So it was a hasty meal indeed that Ghote ate before setting out again to try the other trail he had unearthed in his all-night examination of the files that had been accumulated when the sudden death of Sarojini Savarkar had been investigated fifteen years before.
Yet he felt a shade more hopeful than he had done when he had arrived at the police-station. Superintendent Chavan’s claim about the efficiency of his men had not proved illusory. A team of constable clerks working without cease had succeeded in discovering the present whereabouts of all five of the men who had served on the Coroner’s Committee which had, in defiance of customary procedure, granted permission for a suspected victim of poisoning to be burned instead of being buried.
And more than this, Superintendent Chavan himself had remembered that one man in particular on that committee was very likely strongly indebted to the Municipal Chairman.
‘He is the fellow by name of Ram Dhulup, my dear Inspector,’ the superintendent had said, his heavy frame positively bursting with pride. ‘The man is accident victim, you know, and would have been altogether reduced to beggary except that some person of wealth makes him a monthly retainer.’
The superintendent had leant across his desk at this point and had beaten an absolute tattoo of finger taps on his braided cap so delighted was he with his discovery.
‘I have personally myself checked with one or two very good friends of mine in the town, and I can assure you, my dear Inspector, that man is not in receipt of any kind of State pension whatsoever.’
‘That is most interesting, sir.’
‘It points to one person, eh, Inspector? One person who shall be nameless, I think you would agree. Hah!’
Ghote had hurried off at this, a typed list of the addresses of his five possible leads neatly folded in the top pocket of his shirt. And it was to Ram Dhulup’s home that he had cycled first.
Ram Dhulup may have been in receipt of a mysterious pension from someone or other, but it cannot have been a very large one since his house was simply one of a number of mud-walled buildings, scarcely more than huts, in a lane near the river inhabited by the town’s dhobis, some of whom Ghote saw down by their steps on the riverbank holding out various washed garments in the heavy breeze that forecast a new shower, forlornly hoping to get them a little drier before the new downpour came.
Sitting outside the house on a low earthen platform only just higher than the immense puddles which almost completely covered the ground in this low-lying area, there was a handsome young woman – she would be, Ghote calculated, perhaps twenty-five – busy sifting grain.
‘You are the daughter of Ram Dhulup?’ Ghote inquired.
The young woman was instantly and lithely on her feet. She snatched at her somewhat gaudy sari to take its end decorously across her head, though in doing so she allowed – or contrived – to let the garment slip well down from her bosom.
And, looking modestly at her feet, she giggled.
Ghote, who had seen any amount of this sort of thing in Bombay, stood waiting for an answer with what patience he could muster.
At last it came.
‘Not daughter. It is wife I am.’
Ghote acknowledged his surprise. If Ram Dhulup had been a senior enough citizen to look well on a Coroner’s Committee fifteen years before he ought not to have a wife of this age. However, the discrepancy in years between the couple did not seem to be his immediate concern.
‘Your husband is inside?’ he asked.
Again the buxom young woman standing statuesquely in front of him giggled.
Again Ghote waited.
‘No,’ she replied at last. ‘No, he is not inside.’
‘He is talking with neighbours?’ Ghote asked.
‘No, he is not talking with neighbours.’
The sari had slipped back off the head now, and Ghote was able to see quite clearly that the young woman was, if not a beauty, decidedly attractive. And, plainly too, she knew it. The jewel in her nostril was a large one, and the hand that soon came up to carry out more play with the folds of the sari over the bosom was heavy with bangles.
Ghote took a breath and patiently went on with his interrogation.
‘He has gone to buy something?’
‘No, he has not gone to buy anything.’
‘He is visiting friends?’
‘No, it is not friends that he is visiting.’
‘Ah, but he is visiting somewhere in the town?’
‘No, he is not in the town.’
‘Not in the town? Then where is he?’
‘To Nagpur he has gone. More than three hours ago he has departed.’
‘Why has he gone to Nagpur?’
She smiled at him brazenly, as much as to say ‘What a ridiculously stupid question.’
‘He has gone to wedding of cousin. Many guests they are having.’
‘And you have not gone also?’ Ghote asked sharply.
Ram Dhulup’s young wife modestly looked down at the ground once again. She turned her hip outwards voluptuously to do so.
‘The cousins are not knowing we are married,’ she said. ‘He is widower, my husband.’
Ghote thought he grasped the situation. A poverty-stricken dhobi is involved in some sort of serious accident which prevents him crouching on a stone step by the river’s edge and beating lustily at other people’s dirty clothes. At some point he is able to do a certain wealthy individual a much needed good turn. He finds himself afterwards with a pension, not much but enough to put him in a state of comparative affluence among his neighbours. An astute mother with a hard-to-hold daughter to get off her hands seizes on this suddenly well-off widower and before he knows what has happened to him he is married again and to a prime young wife. Some people have to know about it, but cousins in distant Nagpur, thirty or forty long miles away, can safely be left in ignorance, thus avoiding the recriminations that doubtless would have followed.
‘When is your husband returning from Nagpur?’ Ghote demanded sternly.
‘Not for many days,’ replied the buxom creature in front of him.
She did not seem at all unhappy at this.
‘And where do his cousins live in Nagpur?’ Ghote asked.
To his considerable surprise he was rewarded for this question with not only the address of the cousins but their name and occupation as well. He made a careful note of them, said a cold good-bye to the roving-eyed Mrs Dhulup and clambered back on to his bicycle.
He had four other Coroner’s Committee members to see, but if they did not prove satisfactory he could always go quickly to Nagpur and get hold of Ram Dhulup. Perhaps by doing so he would get ahead of the Municipal Chairman, and he needed to do that only once.
*
The next person after Ram Dhulup on the list Ghote had been given by Superintendent Chavan was the foreman of that Coroner’s Committee of so long ago, Janardan Pendharkar, a minor official in the local tax office. Ghote left his dreadnought bicycle with the dozens of others in racks inside the office compound and entered the building all ready to be the inspector from Bombay once again.
After obtaining a good many contradictory answers from the various file-carrying peons whom he had made inquiries of, he at last located the office of the ex-foreman of the Coroner’s Committee.
Somewhat to his surprise he was immediately admitted when, in accordance with the system he had developed, he sent in his name in a sealed note by the peon he found lightly dozing on a bench in the corridor.
Janardan Pendharkar was a man of about sixty, round, chubby and immovable, like a little god.
‘Sit, sit, Inspector,’ he said with a gracious gesture but without actually giving this one client among many anything in the nature of a direct look.
Ghote would have sat immediately, only it seemed that Mr Pendharkar had not ascertained whether there was anything available to sit on, each of the three chairs in the office being heaped high with a pile of dog-eared and battered files. At last Ghote boldly took hold of the smallest stack and deposited it on the floor.
Rotund little Mr Pendharkar carefully read a document picked from his crowded desk while this was going on and only when Ghote was well seated did he give him one quick glance before fixing his eyes on his own plumply folded hands and launching into an observation.
‘Please not to think,’ he said, ‘that I am not very well acquainted with the purpose of your visit on this occasion.’
Ghote, who now had leisure to look at Mr Pendharkar’s desk more closely, saw on it a copy of a newspaper folded so that a familiar headline was uppermost. ‘Holy Man’s Fast Against Probe Goes On.’ Mr Pendharkar was no doubt well acquainted indeed with the purpose of his visit, but with a venerated holy man fasting to death it was going to be most unlikely that he would be giving any assistance.
And at once his worst forebodings were justified.
He had opened his mouth to explain the imperative need to establish the truth of any allegations that might have been made when Mr Pendharkar addressed a further observation to his folded hands.
‘Yes, Inspector,’ he said, ‘I know well what you are here for, and straightaway I must tell you something which I fear you ought to have known for yourself already.’
‘Yes?’ Ghote managed to interject.
‘It is simply this. That my sole connection with the unfortunate business that has brought you here was to act as foreman of the duly appointed Coroner’s Committee that investigated the matter when it occurred. And, of course, I cannot as a duly appointed officer divulge one word of the deliberations of the said committee.’
Mr Pendharkar smiled with content.
Ghote, who knew when he was beaten, apologized hastily for having troubled the gentleman and took his leave. He omitted to replace the bundle of files on the chair he had sat on.
Outside, standing among the racked bicycles of the tax clerks, he considered the situation. Thanks to the so much venerated holy man having taken his stand, and he wished he knew why he should have done so, it was plain that there was going to be little help got from anybody in the town. And if already there had been one protest march in the streets, how long was it going to be before there were more? Or before there were crowds milling about everywhere determined to expel, if not outright kill, this interloper who was forcing to his death their dispenser of wisdom?
Was it even worth attempting now to go through the rest of the list of Coroner’s Committee members? Yet, if he were to do nothing, there would soon be an awkward accounting to have with an Eminent Figure back in Bombay. He would be expecting another report by telephone before long.
Wearily Ghote took out the list to see who was next on it. It was the committee member called Ram Phalke, a barber.
Then an idea flashed into his mind. He would switch round and tackle instead the man called Bhatu, a basketmaker. The basketmakers lived on the other side of the town, but he would go out of his way to go there. It was possible, just possible, that someone as cut off from the mainstream of local affairs as this Bhatu would be as a low caste citizen in a town like this, might have heard next to nothing of the agitation. If so, perhaps something could yet be got out of him about what had gone on at that Coroner’s Committee all those years ago.
Lugging the ton-weight bicycle out of the rack, Ghote set off at a great rate, swerving wildly from the edge of one lake-like puddle to the edge of the next.
Ploughing along the wide main street as yet another solid shower began to fall, he saw the banner that had been carried in the morning’s procession. It had been propped against the wall of the post office so that people going there had to walk right under to get in. The words on it now could be clearly read. GHOTE GO. He hunched himself yet more determinedly over his handlebars.