Banquet on the Dead (16 page)

Hamid Pasha fixed him with a glance. ‘Do you really think she does, miyan?’

‘Oh, you mean she is putting on an act? But everyone the house has said she hates them, and that
they
hate her too. So it is mutual.’

‘Some might just be afraid of her, and it is easy to hate someone you are scared of.’

‘Well,’ Nagarajan conceded, ‘in that case we need to find out why they are afraid of her. Once again, I think those three other deaths in the family might hold some sort of key: it (they) might tell us why the lady hates Swami saab so much.’ A sudden thought struck him. ‘Do you think Swami saab might have had something to do with one of those deaths? Maybe Karuna knows something that Swami saab wants to keep hidden.’

Hamid Pasha smiled. ‘You are all over the place, miyan. You are turning over every stone, as they say.’

‘I know,’ said Nagarajan, patting his stomach. ‘It is the hunger. I cannot think straight when I’ve got nothing in here.’ He looked up at the kitchen door and exclaimed thankfully as he sighted a man in maroon walk towards him with a tray in hand. Carefully avoiding eye-contact with the glowering Nagarajan, the man laid down the plate and withdrew with a soft, mumbled: ‘Enjoy your meal, sir.’

A rather nasty retort came to Nagarajan’s mind but he thought better of it. For one thing, the aroma of the dal had already hit his nostrils and was turning his thoughts away from the waiter to the plate. For another, the man had already, with a lot of practice, no doubt, covered half the distance to the kitchen and was pretending to be out of earshot. Prudently, therefore, Nagarajan picked up the spoon and confronted his plate.

Hamid Pasha said, ‘I am so sorry, miyan. All this time you were so hungry and I was pestering you with all sorts of questions. Do forgive me. I will now let you eat in peace.’

Nagarajan, with his mouth full of rice, shook his head.

‘Yes,’ said Hamid Pasha, ‘now
you
listen, and
I
will talk.’ He reached out to Nagarajan’s plate and picked up the papad on it. ‘You are not going to have this, are you?’ He broke it in two and started munching on the bigger half.

Nagarajan shook his head slowly.

‘Now,’ said Hamid Pasha, ‘with these things it is always good to think from the point of view of the murderer. Let us look at the case from the outside before we talk of all the people in it. Look at the well and where it is located in respect to the house. There is only one path, and that one path is in full view of the
front
of the house. A highly risky place, don’t you think, to kill someone?’

Nagarajan nodded.

‘It is. If we are going to catch this murderer, miyan, we will have to probe that question most thoroughly. Why did anyone have to kill her at the well? Why not poison her? Why not strangle her? Why not, stab her? Why not kill her in a safe, secluded place instead of at a place where they run the risk of being seen? Hain?’

‘I agree,’ Nagarajan said, between mouthfuls.

‘But be that as it may,’ said Hamid Pasha, ‘the path is also not as risky as it appears at first thought. Because as I said, the
front
of the house faces the path, and it is pretty much invisible from the side windows, is it not? But the fronts of the top-floor houses have no sitting rooms. So people would notice someone coming up or down only while on their way to doing something else—
by chance
; just like Durga and Kamala happened to go to the front windows and see what they saw.’

‘Still, a riskier option than doing her away in a quiet place.’

‘Definitely. But if we grant that it is not as risky as we first thought it was, we have to also grant that the murderer is someone who knows the house intimately and the individual habits of the family too. Because both Kamala and Durga have confirmed that it was their siesta time and they usually were
not
up then.’

Nagarajan nodded.

‘That much we know already. We know that if Kauveramma was murdered—and it seems very likely now—then it had to be one of the people in the house that had committed the crime; either of the family, or the servants. So far, we are on fairly firm ground, then, hain? We have acknowledged that we need to answer the question of “why at the well”, but also grant that for people intimately versed in the ins and outs of the house, it may not have posed too big a risk to kill the old lady at the well. Okay?’

Nagarajan nodded again, only half-listening to the older man. The fried potatoes that accompanied his basmati rice were cooked
just
right, and the chef in Nagarajan (who surfaced every now and then when his wife went home to her mother’s place) approved. All he felt towards that waiter now was benevolence, and in the far reaches of his mind he even considered the possibility of leaving him a tip. So Ashoka Hotel was not that bad after all; he made a mental note of the dish. He should remember to order this the next time he got dragged here. He had to memorise the numeral placed alongside the dish on the menu too, just in case they changed the name of the dish or something— these people were always doing that...

‘
Miyan!
’

‘Hmm?’

‘Miyan, the food is very tasty, hain?’

‘Yes, very,’ Inspector Nagarajan eventually responded, shame-faced. If he had a weakness, and he admitted to it freely, it was good food. But work was work. So he nodded primly and said, ‘Yes, solid ground so far, Hamid bhai. Keep going.’

Hamid Pasha swallowed a gulp of water and began again: ‘Now, let us look at it from Kauveramma’s side for a little while. She is scared of water, we are told. In fact, she is so scared that she has confessed to her grandson that she gets the chills even when she is taking a shower and has to wash her hair. Now what possible thing would lure such a woman to the well? It has got to be a very strong reason, has it not?’

Pointing his spoon at Hamid Pasha and chewing his food, Nagarajan said, ‘Also, this might be the reason the killer wanted to kill her there—
because
she is so afraid of water.’

‘Ah, you mean it is an act of hatred to kill her in the way she most fears?’

‘It is possible, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, but I wonder... anyway, we know the killer lured the old lady out to the well, but we need to find out how.’

‘Or indeed,’ said Nagarajan, ‘if one person lured her out and another person, who had always wanted to kill her, saw his chance and took it.’

‘Ah, miyan, you read too many detective novels.’

‘A few,’ Nagarajan admitted.

‘I do not think this is a crime that was committed on the spur of the moment, miyan. I think it had been planned—oh, yes, I see planning here: immaculate planning, and someone with an innate sense of
timing
.’ Hamid Pasha’s voice took on a cold, distant tone. His eyes hardened. ‘And of course, someone with nerves of steel. For it is no easy matter, miyan, to trust yourself to do this sort of thing without being seen; without being caught.’

‘Maybe he was seen,’ Nagarajan ventured. ‘We just don’t know who by.’

‘Ah.’ Hamid Pasha waved his idea away. ‘That is no good. Now, let us focus again. Let us now talk about the two people who are vital to this case and yet who are out of place in it—Nagesh and Ashok. Remember, miyan, that I said something in this whole mess is out of place, is all wrong. It is
these guys
. They do not fit!’

Nagarajan frowned. ‘I thought they were the only people in the story that are not suspects—who are pure witnesses.’

‘Oh, I agree with all that, miyan! But let me ask you this—we just established that the person who has killed Kauveramma ought to be someone intimately in the know about things happening at Kauvery Bhavan. Hain?’

‘Yes?’

‘Then why did this Mister-or-Ms Know-it-all choose to kill the woman on the very day there were—not one, two!—witnesses to the event? They would know that the people working near the compound wall could hear them, so why did they simply not choose the day after or the day before? This was not a spur-of-the- moment murder, remember—the murderer planned it. But why on that day of all days?’

Nagarajan made to say something, but Hamid Pasha hushed him. ‘And also,’ he said, waving an arm theatrically, ‘another thing that is all wrong about the two accounts are that they did not hear anything apart from the splash’.

‘But they heard the woman scream.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Hamid Pasha impatiently. ‘The scream and the splash. Nothing before that or
after
.’

Nagarajan allowed a little bit of irritation to creep into his voice. ‘I don’t know what you expected them to hear, Hamid bhai.’

‘Well, miyan, I do not expect the old lady to have walked to the well, and silently got toppled into it, without so much as a protest. Remember we postulated that it was
hatred
that made the killer push her into the well. If that was the case you would expect the killer to let her know that she was dying, and that she was dying at
his
hands. So some exchange of words should have been there. Hain?’

‘I don’t know, Hamid bhai. Maybe there was some exchange of words, who knows?’

‘But your men did not report it, hain?’

‘I did not question) them specifically on this point.’

Hamid Pasha’s face contorted—whether in perplexity or in frustration, Nagarajan could not tell. ‘Fine,’ the old man said, visibly controlling himself. ‘So if we have not asked them so far, we will when we meet them next. But if they have not reported anything outside of the scream and the splash, it means they have not heard anything. Hain?’

‘Yes, probably not,’ Nagarajan said.

‘That is strange. It does not fit, that. It—it—sticks out, you know. Just like the lady’s hands.’

‘Which lady’s?’

Hamid Pasha threw a look of shocked admonishment at Nagarajan. ‘Karuna Mayi’s, miyan. I drew your attention to them when we first met!’

‘I—yes, but I did not get what you were hinting at.’

‘Well,’ said Hamid Pasha, very slowly and very deliberately, and Nagarajan could tell he was angry. ‘Here is a woman who is supposedly so weak and so crippled with her “illness” that she only does the bare minimum of her chores. And yet her hands are heavily calloused. And so pale, miyan. So pale! Did you not notice her palms?’

Nagarajan paused and shook his head.

‘What did you think I was secretly pointing at her hands for? Because I thought they were beautiful?’

After another pause, Nagarajan shrugged.

‘These are the things that you have to keep a lookout for, miyan, in the first round. Things that should be one way but are not—in fact, they are quite the other way— you know what I am saying, yes?’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘And of course, you saw how fit the lady was.’ He looked up at Nagarajan’s blank expression and shook his head sadly. ‘Being healthy is one thing, miyan, being fit is quite another! You saw the lady’s arms, how well-formed they were? You saw her legs, her hips, her
body
? If it were not for her disease, she would be a very fit woman, wouldn’t she?’

‘A disease, as it turns out,’ said Nagarajan, ‘that no doctor can find and no medicine can cure’.

Hamid Pasha’s eyes twinkled. ‘Quite so. And the doctor suffers from this same disease. It will be interesting, would it not, to find out more about it?’

Nagarajan signalled to the waiter to clear the plates. He looked around once more and decided that Ashoka Hotel was definitely not as bad a place as he had thought an hour back. A full stomach usually puts things in perspective, he thought. Maybe he would come here again with his wife and have some of those excellent fried potatoes.

Hamid Pasha said abruptly, ‘There is another thing that bothers me, miyan.’

Nagarajan eyed him and placed a toothpick in his mouth. He opened the bill wallet, raised a customary brow at the price, and placed a thousand-rupee note in it.

‘It is the question of the servant girl’s sister,’ Hamid Pasha said. ‘The husband says the servant girl has a sister; the wife says she doesn’t. The wife thinks the husband is too pre-occupied with his affairs to notice that it was just the servant girl with the border of her sari covering her head. The husband says it is a different girl. Which one is it?’

‘I’m more inclined to go with the wife. Venkataramana does not look to me like someone who would notice
anything
—let alone domestic affairs.’

Hamid Pasha nodded. ‘And yet—yes, it is yet another of those things. And there is that young man who was loitering about the gate.’

‘Oh, that’s quite easy to guess. What Kamala said is quite likely, I’d say.’

‘And if it is true, it opens up another line of thought, nahin? Maybe the old lady saw the young lady carry on with this young man, and maybe she even threatened her with—consequences, shall we say. Who knows where that conversation could have led?’

The waiter came back with the change, placed the wallet on the edge of the table, and stood a few feet away, and Nagarajan could see his one eye fixed on him. Nagarajan made a quick percentage calculation and left him a suitable tip.

‘Ah,’ said Hamid Pasha, and slammed his hands on the table. ‘I am frustrated, my friend. Frustrated with so many directions, with so many possibilities, and there are too many stories to keep track of—ah, I hope there is some respite from this, but it is only going to get worse, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ said Nagarajan. ‘We have not yet talked to everyone in the family. Who would you like to meet next?’ He slid out of the chair to his feet and reached for the bowl of peppermint. Hamid Pasha had already popped a handful into his mouth.

‘None from the family,’ he said, chewing noisily. ‘I want to meet the servants.’

13

W
HEN THEY OPENED THE
gate and went in, walking by the path up to the fork in it, with one branch leading to the well and one to the house, Hamid Pasha stopped and looked up at the windows facing them. There were ground-floor windows too, Nagarajan noticed, in exactly the same places as the upper floor, but one of the windows was in Raja’s room and the other was in the big living room. Raja hadn’t been home, so it was unlikely anyone would have been behind that window that day to look upon the path. About anyone behind the other window, they did not know.