Читать книгу Inspector Ghote's First Case - H. R. F Keating - Страница 6

Let us find Inspector Ghote in the days when he was simply an Assistant Inspector in the crowded and confused area of Bombay called Dadar. He is holding a letter that has just come through the door of his flat. A long official-looking envelope, the surplus glue sealing its flap – the work of an over-enthusiastic peon – plain to see. So he is careful to tap the letter inside right down to one end of the envelope and then at the opposite end, between twisting thumb and steady finger, he carefully tears off a thin strip. At last he is able to fish out the folded enclosure. A notably stiff sheet. He opens it up, wondering what it can be, and reads.

From the Commissioner of Police, Bombay March 15^th, 1960 1 Chaitra, 2017

I am informing you herewith that w.e.f. today’s date you are appointed to the rank of Inspector and posted to the Detection of Crime Branch, Bombay Police. You will take up your duties beginning April 1^st next, and should regard yourself as on casual leave during the intervening period.

There was a good deal more of properly bureaucratic information in the letter. But do not imagine that newly created Inspector Ghote is able to read any of it. Tears have come into his eyes. Tears of irrepressible joy. This is the moment he has been hoping for ever since he was old enough to understand what a police officer was and what it was that a detective did. His father, then schoolmaster to the many, many sons, both legitimate and illegitimate, of the Maharajah of Bhopore, had recounted to him, almost before he could understand the words, how once he had watched one Detective Superintendent of Police Howard discover almost magically who had contrived to murder the Maharajah, even aiding him a little in his investigation.

He had recounted, too, many a time, how at their parting from that British deity he had said that, should to his tally of daughters there would ever be added a son, ‘that boy, please God, shall become a police officer.’ The often repeated words had implanted in Ghote’s young mind a determination to one day become one of those demi-gods possessed of an iron resolution to bring to light the perpetrators of crimes of all kinds, and especially the crime of murder.

Now it seemed, at last, the possibility was solidly in his grasp, though the father who had held it up to him and had brought him to Bombay and to college there had long departed this life to await another.

Yes, now, he found himself thinking, my dream has burst into the light of day. And, yes, yes, look at the Hindi version of the date on this letter. The first of Chaitra, Gudi Padva day, the very start of the Hindu calendar. What a fine moment for my new life to begin.

Thoughts pouring on, he said to himself I am no more an officer caught up all day in the petty crimes happening in Dadar. I am at last a member of the Detection of Crime Branch. I am one among the set-apart band of officers who handle only important murder cases or affairs concerning people of the highest influence. I, not all that long out of Nasik Police Training School, son of a lowly schoolmaster, am to be a detective of detectives.

‘Protima,’ he managed at last to call out. ‘Wife, wife. The letter that is just only being pushed through the door. Come and hear what it is telling.’

Protima, the folds of her sari spread wide by the baby she was soon to give birth to, hurried out from the kitchen of the sun-broiled flat right at the top of the barracks block in Dadar police station compound. A home Ghote had sometimes feared he was destined never to leave.

In a moment now he read out to Protima the whole of the Commissioner’s letter, down to the final masterfully scrawled signature.

‘Think, think only, how proud my father would be today,’ he exclaimed, voice rising word by word to a chanted climax. ‘I am at the beginning of the career Pitajee was always hoping would be mine.’

‘If he would be proud,’ Protima answered, her eyes bright with delight, ‘how much more of proud am I. Husband, husband, if … If what is here—’ She patted the rounded shape under her sari. ‘If what is here is a boy, then perhaps he too will one day be following your footsteps.’

‘But-but even so,’ Ghote went on, heart pounding, ‘even so my son should not be born in this hundred per cent too small junior officer’s flat.’

He came to a sudden, perhaps a too sudden, decision.

‘No. We must ek dum be finding somewhere altogether more right for a full inspector to have. Yes, a flat where I can be having a phone. A phone. An officer of Detection of Crime Branch must be in constant touch. Yes, a flat where we can at least get, before long, a priority phone. Definitely. We must begin this evening itself to look for something, and it must be not too far from Crawford Market HQ also.’

But unexpectedly now Protima failed to throw herself into the plan. She stood there altogether silent.

Looking at her face, a picture of doubt now, Ghote frowned.

‘But what for are you all at once unhappy?’ he asked.

‘Oh, well … But-but—’

‘What it is? You are feeling not so good, is it?’

‘No, no. Not at all. Baby is altogether happy.’

‘You are sure? You are not hiding from me something?’

‘No. No, I am saying it. All is well-well. But-but it is something else.’

‘What of else? What can there be?’

She looked down to the concrete floor at her feet.

‘But what it is?’

‘I-I cannot say.’

‘No, come, you can be saying whatsoever you are wanting to your husband, just only now full Inspector Ghote.’

‘But it is that.’

‘That? That? What that is this?’

‘It is because you are now Inspector Ghote and must be shifting straight away to a better flat. And I had so hoped …’

‘Hoped? I am not at all understanding.’

Then, in a burst of words, Protima brought it out.

‘It is Hamlet. Tonight, when you were still an Assistant Inspector here at Dadar PS, we were going – you had promised and promised – to see that film they are at last again showing. One week only at Eros in Queen’s Road. I have been longing and longing to see since I was at college only.’

‘Hamlet. My news was driving it altogether out of my mind. Your favourite play of all, the one you are reading aloud so often. But we must go. We can go. Why did you not remind at once?’

‘You were deciding, deciding so firmly. We had to go to look for a flat. One with a phone, and not too far from Crawford Market. All of a sudden you were deciding. It was so unlike you.’

‘But—’ He took a deep breath. ‘But I can undecide also, isn’t it?’

A delighted smile swept over Protima’s face.

‘Oh, Husbandjee, in one moment deciding. Next undeciding. You, who are always and always taking so long to make one only decision.’

For an instant Ghote wanted to deny he ever did that. But, deep down, he knew it was true. Or not too far from the truth. The news he had learnt, bubbling and bubbling inside him, had made him for once ready to jump to a decision. Without a moment’s thought. Or without a much longer period of struggling to hit on whatever might seem to be the right answer.

‘No,’ he said. ‘No. Today I have learnt the news I have been wanting and wanting to hear all the years of my life. So that must be celebrated. And what better way to do that than to go and see the greatest work – you have so often said it – of the great William Shakespeare? No, tonight we will go to Hamlet.’

Protima gave a little giggle.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘we will go to the film its star is announcing as – everybody at college was always quoting same – the story of a man who cannot make up his mind.’

But they were not to see Hamlet that night.