The Body in the Billiard Room

by H. R. F. Keating

  ‘Evidences-shevidences in plenty. Look, man. You have, Number One, a window forced. Then, Number Two, cupboard doors forced. Number Three, one lot of silver cups and what-all missing. So, that fellow gets himself killed while all this is happening? What could be more likely?’

  But on this last point Ghote had reservations. Pichu had been a very old man. Despite his nights of sleeping across the cupboard doors, it was not very likely that he would have put up a strong fight to preserve the Club silver. But, even if he had stood between this dacoit of Meenakshisun-daram’s and the loot, surely one good blow to the head would have dealt with him. Murder by stabbing was not the most likely outcome, by any means.

  ‘Mr Mehta was telling,’ he said, sounding as casual as he could, ‘that you were stating the victim was killed with a sword. Any confirmation from the post-mortem?’

  ‘Post-mortem, piss-partem,’ Meenakshisundaram replied cheerfully. ‘The fellow was dead-dead, isn’t it? What for would I go through all that business? He had been stabbed-stabbed. I am not needing some damned medico to tell me that.’

  Ghote took this in.

  ‘Tell me, man,’ he said, ‘is there a name you can be putting to this dacoit? Are you hoping to nab the fellow shortly?’

  ‘Name-shame. What does one name matter? There are ten-twelve I could be pulling in if I am wanting. Fifteen-sixteen.’

  ‘So you don’t expect to make an arrest straightaway?’

  Meenakshisundaram shrugged.

  ‘Oh, if things are getting too hot I can pick up some fellow in one jiffy. And be beating confession out of him in jiffies two.’

  Ghote thought then that he had learnt enough for the time being. He turned the talk back to less contentious matters, even going so far as to imply that he owed his own refrigerator to a slice of someone’s black money. But at length he ventured on a cautious approach to the matter of the particularly fat Moslem said to be absconding under the MISA following the big heroin raid in Cochin.

  ‘I suppose you were not having anything to do with that business, Inspector?’ he asked.

  ‘How I am wishing I was,’ Meenakshisundaram replied. ‘That Moslem fellow who was absconding, he must have paid and paid to be knowing in advance what was coming.’

  ‘No doubt. No doubt. And where is he now? Are there any gossips on that?’

  ‘Oh, yes, plenty-plenty. He is seen in Madras every day. So they are saying.’

  Ghote wondered how much reliance was to be placed on that. But he decided there was nothing to be gained from any further probing and asked instead where in Ooty he could get the good warm pullover he had realized, walking to the police station with his breath pluming out in the chill morning air, that he would certainly need if his stay was to last any longer.

  Then, noting with scrupulously false care the exact location of the pavement hawker in the Bazaar who, Meenakshisundaram had claimed, would hand over in fear and trembling a first-class pullover at the mere mention of his own name, he left.

  He did not, however, make his way straight back to the Ootacamund Club, scene of the crime.

  He felt he had too much to think about.

  So he wandered about the town and its outskirts, gratefully warm in the thick green jersey he had begun by obtaining in Chellaram’s department store from among all the souvenirs waylaying tourists there. He had thought of buying one of the bracelets made by the original inhabitants of the area, the Toda tribe, as a gift for his wife. But somehow he suspected he would not relish the idea in the years to come of being reminded too vividly of Ooty: paradise Ooty, hell Ooty.

  So he strode about among the other striding inhabitants of the Ooty of old, in their well-dubbined walking shoes, their flourished walking sticks, their tartan scarves and their obedient, heel-trailing dogs. And he thought.

  Every now and again the beating of his mind up against the dilemma which, more than ever since his meeting with Meenakshisundaram, confronted him would be halted by some unusual sight. The name of one of the neat little houses that reminded him, with their tiny turrets or decorative boarding or windows criss-crossed with diamond panes of pictures of faraway Britain: Iris Cottage, Rosemead, Hillside, Apple Cottage. Or there was ‘Rembrandt and Vandyke, Photographers’, with sepia portraits of British officers of long ago stiffly at attention in elaborate uniforms, their ladies beside them almost as military in long ballgowns.

  A post-box stopped him once and sent him into a long transfixed reverie. Startlingly different from Bombay’s squat, tinny, domed affairs with their dangling padlocks, it stood sturdy and upright, a tall iron pillar painted scarlet and topped by a little iron pineapple and with even, yes, a British crown raised up from the ironwork of its door still visible beneath the layers of painting and repainting over the years. Under it, only just to be made out, were the initials VR. Queen Victoria, Empress of India, she they must denote. He thought of all the decades of quiet peace and order there had been as mail had been confidently despatched to all parts of the world through the box’s rain-protected mouth.

  But less pleasant ideas forced themselves back into his consciousness all too quickly. The body in the billiard room. And the two explanations he had been given for its presence there.

  And, however hard he thought, he could not contrive to come to any conclusion about them.

  Certainly His Excellency showed every sign of having concocted his detective-story theory simply to please himself in his irresponsible old age. But on the other hand it clearly looked as if Meenakshisundaram was not the diligent investigator he ought to be. Far from it. So what was more likely than that he had jumped to the easy conclusion which the mere outer signs indicated?

  Neither explanation was wholly satisfactory. But neither was wholly to be dismissed. And each was plainly contradictory of the other.

  They could not, they could not possibly, both be right. Yet which was? Which was?

  6

  Ghote sighed. It was plain that no amount of solitary walking and hammering thought was going to produce a solution to his dilemma. There was nothing for it, after all, but to go back to the Club, meet His Excellency and tell him as little as he could of Inspector Meenakshisundaram’s beliefs.

  In fact, he encountered the ex-ambassador well before reaching the Club. He heard his name called out and looked up to see his unwished for partner, clutching a book on his way to the Nilgiri Library, just by the deep veranda and dark, rich interior of Spencer’s Stores.

  ‘Ah, Ghote. Something given you furiously to think, as old Poirot says?’

  Something had, Ghote reflected sourly. But he was damned if he was going to say what it was.

  ‘No, no, Your Excellency,’ he answered, stammering slightly. ‘It is that I was taking some time to look over this spot of Ooty.’

  ‘Hah, lie of the land, eh? Feeling the atmosphere? Suppose you read that bit near the beginning of Mrs McGinty’s Dead last night where Poirot says it was a case for once where it was not the voice of the silent dead that interested him, since the victim was only a charwoman, but the personality of the murderer himself. Just as here where we’ve got a servant as the victim.’

  His Excellency looked at Ghote, head cocked to one side in birdlike expectation. Ghote said nothing.

  ‘So,’ His Excellency asked at last, ‘you learn anything about any Moslem absconders from the plodder Meenakshisundaram?’

  ‘Yes, sir, I did,’ Ghote answered, twisting the strict truth, with a small jet of pleasurable spite. ‘There is one thing I am able to tell you. Inspector Meenakshisundaram is stating that the Moslem person wanted under the MISA has been reported sighted in Madras.’

  His Excellency looked gratifyingly disconcerted.

  ‘So not our friend in disguise after all,’ he said. ‘Well, well.’

  Then at once he became a great deal more cheerful.

  ‘So, all to play for still, eh?’ he said. ‘All five of them still possible.’

  ‘Perhaps you should be saying now four,’ Ghote s
aid, disliking the cheerfulness. ‘Four only.’

  ‘Oh, no, old chap. We all know about the one who’s cleared in the early stages, don’t we?’

  ‘Please?’

  ‘Always means that everything is not as it seems about whatever it was that cleared him, doesn’t it? So I don’t think we can regard our friend Habibullah as being altogether out of play. No, indeed.’

  ‘Ah,’ Ghote said, light breaking in, ‘it is detective-story books you are referring?’

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose it is.’

  But His Excellency’s embarrassment lasted only for an instant.

  ‘But, you see, old man,’ he said, ‘this business is a detective story. A detective story come to life. Never thought I’d live to see it, but there it is. Perfect situation. Body on the billiard table, weapon missing, false trail laid and seven suspects. Well, no, five actually. But amounts to much the same thing.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Inspector Ghote.

  ‘And,’ His Excellency added with relish, ‘you brought in, eh? India’s answer to Hercule Poirot.’

  ‘Well, but—’

  ‘And, by Jove, here’s a chance to see you in action. Look who’s going into Spencer’s.’

  Ghote turned, with a sinking of dismay, towards the dim interior of the big grocery shop. He saw, just disappearing into it, a wiry tweed-clad back which he recognized, chiefly from the iron-grey hair escaping in every direction from a stout green cotton waterproof hat, as that of Mrs Lucy Trayling.

  ‘Yes,’ His Excellency said, ‘Lucy must be going back to live at her house and needing supplies. That ancient ayah of hers will be on her feet again no doubt. If you ask me, Lucy’s only waiting for the old thing to pop off before she goes home.’

  ‘But if—If her ayah is popping off,’ Ghote said, once more bewildered, ‘would not Mrs Trayling be staying in the Club?’

  ‘Ah, no, my dear fellow. By home I mean Home. England. From all I hear Lucy wants nothing more than to go back Home, though I think she’s in for a pretty nasty shock when she gets there. England isn’t like it was in the Christie books any more, you know.’

  ‘But Trayling Memsahib is staying on, staying on in Ooty, because of her very aged ayah?’ Ghote asked, pricked by a dart of curiosity.

  ‘That’s what I hear. You see, when old Spot, her terrier, had to be put down a few months ago she did nothing about getting another dog. Significant, what? No, I tell you what it is. Lucy feels she can’t let an old servant down, not when she’s been with the family ever since the Traylings had that boy of theirs. See her point, of course, more or less, though Lucy’s a damn sight more loyal than most of us would be. But that’s the British for you.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Ghote politely.

  If Mrs Trayling, barely possible though it seemed, was a suspect as the wielder of the ‘sharp instrument’ that had ended Pichu’s life, it did not appear to be very likely that the coming death of her ancient ayah, or the recent popping off of her dog, Spot, had anything to do with it.

  ‘Yes,’ His Excellency went on, warming to his gossip in true Ooty style, ‘damn loyal woman, Lucy. Loyal to that frightful husband of hers through thick and thin. Thick and thin.’

  ‘Brigadier Trayling was a frightful person?’ Ghote inquired, scenting the faintest possibility of something not quite as it should have been.

  ‘Well, mustn’t speak ill of the dead,’ His Excellency said, ‘but it was common knowledge that Roly Trayling was knocking it back to a fearful extent in his latter days.’

  ‘The knocking back of alcoholic liquors?’

  ‘Whisky,’ said His Excellency. ‘Indian whisky, most of the time. Cheaper than Scotch as a deadener, and poor old Roly seemed to feel the need for a deadener more and more. Didn’t like Ooty life as a permanent thing, you see. That was the trouble. Had been an active man. Army. Commanding troops. Field exercises. Spot of real war from time to time. And then he ends up here. And what’s there for him to do? Take the dog for walks, come to the Club and see the same damn people every night, go to the Culture Circle on the last Saturday in each month and listen to some damn talk about art or something. Well, you can see how he came to his sticky end. And, of course, the fellow didn’t care for detective stories, unlike Lucy who’s almost as keen as I am. And she had the Flower Show, too. Her pelargoniums won year after year.’

  ‘The Brigadier was coming to some sticky end?’ Ghote asked sharply, cutting through the floral reminiscence.

  ‘Well, suppose that’s not quite the word, sticky end. He fell in the Lake one night, actually. On his way home from the Club. Drunk as a coot, of course.’

  ‘That is certain.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Bar steward gave evidence at the inquest, and so did old Pichu, come to that. Saw the poor chap staggering along by the Lake. And there was the medical evidence. Full to the gills, full to the gills. Still, that’s all keeping us from the matter in hand, eh?’

  ‘What matter is that, please?’ Ghote asked.

  ‘Why, stepping into Spencer’s and talking to Lucy Trayling, of course. Thought that was what this was all about. The old Poirot technique, get ’em talking and something comes out. Something comes out, eh?’

  And, seizing Ghote firmly by the arm, the ex-ambassador strode off towards the wide veranda of Spencer’s Stores.

  Apprehensive thoughts ran round and round in Ghote’s head like so many garishly painted horses on a wooden roundabout at a mela. He had succeeded in talking with Mr Habibullah, for a short while, and he had even found what was said had given him grounds for some vague suspicions. But what was he to talk about to this British memsahib? Her dead dog? Her dying ayah? The amount her dead husband had drunk?

  He had a fleeting impression of a clutter of people and objects on the shop’s wide veranda under the ornate ironwork brackets. There was a blackboard with prices chalked on it, a wide-smiling boy with a big, leaf-fringed basket of bright strawberries, a sign saying Dogs Not Allowed, a monster thermometer four feet high advertising Stephen’s Ink, a squatting man clutching a small aluminium case and looking sly as a pickpocket. And then they were inside and His Excellency was greeting Mrs Trayling in a voice that rang round the high interior of the shop with its long polished counter dotted with pairs of bright brass scales and attended by a row of assiduous clerks.

  And a moment later Mrs Lucy Trayling was thrusting out a hand to be shaken.

  ‘Saw you at dinner at the Club last night,’ she said. ‘Any friend of Surinder Mehta’s is a friend of mine.’

  ‘Most pleased,’ Ghote replied.

  But he could think of nothing to add. What would Hercule Poirot have found to say in such circumstances, he asked himself.

  ‘It is a very nice place you are having here in Ooty, no?’ he brought out at last. ‘I am greatly enjoying. Here you have very much of order and method.’

  ‘Good of you to say so,’ Mrs Trayling replied. ‘’Fraid I’m not much of a one for order and method myself. Or so my friends are always telling me. Aren’t they, Surinder?’

  His Excellency laughed, roguishly.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he said. ‘We are always telling Lucy she’s left something or other behind. Or dropped something. Or she’s telling us there’s something she’s forgotten.’

  Then another thought came to Ghote, and he began to wonder whether he might not after all possess something of Hercule Poirot’s art of making conversation flow.

  ‘But His Excellency was telling that you are thinking of going to Home,’ he said. ‘And after all leaving Ooty.’

  ‘Well,’ Lucy Trayling answered, ‘Ooty’s going to hell, you know. I mean, just look at what they sell in this place nowadays. Beach balls. Beach balls, big, vulgar, plastic beach balls in Spencer’s Stores. Beach balls and nasty little aluminium picnic chairs.’

  Ghote looked.

  And, yes, putting into the shade the bottles of Rose’s Lime Juice and the tins of Scottish shortbread on the shelves behind the counter was a high-piled display on the floor of
big, brightly coloured beach balls. Perhaps Ooty had begun to go to hell, or at least become just another holiday playground.

  His Excellency seemed to think so as well. He joined in now to denounce aspect after aspect of life in the town in the past few years, the huge factory on the outskirts making film stock for the torrential production of song-and-dance spectaculars from the Bombay and Madras studios, the new houses and high-rise blocks being built with no consideration for the traditional British-looking Ooty style of architecture, the people from what he called ‘the weaker sections’ setting up hovel homes in the public streets.

  Ghote listened, thankful that the burden of talking for long enough on any subject at all had been taken up by someone else. But nothing of any significance seemed to be being said. Not the least sign of anything bearing even remotely on the Club billiard room and the corpse that had desecrated its historic table. Soon his mind slipped away to thinking once more about what he had learnt from Inspector Meenakshisundaram and whether, despite the Tamil’s deplorable attitude, his account of the crime might not be, more or less, what had actually happened.

  But then a development in the talk caught his ear.

  ‘Yes,’ Mrs Trayling had said, ‘and there’s that Maharani of Pratapgadh’s. She certainly would never have been allowed in the Club in the old days.’

  ‘Extraordinary woman,’ His Excellency agreed, if without thoroughgoing conviction.

  Ghote thought that here at last was something useful, even if it was not revealing anything about Mrs Trayling. But it seemed as if His Excellency was throwing the chance away. Well, if Watson was not up to seizing it, then the Indian Hercule Poirot was.

  ‘Please,’ he said, thrusting himself in. ‘Please, why for would Her Highness the Maharani of Pratapgadh be not allowed upon Club premises in days of old?’

  Mrs Trayling gave him a sharp look.

  ‘Hm,’ she answered, ‘less said about that the better, I think.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ His Excellency added, traitorously aligning himself with his own suspect. ‘No talk about ladies in the smoking room, you know.’