Under a Monsoon Cloud: an Inspector Ghote Mystery

by H. R. F. Keating

  But evidently S.M. Motabhoy had also been considering the matter of the lie and how it had come to be told. Because, leaning forward now, he addressed the two advocates.

  ‘Mr Sankar, Mrs Ahmed, I feel that in the interests of a fully just hearing we ought to be appraised before we proceed any further of the exact circumstances which caused this last witness to present evidence so palpably false. I suggest the best way we can achieve this is for the officer who investigated the implications of the late A.D.I.G. Kelkar’s dying statement to come to the witness table and answer such questions as you, Mrs Ahmed, may like to put.’

  R.K. gave a deep shrug of his thin shoulders under the long black atchkan.

  ‘I cannot, of course, have any objection, Mr Presiding Officer.’

  ‘Very well then,’ S.M. Motabhoy said.

  He turned to the Inquiry orderly.

  ‘I imagine Inspector Pimputkar is in the building,’ he said. ‘Will you bring him as soon as possible?’

  Inspector Pimputkar.

  So he, Ghote thought, has been the man who has prepared the case against me.

  Pimputkar was an officer feared, loathed even, throughout the State force. He was the chief investigator for Vigilance Branch at the force headquarters in Pune. As such his task was to inquire into allegations or suspicions of corruption. It was a duty which ought not to seem odious. But Pimputkar, notoriously, took pleasure in his task. Officers who had had to answer his questions, even when they were not in any way implicated in a particular investigation, had tales to tell that sent tremors of disquiet through the minds of even the most honest. Pimputkar, they said, brought to his questioning a fury of suspiciousness which made even innocent actions look devious.

  No wonder that opening statement of R.K.’s had seemed almost as if he had been hovering over Vigatpore that night, peering through the heavy rain-weeping monsoon cloud, watching every move he and Tiger had made. It had not been R.K. who had been there then: it had been Pimputkar prying and suggesting afterwards.

  It took the orderly some little time to locate this unexpectedly summoned witness. The officers of the Board began chatting quietly. R.K., behind his table with its impressive piles of papers, leant back in his solid wooden-armed chair and closed his eyes with a tremendous show of weariness. Mrs Ahmed soon delved into her bulging bag and produced a document, typed in purple, evidently referring to some injustice she was concerned with. Ghote could hear, as she perused it, little sighs and puffs of wrathfulness.

  But he himself sat in stone-like silence, sunk beneath flood waters of depression. Stories of Pimputkar’s triumphs, vague in outline but frightening for the odd details that floated into his mind, oppressed him. The man was a mongoose, sharp-teethed, glittering-eyed, intent on his prey. And the fact that such prey was always, in theory at least, some sort of evil snake did nothing to soften the image that had come into his head.

  So that, when at last the orderly opened the door and stood aside for Pimputkar himself to enter, the sight of his pursuer – he had never till this moment set eyes on him, for all the talk he had heard in canteen conversations and long night waits – came as an anticlimax.

  He was a man of remarkably average appearance, neither particularly large – at one moment he had expected to see a towering ogre – nor noticeably small, for all that a rat-like creature had been another image he had built up. All that at all distinguished him was that he was thin in the face. Its flesh might, indeed, have been eaten away by some consuming internal fire.

  He marched stiffly across to the witness table and stood at attention behind it.

  Mrs Ahmed put to him the statutory questions about his name and rank and the authority for his investigation. He answered each with snapped-off precision, as if that inner fire was preventing him parting with one single piece of information not properly demanded of him.

  At last, after what had seemed to Ghote an interminable time, Mrs Ahmed came to the matter over which Pimputkar had been brought in. At her request the shorthand writer turned back to the last few answers Shivram Patel had given and read them out. Falteringly and with several abysmal mispronunciations he stumbled his way to that final betraying It was sold.

  ‘Now, Inspector,’ Mrs Ahmed said, ‘that witness, Shri Shivram Patel, was brought to give evidence as a result of your inquiries?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You realize that what he first told us was no more than mere malicious invention?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you account to the Inquiry for what reason you were deceived by this man’s wanton lies?’

  ‘He offered a statement corroborating what his servant had told me. I accepted it.’

  ‘You were anxious to accept any evidence that would seem to tell against Inspector Ghote?’

  Pimputkar’s eyes glittered momentarily with suppressed fury. But he did not let any of it emerge in words.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You chose to believe the servant’s doubtful notion that it might have been 3 a.m. and not midnight when he let Inspector Ghote in?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It did not occur to you that Inspector Ghote’s statement as to the time would be more likely?’

  ‘No.’

  A moment of hesitation. And then an addition.

  ‘I continue to trust the expressed belief of the servant.’

  Mrs Ahmed looked quickly down at her desk. Such a firmly delivered statement would hardly benefit her case.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you were not brought here this afternoon to do anything other than explain why it was that you believed the lies Mr Shivram Patel put before us.’

  But R.K., for all that he had continued to lean back in his chair with eyes closed, was not going to let such a chance go by. He was on his feet in a moment.

  ‘Mr Presiding Officer, it would seem to me convenient, since we have Inspector Pimputkar with us, to pursue this line at the present time. Might I put some questions?’

  S.M. Motabhoy took his customary second or two for consideration.

  ‘Yes,’ he said then. ‘I agree, Mr Sankar. I think we should hear from Inspector Pimputkar why he continues to believe one impression about that time rather than another.’

  Ghote sat looking from Pimputkar to R.K. and back again. He felt abruptly now that the whole invention he had embarked on with Tiger’s backing, and which he had promised Protima he would stand by, was no more than a frail leaning fence of pieces of rusted corrugated iron patched with rotting gunny strips. Before the whistling wind which these two pursuers would sweep down the whole wretched screen would be sent whirling away in a moment.

  16

  R.K. gave a little tug to the sides of his long atchkan. It indicated somehow a fresh start, and Ghote, sweaty-thighed on his hard chair, experienced a new interior qualm.

  ‘Now, Inspector Pimputkar, we have disposed, quite satisfactorily to my mind, of the unfortunate matter of the evidence given by Shri Shivram Patel, and we come to the evidence, the more impressive evidence, of Shri Patel’s servant, the man who actually admitted Inspector Ghote to the house on that fatal night.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Pimputkar said, with a little, licking trace of excitement.

  ‘Now, in the course of your investigations you asked this man a simple question: at what hour did Inspector Ghote knock at the house door?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And what answer did he give?’

  ‘He stated that it was at approximately three ack emma.’

  ‘Three o’clock in the morning, I see. And did you have any reason to doubt that statement?’

  ‘No, sir. It was his other statement that I felt to be doubtful.’

  ‘His other statement? What statement was this, Inspector?’

  ‘That Inspector Ghote had complained to him that he had been kept waiting at the door “at almost midnight”.’

  ‘At almost midnight? The man distinctly recounted to you that this was what Inspector Ghote had said? That he had been
told in so many words that it was “almost midnight”?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And you thought this was – shall we say – curious?’

  ‘I did, sir. I saw no reason why a person arriving at a house and needing to have the door unbarred for him should state what time it was.’

  ‘No. No, that I can understand. So what conclusion did you draw, Inspector?’

  ‘I considered that this statement as to the hour was in the nature of a trick, sir.’

  ‘A trick?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Intended to confuse an ignorant and aged man as to the correct hour.’

  ‘I see. Yes. And in such further questioning as you saw fit to put there was nothing that caused you to alter that opinion?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘I see. Well, I think that is all we need to know, Inspector.’

  But, of course, Mrs Ahmed was on her feet almost before R.K. had finished his dismissive conclusion.

  ‘Mr Presiding Officer, there is a great deal more that we are needing to know.’

  ‘Then kindly put such questions as you may have, Mrs Ahmed.’

  Ghote’s belief in his defender grew to a new height in the next quarter of an hour. She was unable to make Pimputkar retract his reliance on the old servant’s estimate of the time as being about 3 a.m. But by harping again and again on such weak points as his not seeing how likely it was that anyone kept waiting so late should mention the time, and by other occasional asides indicating her own opinion of Pimputkar as a prejudiced witness she did a considerable amount to put his testimony in doubt.

  Yes, he was lucky to have found Mrs Ahmed. She would not stand back from the fight.

  Even though – his heart shrank – unknown to herself she was fighting in an unjust cause.

  ‘Very well,’ S.M. Motabhoy said, when she indicated she had no further questions, ‘you may stand down, Inspector Pimputkar. But I should warn you to hold yourself in readiness. The Inquiry will wish to hear further from you.’

  Ghote watched Pimputkar march smartly from the room. And he wished with all his might that this could be the last he would see of him. But S.M. Motabhoy’s words were still in his ears. The Inquiry will wish to hear further from you.

  R.K. came to his feet again.

  ‘I should like now, with your permission, Mr Presiding Officer, to bring before the Inquiry one Vasantrao Chavan.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Sankar. We have plenty of time. Proceed.’

  Now, who was it that R.K. was summoning up, Ghote asked himself. The name meant nothing to him, but it was a common enough one in parts of Maharashtra. Yet who could R.K. and Pimputkar in the cat-and-mouse game they were playing with him be going to produce next? Thanks to the lines on which S.M. Motabhoy had said the Inquiry was to be conducted, the two of them had been able to bring forward witnesses in whatever order they pleased and had contrived to do so in a way best calculated to blast down his defences as each one of them was erected.

  So why were they bringing in this Balvantrao Chavan? No, Vasantrao Chavan. Could he come from Vigatpore? Certainly he could not be anybody who had actually seen himself and Tiger with Desai’s drooping body on that bicycle.

  The night, when they had set out, had been far too tumultuously rainy for anyone to have ventured out of doors except for the most urgent reasons. And, surely, in sleepy Vigatpore there were no urgent reasons.

  He clung on to this last thought.

  It was the key to his whole scheme of lies. The lies on which all his future depended. The lies which, battered but still intact, stood between a life of wretchedness and misery and the taking up once again of the life he was meant to lead. His karma, if Pandit Balkrishan was to be taken at his word.

  He shifted in his chair to get a better view of the tall door of the room. But there was no sign of it opening, no sounds from outside of steps banging down, echoing out.

  Mrs Ahmed was deep, once again, in the purple typed document she had taken up when they had had to wait for Pimputkar to appear. It consisted of a good many pages, and he could imagine the heart’s-core effort that had, long ago, gone into producing it. R.K. had resumed his attitude of apparent sleep. The members of the Board had begun to chat again, talking no doubt about every sort of triviality, the price hike in rainwear, where the deepest flood in the city was to be found, the latest film, their wives’ latest holyman and how he had spotted out her symptoms straight away.

  Then, at last, there came the sound of steps in the corridor, the slap of the orderly’s heavy regulation chappals. And what other sound? Something hard to make out. Bare feet. Yes, bare feet, most probably.

  So who? Who was it R.K. was calling? This Vasantrao, no Balvantrao, no Vasantrao Chavan?

  He looked across at R.K. His eyes were just not closed, two glinting slits.

  The door opened and the orderly ushered in a wide-eyed man who obviously held some menial job somewhere. Barefooted, yes, with a pair of khaki half-pants above thin knobbly knees and a well-washed, faded shirt that had once had a gay pattern of small yellow aircraft on it.

  The orderly directed him, almost manhandled him, to the witness table. The officers of the Board turned away from each other and assumed alert and interested expressions. S.M. Motabhoy gave a small beneficient nod to R.K.

  R.K. got to his feet.

  ‘You are Vasantrao Chavan?’

  The man at the witness table looked round the big room like a scared rabbit and at last located who it had been who had demanded his name.

  ‘You are Vasantrao Chavan?’ R.K. repeated wearily.

  ‘Yes. Yes, sahib. That is being my name.’

  Vasantrao Chavan looked at once as if he feared it had been the greatest mistake to have admitted this.

  R.K. sighed.

  ‘You are by occupation a dhobi?’

  A dhobi, Ghote thought. Why should Pimputkar have dug up a washerman to give evidence? What was he going to give evidence of?

  ‘Ji, sahib. I am dhobi.’

  ‘One of the places where you go to collect clothes for washing is the residence of Mrs G.V. Ghote?’

  Ghote did not hear the dhobi’s reply. His mind was too full of a wild flux of anger and appalled dismay.

  Pimputkar, that biting mongoose, had penetrated to the very heart of his existence. To his own home. Somehow he felt now that, whatever evidence the dhobi was about to give, it must betray him entirely. If Pimputkar’s claws had reached this far into his life, what would he not have found out?

  The man might have been crouching somewhere just outside the open window when he had first confessed to Protima what had actually happened on that fearful night in Vigatpore.

  Sitting on his hard chair in the high-ceilinged room, he shook his head in sharp self-reproof.

  What nonsense he had let himself think. That window at home was far too high for any eavesdropper. But Ved, young Ved, might not Pimputkar somehow have got hold of him? No, again that was nonsense. The boy knew nothing. He might, in fact, have been wondering what had been happening in their little world. He was old enough to have his suspicions of the story about extra casual leave he had been given to account for those long days of idleness. But he had been told not a word of the true state of affairs, so there was nothing Pimputkar could find out from him.

  But, all the same, the very thought of the fellow making inquiries round about his home, even to questioning the dhobi and discovering – Discovering what?

  He forced himself to pay attention to R.K. again.

  ‘Now, can you remember a particular day rather more than a year ago, during the early monsoon, when you collected from Mrs Ghote an unusual piece of dirty washing?’

  The dhobi grasped the table edge in front of him and leant forward, twisting his head to look at R.K. with a tremendous air of being willing to cooperate.

  ‘This is what that Inspector Sahib was telling?’ he asked.

  Mrs Ahmed was up in an instant.

  ‘Mr Presiding Officer, this witness has clearly
been instructed in his testimony.’

  But R.K. was undismayed.

  ‘Mr Presiding Officer, this Inquiry has been convened, in your own words if I recollect them, to elicit the truth of the events of June the 24th and 25th last year. We have before us a dhobi who spends his life collecting and washing dirty clothes of all varieties from a considerable number of persons. How is he to recall a particular transaction more than a year ago unless he is to some degree prompted?’

  S.M. Motabhoy considered. And then pronounced.

  ‘Yes, I see no way we can get to the heart of this matter without some such instruction of the witness. Proceed, Mr Sankar.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  R.K. turned to the dhobi once more.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘we are talking about the time which Inspector Pimputkar asked you about. The time during the last monsoon when you collected from Mrs Ghote certain items for washing. Will you tell us, please, what they were?’

  The dhobi clasped his hands together in his eagerness to produce the wanted answer.

  ‘Oh, yes, sahib. It was as that Inspector Sahib was telling. Two pieces of police officer uniform.’

  Ghote looked behind him at Mrs Ahmed. Should she not be protesting again against such prompted evidence?

  But wearily she shook her head in negative, as much as to say there was no point if S.M. Motabhoy was determined to conduct the Inquiry in the way he was.

  And Ghote, turning back to look at the too willing witness once more – what threats had Pimputkar used? – realized just how seriously the fellow could damage his case. What was in question, no doubt, was the uniform he had been wearing on that appalling night. With his temporary assignment ending so abruptly he had had no time in Vigatpore to get it washed there and so he had brought it back to Bombay terribly mud-stained. How could he account for that? What could he say to Mrs Ahmed, so that she would have counter-questions to put to this wretched dhobi?

  Or was this the moment when he would have to tell her the truth after all? And if he did, what would she say to him, this true champion of good causes?

  ‘Do you know whose uniform this was?’ R.K. was asking now.