a boy on the threshold of manhood?’ he asked the fat pathologist.

  ‘What is such a boy to me?’

  ‘To you, nothing perhaps. But he is a person in this town, and his life will be very much changed by what is going to happen. He will not have to marry a girl who has already been picked out for him, he will lead a life of comparative poverty but one day he will come to marry some other girl, one perhaps more suitable, and then he will live out the rest of his days the way we all do, rubbing along from bad to better.’

  ‘Inspector, all this is nothing to me.’

  ‘No,’ said Ghote, ‘but to me it is something, a little. The lives of all the people I have encountered here in this town are something to me. Yours also.’

  But the pathologist was still not to be lured by friendship, even though genuine.
/>   ‘Inspector, you will go away soon. Perhaps tomorrow and everything here will be as it always has been.’

  ‘No,’ Ghote almost shouted. ‘No, it will not. I told already at some time in this night that the Chairman is not the Brahmin everyone here has taken him for. Did I not?’

  ‘Inspector, such things will not be believed when it is a rich and powerful man they are said against.’

  ‘I could bring his outcaste mother to this very cell to show you,’ Ghote countered. ‘Perhaps she will end her days greeting her broken son as he comes out of prison, though that will be many years from now.’

  ‘Inspector Ghote, men like the present Municipal Chairman do not go to prison.’

  ‘Why do they not?’ Ghote retorted, with his confidence growing as he began to believe his own vision of the future. ‘Why do such scoundrels not meet their just deserts? Do you think it is because they have holy men to fast to death for them?’

  A sheer clarion call of triumph sounded in his mind.

  ‘I tell you,’ he harangued the obstinate alcoholic, ‘the Swami who was fasting against my investigation into this crime has eaten. He has taken white-of-egg and water. A most nourishing preparation, as you well know. He has taken that. Now, will you also take your medicine? Will you tell me what exactly you did wrong at that autopsy?’

  The pathologist held his face without moving a muscle.

  Ghote crowded in any fact he could get to hand.

  ‘All will be different in this town, I tell you. Others will have nothing to fear, and you need not. There is the man Ram Dhulup I told you of. He too committed a crime at the Chairman’s behest. He gave the Coroner’s Committee information about the deceased’s religious beliefs that he knew to be false. Will he be prosecuted? No. He will live in peace. Certainly he will lose the pension he has been receiving all these years. But he will also lose the wife who would have made the rest of his days a misery. Ram Dhulup will be the happier for the Chairman’s departure. So will you also.’

  A smile appeared on the pathologist’s drink-bloated face.

  Was this in anticipation of his rosy future?

  ‘Inspector,’ he said, ‘you are talking nonsense only.’