A Son Of The Circus (74 page)

The thing is,’ Nancy said, ‘I think she feels like she can’t control something in herself, like she just
needs
to do things. She can’t stop herself. The things she wants are just too strong.’

‘What things?’ asked the detective.

‘You know. We’ve talked about it,’ Nancy told him.

Tell
them
,’ her husband said.

‘She’s horny – I think she’s horny all the time,’ Nancy told them.

That’s unusual for someone who’s fifty-three or fifty-four,’ Dr Daruwalla observed.

That’s just the feeling she gives you – believe me,’ Nancy said. ‘She’s awfully horny.’

‘Does this remind you of someone you know?’ the detective asked Inspector Dhar, but Dhar kept looking at Nancy; he didn’t shrug. ‘Or you, Doctor – are you reminded of anyone?’ the deputy commissioner asked Farrokh.

‘Are you talking about someone we’ve actually met –as a woman?’ Dr Daruwalla asked the deputy commissioner.

‘Precisely,’ said Detective Patel.

Dhar was still looking at Nancy when he spoke. ‘Mrs Dogar,’ Dhar said. Farrokh put both his hands on his chest, exactly where the familiar pain in his ribs was suddenly sharp enough to take his breath away,

‘Oh, very good – very
impressive
,’ said Detective Patel. He reached across the table and patted the back of Dhar’s hand. ‘You wouldn’t have made a bad policeman, even if you don’t take bribes,’ the detective told the actor.

‘Mrs Dogar!’ Dr Daruwalla gasped. ‘I
knew
she reminded me of someone!’

‘But there’s something wrong, isn’t there?’ Dhar asked the deputy commissioner. ‘I mean, you haven’t arrested her – have you?’

‘Quite so,’ Patel said. ‘Something is wrong.’

‘I told you he’d know who it was,’ Nancy told her husband.

‘Yes, sweetie,’ the detective said. ‘But it’s not a crime for Rahul to be Mrs Dogar.’

‘How did you find out?’ Dr Daruwalla asked the deputy commissioner. ‘Of course – the list of new members!’

‘It was a good place to start,’ said Detective Patel. ‘The estate of Promila Rai was inherited by her niece, not her nephew.’

‘I never knew there was a niece,’ Farrokh said.

‘There wasn’t,’ Patel replied. ‘Rahul, her nephew, went to London. He came back as her niece. He even gave himself her name – Promila. It’s perfectly legal to change your sex in England. It’s perfectly legal to change your name — even in India.’

‘Rahul Rai married Mr Dogar?’ Farrokh asked.

‘That was perfectly legal, too,’ the detective replied. ‘Don’t you see. Doctor? The fact that you and Dhar could verify that Rahul was there in Goa, at the Hotel Bardez, does
not
confirm that Rahul was ever at the scene of the crime. And it would
not
be believable for Nancy to physically identify Mrs Dogar as the Rahul of twenty years ago. As she told you, she hardly saw Rahul.’

‘Besides, he had a penis then,’ Nancy said.

‘But, in all these killings, are there no fingerprints?’ Farrokh asked.

‘In the cases of the prostitutes, there are
hundreds
of fingerprints,’ D.C.P. Patel replied.

‘What about the putter that killed Mr Lai?’ Dhar asked.

‘Oh, very good!’ the deputy commissioner said. ‘But the putter was wiped clean.’

‘Those drawings!’ Dr Daruwalla said. ‘Rahul always fancied himself an artist. Surely Mrs Dogar must have some drawings around.’

‘That would be convenient,’ Patel replied. ‘But this very morning I sent someone to the Dogar house – to bribe the servants.’ The detective paused and looked directly at Dhar. There
were
no drawings. There wasn’t even a typewriter.’

There must be ten typewriters in this club,’ Dhar said. The typed messages on the two-rupee notes -were they all typed on the same machine?’

‘Oh, what a very good question,’ said Detective Patel. ‘So far, three messages – two different typewriters. Both in this club.’

‘Mrs Dogar!’ Dr Daruwalla said again.

‘Be quiet, please,’ the deputy commissioner said. He suddenly pointed to Mr Sethna. The old steward attempted to hide his face with his silver serving tray, but Detective Patel was too fast for him. ‘What is that old snoop’s name?’ the detective asked Dr Daruwalla.

That’s Mr Sethna,’ Farrokh said.

‘Please come here, Mr Sethna,’ the deputy commissioner said. He didn’t raise his voice or look in the steward’s direction; when Mr Sethna pretended that he hadn’t heard, the detective said, ‘You heard me.’ Mr Sethna did as he was told.

‘Since you’ve been listening to us – Wednesday you listened to my telephone conversation with my wife –you will kindly give me your assistance,’ Detective Patel said.

‘Yes, sir,’ Mr Sethna said.

‘Every time Mrs Dogar is in this club, you call me,’ the deputy commissioner said. ‘Every reservation she makes, lunch or dinner, you let me know about it. Every little thing you know about her, I want to know, too — am I making myself clear?’

‘Perfectly clear, sir,’ said Mr Sethna. ‘She said her husband is peeing on the flowers and that one night he’ll try to dive into the empty pool,’ Mr Sethna babbled. ‘She said he’s senile – and a drunk.’

‘You can tell me later,’ Detective Patel said. ‘I have just three questions. Then I want you to go far enough away from this table so that you don’t hear another word.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Mr Sethna said.

‘On the morning of Mr Lai’s death … I don’t mean lunch, because I already know that she was here for lunch, but in the morning, well before lunch … did you see Mrs Dogar here? That’s the first question,’ the deputy commissioner said.

‘Yes, she was here for a bit of breakfast – very early,’ Mr Sethna informed the detective. ‘She likes to walk on the golf course before the golfers are playing. Then she has a little fruit before she does her fitness training.’

‘Second question,’ Patel said. ‘Between breakfast and lunch, did she change what she was wearing?’

‘Yes, sir,’ the old steward replied. ‘She was wearing a dress, rather wrinkled, at breakfast. For lunch she wore a sari.’

‘Third question,’ the deputy commissioner said. He handed Mr Sethna his card – his telephone number at Crime Branch Headquarters and his home number.

‘Were her shoes wet? I mean, for breakfast?’

‘I didn’t notice,’ Mr Sethna admitted.

Try to improve your noticing,’ Detective Patel told the old steward. ‘Now, go far away from this table –mean it.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Mr Sethna, already doing what he did best – gliding away. Nor did the prying old steward approach the Ladies’ Garden again during the foursome’s solemn lunch. But even at a considerable distance, Mr Sethna was able to observe that the woman with the fuzzy navel ate very little; her rude husband ate half her food and all his own. At a proper club, people would be forbidden to eat off one another’s plates, Mr Sethna thought. He went into the men’s room and stood in front of the full-length mirror, in which he appeared to be trembling. He held the silver serving tray in one hand and pounded it against the heel of his other hand, but he felt little satisfaction from the sound it made – a muffled bonging. He
hated
policemen, the old steward decided.

In the Ladies’ Garden, the early-afternoon sun had slanted past the apex of the bower and no longer touched the lunchers’ heads; the rays of sunlight now penetrated the wall of flowers only in patches. The tablecloth was mottled by this intermittent light, and Dr Daruwalla watched a tiny diamond of the sun — it was reflected in the bottom half of the ballpoint pen. The brilliantly white point of light shone in the doctor’s eye as he pecked at his soggy stir-fry; the limp, dull-colored vegetables reminded him of the monsoon. At that time of year, the Ladies’ Garden would be strewn with torn petals of the bougainvillea, the skeletal vines still clinging to the bower – with the brown sky showing through and the rain coming through. All the wicker and rattan furniture would be heaped upon itself in the ballroom, for there were no balls in the monsoon season. The golfers would sit drinking in the clubhouse bar, forlornly staring out the streaked windows at the sodden fairways. Wild clumps of the dead garden would be blowing across the greens.

The food on Chinese Day always depressed Farrokh, but there was something about the winking sun that was reflected in the bottom half of the silver ballpoint pen, something that both caught and held the doctor’s attention; something flickered in his memory. What was it? That reflected light, that shiny something … it was as small and lonely but as absolutely a presence as the far-off light of another airplane when you were flying across the miles of darkness over the Arabian Sea at night.

Farrokh stared into the dining room and at the open veranda, through which the shitting crow had flown. Dr Daruwalla looked at the ceiling fan where the crow had landed; the doctor kept watching the fan, as if he were waiting for it to falter, or for the mechanism to catch on something – that shiny something which the shitting crow had held in its beak. Whatever it was, it was too big for the crow to have swallowed, Dr Daruwalla thought. He took a wild guess.

‘I know what it was,’ the doctor said aloud. No one else had been talking; the others just looked at him as he left the table in the Ladies’ Garden and walked into the dining room, where he stood directly under the fan. Then he drew an unused chair away from the nearest table; but when he stood on it, he was still too short to reach over the top of the blades.

Turn the fan off!’ Dr Daruwalla shouted to Mr Sethna, who was no stranger to the doctor’s eccentric behavior — and his father’s before him. The old steward shut off the fan. Almost everyone in the dining room had stopped eating.

Dhar and Detective Patel rose from their table in the Ladies’ Garden and approached Farrokh, but the doctor waved them away. ‘Neither of you is tall enough,’ he told them. ‘Only she is tall enough.’ The doctor was pointing at Nancy. He was also following the good advice that the deputy commissioner had given to Mr Sethna. (Try to improve your noticing.’)

The fan slowed; the blades were unmoving by the time the three men helped Nancy to stand on the chair.

‘Just reach over the top of the fan,’ the doctor instructed her. ‘Do you feel a groove?’ Her full figure above them in the chair was quite striking as she reached into the mechanism.

‘I feel something,’ she said.

‘Walk your fingers around the groove,’ said Dr Daruwalla.

‘What am I looking for?’ Nancy asked him.

‘You’re going to feel it,’ he told her. ‘I think it’s the top half of your pen.’

They had to hold her or she would have fallen, for her fingers found it almost the instant that the doctor warned her what it was.

‘Try not to handle it – just hold it very lightly,’ the deputy commissioner said to his wife. She dropped it on the stone floor and the detective retrieved it with a napkin, holding it only by the pocket clasp.

‘“India,”’ Patel said aloud, reading that inscription which had been separated from
Made in
for 20 years.

It was Dhar who lifted Nancy down from the chair. She felt heavier to him than she had 20 years before. She said she needed a moment to be alone with her husband; they stood whispering together in the Ladies’ Garden, while Farrokh and John D. watched the fan start up again. Then the doctor and the actor went to join the detective and his wife, who’d returned to the table.

‘Surely now you’ll have Rahul’s fingerprints,’ Dr Daruwalla told the deputy commissioner.

‘Probably,’ said Detective Patel. ‘When Mrs Dogar comes to eat here, we’ll have the steward save us her fork or her spoon – to compare. But her fingerprints on the top of the pen don’t place her at the crime.’

Dr Daruwalla told them all about the crow. Clearly the crow had brought the pen from the bougainvillea at the ninth green. Crows are carrion eaters.

‘But what would Rahul have been doing with the top of the pen – I mean
during
the murder of Mr Lai?’ Detective Patel asked.

In frustration, Dr Daruwalla blurted out, ‘You make it sound as if you have to witness another murder — or do you expect Mrs Dogar to offer you a full confession?’

‘It’s only necessary to make Mrs Dogar think that we know more than we know,’ the deputy commissioner answered.

That’s easy,’ Dhar said suddenly. ‘You tell the murderer what the murderer
would
confess, if the murderer were confessing. The trick is, you’ve got to make the murderer think that you really
know
the murderer.’

‘Precisely,’ Patel said.

‘Wasn’t that in
Inspector Dhar and the Hanging Mali
?’ Nancy asked the actor; she meant that it was Dr Daruwalla’s line.

‘Very good,’ Dr Daruwalla told her.

Detective Patel didn’t pat the back of Dhar’s hand; he tapped Dhar on one knuckle – just once, but sharply –with a dessert spoon. ‘Let’s be serious,’ said the deputy commissioner. ‘I’m going to offer you a bribe – something you’ve always wanted.’

‘There’s nothing I want,’ Dhar replied.

‘I think there is,’ the detective told him. ‘I think you’d like to play a
real
policeman. I think you’d like to make area? arrest.’

Dhar said nothing – he didn’t even sneer.

‘Do you think you’re still attractive to Mrs Dogar?’ the detective asked him.

‘Oh, absolutely – you should see how she looks him over!’ cried Dr Daruwalla.

‘I’m asking
him
,’ said Detective Patel.

‘Yes, I think she wants me,’ Dhar replied.

‘Of course she does,’ Nancy said angrily.

‘And if I told you how to approach her, do you think you could do it – I mean
exactly
as I tell you?’ the detective asked Dhar.

‘Oh, yes – you give him any line, he can deliver it!’ cried Dr Daruwalla.

‘I’m asking you,’ the policeman said to Dhar. This time, the dessert spoon rapped his knuckle hard enough for Dhar to take his hand off the table.

‘You want to set her up – is that it?’ Dhar asked the deputy commissioner.

‘Precisely,’ Patel said.

‘And I just follow your instructions?’ the actor asked him.

‘That’s it–
exactly
,’ said the deputy commissioner.