The Sheriff of Bombay. H. R. f. Keating
with the bandobust for the Police Vegetable and Flower Show.’
‘Well, that should keep him out of trouble,’ D’Silva said. ‘Until he finds a carrot or a mooli root that looks too much like something else.’
His laugh resounded clangingly along the narrow passageway.
‘Sub-Inspector,’ Ghote said. ‘There has been a bad case of murder here. A girl’s body very, very horribly mutilated. She is in this room.’
‘Old Heera lost one of her treasures, has she?’ D’Silva replied. ‘Well, let’s see which of the beauties it is.’
He barged into the room where Kamla’s body lay.
Ghote stood outside in the passageway for a moment, thinking.
Yes. Yes, he would do it. Far from drawing the attention of the investigating officer to the weapon used, he would, if he could, get hold of it himself and whisk it away under the fellow’s nose.
That whip was a first-class piece of hard evidence. With any luck it would link the dead girl and the Sheriff of Bombay together so tightly that no amount of courtroom hanky-panky could upset the scientific fact. But let D’Silva get hold of it and it would either disappear entirely or it would go to the Sheriff himself ‘as a keepsake’, in either case for a hefty sum.
He looked into the room. D’Silva was bending over Kamla’s body, heaving it over to look at her face.
Ghote stepped quietly forward, reached out to the wall beside him where on the bright-coloured calendar a green-tinged near-naked Shiva gazed for ever amorously at a doe-eyed Parvati, gripped the dangling whip by the very end of its lash far from the fingerprinted handle, twisted the thong once round his fist, jerked the whip off the nails it had rested on and, in one dextrous movement, concealed it behind his back.
He retreated a step to the room’s doorway. D’Silva was peering down at the dead girl’s face.
‘Yeah, Ganesh bhai,’ he said. ‘I know this one. She was a goer, man. I’ve had some spicy fun with her once or twice.’
Ghote choked down the reply that had come to his lips.
‘Well, Charlie,’ he said.
Was the fellow’s name Charlie? He had never used it before.
‘Well, Charlie, I must go off now. I had brought a VIP tourist here and I must be making sure he is quite all right.’
‘See you, man,’ D’Silva answered, without looking up from the body on the bed.
Ghote slid sideways, still keeping his face towards the open door of the murder room and then, safely clear, turned and hurried down the rickety stairs leading to the street.
From the corner of his eye he saw little Munni, squatting still with her broom finishing her unsavoury task. She glanced up at him.
Would she make anything of the fact that he had dangling behind his back the whip that had been used to kill her protector and friend? Probably not. What would a girl like that know of fingerprints and police procedures? No, she would forget all about him in a day or two, and soon enough she would carry on unconcerned in the profession which she seemed to get so much unexpected pleasure out of. She would forget him, as in a week or so he would forget her.
In the doorway of the house just before stepping out into the noisy street, half garishly lit from its many barred windows and open shop-fronts, half plunged into dark shadows, he stopped and contrived to stuff the whip underneath his loose shirt without touching its handle. Better that his driver, still waiting at the end of the street, should not see this piece of unorthodoxly obtained evidence. There would be no one in the Fingerprint Bureau at this late hour, but tomorrow first thing he would slip over and have a quiet word with one of the people there he knew.
But next morning when Ghote, having safely deposited the stolen whip with his friend in the Fingerprint Bureau, went to see the A.C.P. matters quickly took a very different course from the one he had expected.
‘The Sheriff?’ the A.C.P. said when he had heard what Ghote had finally come to suspect at the end of his disastrous visit to Kamatipura with the Svashbuckler. ‘I don’t think that’s very likely, Inspector. The fellow was one of India’s best-ever cricketers, you know.’
‘Yes, sir, I am very well knowing. My son was a most keen fan of his batting, sir. He has a picture of him beside his bed still. It is because of that I am sure the man I saw was truly the Rajah of Dhar, Randy Dhar as they are calling him, sir.’
The A.C.P. wrinkled his moustache from side to side.
‘But you say he was leaving when you arrived?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And the passageway in this — this place, it was not very well lit up?’
‘No, sir. There was no light there itself.’
‘Very well then, Ghote, how did you see the fellow?’
‘Sir, it was by the light coming through the door of one of the rooms. There are gaps at the top of those doors, sir. They are not all pukka, sir. And by a beam of light coming from the furthest of them I saw his face, A.C.P. Sahib.’
‘No. No, I don’t think so, Ghote. Not very likely. Letting your imagination play tricks on you. Not what I like to find in any of my officers.’
Ghote stood abashed. He wondered whether to tell the A.C.P. about the whip, that it would possibly prove with scientific certainty that the Sheriff had been in the room where the girl had been murdered. But he was no longer altogether happy about his own conduct over that potentially valuable piece of evidence. He had taken it from the scene of the crime without making sure that his action was witnessed by impartial persons. If the Sheriff was ever brought to court the fellow’s Defence advocates would make chutney out of him over such laxity.
He decided that, especially since he had no way of knowing whether the prints on the whip’s handle would indeed correspond with the Sheriff’s, he would keep silent about this angle, at least for the time being.
‘But, sir,’ he said. ‘If there is a suspicion only that a person of importance is involved in the matter, sir, shouldn’t the case be handled here at Headquarters?’
‘Not at all, Ghote, not at all. You say Sub-Inspector D’Silva is in charge from Nagpada? Well, I have seen his Service Sheet and I am very well satisfied with it. An officer with an excellent record, Inspector. Likely to go far.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Ghote stood in silence for a moment. He knew really that the interview had come to an end. The A.C.P. had taken one of his shiny brass paperweights off the pile of papers it was protecting from the breeze of his desk-fan and had put it down on the dark surface of his desk. He could scarcely have given a clearer indication that important work awaited.
‘But, sir,’ Ghote burst out nevertheless. ‘Sir, if you had seen those marks on the body, sir, and the way that whip had been pulled round the girl’s neck. It was the work of a maniac only, sir. Sir, should it be that the man is not after all just someone who can be picked up in the red-light area, then he is a great, great danger to the public, sir.’
‘To the public, Ghote? Well, you can call it the public if you like. But the fellow, even if he wasn’t some local dada taking revenge on a girl who had stepped out of line, is obviously going to confine his activities to the prostitute class. I don’t think it’s a matter that need worry us at Headquarters. Dismiss, Inspector.’
‘Yes, sir. Yes, A.C.P. Sahib.’
Ghote clicked his heels, turned and marched out of the A.C.P.’s big, airy office. A miserable man.
FIVE
Back at his desk, confronting once more the case of the Major-General’s son and the stolen platinum chain, Inspector