Cheating Death

by H. R. F. Keating

  ‘Very good, madam,’ he said, however. ‘There are many other inquiries that must be made. Perhaps I should come back after some time. When would Principal Bembalkar be free?’

  Mrs Cooper remained inflexible.

  ‘That is impossible to say.’

  ‘But – But his conference with Mrs Rajwani cannot go on for ever. Kindly tell me what is the latest time it would last.’

  ‘Inspector, I do not think you can be knowing what is the situation in the college just now.’

  It sounded like an accusation.

  Mrs Cooper looked at him with unvarying hostility. Fire at the lips of her rakshas’ nostrils.

  ‘There have been calls for the Principal’s resignation,’ she said.

  Again Ghote thought he was getting a grasp of things.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ he replied. ‘That morcha some students were taking out last night. I am very well knowing about that.’

  ‘I do not think that is what is most worrying Principalji this morning,’ Mrs Cooper answered. ‘Say what you like, he would not be pushed from his seat by any student nonsense, however little he is able –’

  She broke off. Ghote wondered briefly whether in the interests of discovering more about the man from whose chamber that question-paper had been stolen he should pursue this half-hint that the Principal was not an altogether strict administrator. But a possibly more worthwhile line of inquiry was there, too.

  ‘Madam,’ he said, ‘what is it then that is more worrying to Principal Bembalkar this morning?’

  He had put his question with such firmness that even this fire-breathing lady could hardly avoid giving him an answer.

  ‘Inspector, I must not speak out of turn, but it is after all well known. Things have not been very easy in the college these past few months, and …’

  Silence.

  ‘Yes?’ he said sharply.

  Mrs Cooper, unexpectedly tamer, looked down at her typewriter, its dust cover already lifted off.

  ‘Inspector, you must know yourself that university life is nothing like it was when, say, you must have been a student.’

  ‘That is one hundred percent true, yes,’ he said, thinking of the performance of the night before. ‘One hundred and one percent. But what exactly is now the trouble?’

  He thought he could detect a softening in the look he was given. Perhaps his hearty agreement about the deterioration in university life had helped.

  ‘Oh, it is no worse here than at other colleges,’ Mrs Cooper answered with a flick of returning pride. ‘But, yes, our students are all the time taking advantage of Dr Bembalkar. He is such a true scholar also. So he is not always the best person for keeping discipline. And now that this paper has been stolen from his very chamber, when it was his sacred duty to guard it, well, there have been demands from some politicians and from some senior colleagues here also for resignation.’

  ‘And he is resisting same?’

  ‘No, no, Inspector.’

  ‘No? You are saying he is after all wanting to quit?’

  Mrs Cooper actually smiled now. It was a smile of confidentiality.

  ‘Between you and me, Inspector,’ she said, ‘Dr Bembalkar would be only too pleased to leave his seat.’

  ‘But then what-all is his meeting with Mrs Maya Rajwani about? If the trustees are wanting him to resign and he is wanting also, where is the problem?’

  Mrs Cooper sighed.

  ‘Inspector,’ she said, ‘you do not understand the difficulties that are facing Dr Bembalkar. You do not at all understand. Others are wanting him to resign, yes. But the trustees – Well, it is Mrs Rajwani herself, she is very, very anxious for him to stay.’

  Ghote pondered.

  ‘But why is that?’ he asked at last, still puzzled.

  ‘Inspector, I cannot say.’

  He thought, however, from the tone of her reply that probably she could say. He even wondered whether he should press her to answer. But, partly because he suspected that he would find this not at all easy, and partly because he was not sure whether what he might learn would have a bearing on his inquiries, he let it slide.

  And in any case, as if worried that she had already said too much, Mrs Cooper was quick now to add to her ambiguous statement.

  ‘You see,’ she said, ‘Dr Bembalkar would very much like to have more time for his studies. He is writing a very, very important book.’

  ‘Oh, yes? It is to state what should be done in our Indian universities?’

  ‘No, no, no. It is Hamlet.’

  ‘Hamlet? What is this?’

  The Principal’s guardian rakshas shot him a fiery look.

  ‘It is Shakespeare’s play, Inspector,’ she said. ‘The world’s most famous. Principalji is making a very highly important study of same.’

  Ghote inwardly cursed himself. Although Macbeth was the only one of Shakespeare’s plays he had ever been acquainted with, he knew the existence of Hamlet perfectly well. He gathered his wits.

  ‘So Principal Bembalkar is writing his book on that famous play,’ he said, hoping to blot out his error. ‘Please, when it will be released? I must try to obtain one copy.’

  ‘But it will not be coming out for some time. In fact, I can tell you Dr Bembalkar has not yet begun some actual writing. There is much, much research needed.’

  Ghote could not quite see how there could be room for all that much research on what was after all just one play. But perhaps Hamlet was so famous because it was altogether longer than Macbeth, a nine-nights’ affair like the Ramayana plays. But he was not going to risk antagonising his useful source of information again by making any such comment. He had developed a notion that the rakshas, for all her ferocity, had ‘a soft corner’ for Principal Bembalkar. And it might well be of considerable use to him to know as much as possible about the man. After all, the way that the question-paper had been spirited out of his locked chamber was a total mystery. The man’s personality might well lead to solving that riddle.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘is Dr Bembalkar …? Well, in my college days we had some professors who were – you know what it is they are always saying – well, absent-minded.’

  But he had failed to take into account the soft corner he had guessed at.

  ‘No, no,’ Mrs Cooper said, rage belching out once more. ‘No one should say that about Dr Bembalkar. He is a very, very great scholar, altogether too understanding and kind-hearted to be very firm in punishing students. But he is not at all absent-minded. Not at all.’

  She gave Ghote a new glare.

  Sadly he acknowledged that, for the time being at least, he had lost the art of standing unscathed amid rakshah’s breath. Time to cut his losses.

  ‘But I must not be chit-chatting here,’ he said with as much decisiveness as he could summon up. ‘There is much of work to be done. Yes, very much of work.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Mrs Cooper said with some eagerness. ‘Go now, and come back after some time. It is no use you standing here, as Principalji is often saying, like the poor cat in the adage.’

  Outside on the wide veranda, Ghote found himself puzzling hard about that last remark. The poor cat in the adage. The words were familiar. They even seemed to be hovering just short of the forefront of his mind, although he could have sworn he had not heard the expression for years.

  And then he got it. A jagged lightning-flash of recall.

  It came precisely from that one play of Shakespeare’s he had studied, years ago at the end of his schooldays, Macbeth. He remembered the curious English word ‘adage’ being explained to the class, and how, although he had written a careful note at the time, he had, even immediately afterwards, been somehow unable to recall what it meant. Nor had he ever got it properly lodged in his mind. Time and again he had had to return to the note he had made, until at last, school left behind, he had ceased to need to know.

  Even now, tease his brain how he might, he could not at all remember.

  So how did the expression apply to him a
t this moment? There had seemed to be an underlying hint of criticism in Mrs Cooper’s use of it. Had that been there? And, if it had, what was he being criticised for? What?

  At last, with an unhappy internal shrug, he abandoned the hunt.

  FIVE

  Ghote had told the fire-spurting rakshas that he had work to do. He must get on with it. Only … Only he was momentarily at a loss as to just where this work was actually to be found. He felt a new dart of exasperation. Here he was, determined to show those CBI wallas that there was anyhow one officer in Bombay able to get things done, and at every point what was he meeting but checks and difficulties.

  Perhaps, he thought suddenly, that was what an adage was. A sort of very cunning trap, something that created more and more difficulties the harder you tried to escape from it. Was that it? Something that added coil after trapping coil, added and added. An addage.

  It did not revive an exact memory of the word he had learnt, or failed to learn, at school. But certainly here difficulties had been added and added to his task from the very start. Even that security man –

  Wait. Yes, by God, there was somewhere to break out of it. That fellow down in the entrance hall ought to know about locks and keys and who had them and who could get at them. It was his duty itself to know. So a one hundred percent good talk with Mr Security Officer. Now.

  He went stamping down the stairway, brushing past books-clutching students coming up, grim with renewed determination.

  The fellow was still just inside the wide double doors, busy examining a young man’s identity card, glowering at it as if it was bound to be somehow a forgery.

  ‘You there,’ Ghote addressed him. ‘You are one of College’s security officers, yes?’

  The tall fellow lifted his head, huge moustache rising on his lip.

  ‘I am sole and only security officer, Inspector,’ he said. ‘One Amar Nath by name.’

  ‘Very good. Drop all that card nonsense. I am wanting to talk. In private. And now only.’

  For a single instant Amar Nath looked down at the identity card he was holding, as if reluctant to allow it to be authentic. But then he tossed it back to the student in front of him and turned to Ghote.

  ‘Inspector,’ he said, ‘One cup of tea would be good, yes? At chaikhana opposite I am well known.’

  Ghote did not altogether like the idea of sitting down over a friendly cup of tea. He had seen his questioning of the security officer as being an altogether more formal affair. A desk, at which he himself was sitting, upright and forceful, and the fellow standing in front of him. At attention.

  However, there was no desk to hand, nor anywhere at his disposal where a desk might be found. And, in any case, he might learn more in friendly circumstances than by any amount of sharp interrogation.

  Or was this going to prove just one more entangling coil in the adage, the addage?

  ‘Very well,’ he said, with rapid inward resignation. ‘Let’s go. But, mind, I do not have time for just only gup-shup.’

  ‘No, Inspector, no, no.’

  Briskly Amar Nath led the way out past the long line of applicants for First Year places – they did not seem to have made any progress – through the college gate and across the road to where there was a tea-shop, blotted out the night before when it had been unlit and its shutter had been down. Despite its name, Paris Hotel, just to be made out in faded yellow letters on a board above the shutter, it did not look at all high-class.

  Inside, it seemed no better. There was a strong smell of over-boiled tea. The blue painted walls, on which three or four out-of-date calendars hung limply, were peeling in places. Nor did the handful of students at the plastic-topped tables, some leaning close in confidential chat, one or two others reading in morose solitude, look very interested in the cooling half-cups of tea in front of them.

  But at Amar Nath’s arrival the proprietor, gloomily perusing a big black account-book at the entrance, showed welcome signs of life. He banged the domed bell beside him with vigour. From the back a boy in scanty shirt and drooping khaki half-pants emerged, took one look at Amar Nath and at once proceeded to give the best of the unoccupied tables a good flicking-over with the stained cloth from over his shoulder.

  ‘Tea, Proprietor sahib,’ Amar Nath said boomingly. ‘One double omelet, toast.’

  He turned to Ghote.

  ‘Inspector, you will take also?’

  ‘Just only tea,’ Ghote said, seeing his business-like scenario already being badly eroded.

  So, as soon as they had seated themselves and the boy had banged two smeary glasses of water down in front of them, he leant forward and addressed the security man’s expansively moustached face.

  ‘You must be knowing what for I am here,’ he said. ‘It is this theft from your Principal’s office of a question-paper, Statistical Techniques.’

  ‘Yes, yes. That Bala Chambhar is one bloody anti-social.’

  ‘So much I am already knowing. But what I am needing to find out is how did the fellow get into the Principal’s chamber? It was locked, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, yes, Inspector,’ Amar Nath happily replied in his broad Punjabi accent. ‘Locked, locked.’

  ‘Then how was Bala Chambhar getting in?’

  Amar Nath looked puzzled. Plainly this was something he had yet to ask himself.

  ‘Don’t know, Inspector. But if I had caught him I would break his bones, I can tell you.’

  ‘Yes, yes. But that would not help in knowing how he was getting into a room that was altogether locked. What about the windows? I have not been inside, but it is up on the first floor, yes? So could this Bala have climbed in?’

  Amar Nath sat and thought. The boy brought their two cups of tea. Ghote noted that, unasked, they had been given Specials, teaspoons in the saucers of their extra large cups.

  Amar Nath poured a splashy quantity of the milky brown liquid into his saucer and raised it to slurp.

  Ghote put out a hand and steered the saucer back to the table top.

  ‘Could Bala Chambhar have climbed into Principal’s chamber?’ he repeated.

  ‘No.’

  ‘No? You are certain?’

  ‘Yes, yes, Inspector. I am seeing those windows in my mind. There are two only. Side by side. And the wall underneath, smooth-smooth.’

  ‘So how do you think the boy got in? That Mrs Angela Cooper, is she always outside at her desk there? I am thinking she would not so easily desert her post.’

  Amar Nath, for all his slowness, at once caught on to the implication of this.

  He gave a loud guffaw.

  ‘Is there almost all the damn time, yes,’ he said. ‘Would like to get into Princi pants. Married or not married, child or not child.’

  Ghote decided not to respond.

  ‘So with Mrs Cooper outside and no way to climb up to the windows how did Bala Chambhar get hold of that question-paper?’ he repeated.

  ‘Easy, Inspector.’

  ‘Easy?’

  Ghote felt a jab of annoyance.

  ‘Even those Anglo-Indian women got to eat,’ Amar Nath answered. ‘Keep up their strength for hanky-pankies.’

  ‘I see. Mrs Cooper goes to eat at some time, and it was while she was away that Bala Chambhar was taking the question-paper.’

  Amar Nath gave a massive shrug.

  ‘Looks like.’

  ‘But Dr Bembalkar, isn’t it that he would lock his chamber door? When there are exam papers inside? He must be knowing that there have been leakages at other colleges.’

  ‘Oh, yes, Inspector, lock up and lock up he would. What is my duty after all? To make sure what should be locked is locked. And this I can be telling. Princi may be all sorts of a damn fool, but he is very-very keen on lockings-up. Each time I pass by that office when there is no one there I am going in and checking his door itself. Duty is duty. And never one time am I finding same unlocked.’

  Ghote thought for a little. The boy came up with Amar Nath’s double omelet. It looked
as leathery and greasy as he had guessed and so small it seemed doubtful that two eggs besides a sprinkling of green chilli could have gone to its making.

  ‘Toast,’ Amar Nath yelled at the boy. ‘Where my damn toast?’

  ‘Coming, sahib, coming-coming.’

  ‘Listen,’ Ghote said when Amar Nath had turned to his omelet and begun tearing it apart. ‘You are saying and saying Principal Bembalkar is a damn fool. But, if he is always so certain in locking his office, what about is he so much of a damn fool?’

  Amar Nath gave a healthy belch.

  ‘Everything,’ he said cheerfully. ‘All the bloody same those professors and their question-papers this and question-papers that. Do nothing, say plenty. Princi, Dean Potdar, all all. That Dr Mrs Gulabchand, sitting there and saying nothing, but all the time pushing and pushing to get where she is wanting. And look at that Potdar. Little fat owl, with all those daughters he has and none-none married. Dean is meant to be keeping order, no? But what is he doing? Making nasty remarks about each and every one of the others from Princi down, but never at all keeping those damn boys in their place. Or those girls. Worse than boys, I say. What they are needing is one damn good touch of a belt. I would give it, girl or boy.’

  For a moment Ghote allowed himself to wonder whether Amar Nath’s solution to the problem of discipline might not be …

  ‘All the same,’ Amar Nath banged on. ‘Not one of them any good for any damn thing.’

  He jerked forward and peered suddenly into his tea-cup.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not true. One only is any good. You are knowing Professor Kapur?’

  ‘No,’ Ghote said, wondering why he should.

  ‘Is teaching astrology. Damn good fellow. He keeps those brats in order. And he will tell even a security officer what is waiting in future.’

  A professor of astrology, and at a college of Bombay University itself. Ghote felt a sense of insult. Yes, colleges in less up-to-date parts of the country had astrology professors, and there were astrologers in plenty in seemingly equally up-to-date Delhi who, if newspaper gossip was true, advised even the most illustrious figures. But in Bombay? What sort of a place had he come to?