He forced the thought aside and continued.
‘Yes, it is a most astonishing matter. But I am assuring: Pichu was murdered on two occasions. Let me tell you how I came to know that such was the case.’
He paused, gathering into as logical a chain as he could the various scraps of knowledge and observation that he had been able to forge together in his hours of trance into the real explanation of Pichu’s death.
‘It was in the following manner,’ he began again. ‘The first thing I was noticing, though at the time it did not strike me as it should, was the billiard table upon which the body of Pichu had been lying. That table was not at all bloodstained. Yet Pichu received a blow to the heart from some kind of sharp instrument. Now, as perhaps you are knowing, such blow will, unless in some cases where the inflicting weapon is left in the body, cause great effusion of blood. So why was there just only a small red stain upon
Pichu’s white servant’s coat? His Excellency had told me this was so when he was examining the body quite soon after discovery. Also I had confirmation when I was after able to speak with the person who actually made that discovery, one Gauri, a sweeper woman.’
Now there was only one response among his eight listeners, close attention.
‘So I am forced to the conclusion, impossible though it is seeming,’ he continued, ‘that Pichu was not killed by a blow from this sharp instrument, whatever it was. Yet there was in his chest a deep wound. Gauri had seen it. Mr Iyer, you also saw it. Your Excellency, you saw it. Inspector Meenakshisundaram saw it, and because of it, with every good reason upon his side, concluded that the murder was the work of a dacoit, the dacoit who had robbed many silver cups and trophies from the locked almirah in the said billiard room. How then did this almost bloodless wound come to be inflicted? The answer must be plain. It was after the blood in the body had ceased to flow. Or after it had almost ceased to flow. And what is it that is making blood cease to flow? It is death. Death itself.’
He took a quick survey of the eight faces watching him. Would one of them, at this stage of his revelation, betray something?
But, no. The faces he saw were all still pictures of mingled bewilderment and intentness.
He went on.
‘It was from the sweeper woman Gauri that I was also learning some other most significant facts about the body, though I must confess that at the time she told me I was too interested in finding out other matters to pay fullest attention. But I remembered at last what she was telling. She was saying Pichu’s face was pink-pink like flowers. Such were her words. She believed this was because Pichu had been drunk, as he often was she said. But, if the body had been dead even a short time, the colour from drink would have disappeared. No, what Gauri was describing in saying Pichu’s face was pink like flowers was patches of pinkness and when she was stating also that his mouth was filled with very much of saliva, I should at once have thought ‘Poison'. These are the signs of poisoning by cyanide. So it is plain that Pichu had taken a fatal dose some short time before in that billiard room where he lay on the shelf of the almirah, as was his invariable custom, and there entered feloniously the dacoit Inspector Meenakshisundaram had from the start suspected of committing the crime.'
‘Meenakshisundaram right?' His Excellency, till now kept silent by the steady piling on of Ghote's explanation, broke out in frustrated amazement.
‘Yes,' Ghote replied. ‘Inspector Meenakshisundaram is a trained police officer. It is most likely he would know how a crime has been committed, isn't it?'
‘Then you are saying that the fellow I'm told he's got down at the police station is the murderer?'
Again His Excellency sounded incredulous.
‘Well, I am not necessarily saying so much. A police officer can sometimes arrest a suspect upon good circumstantial evidence to find upon questioning that he has nabbed the wrong man.'
‘With Inspector Meenakshisundaram's methods of questioning,' Mr Habibullah put in, ‘I greatly wonder whether any detenu whatsoever would afterwards be freed.'
Ghote thought he had no comment to make.
‘Whether the dacoit who undoubtedly entered the billiard room at the Ooty Club and robbed away the silver trophies therein is or is not the murderer of Pichu is a most difficult question,' he said. ‘Because, you see, the person who was administering that cyanide must also be his murderer.'
‘A nice point, a nice point,' Professor Godbole broke in, his eyes shining in pure glee.' I'd enjoy putting that to my colleagues in the Faculty of Law. I fancy it would set them at each others' throats in fine style.'
‘But would they at all be able to say which person should be charge-sheeted under IPC Section 302?’ Ghote said. ‘Because at some time that is what is going to be the problem for Inspector Meenakshisundaram.’
‘Oh, the practical implications,’ the professor answered with a darting shrug. ‘Those I cannot help you with. And nor, I am sure, could any of my colleagues.’
The intervention seemed to have the effect of throwing the subject open to the meeting. If such it is, Ghote thought.
Now Mrs Trayling put in her contribution.
‘I may be stupid,’ she said, ‘but what I haven’t understood is how that wretched Pichu got on to the billiard table at all. I mean, if he was poisoned - and I don’t really understand about that either - but if he was poisoned and then lay down in the place where he always slept, in front of the trophies almirah, as he never used to cease to tell us, then how did he move over to the billiard table? Did he hop or something? I don’t understand.’
‘Oh, there is no need to crack your head over that, madam,’ Ghote answered. ‘Pichu had to be moved by the dacoit who had come to rob the trophies. I have a suspicion that the fellow had learnt that Pichu was often drunk last thing at night and had counted on only gagging and binding him. But, when he came to touch, then the final one of the convulsions that are also a symptom of poisoning by cyanide was taking place. And so the dacoit, in fear and surprise, stabbed him with the sword he had with him in order to break open the almirah. He then, altogether in haste, was moving the body so that he could seize his loots.’
‘Yes, but steady on,’ His Excellency intervened, resuming something of his old authority. ‘What about the way the body was, right in the middle of the billiard table? You yourself agreed when I first told you that it was laid out in that way that it was a damn significant circumstance. A blackmail victim’s message to the world. Nothing less.’
‘Yes,’ Ghote admitted. ‘Yes, I was agreeing then. But I was wrong to have concurred to one hundred per cent. Certainly such was one possible explanation, even one likely explanation. But, of course, it was not the sole and only explanation. In life, many factors can add up to provide one particular circumstance. What must have happened here, I am believing, is that the dacoit, in order to remove Pichu from in front of the almirah doors, was putting the body across his shoulder and then turning round and staggering a pace or two away. Then there in front of him was the billiard table. He tossed the body down. It fell by chance into that particular position.’
‘Hm,’ grunted His Excellency doubtfully.
But Ghote abruptly received some unexpected support. It came from Mr Habibullah.
‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, yes, indeed. We are too apt in our everyday goings-on to neglect the oddities of chance. Altogether too apt. I can believe Mr Ghote’s explanation. Perfectly.’
And from some of the others at least there came a murmur of assent.
But His Excellency had not done yet.
‘That’s all very well,’ he said. ‘But there’s the way the silver was hidden, too. I pointed that out to you in the first place, Ghote. A dacoit would have no reason to hide his haul so near to the scene of operations. It’s exactly the same situation in Mrs McGinty’s Dead'
‘Please,’ Ghote said, ‘that is not so. Mrs McGinty’s Dead is just only a detective story, a book wherein what is stated to be the only possible thing to have happened is
the only possible thing. But the case of the body in the billiard room is not at all a detective story. It was a real body, except just only that it had been done to death in a highly unusual circumstance, such as may by coincidence sometimes occur in this world we are inhabiting.’
‘But—’
‘No, sir. What was taking place in this world we are in, as could have been found out by one talk with the Club watchman, is that the said watchman was hearing the breaking of a glass-pane in the billiard room window but was not instantly proceeding to the scene, for perhaps good reasons. He did not in fact proceed until the culprit had just left the spot with his loots. Then he was calling hue-and-cry. So the dacoit was damn quickly hiding evidence of his nefarious activity, not knowing that the hue-and-cry on this occasion did not succeed to be raised.’
He looked directly at His Excellency. The exambassador attempted to look him back. The whole theory on the strength of which he had summoned this supposed Great Detective was at stake. A stubborn determination not to be proved wrong was set in every line of his long leathery face.
Ghote gathered his thoughts.
‘But, yes,’ he said, ‘it was a dacoit’s sword that was inflicting that wound. It was not at all like in some detective story where each and every person concerned has in some way concealed an object that might have been the murder weapon. This is life, simple if not always most clear life. No, the murder was not committed with one of Mrs Lucy Trayling’s long metal knitting needles, though I had noted the existence of such when I was thinking the business was just only some sort of detective-story affair. No also, it was not a case of murder with a long, strong ivory paper-cutter such as Professor Godbole is sometimes using. And, once more, no, Mr Habibullah’s silver-headed walking cane is not a gupti with a sword blade inside.’
‘Alas, I am afraid, no such romantic notion . . .’ the balloon-airy Moslem murmured.
Ghote ignored him.
‘Again, no,’ he went on, ‘although Her Highness the Maharani of Pratapgadh is sometimes visiting a part of the Bazaar where a knife-grinder is often working, there was no sharpened murder weapon coming from him. And, once more, no, in the golf-bag of the Maharajah, although he is so jealously guarding same, there is not the pig-sticking spear he was in youth so skilful in wielding.’
And at last his inexorable catalogue seemed to have done its work.
His Excellency’s mouth under the neat white bar of his moustache contracted in a grimace of wryly bitter acknowledgement and his gaze dropped to the floor.
So it was left to someone else to take up the challenge Ghote’s explanation had put to them all.
It was the Maharajah.
‘I dare say you’re right about poison and all that, Inspector,’ he said. ‘I mean, you’re a Bombay CID wallah and should know your business. But, even if you are correct, you can’t really prove anything. Not unless you can name the person you say gave that fearful old billiards marker cyanide.’
Ghote looked at the ring of faces round him once more. No longer were they bemused and accepting. There was, in every eye now, some hint of combativeness.
He swallowed.
‘Yes, that is so,’ he agreed. ‘Unless I am able to state who was putting poison last thing in the night into the alcoholic drink that Pichu habitually took, as you, Mr Iyer, were informing me was the case, then I would not be able to prove what I have told you has happened. And, ladies and gentlemen, I am not able to name that name.’
Was there a sigh of relief from somewhere in the big room? If so, it was so faint he was unable to locate it.
He decided to see if he could produce a clearer giveaway reaction.
‘I am not able to name that name,’ he repeated. ‘But I am able to say one thing. The person who was administering poison to the said Pichu cannot have done so without having some strong need. His Excellency was summoning myself from Bombay to investigate into the murder because he was convinced that Pichu had threatened to wash some dirty linens and that some person unknown had taken a dramatic step to prevent. Some person within the Ootacamund Club on the night of the murder. And His Excellency’s reasoning on that is still holding good to one hundred per cent.’
He tried then in one comprehensive sweep to bring into high focus every face in the room.
Would there be a twitched muscle, a momentarily held breath, that would be a betrayal?
But the room was too large, the faces too distant.
And the general lack of response to his attempted bombshell immediately renewed the opposition he had felt. It came now in particular from the Maharani.
‘I think you’re talking damned nonsense actually,’ she said. ‘I mean, cyanide. How would I — how would any one of us, come to that — get hold of cyanide? Or know anything about any sort of poison at all? Tell me that.’
Ghote fought back a hot flush.
‘Well, yes, madam,’ he said, ‘that I can be telling you. You are all, I am thinking, at one time or another visiting Nilgiri Library. And there on the shelves, for any person whatsoever to lift down, is the book Alfred Swaine Taylor On Poisons, 1848. It is not altogether up to date, but therein you could be finding all you are needing to know about cyanide, or as it was sometimes called prussic acid.’
‘Very clever,’ the Maharani replied, hardly hiding a sneer. ‘And when we have gathered all we are needing to know, where the hell are we going to get the stuff from? In Ooty, for God’s sake?’ But now Ghote was more prepared.
‘Madam,’ he replied, ‘in Ooty itself many, many dogs are always being what is called “put down”. I have heard those words more than once in the few days I am here. And what is most recommended for this putting down? A poison. A poison based, as is well known to every Crime Branch officer, very much upon cyanide.’
He felt then that the initiative was his once more.
‘So,’ he said firmly, ‘nothing that I have seen or heard here has in the end made as meaningless the theory of His Excellency which caused me to be called to Ooty. He has stated that the person who was murdering Pichu must be one of just only your small group. I have said I cannot as of this day and date put a name to that person. But it is nevertheless my bounden duty, now that I know that Pichu was a poison victim also, so to inform my colleague on the spot, Inspector Meenakshisundaram. And I have no doubt he would be wanting to question each and every one of you.’
Once more he looked at the array of faces, if now with not as much hope as before. And after a moment he had to acknowledge that, with the advantage of shock less and less on his side, his threat had not met with success.
He drew himself up.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, sharply brisk, ‘I am wishing you goodnight.’
He marched out past them all, out into the chill, starlit Ooty night and on along to the Urban Police Station where, a little to his surprise, he found Inspector Meenakshisundaram was still in his office.
‘Ah, Ghote bhai, good to see. Are you also having a wife who is nag-bagging at you day and night only?’
Ghote, feeling he was betraying a little his Protima back in Bombay, contrived a reply that did not altogether deny the possibility. And its implied plea for male comradeship.
Seizing advantage of the warm atmosphere thus created, he launched at once into his account of what must have happened in the Ooty Club on the night of the murder, glossing over as much as he could points such as Meenak-shisundaram’s failure to question the old watchman.
The Tamil inspector took it pretty well, once he had been brought to understand the full details.
‘Okay, Ghote bhai,’ he said. ‘First thing ack emma I am up at that Club-shub with questions-pestions for each one of those buggers.’
So at last Ghote made his way back to the Club, scene of the crime, and dodging any contact with any of the people he had had his non-confrontation with at the Culture Circle, he crept to bed and tried to compose himself to sleep.
But, despite the comforting hot-water bag he found i
n the bed, he could not stop his mind racing alertly round and round the facts. He tried, not once but half a dozen times, to launch himself again into that state of fruitful trance that had produced half the answer to his riddle. But, concentrate on the tip of his nose, the tip of his tongue, the mid-point of his eyebrows as he would, round and round his thoughts continued to scurry. The Maharajah. The Maharani. Professor Godbole, but how could he—Mrs Trayling. Balloony Mr Habibullah. Mr Iyer, the Efficient Baxter.
Nothing emerged.
He began to long simply for the oblivion of sleep. But even that would not come. Had he, after all, he wondered, been asleep most of the day? Had he not after all achieved dharana? Had his revelation come not in a yogic trance but in common or garden slumber?
And would that make him more or less of a Great Detective?
20
Professor Godbole proved to be the first suspect Inspector Meenakshisundaram wanted to see when, as early as he had promised, he arrived at the Club next morning. Whether this was by way of eliminating first the least likely person or on some other obscure principle Ghote did not inquire.
He found himself now distinctly at odds with his Tamil colleague. To begin with, Meenakshisundaram had at once made it clear that he would not welcome his presence during his interrogations of the poisoning suspects. Was he going to subject them, Ghote promptly wondered, to the same sort of treatment he had meted out to runaway Balakumar?
He found he viewed that with dismay. Had he, he asked himself, already become so much of an Ooty person that he was beginning to think of his fellow Club members as being somehow different from the rest of harassed, chance-afflicted humanity?
Whatever the answer, he had no hesitation when the door had closed on Mr Iyer’s office, which Meenakshisundaram had commandeered, in stationing himself on the watch in the depths of one of the sofas nearby.
The Body in the Billiard Room Page 20
