When Tarzan’s unsympathetic brother had carried his flat basket of plump fish past the palisade of the curing yard and out of sight, Inspector Ghote swung round to the old man sitting impassively on the edge of his beached boat, beginning to gather up the stiff folds of the sail into neat coils.
Ghote let him finish the task. Then he moved in confidently.
‘I would like to see the three fish still at the bottom of the boat,’ he said with quiet triumph.
For a moment the old man crouched in front of the fish braced for combat. But Ghote knew he could not lose now.
‘They are my fish,’ the old man said.
‘I want to see them,’ Ghote replied implacably.
‘They are for us to eat only.’
‘You can eat them after I have seen them.’
‘Who are you that you should see my fish?’
The stony-faced old man began looking up towards the huts as if he might summon his neighbours to help defend his private property. Ghote darted forward, dipped agilely into the boat and seized one of the fish.
He squeezed it hard.
And felt nothing.
He pushed the old man back and grabbed the other two fish. He thrust his fingers down their gullets.
Nothing.
He stepped back. The old man took a short knife from his loincloth and in a single jerk ripped open the first fish from mouth to tail.
Mockingly he presented the two pieces for Ghote’s inspection.
Ghote hung his head. Cheated, and so easily. He looked over at the curing yard. Villagers were coming and going from it in a regular procession. Some carried bundles of dried fish on their heads. Others swung baskets by their sides. Tarzan’s brother strolled back to the family hut, empty-handed.
He could always arrest them still. He could swear to having seen them behaving suspiciously at sea. But with no actual gold to prove his claims he would have a hard time getting a conviction, let alone being able to touch Amrit Singh. With such a doubtful case against them, the old man and his son would never even consider turning approvers and giving evidence against the big Sikh.
He had failed. He would be unable to get the Sikh on a smuggling charge. His orders to arrest him for murder and work up the evidence afterwards stood.
No, he thought obstinately, he would at least see Krishna Chatterjee once again. He would try his squeezing process at least once. He would give himself twenty-four hours more. Not a minute above that. And then he would go the whole hog, pull in Amrit Singh, bring every pressure to bear on the boys to say the right things in court. Be a complete D.S.P. Naik man.
Ghote decided to play it tough.
He had Krishna Chatterjee brought down to headquarters. After all, the social worker was no Amrit Singh. He would hardly stand up to rough treatment. The threat of it, or even the hint of it, might still change everything.
Before his victim was due to arrive he set about making a few preparations. He pulled his squat, little spare chair out from its place against the wall and set it very carefully in front of his desk. He went round to the other side and sat down. He leant forward to judge the distance between himself and anybody sitting on the little chair.
He came to the conclusion that the gap was a bit too wide and went round the desk to make a final adjustment.
There was no harm in a policeman having finer feelings, he told himself, but that did not mean he had to be soft. Far from it. Real softness was as much going too far with witnesses as not going far enough. The right thing, the truly tough thing, was to judge the amount to a nicety. This was the real world where people acted. They did things. It was necessary to do things back to them to set the balance right again. But the whole art was to do just what was necessary and no more.
He turned the heavy, squat chair a few degrees round so that it would be a strain on anyone sitting on it to look directly at the occupant of the desk.
After all, if Krishna Chatterjee had indeed been driven by some inner urge to poison Frank Masters, then he had laid himself open to whatever sort of treatment he might get. He had put himself in the wrong. And if that meant being pretty tough to himself, it was the kindest thing in the end.
A scutter of movement caught the inspector’s eye.
He turned round. The little lizard had once again got itself caught in the glass-fronted bookcase. Ghote shrugged. Some creatures would never learn. He went round to his own side of the desk again, sat down, opened the bottom drawer and took out a wad of clean paper. He looked at the pencils in the enamelled brass tray in front of him. Some of them seemed a bit blunt. He took a little bright purple plastic pencil sharpener from the deepest corner of the bottom drawer, where he kept it to stop it being pinched, and set to work.
A few minutes later he heard the tread of heavy boots on the corridor floor outside. A sharp but respectful knock sounded on the door.
‘In,’ he called.
It was Krishna Chatterjee, escorted by two constables.
‘Wait outside,’ Ghote said to them briskly. ‘You may be needed.’
The two big men with their shining brass buttons and heavy highly polished boots saluted smartly.
Ghote watched them go and then turned back to his pencil sharpening. Krishna Chatterjee, round-faced, round-shouldered, stayed where he was by the door watching him. In the bookcase down in the corner the little lizard flung itself wildly at the unyielding glass.
At last Ghote glanced up.
‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘Please.’
Krishna Chatterjee came forward and sat on the heavy chair, having tried unsuccessfully to shift it slightly first.
‘Good after –’ he began.
Seeing that Ghote was busy down behind his desk restoring the plastic pencil sharpener to its hiding place, he stopped. Ghote took a long time tucking the little purple object safely away. It would do the talkative Bengali the world of good to have to sit for a little with no one to speak to.
At last the inspector swung suddenly up.
‘Well,’ he barked, ‘have you thought better of this ridiculous nonsense?’
Mr Chatterjee leant forward, twisting round uncomfortably.
‘Inspector,’ he said, ‘I very much regret, but I have nothing more to tell you. I admit that for reasons I thought good I entered the dispensary on the evening Frank Masters died. I admit I obtained the key from Mr Carstairs by using what amounted to threats. But I must insist on keeping the reasons for that visit strictly confidential.’
‘You must insist?’ Ghote said, leaning back so that Mr Chatterjee had to twist forward even more to keep his face in view, ‘you must insist, and what right have you to insist on anything at all?’
Mr Chatterjee looked very pained. His big, almond-shaped brown eyes went liquid with hurt.
‘Inspector, I had hoped you would respect my decision. I assure you it is one that is totally inevitable. Totally.’
‘Nothing is inevitable when it gets in the way of a police inquiry,’ Ghote said. ‘We have ways of removing inevitabilities, Mr Chatterjee.’
He glanced over the little Bengali’s head at the door of the office where he had ordered the two enormous constables to wait.
Mr Chatterjee wriggled round in the heavy little chair to follow the direction of his glance. The big, brown eyes widened in fear.
‘Yes,’ Ghote said, ‘we have ways. So I suggest you think again, Mr Chatterjee. Do some very hard thinking. And very quick thinking.’
He swung himself suddenly forward across the narrow, lined and ink-blotched desk, bringing the legs of his tilted chair down on to the floor with a jarring bang.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘when you took the poison from the jar what did you keep it in on your way up to the house?’
Opposite him, not eighteen inches away, the round face of the little social worker went suddenly flabby.
He stammered for an answer but could find nothing to say.
Ghote never for half a second took his eyes off him.
At last the little Bengali managed to stutter out a reply.
‘Inspector, you must understand this. I am not telling you any lies. Perhaps it would have been altogether less distressing if I had. But I have a constitutional objection to falsehood. So, when because of Frank Masters I am obliged not to inform you of certain matters, there is nothing I can do but fall back on silence.’
He twisted round even farther in the squat, heavy chair. His eyes shone with trepidation.
‘Inspector, spare me,’ he murmured in a voice that could be scarcely heard.
Ghote knew that this was the moment he should act. Even the reference to never telling lies alerted him. That way lay thoughts of doing evil that good might come. Now was the moment to leap up and stand over the fundamentally timid Bengali and shout and shout until he got a confession.
But something else Mr Chatterjee had said had set up a sudden long echo in his mind.
He leant a little more forward.
‘For Frank Masters?’ he asked. ‘You are keeping silence for him? Tell me what it is about him that makes you do that?’
Mr Chatterjee looked up. His big eyes had a faint gleam of hope in them. Reprieved.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it would have been more satisfactory perhaps not to have referred to this. But it is the strict truth.’
Ghote pressed the palms of his hands down on the blotched surface of his desk.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘but what was it about Frank Masters that made you do that? What was his secret?’
A look of staring dismay suddenly appeared on Mr Chatterjee’s face.
‘His secret –’ he stammered.
‘Yes,’ Ghote said, his voice almost at a shout, ‘what is this secret of his personality that made him so different from all of us?’
The dismayed look faded from the Bengali’s round face. He coughed a little primly.
‘Oh yes, that,’ he said. ‘Well, you might put it that it existed only to a certain extent. Frank Masters was unlike us, certainly. We are not all immensely wealthy men, and we do not give up all that wealth in a crusade in a foreign country. That is true. But on the other hand, Frank Masters was in many ways all too like us. That is to say, all too human.’
He came to an end and sat contemplating the humanness of Frank Masters with a woebegone expression.
‘All too human?’ Ghote said at last. ‘Please explain that a little more.’
Mr Chatterjee looked up.
‘In certain ways his very wealth was a disadvantage,’ he said. ‘He was apt to prefer to be kind rather than to be strictly useful, and his money frequently gave him the opportunity to smother up any unfortunate results of too much kindness by the exercise of further acts of generosity. And at this stage on many occasions a certain lack of interest would manifest itself. He failed to follow through.’
Mr Chatterjee pronounced these last words with great sadness. Ghote nodded sagely.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘you can often do more harm than good that way. People like that should not really be allowed to interfere in other people’s lives.’
‘No. You are wrong. Quite wrong.’
Ghote jerked back in astonishment. In the big, almond eyes of the little Bengali there shone fire.
‘No,’ he repeated, ‘you are quite wrong. Frank Masters did good. That we must never forget. He set out to use his wealth to do good to others, and this he did. Whatever else we reproach him for, this blots out everything.’
He breathed rapidly.
‘After all,’ he went on, ‘he had no need to spend his money on us, and live a life that was relatively austere. Decidedly a life that was relatively austere.’
He sat looking straight forward at the wall to Ghote’s side. His big eyes were moist.
Ghote puffed out a long breath.
‘I dare say there is something in all that,’ he conceded.
He pulled himself together.
‘However that is not the point. We are not here to discuss the charitable activities of Mr Masters. We are here to discuss his sudden death.’
He glared fiercely at Mr Chatterjee.
‘His sudden death and the part you played in it.’
Mr Chatterjee slid round again to the uncomfortable position in which he could look Ghote straight in the eye.
‘Inspector,’ he said, ‘I must repeat that I played no part at all in Mr Masters’s death. It was the last thing in the world I would have wished to have occurred. The absolutely last thing.’
‘That will not do,’ Ghote shouted.
But it was too late.
Mr Chatterjee sat serenely now on the heavy chair. During his summoning up of the spirit of his former chief Ghote’s threats had lost their power over him.
‘That will not do at all,’ Ghote repeated. ‘I must have answer.’
‘I regret that you have had such answer as in my power to provide.’
The little social worker looked modestly down.
And Ghote let him go.
When the door had been softly shut he sat there contemplating bitterly the course of the interview. To begin with, he had puffed himself up with all those thoughts about being tough. And little Krishna Chatterjee had shown him what real mental toughness was.
For a moment he speculated on whether this display of inner unshakeable resolution put the little Bengali more definitely into the murderer class. He decided that it did not. Certainly, this was the sort of force that could have led him to an altogether unlikely ruthlessness. But the mere possession of it did not necessarily mean that he was bound to have killed Frank Masters. Amrit Singh, if it came to that, possessed beyond question the ability to kill.
The scales were still level.
The thought of Frank Masters plunged Ghote into deeper gloom. He had actually been so foolish as to abuse him, to sit there and utter statements about preventing people like him interfering in other people’s lives. How could he have done it? In face of an example of real goodness like that? Mr Chatterjee was right to have snubbed him.
He bunched up his fist and banged it down on the pile of untouched white paper in front of him. The dull, padded sound of the blow reverberated quietly through the small room. Down in the glass-fronted bookcase the lizard was stirred to a fresh frenzy of ineffectual scuttling.
Wearily Ghote got up, took a piece of the paper, went over to the corner and hoicked the little beast to freedom once more.
Shortly afterwards he went home. There was no point in staying in the office. At any moment D.S.P. Naik might come in and start asking awkward questions. Home was safe.
Home was delightful. He found Protima in a very good humour. His son was being extremely serious and well-behaved, which in a replica of a man only a quarter lifesize he found always so absorbing that for a time nothing else seemed to matter.
He relaxed. Frank Masters might have been murdered in circumstances which were still almost as mysterious as when he had been assigned to the case, but that could wait. The impression he had at last begun to gain of the murdered American as a human being, and one whose very existence posed problems in behaviour almost too big to deal with, might be still heavily present in his mind, but at least it could for a few minutes be pushed into the background. To be a father and a husband and nothing else was important and right. Ghote watched his son and talked in a low voice to Protima about the events of her day at home.
‘But you,’ she said at last, ‘what have you been doing? Your clothes? How did you get them into that terrible state? When you came in they looked as if you had been wading through the sea in them.’
So Ghote was gently urged back into being a policeman. He told Protima, in brief outline, about how he had hoped to catch Amrit Singh as a smuggler and about how he had failed, leaving himself faced as inexorably as ever with his dilemma about Amrit Singh and Krishna Chatterjee and the D.S.P.’s almost inescapable order.
Protima promptly justified his former reluctance to tell her about his work by getting the situation typically wrong.
‘But why cannot you arrest Amrit Singh?’ she said. ‘He was the one who poisoned your Frank Masters.’
‘But he did not,’ Ghote replied. ‘Not necessarily. I explained to you. Both he and Krishna Chatteijee admit going into the dispensary where the poison was. Both swear they did not take it. Either could be telling the truth. And while I know for a fact that Amrit Singh has killed three people himself at least, I am also sure that someone like Krishna Chatterjee could push himself to the extreme of murder. It balances up.’
‘Then you do not want to believe Amrit Singh killed Frank Masters?’
‘It is not a question of what I want to believe. It is question of simple logic.’
An unexpected stain of dark anger appeared momentarily on the smooth stream of his tranquillity.
‘Logic,’ Protima laughed. ‘It is no good talking your logic this and your logic that. You know I never understand such things.’
She made them sound as if they were all right for little Ved, solemnly bringing dishes of pickle in from the kitchen for their evening meal, but not really worth considering above that level.
‘But you cannot escape logic,’ Ghote said, his voice suddenly rising.
Ved looked up but said nothing.
‘Oh, I can escape it very well,’ said Protima, undisturbed. ‘You must not let such things worry you.’
‘But I have failed to find who killed Frank Masters.’
‘All right. You must ask yourself who killed him. Was it Amrit Singh, was it Krishna Chatterjee, was it that Dr Diana?’
Ghote’s fury boiled over.
‘How can you be so stupid?’ he shouted. ‘I tell you it could not possibly be Dr Diana. She does not come into it at all.’
Protima gave a little toss of her fine, long head.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘from what I have heard about the way she talks to you, I think it must be her. But enough of this nonsense. If I do not go to kitchen now, we will have no food tonight.’
And she went.
Ghote stood in the living-room looking at the empty doorway, oblivious of Ved arranging the pickle dishes with great exactitude.
‘Dr Diana has absolute alibi,’ he said into space. ‘For all the time when the poison was stolen she did not have a key to the dispensary. That is a fact.’
From the kitchen came the sound of a pan being put on the gasring and its contents being stirred briskly. Ved went back in to fetch another pickle dish to complete his display.
Ghote marched up and down. He began to feel hot and uncomfortable even in his fresh clothes. He slumped down on a rattan stool in the corner and fanned at himself furiously.
Protima came back in calmly carrying the food with Ved and his final pickle dish in the rear. Ghote glowered at them and stayed where he was.
‘Well,’ Protima said, ‘the meal is ready. Are you going to eat?’
Ghote did not reply.
‘Come, why are you sitting like that?’
‘It is hot.’
‘Then take some water to drink. It has been standing in the big clay jar. It is quite cool.’
Ghote got up and helped himself, dipping a brass tumbler into the big pot. He drank.
‘Cool,’ he said contemptuously.
‘Well, it is cool as water can be kept without refrigerator.’
‘Refrigerator. Refrigerator. There you go again. Always dragging it in. Always nagging about it. Always hinting.’
It was the signal for battle.
But Protima, with that contrariness that was both the bane and delight of her make-up, refused to fight. Instead she was all sweetness.
‘No, you are wrong,’ she said. ‘Really, I do not always go on about the refrigerator. Or if I do, it is joking only. Yes, I would like, I admit. But if we have not got the money, then we cannot have one. I know that.’
And, as was almost always the case, she melted Ghote completely.
‘But you will get one one day, soon even,’ he burst out. ‘I meant to keep it secret. I have been saving.’
It was true. He had been saving in secret. Whenever Protima had talked about how wonderful it would be to have a refrigerator he had taken good care to laugh at her, to ask how Indian women had survived so many centuries without such objects, to say that at his present rate of pay such luxuries were unthinkable. But some time before he had been unable to resist setting aside a lump sum in back Dearness Allowance that had unexpectedly been paid him. It had made a start and bit by bit he had added to it. Now, although the refrigerator was still a good distance away, the sum in the Post Office account he kept for it, his refrigerator fund, was of a respectable size.
Protima came running up.
‘You have been saving? In secret? Oh, my husband, such a deceiver he is. Oh, you funny man, you good man. How much have you saved?’
‘Nearly five hundred rupees.’
‘Five hundred rupees. Five hundred rupees. But that is wonderful. How clever to get so much together and never hint at it to me.’
Never, thought Ghote a little wryly.
Protima laughed tenderly.
‘And you are so silly, too,’ she said. ‘When you have saved that much money there is no need to go any longer without refrigerator. It can be bought on easy terms.’
She came up to him and stroked the back of his head with a long, slim, fine-boned hand.
‘Oh, Mr Practical,’ she said. ‘With his logic here and his logic there. Sometimes you must think of how things really are in the world. Tomorrow you can get the money and we will go to the Hiro Music House shop and make the arrangements. We can have proper cold drinks tomorrow night even.’
‘I will see,’ Ghote said.
He felt suddenly shy about the whole transaction.
‘But the next day is Holi. It would be nice to have cold drinks for the holiday.’
‘I may be too busy,’ Ghote said with a trace of irritation.
‘Then we will wait. We have waited so long, two days more will not matter. Straight after Holi we will go.’
‘Yes.’