Cheating Death

by H. R. F. Keating

‘Please, sir, what is peach?’

  That was an easy one.

  ‘Peach? Peach? Yes, perhaps an unusual English word. Slang, you know. Picked it up in my miscellaneous reading. It means, I believe, to tell tales on. To tell-tale against, perhaps you would say.’

  ‘Oh, yes, sir. To tell-tale against. That is cent percent correct.’

  Ghote let a silence fall. He had no doubt now that the Dean was going to produce the names of anyone in the college likely to succeed the Principal. No point in risking spoiling the game by fishing for the names more than necessary.

  He did not have long to wait.

  ‘However, Inspector, it is my duty. As you have indicated. And duty must be done, however unpleasant. So …’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  He had no difficulty in assuming a properly puppy-dog look now. He was eager enough to hear the names, after all.

  ‘Well, Inspector, I suppose, if pressed, I would have to say that the succession lies between three people.’

  ‘Three, sir?’

  ‘Yes, three. Do you want to make notes, Inspector?’

  ‘Oh, yes, sir. Yes. Most important to keep one only accurate record.’

  He fished out notebook and pencil. And remembered, just in time, to give the end of the pencil a good heavy lick.

  ‘Ready, Inspector?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Ready, steady, go.’

  ‘Good. Then Number One: Dr Dinanath Kapur, or Professor Kapur, as he insists on calling himself. Lecturer in Astrology.’

  The Dean gave a heavy sigh. And Ghote himself restrained only with difficulty a similar reaction. He still felt that a college of Bombay University, modern, up-to-date Bombay, even one as remote as Oceanic College, should not have such a lecturer on its staff.

  But he dipped his head down and wrote busily in his notebook.

  ‘… in astrology,’ he murmured. ‘Yes, sir, and Number Two?’

  ‘Number two, Inspector. Dr Mrs Lakshmi Gulabchand, Head of the English Department.’

  Ghote allowed himself to look up with a startled expression.

  ‘Sir, you are saying that a lady only may be responsible for –’ he checked himself. ‘For this diabolical plot, sir?’

  Dean Potdar sighed. Very heavily.

  ‘Inspector, I have to tell you that the female of the species is sometimes more deadly than the male.’

  ‘Sorry, sir?’

  ‘Women have been known to commit murder, Inspector.’

  ‘Oh, yes, sir. Yes. I am seeing what you are meaning. Yes, that is altogether true. Two hundred percent.’

  ‘So, do you want to hear the third name I have for you, Inspector?’

  ‘Oh, yes, please, sir. That is being most helpful.’

  ‘Then it is this. Dean N.N. Potdar.’

  He very nearly caught Ghote out. Only a sudden almost choking effort kept back some such give-away reaction as ‘But you are too old, the University has already rejected you’. Playing this game was not as easy as he had fallen into believing. He must remember that the man he was milking was no simpleton.

  If the cat was slipping and sliding out of that adage – was it a contrivance of sharp kika thorn branches? – it was clear that at any moment new twisty lengths of the stuff could wrap themselves round him.

  He quickly took advantage of the choking fit that had saved him, extending it till the blood rushed up into his face.

  ‘Sir,’ he said at last. ‘Is it that you are saying that you yourself were murdering the boy Bala Chambhar?’

  ‘Murdering, Inspector? But who has said that the boy has been murdered?’

  ‘Oh, sir, sorry. Very-very sorry. I must be saying attempted murder. Sir, is it that you were committing one attempted murder?’

  Dean Potdar’s twinkling eyes glinted yet more brightly.

  ‘Well, what do you think, Inspector?’

  He took his time in answering. As a stupid police officer surely would have done too.

  ‘Sir, it was never occurring to me that a gentleman such as yourself …’

  ‘Well, it should have done, Inspector, should it not? However, as it happens, though I suppose from my position in the college, if by nothing else, I might be seen as a successor to poor Bembalkar, I am rather too aged to be able to accept the post.’

  ‘Oh, I see, sir. Jolly good. I mean, not at all good that you are aged, sir but – but –’

  ‘Yes, well, Inspector, perhaps we had better not pursue that line.’

  ‘No, sir. No. But, please, sir, you are certain there are only three – no, two. Just only two people in the college who might succeed to Principal Bembalkar?’

  Dean Potdar considered.

  ‘Yes, Inspector, I think I can acquit each one of my other colleagues of the crime of wanting to step into Bembalkar’s shoes. Or if not of wanting to, since ambition lurks in the most unlikely places, of having any real chance of so doing.’

  Ghote pretended for a little to be working out what that had meant.

  If Dean Potdar was right, he thought quietly to himself – and he had little doubt that had there been any other serious contender for the Principal’s post the Dean would not have hesitated to put their name forward – then his task was less difficult than it might have been. He had only two suspects to try to find some good evidence against before he could go to the Additional Commissioner. And, he thought, there might well be some hard evidence to be got. Bala Chambhar had been reduced to his state of coma by Somnomax Five tablets. And Somnomax Five was not the sort of sleeping pill that would be found in very many Bombay homes. So it was possible that either Professor Kapur, Lecturer in Astrology, or Mrs Lakshmi Gulabchand, Head of English, might be found still to be in possession of a supply. Or there might be evidence – an empty packet, a torn scrap of a container – that they had had such a drug.

  His task was clear before him.

  TWELVE

  Before Ghote left the Dean’s office, however, he received a parting shot from the malicious little man.

  He had got to his feet, mumbling thanks as incoherent as he could make them. If he could get the home addresses of his two suspects from the now obliging Mrs Cooper – what excuse could he give her? Never mind, he would think of something – and contrive then to get a look round their places of residence, he might be able before the day was out to go to the Additional Commissioner.

  But then the Dean had teasingly added that one extra thought.

  ‘Inspector, I wonder if it has occurred to you that there might be another reason for someone to have taken that question-paper and handed it to that poor young man now in the KEM Hospital?’

  Ghote had only just taken it in.

  ‘Yes, sir?’ he managed to say, halting in the doorway. ‘Please, what it is you are suggesting?’

  ‘Motive, Inspector. What I believe you police people call motive.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Yes. Whatsoever reason a culprit has for committing offence under Indian Penal Code Section 352, murder, we are calling as motive.’

  ‘Well then, Inspector, may I put it to you that forcing poor Bembalkar to resign so as to step into his shoes may not be the only reason, or motive, for taking that paper?’

  Ghote allowed himself a moment to think, thankful that it was expected his reactions would be slow.

  What was the Dean saying? Was he questioning the logic that had guided himself to believing that the person who had attempted to poison Bala Chambhar must be someone who wanted to become Principal of Oceanic College? But what other motive could the Dean have in mind? Yet – remember – the Dean, for all his evident enjoyment of spiteful teasing, was a clever man, one who had risen high in the academic world. So had he contrived to hit on something he himself had completely failed to see?

  ‘Please,’ he said, hardly having to put on an appearance of ignorance now, ‘please what it is you are thinking?’

  ‘Revenge, Inspector. Black and bloody revenge.’

  ‘Revenge, Dean sahib?’

  What could he b
e suggesting? Was this some film? Songs, dances and fights? Villains, heroes and vamps?

  ‘Yes, Inspector, it has just occurred to me – I am putting it to you almost as the thoughts enter my head – that if someone in the college felt that he had been badly let down by Principal Bembalkar and if, immediately afterwards, the opportunity arose of taking that question-paper, the person I have in mind might have snatched at the chance of revenge, Inspector.’

  Could he be right? And who did he have in mind?

  ‘Please, sir, you are stating and saying you are having some individual in mind. Please, what is the name of the individual in question?’

  ‘But should I tell you, Inspector? I mean, thinking it over, I wonder whether I am being fair in perhaps impugning a respected member of the academic staff of this college.’

  Ghote drew himself up.

  ‘Sir, it is your bounden duty.’

  ‘I thought you might say that, Inspector.’

  The Dean gave a little wriggle of his plump body in his chair.

  ‘Very well then, I shall do my duty. My bounden duty.’

  ‘The name, sir?’

  ‘Mr Victor Furtado, Inspector.’

  It took Ghote only half a second to know whom the Dean was referring to. On the previous occasion he had been in this room the Dean had told him about the incident that had, as it proved, drawn Principal Bembalkar out of his office and caused him later to take an early lunch leaving his keys in his chamber door. A group of students, led as it happened by Bala Chambhar himself, had for some reason or other felt they had a grievance against one of their lecturers, a junior lecturer in English, and they had blackened his face. With some tarry substance.

  His name was Victor Furtado.

  Could what the Dean had suggested be right? Was Victor Furtado another suspect? It could be. Principal Bembalkar had altogether failed to stop that rag. So, if Victor Furtado as soon as he had at last been released, going perhaps to the Principal simply to complain, had found the chamber unlocked, had looked in and had seen the question-papers, it might well have struck him that by taking one he could pay out Dr Bembalkar for his failure to act with decision. True, revenge sounded unlikely as a motive for murder, more than a little filmi. But then it had not at the time been the motive for the near-murder of Bala Chambhar. It had been the motive only for snatching that Statistical Techniques question-paper and getting it somehow put on sale so as to bring maximum discredit to the Principal. The poisoning had been, surely, no more than a hasty effort to cover up the original impulsive minor crime.

  So, yes, Victor Furtado could be his man.

  ‘Sir,’ he asked the Dean, ‘are you by any chance knowing where this Mr Victor Furtado has his residence? I am thinking it would be one good idea first of all to eliminate him as a suspect, if at all possible.’

  The Dean blinked behind his little gold-rimmed glasses.

  ‘Do you think so, Inspector? Now, how are you going to go about that, I wonder.’

  Ghote, who had just conceived the idea of searching Victor Furtado’s residence in the hope of finding some evidence of a past purchase of Somnomax Five, thought it prudent not to say so.

  ‘We are having our police methods,’ he replied, conscious that such an answer to the Dean’s probing, the best he could produce on the spur of the moment, was not likely to deflect him for long.

  As it did not.

  ‘I suppose your best plan,’ the Dean went cheerfully on, ‘might be to search Furtado’s room – he occupies one in one of our student hostels, I believe – in the hope of finding some evidence of whatever poison was used on the wretched Chambhar? What was it exactly, Inspector? Have your astute inquiries already led you to that?’

  A tiny dart of caution flicked into Ghote’s mind. He had already told this mere unofficial assistant more than he ought. A good deal more, however useful he had turned out to be. But it would be better not to add to his indiscretions.

  ‘Sir, my investigations till date have not revealed exact substance.’

  ‘Ah, but you have something in mind?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Then let me direct you to Furtado’s hostel. One must do everything within one’s power to assist the police in their inquiries.’

  ‘That is most good of you, sir.’

  ‘It’s not at all far from the college itself. I am sure that you will have no difficulty in finding it. A man of your courage and resource.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.’

  ‘You go out of the college gate, Inspector, and turn to your left. Your left. Then you keep straight on till the first turning on your right. You understand? First a left, then a right?’

  ‘First right – No, first left, then also right. Yes, sir.’

  Did the fellow really believe a Crime Branch officer was incapable of remembering simple directions?

  ‘And you will find the hostel – it is easily recognised – only some two hundred yards along.’

  ‘Very good, sir. First right –’

  ‘No, no. Inspector. First left. Left.’

  ‘Oh, yes, sir. First left, then right. Thank you, sir. Thank you.’

  Thoughts of the moment, if it should ever come, when he would be able to put his contemptuous informant properly in his place swirling round, he traversed the long corridors of the college. From each classroom in turn there came the sound of lecturers’ voices, high-pitched and hectoring, as they dinned their various subjects into their students’ heads.

  His thoughts were abruptly halted, however, by a rolling burst of noise from the next classroom he was coming to. Laughter, jeering, some shouts even. Then its door was opened and a stream of students began to emerge, first boys then, slightly under protest, girls. Amid much laughter and bits of horseplay they headed away in the direction of the students canteen. Puzzled a little, he stood and watched.

  Then, as the last of the students turned the corner ahead, he realised there was a sound still emanating from the classroom. The sound of a lecturing voice, though one much less vigorous and dominating than those he had heard earlier.

  Curious, he went quietly up and peered round the still open door. But all he could see were the rows of student desks and benches, mounting up in tiers. And every seat was empty except in the farthest corner of the topmost row where a solitary girl, fat and bespectacled, crouched, furiously writing in a notebook.

  In a moment he was able to make out clearly the thin, reedy voice of the invisible teacher.

  ‘… makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience both make cowards of us all, and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.’

  At that he recognised the words. Shakespeare. The very expression Principal Bembalkar had used describing himself. Sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought. So that thin voice was reciting Shakespeare, and all his listeners, with the single exception of the fat girl taking notes – could she really be copying down, fast as she could go, just only Shakespeare’s words? – had walked out on him.

  Then he saw that, almost within three inches of his eye, there was a card in a brass holder on the half-open door. Mr Victor Furtado MA, it read.

  He experienced a little jolt of shock. So here was the very man Dean Potdar had, only a few moments earlier, suggested to him as the man most likely to have attempted to murder Bala Chambhar.

  Carefully he peered further round the door till he could catch a glimpse of the owner of the thin voice. He saw a young man, perhaps in his late twenties, with a full, fleshy Goan face on which there rested a pair of cheap plastic spectacles. Above his mouth, still slowly and almost expressionlessly reciting Shakespeare, there was a faint blur of moustache.

  So this was Victor Furtado, possible murderer.

  He certainly hardly looked the part. He was as far removed from the film villain that Dean Potdar’s talk of revenge had conjured up as it was possible to be.

  So what to do ab
out him? Leave him to go trickling on with Shakespeare’s words to that fat girl in the far corner? Dismiss him from all consideration, in fact? But a man might commit murder on a sudden, weak impulse as much as through long-matured dark plans. No, Victor Furtado at least merited questioning.

  And why not now?

  Not giving himself time for second thoughts, he stepped smartly in and marched up to his suspect.

  ‘Mr Furtado?’ he asked in a loud voice, easily over-riding the reedy pipe of ‘Get thee to a nunnery: why woulds’t thou be a breeder of sinners?’ ‘Mr Victor Furtado?’

  Victor Furtado lifted his eyes from the book in front of him and brought his recitation to a trailing halt.

  ‘Please? Yes?’ he said. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Mr Furtado, I am a police officer, Inspector Ghote, Crime Branch, and I am wanting one word.’

  ‘But – But – I am in the middle of giving out a lecture.’

  Ghote turned and took a long look round the all but empty room. After a little Victor Furtado saw the point.

  ‘Well, yes,’ he said, ‘some of my class has left. I have given permissions. If not in so many words …’

  Suddenly he darted a look at the fat girl in the top corner.

  ‘Miss Washikar,’ he said, almost shouted. ‘Kindly go. Class is dismissed. What for are you sitting and sitting?’

  Miss Washikar scrabbled up notebook and handbag, and clutching both to her chest went rattling down beside the tiered benches and scuttled out.

  ‘Police,’ Victor Furtado said, glancing to left and right as if he too would have liked to have scurried out of the room. ‘Please, what have I done that the police should be coming to me?’

  ‘Well,’ Ghote said, feeling moment by moment more aggressive faced with this whining fellow, ‘suppose you are telling me what it is you have done?’

  He stood fixing the Goan lecturer with an unyielding glare. Every inch the police officer well prepared to slap, and more.

  Victor Furtado licked his lips.

  ‘But – But –’ he said.

  He gave a sudden look towards the door as if he was contemplating making a desperate run for it.

  ‘But it was long ago,’ he burst out unstoppably, his voice rising with every word. ‘And I was explaining. In the end they were letting me go. I had done nothing. It was the others who were protesting.’