The Body in the Billiard Room

by H. R. F. Keating

  Wearily he scrambled down from the high seat of the jeep.

  ‘I am not quite catching what it is you are telling, Your Excellency,’ he said, hoping enlightenment might still come.

  ‘The silver, man. It’s been found, and guess where?’

  ‘No, sir, I am not able to guess.’

  ‘Not a hundred yards from where we stand at this moment. Or not much more. See the significance?’

  Ghote decided that silence was his only possible course.

  ‘Yes, exactly. Simply confirms what I’ve said all along. The theft wasn’t a real theft at all. The whole thing was a piece of diabolic deception. The murderer simply took the silver, pretended to force that window, no doubt scrambled out through it and then hid it all in the nearest convenient place.’

  ‘And, please, where is that?’

  ‘Corner of the churchyard at St Stephen’s. Scarcely more than a hundred yards from here, across country.’

  ‘That is the church we can see?’

  ‘Yes, yes. Parish church of Ootacamund. Been here since the early years of the last century, 1829 to be exact. Go there every Sunday myself, see the plaque. Built at the expense of the Right Honourable Stephen Rumbold Lushington, Governor of Madras State. Timbers of the roof taken from the ruins of Tippoo Sultan’s palace after the Siege of Seringapatam. Cruel man, of course, but a fine scholar. Makes one think, that. Fine building, too.’

  Under cover of this spate of historical information Ghote had been sorting things out.

  ‘And what you are believing, Your Excellency,’ he said, ‘is that, if the murder had been just only the work of a dacoit, the fellow would have taken with him his loots and not placed same in hiding?’

  ‘Of course, of course. Especially not so damn near. We’ll see that fool Meenakshisundaram laugh out of the other side of his face now. He’s coming over, by the way. We’ll go and meet him at the spot.’

  Ghote did not much like the idea of being seen by Inspector Meenakshisundaram, that believer in the wily ways of all Bombay CID wallahs, in the company of his overbearing Dr Watson. But there seemed to be no help for it.

  ‘How was it that the silver came to be discovered?’ he asked. ‘If the murderer was wanting all this to look like a dacoity, he would have taken utmost care to hide safely, no?’

  ‘He?’ His Excellency said unexpectedly. ‘Aha, caught you out there, old chap. He or she, surely? Mustn’t get led astray by the unlikeliness of a woman committing the crime. Old trick that.’

  Ghote tried to envisage Mrs Trayling climbing out of the broken window of the billiard room with a sack of heavy silver and making her way across country to where the missing items had been hidden. He did not find it easy.

  Yet, he admitted, perhaps it would not be altogether impossible. Trayling Memsahib was a wiry-looking woman, and until quite recently she would have certainly taken her dog Spot out for walking each and every day.

  ‘Ah,’ His Excellency said, breaking into excited speech again, ‘that’s the dashed extraordinary part of it. Do you know how the silver came to light?’

  ‘That is what you were telling, sir,’ Ghote said, checking his exasperation.

  ‘Ah, yes. Yes. Well, it was Dasher, you see.’

  ‘Dasher, the dog of Major Bell?’

  ‘Quite right. And pretty well as far gone as his master. In fact, old Bell was saying when he came round here to tell us what he’d found that poor Dasher hasn’t smelt a thing for years. But today he took it into his woolly old head to rummage about behind one of the tombstones in the churchyard and there was the silver, just glinting in a shaft of sunlight.’

  ‘Altogether a fine piece of luck’, Ghote said.

  But luck did happen, he reflected. In the wild jungle of the world the most unlikely things did occur sometimes. Though he had somehow not expected the unlikely in the ordered calm of Ooty. Perhaps, however, Ooty was not so ordered after all.

  Filled with a vague sense of disappointment, he set off with His Excellency on the short walk round by road to St Stephen’s Church where, His Excellency said, Major Bell had gone back to mark the spot.

  As soon as they entered the churchyard, a sea of feathery grass interspersed with tall dark trees mounting sharply up from behind the very English-looking church, Ghote saw Major Bell. He was standing beside one of the square old tombs, very like those in the ancient Sewri Cemetery in Bombay - Ghote thought - where he once had waited fruitlessly in ambush for a black-money seth buying smuggled gold.

  The hero of the silver find, the suddenly rejuvenated Dasher, was invisible down among the depths of the tall grass, only evident from the way the Major occasionally shouted ‘Stop it, sir, stop it.’

  But, unexpectedly, the Major and his ancient dog were not the only ones standing guard. Seated on a tomb at a little distance, looking like a great ball of white seed-fluff that might at any moment be blown away by a puff of wind, was Mr Habibullah.

  His Excellency seemed just as surprised to see the big Moslem.

  ‘What’s that fellow doing here?’ he exclaimed. ‘Poking his nose in. Not wanted. Not wanted on voyage, not one bit.’

  ‘You are not thinking it is significant that the gentleman has come to the place where the murderer was hiding what he took?’ Ghote asked, just a little out of malice.

  ‘Hah. Revisiting the scene, eh? Hadn’t thought of that. You may well be right, Ghote, you may well be right.’

  His Excellency glared across at the former railways officer.

  ‘Go and talk to him,’ he said. ‘Tackle him on the spot. Dare say he’ll give something away. Rely on you.’

  Ghote acknowledged inwardly that he had been properly paid out for his tiny, secret challenge. But he supposed that at least Mr Habibullah would be easier to talk with this second time.

  They pushed on through the tall, purple-headed grass, warm in the sun and abruptly chilly when the dense shadow of a tree let the sharp Ooty air have its own way.

  ‘So this is where it was,’ His Excellency greeted the Major.

  ‘Tucked in here, just where the tomb’s crumbled away,’ the Major replied, pointing. ‘Behind that bit of gorse growing there.’

  The old tomb had indeed crumbled away at one of its corners, Ghote saw. There was quite a deep hole, partially concealed by the dark-green, prickly bush scattered with golden yellow flowers. Behind it a much-used gunny sack could be seen and, where a ray of sunlight came and went as the breeze moved the branches of a tree nearby, there were glints of silver.

  On the tomb Ghote could just discern, where the sun struck its surface, letters that spelt out Sacred to the Memory of Annie, Wife of Captain Henry Browne, Bengal Artillery, in the Twenty-fourth Year of Her Age.

  He felt a dart of pity.

  But there was work to be done. Perhaps.

  He turned and tramped off towards where Mr Habibullah was sitting, his heavy, black, silver-topped stick lying beside him.

  From a tree further up the slope there came suddenly the call of a bird Ghote had not heard before. Cuckoo, cuckoo, it seemed to cry.

  Of course, he thought, it must be a cuckoo bird, like the ones we used to read about in English poems at school. There would, naturally, be such an import from England in Ooty.

  Cuckoo, cuckoo.

  But a cuckoo, that was surely an expression meaning a fool. An owl, as we would say. Was the bird mocking him for going about here in Ooty on some sort of a fool’s errand?

  Now, though, he was standing directly in front of the huge Moslem.

  He coughed.

  ‘It is a most astonishing discovery Major Bell’s dog has made, no?’ he said.

  Mr Habibullah turned his large face towards him and broke into a smile of simple delight.

  ‘Oh, yes, yes. Altogether a freak of chance. I find that most pleasing. I came up here, indeed, when I heard, just to see the place with my own eyes. After my years of attempting to regulate the complexities of the Indian railway system anything that has about it the wildn
ess of chance appeals to me beyond measure.’

  Ghote found all this somewhat hard to swallow. Yet on the other hand, he thought, people do have the most strange ideas. Perhaps this great fat fellow sitting up on the tombstone swaying a little from side to side is genuinely no more than a worshipper of the god of pure chance. After all, if he is instead that absconder under the MISA, it would be absurd for him to be putting out such a story.

  But then - a new thought struck him - what if the murder of the billiards marker was not, as His Excellency kept insisting, the carefully plotted work of a diabolically cunning criminal, but a killing on a mere whim only?

  Could this be so? Could this happy-go-lucky, smiling fellow in front of him have taken it into his head to go and stab to death an innocent old man?

  ‘You seem pensive, my dear sir,’ the Moslem’s voice broke in on his thoughts. ‘I trust you are not pursuing some implacable chain of logic. You have met Professor Godbole, of course, that so serious new visitor to my unlikely Ooty? Well, I understand he is an authority on the subject of Great Detectives, and he tells me, at some length, that such persons do not at all work in a methodical fashion but rely on some mixture of intuition to reveal all in one single blinding flash.’

  Ghote experienced a jet of fury. It was bad enough to be called and called again a Great Detective by a murder-book-obsessed person like His Excellency, but to be hailed as this by an utter outsider was altogether too much.

  ‘Please to understand, sir,’ he snapped out, ‘I am not any sort of a Great Detective. A detective officer, yes. Of the Bombay CID, and here on secondment to inquire into some special circumstances arising from the death of one Pichu in the Ootacamund Club. But no more than that. No more at all.’

  ‘Well, I am disappointed,’ Mr Habibullah replied. ‘I tell you frankly, Inspector, that I am much disappointed. The picture you put before me is sadly humdrum, and I do not like the humdrum. Not at all. I have fled from it all the way to Ooty, and now you pursue me with it once more. Yes, pursue me.’

  ‘That is as may be, sir,’ Ghote answered, still nettled. ‘But I must tell you that, if the murderer of the said Pichu is to be apprehended, it will be by the humdrum and regular methods of criminal investigation. You can be sure of that.’

  But how sure was he himself, he asked in sudden inward doubt. Here in Ooty, how sure was he?

  He was spared arriving at an answer.

  A shout from behind made him turn his head, and thus only half-see the quick look of — what? — suspicion, wariness, or mere displeasure that had passed over Mr Habibullah’s large, placid face.

  It had been His Excellency who had called out. A police jeep had appeared at the gates of the churchyard, coming to a halt in a cloud of rising dust. Inspector Meenakshisun-daram had arrived on the scene.

  Grimly Ghote marched off to where His Excellency and Major Bell were standing beside the newly discovered silver. He did not at all look forward to this meeting with his Tamil colleague.

  They waited in silence for Meenakshisundaram to come plodding up to them in the crisp sunshine.

  But after a little Ghote felt obliged to say something. He gave a little cough.

  ‘You must be greatly pleased, Major, that the cup that is bearing your name as snooker victor will be once more restored to its place of honour.’

  But the Major turned his puce-red face to him with a gun-battery glare.

  ‘Feller doesn’t want to go on and on about something like that.’

  Ghote felt altogether disconcerted. His chance words of conversation had clearly angered the Major. It must be that he had unwittingly broken some unwritten Ooty rule about not showing enthusiasm. Had he been unBritish? Shown himself to be part and parcel of that swirling muddy tide rising up to engulf the proper Ooty of old?

  He hung his head.

  So he was doubly put out when Meenakshisundaram, his bloated cheeks beaded with sweat, coming within hailing distance, chose to greet him rather than either of the two senior Ooty hands beside the tomb of youthful Mrs Annie Browne.

  ‘Hello, hello, Ghote bhai. Still enjoying the good life of here, I see, even when there is no more work for you.’

  ‘But finding this silver at this place itself is meaning that work is still there,’ Ghote declared strenuously, as he fought down a flush of shame.

  ‘Oh ho, you are still holding and holding to that idea of Mehta Sahib’s here, is it?’ Meenakshisundaram answered, his voice booming over the tall grasses and tumbledown tombs all round. ‘Well, I am not blaming. Ooty is most pleasant place to stay, no?’

  Ghote was saved from defending himself from this hardly subtle allegation, as he was about to do with some anger, by the intervention of His Excellency himself.

  ‘Come, Inspector,’ he said to Meenakshisundaram, ‘you cannot possibly claim for one moment longer that this affair is the work of a mere dacoit. Why would a thief promptly hide what he’s stolen within a few yards of the place where he took it from? Answer me that.’

  ‘Yards-fards,’ Meenakshisundaram replied cheerfully. ‘Here is a damn fine place to be hiding the loot till hue and cry is dying down.’

  ‘Nonsense, man. In the churchyard of the principal place of worship in Ootacamund?’

  Meenakshisundaram grinned.

  ‘Temples are there also,’ he said. ‘In plenty-plenty. And how many are coming to your Christian place of worship? Let me be informing you. Twenty-thirty only each Sunday, no? I tell you, Mehta Sahib, I am knowing what goes on in Ooty. Every bit-pitt. Even if you are not at all liking.’

  And His Excellency, very evidently, was not pleased to hear that even the attendance figure at the parish church was something that came under the Tamil inspector’s eye.

  ‘That’s as may be,’ he said. ‘But you cannot get away from the facts. I told you at the time, Inspector, that the theft of the Club silver was no more than a ruse conceived by a devilishly subtle mind, and finding the so-called stolen goods now as near to the Club as this, whether it’s one hundred yards, or two, or three, simply proves my point. If you don’t believe me, ask Ghote here. India’s Sherlock Holmes.’

  Ghote suddenly understood to the full the meaning of the expression ‘wishing like Sita to disappear into the bowels of the earth’. But this was not the world of the Ramayana: his opinion had been demanded and he would have to give it.

  ‘Sherlock Holmes or not at all Sherlock Holmes,’ he found himself answering, ‘there is one thing I am long ago learning. It is no good whatsoever to come to theories without having at your disposal the facts.’

  To his surprise, since he felt acutely that this temporizing answer was a betrayal of the man who had, for better or worse, done him the honour of calling him to Ooty, His Excellency burst into appreciative laughter.

  ‘Very good, very good,’ he said. ‘Holmes to a T. “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.” I think I quote exactly.’

  ‘Yes,’ Ghote chimed in, as much to snub Meenakshisundaram as to gain further approbation from his Watson. ‘Yes, and up to now we are not having enough of datas. Definitely.’

  But his pronouncement did not seem to quash the Tamil inspector.

  ‘Some datas at least we are having,’ he said, stooping suddenly and tugging the gunny sack from behind the untidy, self-sown gorse bush. ‘And I will take into my custody.’

  From the grass beside him Dasher gave a feeble throaty growl and made as if to fasten his almost toothless jaws into Meenakshisundaram’s distinctly too fat right calf.

  A push rather than a kick put an end to the attempt. And in another moment Meenakshisundaram was tramping back down the slope towards his jeep, the Ootacamund Club silver in its clanking old sack held in a carelessly swinging hand.

  ‘Well,’ said His Excellency, ‘that seems to be that. We’d better get back to the Club, I suppose. You coming, Major?’

  ‘Er—No thanks, no. Generally take Dasher up to the top for his walk. Better stick to routine, long as my old ticke
r will let me.’

  He turned and began trudging slowly away. Dasher followed, looking mournful.

  His Excellency, contriving totally to ignore Mr Habibullah, led the way down towards the church and the way back to the Club via the road.

  ‘Thought you handled that very well,’ he said to Ghote as soon as they were out of earshot. ‘Put that plodder Meenakshisundaram nicely in his place.’

  Ghote preened himself a little.

  ‘Get anything out of that fearful Habibullah?’ His Excellency promptly asked. ‘Fellow seemed to be talking away to you all right.’

  Ghote thought. He had clearly not got anything in the way of a firm clue from the Moslem. Rather, instead, a series of disquieting ideas had been put into his head. Certainly none of them suitable to present to His Excellency.

  ‘Well,’ he answered, feeling his way, ‘something perhaps I was learning. But—But it is not at all easy to put a finger on just only what.’

  ‘Aha, yes. Poirot often felt the same, of course. Did so in Mrs McGinty’s Dead. About two-thirds of the way through, it would be. When he compares the mystery to a pattern woven in some material, only the stuffs all in the same colour making it almost impossible to pick out the pattern. Got that far yet?’

  ‘No,’ Ghote said. ‘No, I have not had much of time to go through that book up till now.’

  Then, feeling that he ought at least to show an interest in something as close to His Excellency’s heart, he asked a question.

  ‘This cut-piece that Shri Poirot saw himself as examining, was he in the end seeing the pattern therein?’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course, my dear fellow. Of course. Wouldn’t have been a Great Detective otherwise, would he?’

  ‘No. No, I am supposing not.’

  ‘But you, old man,’ His Excellency went relentlessly on. ‘Surely by now you in your turn must have begun to glimpse the pattern? I mean, after all, we have just established beyond doubt that the crime is bound to have been committed by one of those five in the Club at the time. So can’t you just hint at a name? I promise it’ll go no further until you have absolute proof.’