The Perfect Murder: the First Inspector Ghote Mystery Read online

  Inspector Ghote sighed. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and, gently holding the corner of the drawer handle, repeated the actions Mr Jain had described.

  But do what he might, in the end he had to admit that there were nine one-rupee notes in the drawer and that nowhere high or low in the big, luxurious room was there one single one more.

  He looked round the room one last time. The white walls stared blankly back at him.

  The others looked round.

  Axel Svensson seemed especially unhappy.

  He swayed slightly from side to side, and at last brought out the terrible thought that he had been so obviously wrestling with.

  ‘In the East,’ he said in an unexpectedly squeaky voice, ‘mysterious things happen.’

  ‘Oh, no, Mr Svensson. Sahib, no.’

  Inspector Ghote was shocked, and hurt. This was treason to all his fought for beliefs.

  ‘Listen, Mr Svensson,’ he said urgently, ‘a rupee note is a piece of paper. It is a thing. You can touch it. It is put in a drawer, and later the drawer is opened and the note is not there. Very good. An object has been moved. That is all. We will simply have to examine the situation until we find in what way the object was moved, and who moved it. No more than that, Mr Svensson.’

  For once the tall Swede did not ask to be called Axel.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said, ‘it is easy to say that. If I had been in Sweden, if I had been in America, I would say that too. But I am in India.’

  He looked round with patent bewilderment clouding his periwinkle blue eyes.

  The big, airy room with its heavy carpeting, its big shiny Ministerial desk, its neat white telephone, its discreetly humming air-conditioning, did not emanate an atmosphere of mystery.

  ‘But all the same,’ he said, ‘I am in India. And a rupee note has disappeared from a room which no one has entered. Inspector Ghote, how did it happen?’

  Inspector Ghote looked round in his turn.

  The white walls were not broken by the faintest outline of any secret door, the air-conditioning grilles were tiny, the ceiling was as plain and unbroken as a single slab of stone, the carpet lay in one unpierced layer, the big windows stared out of the sheer cliff-face of the great building.

  For an instant he shut his eyes.

  ‘Why, Mr Svensson,’ he said, ‘it is very simple.’

  6

  Axel Svensson looked at Inspector Ghote with sudden astonishment. It was plain that he had not expected to be answered with such an air of confidence.

  ‘All right,’ he said a little truculently, ‘if it is so simple, what happened?’

  ‘Those windows, Mr Svensson,’ answered the inspector.

  ‘But they could not be reached by climbing.’

  The Swede’s eyes shone suddenly.

  ‘Could it be,’ he said, ‘could it really be the rope trick? I always thought that was just a fable, but …’

  Inspector Ghote shook his head.

  ‘No, my friend,’ he said. ‘It’s not a question of a rope up from the ground supported by a flute-playing showman. It’s more simple. It is a rope, or probably four ropes, coming downwards. At each corner of a platform, and on the platform a window-cleaner.’

  Even the ascetic Mr Jain looked impressed.

  ‘I had not thought of that,’ he said.

  He went briskly over to the telephone on the shining desk and picked up the receiver.

  ‘Works Department,’ he said.

  A rapid conversation took place. At the end of it Mr Jain looked up.

  ‘Well, Inspector,’ he said, ‘you are quite right. The windows on this side of the building are cleaned on Monday mornings. This is Monday.’

  He smiled widely.

  ‘So very simple really,’ he said. ‘And I had thought – but never mind.’

  Inspector Ghote smiled too.

  But underneath he added a mental rider. Once already he had thought this business had been cleared up nice and easily. He was not going to be caught that way twice. Perhaps it was going to turn out to be merely a short distraction from his main task, but he would not let himself feel quite easy until he had heard a magistrate impose a sharp sentence on somebody or other for the temerity of stealing money from the very desk of the Minister for Police Affairs and the Arts.

  Axel Svensson smiled in his turn. A little shame-facedly.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I know the rope trick is just something you read about really. But all the same I have been impressed, most impressed, with certain things I have heard and seen since I came to India.’

  Felix Sousa smiled broadest of all.

  ‘You, Sousa,’ Mr Jain suddenly barked, ‘what are you hanging about here for? Can’t you see the Minister’s wastepaper basket? It’s in a disgusting state. Get it emptied, man, get it emptied.’

  Deflated, Felix hurried across and bent obsequiously over the basket. He rescued the crumpled piece of jotting paper that Inspector Ghote had dropped back into it and bore his burden reverently away.

  ‘Well,’ said Inspector Ghote, ‘I would put men on to getting the names of the window-cleaners. When we know who they are, perhaps we shall be nearer an arrest. Thank you Mr Jain, for your help. I shall hope to have good news for you before a great amount of time.

  He went down to the vehicle with Axel Svensson and snapped an order to get to headquarters as fast as possible. A telephone call to the Varde house had become an obsessive necessity, and there was also a report on the Ministry visit to compile. Mercifully the Swede was more subdued than usual. Ghote could hardly have spared him a thought. Like the mechanical display devices outside some cinemas, picture after picture flapped up into his mind, stayed a few seconds and flapped down to be replaced by another in an endless repetitive succession.

  Mr Perfect lying on the tattered charpoy breathing so dangerously gently: Lala Arun Varde calling for whisky and arousing only the distant clamour of the locked-out servants: the thin line of the wound on the back of Mr Perfect’s skull: the succession of steel-grilled windows looking out on to the streets round the house: Lala Varde hinting at his power and influence in distinguished quarters: and again and again and again, Mr Perfect’s long, still, emaciated body hovering on the boundaries of death.

  Ghote shook his head angrily. He must not allow this irrational fascination with the old Parsi to obsess him. It was wrong and illogical. Yet …

  The driver, pot-bellied and impassive, brought the truck to a wild screaming halt, perfectly unnecessarily, in front of the C.I.D. building. Without bothering to do anything about looking after his Swedish charge, Inspector Ghote jumped out, pounded up steps and stairs and flung himself into his office. He grabbed the telephone with sweaty hands and shouted out the number of Arun Varde’s house. He got put through with undeserved rapidity and as soon as a voice answered demanded to know how Mr Perfect was.

  ‘Will go to ask the nurse-lady,’ the voice said primly.

  The inspector waited, his fingers drumming away at the lined and blotched surface of his desk.

  If he died, if he had died …

  The thought hammered away to the rhythm of his restless fingers. He would not allow himself to complete the sentence.

  There came a prolonged throat-clearing at the far end of the line.

  ‘Yes, yes? Is he dead?’

  ‘Nurse is saying patient just the same.’

  Ghote dropped the receiver on to its rest without waiting for any more.

  And when Axel Svensson came into the cramped office a few moments later he gave him a beaming smile.

  ‘Just a few words of report to write,’ he said to him, ‘and then I would be going back to the case of the attack on Mr Arun Varde’s secretary. I would be revisiting the house. Do you want to come?’

  No sooner had he issued the invitation than he regretted his expansive optimism. But it was too late.

  ‘Ah, the Perfect Murder,’ said the Swede. ‘Most interesting problem.’

  ‘Not murder,’ the ins
pector replied tersely.

  ‘No, no, of course not. An attack only. I understand.’

  The tall Swede nodded up and down good-humouredly, and the inspector set rapidly to work on his reports. The one headed ‘Missing Rupee Case (Larceny from Office of Shri Ram Kamath, Minister for Police Affairs and the Arts) Most Confidential’ presented no difficulties. The other, ‘Attack on Mr Perfect, secretary to Mr Arun Varde’, was decidedly trickier.

  The truth of the matter was, the inspector told himself, that he had been taken off the case at a very awkward moment, for him. If only he had had a few more hours at Lala Varde’s house all his preliminary work would have been completed. As it was, if the D.S.P. came in and started asking questions, he would look a pretty fool.

  He gave the door more and more frequent glances. But at last the second report was finished. He jumped up, and, pursued by the tireless Axel Svensson, set off once more for the Varde house.

  He began to feel guardedly happy. After all, it was quite possible that the Rupee Affair was done with, and certainly he had dealt with it so far without fault.

  He scouted back to make sure that he was not being too proud in saying that. But, no, he could not honestly see what else he could have done there. And, if things went well for a bit, he would soon be able to bring the case of the attack on Mr Perfect up to the same standard of efficient handling. The thing to do was to get hold of the remaining witnesses and get their stories out of them as quickly as possible. Then he could submit a new report, neatly laid out and with all the paragraphs numbered. Once the D.S.P. had that he could hardly kick up one of his famous fusses. And, with a good foundation laid, there would be every chance of making some real progress with the case.

  The only blemish was that he seemed to be stuck with Axel Svensson. And the effect of the setback inflicted over the rope trick was beginning to wear off. Bit by bit the Swede’s remarks about Indian life were regaining their old decisiveness.

  Inspector Ghote could have done without them.

  ‘Mr Sven – Axel sahib,’ he said as their vehicle roared up to the Varde house. ‘There is one thing I should like you to understand. This case is rather different from the last. This is a private household. They may not be happy to find I have brought someone else with me, especially a European.’

  Axel Svensson put his broad hand on the inspector’s shoulder.

  ‘That is all right, my friend. I perfectly understand. I shall be completely discreet, completely silent.’

  Inspector Ghote felt it was the most he could have hoped for.

  At the house he asked first for Lala Varde himself. He was taken by the erect little bearer he had seen before to the courtyard where the great man was sitting dozing over the advertisement columns of a newspaper.

  ‘Good morning, Lala Varde sahib,’ the inspector said. ‘I was afraid you would have gone to your office.’

  Lala Varde did not answer. Instead he shifted in his wideseated cane chair and scratched with a great podgy fist at the side of his huge fat-covered ribs.

  Inspector Ghote quelled a feeling of annoyance.

  ‘Mr Varde,’ he said in a voice which must have carried to every corner of the big compound, ‘Mr Varde, may I introduce Mr Axel Svensson. Mr Svensson is working for Unesco. He is studying our police methods.’

  Again Lala Varde seemed not to have heard, loud though the inspector’s voice had been. But the inspector experienced a certain sense of relief this time: he had not looked forward to two such powerful personalities as Lala Varde and the tall Swede discussing any case he was meant to be in charge of.

  He looked down at the massive sprawling form in the wide chair in front of him. Lala Varde’s eyes were slowly closing.

  ‘Mr Varde,’ he said sharply.

  Lala Varde’s eyelids met.

  ‘Mr Varde,’ said the inspector again.

  He put all the concentrated force he could muster into the words.

  If they had no apparent effect on Lala Varde, they did not leave the little ramrod bearer untouched.

  ‘Sssh, sahib. Oh, please to be quiet,’ he said. ‘Lala Varde is sleeping.’

  Inspector Ghote turned on him.

  ‘I cannot help whether he is sleeping,’ he said, letting his pent anger rip out. ‘I am police officer. I am investigating most serious case. I have to speak to Lala Varde here and now.’

  ‘Oh, ho. So you think you can come trampling bampling into my house just because you are police officer.’

  The inspector wheeled round. Lala Varde’s great blood-shot eyes were open.

  ‘I greatly regret to have disturbed you, sahib,’ the inspector said with an air of rectitude, ‘but I must remind you that Mr Perfect is still in a most serious condition as a result of the attack of last night. Rigorous investigation is essential.’

  ‘But there was no attack. You are dreaming only Inspector.’

  Lala Varde gave a monstrous, unconcerned yawn.

  Inspector Ghote seized his runaway temper and tethered it sharply back.

  He took a deep, long, measured breath.

  ‘Mr Varde,’ he said, ‘last night at 1.47 a.m. precisely you telephoned the Police Department. Is that not so?’

  Squinting through half-closed eyelids, Lala Varde looked at him for a long while before replying.

  ‘Oh, you policias,’ he said at last, ‘with your records of this and your records of that, your times that this occurred and your times that that occurred. I tell you, Inspector, if I ran my business by keeping notes of every little time that I stood up or I sat down, no money would I have, not one anna.’

  The inspector took the veiled point.

  ‘Exactly, sahib,’ he said. ‘You reported last night that your secretary, Mr Perfect, had been attacked. The report is entered in the appropriate log books.’

  From behind his now definitively closed eyes Lala Varde emitted a gurgle of laughter.

  ‘Not attack, Inspector,’ he said, ‘murder instead. I told that poor old Mr Perfect was murdered. In your record pecord you have written “the Perfect Murder”.’

  The words, with the unpleasant fact that it was almost certain that they were on official record somewhere, confronted the inspector. He felt them as the distinguishable outposts of a great cloud-wall that lay in front of him, shifting, advancing, retreating, but never doing more than give the delusion of penetration.

  With an effort of will that almost hurt, he recalled the blue volume of Gross reposing in its place in his office. Doctor Gross would not permit a case to be handled in this way.

  ‘Mr Varde,’ he said, ‘whatever the actual words used, it remains nevertheless that you reported an attack on Mr Perfect. Also it was not then a fatal attack, but even at this moment it may have become such. You cannot now say the attack never took place.’

  He saw again the long prostrate figure of the old Parsi, lightly and delicately and dangerously breathing.

  ‘What attack are you talking, Inspector. I know of no attack.’

  The voice was utterly bland, and thick with sleep.

  ‘Very well, Mr Varde,’ said Inspector Ghote, ‘you leave me no alternative. I shall have to submit application to higher authority for permission to arrest you for obstructing a police officer in the course of his duty.’

  The huge sleeping form in the wide cane chair spoke.

  ‘And have you thought what higher authority will say when they learn how you treat Lala Arun Varde?’

  Yet by the end of the sentence the bloodshot eyes were fully open and were regarding the inspector warily.

  ‘Mr Varde,’ the inspector said, ‘from inquiries to date we know that Mr Perfect was alive at midnight last night. At 1.47 a.m. you reported that he was dead, a statement subject to subsequent modification. It remains therefore to account for movements made by victim in the intervening period. Mr Varde, when did you last see Mr Perfect?’

  ‘Inspector,’ said Lala Varde in a tone of all-embracing reasonableness, ‘what are you bothering your head
with such matters? There is a lot of work for Police Department to do, Inspector. I know it. There is much disregarding of the prohibition laws in the city. People are obtaining medical certificates when they are quite unnecessary. The poorer classes are frequently making illicit brews. Such things must be stopped, Inspector. And then there is the whole matter of anti-corruption. It is needing the utmost attention.’

  He heaved himself forward making the wide chair under him bend and shudder.

  ‘Inspector,’ he said, ‘don’t you think you ought to be doing this work?’

  ‘Breaches of the prohibition law and anti-corruption activities come under different departments,’ Inspector Ghote replied stolidly. ‘Also my task is to investigate the criminal attack on Mr Perfect. I have been given it, and I will continue with it until it is finished.’

  Lala Varde shook his head sadly.

  ‘Oh, Inspector, Inspector,’ he said, ‘you are a foolish man.’

  ‘No, sahib,’ Inspector Ghote said with unshaken firmness.

  ‘It is you who are foolish. It is always foolish not to answer questions put by a police officer in the course of his duties.’

  ‘Very well, Inspector, I have said.’

  ‘Very well, sahib. And now perhaps you will tell me when you last saw Mr Perfect before the attack?’

  Lala Varde’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘At midnight you know he was alive?’ he asked.

  Inspector Ghote winced inwardly. If he had not been so irritated by the huge old man’s obstinacy, he would probably have contrived to have kept this fact to himself.

  ‘At midnight,’ he admitted.

  ‘Yes, that must be so,’ Lala Varde said. ‘Because at midnight I saw him also.’

  ‘Mr Varde,’ the inspector said, ‘when Mr Perfect was attacked he was in the little room by the door to the house. Why should he have been in there?’

  ‘Oh, Inspector, what questions you are asking. How should I know a thing like that? How should I know anything? I have too many things to think to be knowing why is this and why is that. It all falls on my shoulders. My son Dilip is no good. I have ordered him not to go to office today. He can think instead about what is the right thing to say and the right thing to do, and he can read his mysteries histories at home. If he went to office he would give orders, and then where would we be?’