The Body in the Billiard Room

by H. R. F. Keating

  ‘I can see we shall get on,’ he said, spluttering with laughter. ‘I like a chap who can joke about serious subjects.

  So let’s play stroke for stroke, shall we, and see how we get on? I’ll tee off.’

  Ghote was relieved to find that this meant that the Maharajah would be the first to do whatever had to be done. He watched intently as his opponent, if such in golfing terms he was, went over to the wizened bag-carrier and took from a pocket in the bag’s side a little, bright red plastic stick, pushed it into the fine turf at his feet and then balanced a white golfball in a cup at its head.

  The little bag-carrier - was he what they called a cuddie? Or just a coolie? Or, no, a caddie? Yes, a caddie - removed from the deep bag a club with a leather pouch over its head. This he untied and then offered the club to the Maharajah. The Maharajah addressed himself with it to the poised ball. He wiggled his shoulders, changed his stance by a quarter-inch two or three times and at last took a whirling swing and sent the ball flying for some distance down the long swathe of cut grass stretching out in front of them.

  ‘Your tee-off, old boy.’

  Ghote swallowed.

  The Maharajah handed him a ball and he placed it on the little red stand. Then the caddie offered him the club which the Maharajah had used. He took it and hastily, for fear of now exposing his total ignorance before there had been any time for the talking he knew he had to engage in, he went through a quick imitation of the shoulder wiggling and stance-shifting he had seen the Maharajah perform. Finally he swung the club high and brought it swishing down. He felt a smack of impact as its head came into contact with the heavy little white ball. A not unsatisfactory sensation.

  ‘By God,’ said the Maharajah, ‘I can see I shall have to pull my socks up.’

  Ghote looked down the length of crisp cut grass in front of him, dotted to either side with low dark-green bushes sprinkled with yellow flowers and a few tall spindly paletrunked unfamiliar trees. The ball he had hit had travelled about half as far again as the Maharajah’s.

  ‘Away we go then,’ the Maharajah said, rather grimly.

  He set off at a wide-striding walk. Ghote, keeping up with some difficulty, decided that he must now begin the business of talking like Shri Poirot.

  ‘It it that you are often coming to Ooty?’ he ventured.

  ‘Hm?’

  ‘I am asking do you visit Ooty very, very often?’

  ‘Hm? Oh, yes. Yes, I suppose I do. Family used to have a palace here, you know. In what they call Rajahs’ Square. Good many princely families used to come in the season and had places there. Most of them shut up now, of course.’

  Ghote began to feel that, despite his fluke shot with the golf club that had seemed to upset the Maharajah, he was now getting on to easy terms with him.

  ‘And is it that you have many friends here?’ he said, hoping that he was not being too hurried in leading the talk towards the possible presence somewhere in or near the town of Sarla Kumar.

  ‘Hm?’

  ‘Are there many friends of yours in Ooty now?’

  The Maharajah stopped suddenly in his striding walk and turned to him.

  ‘I say, old boy,’ he said, ‘do you mind not actually talking while we’re playing. Spoils the concentration, you know.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Not at all, not at all. I am sorry.’

  Glumly Ghote walked on towards the little white specks of their two golfballs. And to think, he said to himself, that I have let myself in for this most curious ritual, when I have no idea at all of its proper rules and regulations, and all to no purpose.

  They arrived at the Maharajah’s ball. It was resting in a slight depression in the springy turf. From what he recalled of the game, Ghote expected the Maharajah to take another of his clubs from the deep bag under the weight of which their caddie had tramped along and with it hit the ball as near as he could to the pole with a little flag on it he could see in the distance.

  But instead the Maharajah went and stood at a distance of a few feet and watched while the caddie, dumping the heavy bag down, picked the ball up, looked about and then placed it on top of a convenient tuft of grass from which, clearly, it would be a great deal easier to hit it effectively.

  Perhaps, Ghote thought, his own vague understanding of the rules of this game was at fault. Or was it permitted to those of princely blood, however unrecognized elsewhere in republican India, to flout such rules at golf? Or perhaps there was a special rule here, up in paradise Ooty, that things could be made easier than they were elsewhere?

  The Maharajah, after even more preliminaries than with his first shot, swung the new club the caddie had handed him, hit his ball off its tuffet and sent it to a spot just short of the circle of trimmer grass surrounding the pole and its flag.

  They marched off again, in silence, to where Ghote’s ball had finished its run. It, too, was lying in a depression in the springy turf, a rather deeper depression. Ghote wondered if the caddie would do the same kindness for himself as he had done for the Maharajah.

  The wizened old man looked up at the Maharajah questioningly. The Maharajah gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. The caddie dipped into the golf bag and handed Ghote in a pointed manner the club he was evidently to use on his half-sunken ball.

  A small fire of resentment began to burn in Ghote’s mind.

  He gritted his teeth, stood astride beside the ball, swung the club back and, by dint of bending sharply at the knees and achieving a sort of scooping action, succeeded in making a fair-and-square hit.

  He tried to keep any expression of triumph off his face as he saw the ball land inside the circle of close-cut grass round the pole and trickle a foot or two onwards.

  ‘Jolly good shot,’ said the Maharajah.

  Bitterly.

  They walked on again to where the Maharajah’s ball lay, and once more the caddie altered its position slightly before handing over a club.

  The Maharajah’s shot was better this time. His ball ran across the smooth grass surrounding the flag in its hole and looked as if it might even strike the pole and plop in.

  In the event it came to a stop some six inches away.

  ‘Jolly good shot, sir,’ Ghote said, guessing that this was what was required of him.

  ‘Not bad, not bad. Let’s see what you make of your putt. Pretty long one, of course, twenty-five feet if it’s an inch.’

  They walked across to Ghote’s ball. It was certainly twenty feet from the flag. The caddie handed him a club with a flat iron head to it. He supposed that it would be more efficient at sending a ball in a straight line across the very short grass.

  The caddie went up to the flag in its hole and, after another quick glance at the Maharajah, removed it. Ghote now had some difficulty in making out exactly where the hole was. But he made up his mind he would do his best. He took a look along what he thought was the line his ball should go, gave it a firm tap with the club and watched the result.

  The ball ran fair and true, slowed at its approach to the hole, almost came to a stop, reached the lip of the hole a little towards the right-hand side of it, teetered there for an instant and at last dropped in.

  The Maharajah did not say ‘Jolly good shot’.

  Instead he picked up his own ball and muttered ‘One up to you, then.’

  Well, Ghote thought, if I am not a Great Detective perhaps I may turn out to be a Great Golfman.

  They walked on to the next starting point, which Ghote suddenly remembered should be called a tee.

  There, rather to his surprise, the caddie having taken out the club he had first used handed it not to the Maharajah but to himself.

  Evidently this time he had to be the first to play. He tried to remember exactly what the Maharajah, and he in imitation, had done last time. But he realized he would never manage to get the whole ritual correct. Was it, he wondered, strictly necessary? He decided to leave it out, put his ball on the red peg, placed himself with legs astride beside it, swung the weig
hty club up once and brought it swishing down. Its head met the ball perched up on its peg with much the same satisfying thwack as before. But it seemed not to have quite as much effect. The ball ran well but nothing like as far as before.

  ‘Oh, very good shot,’ the Maharajah said.

  Ghote thought he sounded secretly rather pleased.

  The Maharajah then took his own stance. This time he shrugged his shoulders, flexed his wrists and altered the position of his feet even more than the time before. But with not much greater success. His ball went nearly as far as Ghote’s, but it was well off the line and ended up in the longer grass at the side of the long clear swathe.

  They marched off towards it - clearly silence was still to be observed - and after the caddie had lifted the ball out of the awkward longer grass the Maharajah managed to get in a shot that put it within easy reach of the green circle surrounding the second marker flag.

  Ghote was uncertain whether to say ‘Jolly good shot’ or not. And by the time he had decided that perhaps it would be best to offer congratulations the moment seemed to have passed. The Maharajah had set off grimly in the direction of Ghote’s ball, lying fair and square in the middle of the approach.

  Ghote followed, took the club the caddie handed him, looked over towards the flag, not too far off, and prepared to swing, with some confidence.

  ‘Yes,’ came the Maharajah’s voice, in something like a sharp yelp from directly behind him. ‘Yes, damned if I could find a partner at all when I asked about yesterday.’

  The even swing Ghote had begun to impart to his club was not proof against the jerk to his nerves the interruption had caused. He struck the ball with sufficient vigour but appallingly crookedly. It rose too high in the air and took a path well away from the neatly clipped grass in front of him.

  He resigned himself to defeat. But, to his awed delight, as the ball descended it struck one of the tall, pale-trunked trees dotted about, bounced off it at an angle and landed well on course for the flag, if still behind the Maharajah’s ball.

  ‘I say, I hope I didn’t put you off by talking,’ the Maharajah said. ‘I didn’t think you were going to take your shot so quickly.’

  ‘No, no, not at all,’ Ghote murmured.

  ‘Still, bit of luck for you your ball hit that eucalyptus tree.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So it’s your shot again.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Of course.’

  Evidently then the player furthest from the hole always took the next shot. He was learning.

  ‘Yes,’ the Maharajah said, as if he was continuing the conversation he had begun so explosively at that highly inopportune moment, ‘not a damn soul in the Club wanted to come out today when I asked around yesterday. Poor old Surinder Mehta’s much too old, of course. And as for that fearful Moslem, Habibullah, I doubt if he’s ever played golf in his life.’

  ‘No,’ Ghote answered bleakly, ‘I do not suppose that he has.’

  He wondered, too, whether, if talk was now permissible, he should attempt to steer it round again to the subject of visitors to Ooty and whether the Maharajah was seeing any particular one of them.

  But as they walked up to where his ball was lying the Maharajah stalked ahead, wrapped once more in silence. It was only when Ghote had been handed his next club and after looking to see where he should try and put his shot was placing himself to make it that his opponent took up once more the conversation he had abandoned.

  ‘Even asked that fellow Iyer to play. Met him prowling about late at night - never rests that chap, often see him about in the small hours, can’t understand it - and asked him if he was a golfer. He said he was . . .’

  Ghote decided that yammer-yammer-yammer or not he would have to play his shot.

  ‘ . . . but when I put it to him that he could come out with me this morning he said he had his duties. I should have thought a club secretary’s duty was to play with a member when asked, but there you have it. . .’

  Ghote forced himself to shut out the voice and took his shot. To his joy he seemed to have hit the ball absolutely right. It rose up in a sweet parabola and landed within comfortable reach of the waiting flag.

  ‘Good shot,’ the Maharajah said, though he might have been saying ‘Good God’.

  They set off towards his own ball. Ghote gave a little cough. If chit-chat was suddenly allowable it must be kept up.

  ‘But could you not find Major Bell to play with?’ he asked. ‘He would make a good partner I am thinking. He must be good at games when he was winning the snooker trophy, with his name on that cup that has been stolen.’

  ‘Ringer Bell?’ the Maharajah replied. ‘My dear chap, he’s more of a crock than old Mehta. He’d probably drop down dead when he took his first swing.’

  Ghote was thinking furiously how to carry on the conversation when the Maharajah spoke again.

  ‘And I’d really be obliged, old boy, if you didn’t talk,’ he said. ‘I have asked you once.’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes. Most sorry. Most sorry.’

  Yet it seemed that his indiscretion had not too greatly upset his opponent. When he took his shot he succeeded in getting his ball on to the green almost as near the hole as Ghote’s own.

  ‘Looks as though I’ve got this for it,’ he said. ‘Or at least to halve it if you happen to sink your putt.’

  ‘Yes,’ Ghote ventured to reply, risking that much speech. The Maharajah made a considerable fuss about making his stroke, even placing his club full-length on the ground to establish the right line between ball and hole. Or was it, Ghote wondered seeing him press the club hard down into the grass, here seemingly as smooth as the billiard table on which Pichu’s body had lain, was it in order to make a little channel for the ball to run along?

  But at last the Maharajah, after much wiggling and looking, did take the shot. His ball ran along the thin depression in the grass as if on a railway line. But it had been struck just too tentatively. It came to rest one inch short of the hole.

  Taut-faced, the Maharajah stepped forward and tapped it home.

  ‘Well,’ he said, looking over towards Ghote’s ball, ‘you’ve got this for it, I suppose.’

  At least, Ghote thought, the fellow has not had the utter cheek to pretend his two strokes were only one.

  He wondered whether he ought perhaps to attempt to get his own ball to finish up short of the hole. If the Maharajah felt that they had done equally well, would he be more prepared for revealing chit-chat? Or would it even be best to make a complete mess of his shot so that the Maharajah’s feelings of hundred per cent superiority would be restored? Would that get him then to lower his guard right down?

  Always supposing he had a guard to lower. Always supposing it really was one of His Excellency’s five suspects who had actually done the murder and that the whole thing was not just an old man’s fancy.

  He decided that the possibilities were simply too many. Their ramifications were just too complex. The only thing seemed to be to play this extraordinary game which he had got caught up in just, apparently, as it should be played.

  He went over to the golf-bag in which the caddie had for some reason replaced the club the Maharajah had used. The long, heavy bag was lying on the ground and he had to crouch to see if he could find the flat-headed affair that was, it seemed, best for the business of sending a ball accurately across smooth grass.

  ‘Stop.’

  The Maharajah’s voice barked out as if he had suddenly been winged by a gunshot.

  Ghote tumbled back on to his haunches.

  ‘Please,’ the Maharajah said, with what might have been a trace of apology. ‘I never let anyone mess around with my clubs.’

  He spoke rapidly in Tamil to the caddie, who scurried across and produced the club Ghote needed.

  Picking himself up, Ghote came to the conclusion that the whole odd little incident must be another of the Maharajah’s attempts to upset him.

  Really his tactics were altogether too much of stark an
d staring.

  He decided firmly now that, since he did seem to have the knack of dealing with the little white ball, he would do his damndest to make sure he got it into the hole.

  He drew in a single deep breath of the crisp Nilgiri air, took his stance, looked at the dark little hole in the middle of the ring of velvety green grass and firmly tapped the ball. To his intense inward pleasure, it ran straight and true and plopped down into the hole as if it had been pulled into it by a swiftly rolled-up invisible string.

  He looked across to the Maharajah. His lips were compressed and his eyebrows sharply drawn together.

  After a few long moments he spoke.

  ‘I’m very sorry, old man,’ he said, ‘but the truth is I’ve just got the most fiendish headache. I think I’ll have to go back and lie down. And I’d like to get back to my wife. She gets upset if I’m away too long.’

  ‘Of course, most certainly,’ Ghote said, aware of the lack of logic in the Maharajah’s double excuse but doing his best not to let that appear on his face.

  They returned in storm-heavy purple silence to the clubhouse and got into the jeep. The Maharajah drove even more ferociously than on the way out. They did not encounter any wandering sheep, but they did come across a group of half-wild ponies. And sent them scattering.

  As soon as they pulled up outside the Club, with a vile screech of brakes, the Maharajah jumped out and plunged into the building, leaving Ghote sitting up in his seat.

  He stayed where he was, thinking about the strange hour he had spent. He was still there when His Excellency appeared in the portico.

  ‘Ghote, Ghote,’ he called out in his high, fluting voice. ‘A surprising turn of events. They’ve found the missing trophies.’

  He came trotting over to the jeep.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘they’d been hidden quite near the Club. Very near really. Very near. And you know what that means.’

  10

  Not the Great Golfman, Ghote thought in an abrupt swirl of depression. No longer the Great Golfman, but the Great Detective once again. Here is my Dr Watson, only he is a Watson who is somehow always the guru never the shishya, stating that finding the stolen silver so near the Club must be meaning something. And here am I, Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot and all the rest, and I do not have any idea whatsoever why this should be so.