Читать книгу Inspector Ghote's First Case - H. R. F Keating - Страница 9

Newly made Inspector Ghote was soon to be afflicted by more, and worse, troubles than those that had come to him in Sir Rustom Engineer’s spacious flat. Coming back to Dadar PS in Sir Rustom’s little grey-coloured, and horribly noisy, Ambassador, he could do no more than thank his lucky stars that, by no means a practised driver and in a vehicle, it appeared, made without any rear-mirror, he had not come to grief amid the tangle of Bombay’s traffic. Bullock-drawn carts and horse-drawn ones had appeared suddenly and mysteriously in front of him. Lumbering red double-decker buses, often with yet more lumbering and dangerous trailers behind them, had loomed and hooted behind him. Swaying victorias had trotted past at will, on both sides of the little car. Bicycles, it seemed by the thousand, had flocked together in his path. And, totally regardless of everything and everybody, pedestrians had rushed back and forth across roads seemingly so traffic-crowded as to be impassable.

But when, exhausted, he had mounted stone step by stone step to the top of the familiar tall barracks block he was met by a whole set of new difficulties.

If Protima had taken it well the day before when he had told her they would have to miss seeing Hamlet, she did not take it at all well when, with considerable caution in expectation of one of her sudden explosions of anger, he now informed her that he was about to have to leave Bombay for he did not know how long.

‘No,’ she burst out. ‘No. Think of me. Here in this horrible flat. All alone, and waiting, waiting for the first signs that Baby is coming. Who will be there to go down, down, down to a telephone to ask Dr Pramash to come jaldi jaldi?’

‘But-but I may not be there in Mahableshwar for more than two-three days and Dr Pramash himself was telling it would be as much even as two whole months before-before anything is expected.’

‘Two whole months. What does a doctor know about when the baby is going to come? A mother can tell. She is knowing what is happening inside. She is knowing that it will be two-three weeks at most before birth pangs are there.’

‘But no. Very well, I am admitting that the mother-to-be must somehow know what is going on something of better, perhaps, than a doctor, but—’

‘A doctor you are saying. But Dr Pramash is not a doctor only. He is a man. A man. How can he be knowing what the woman who is carrying that child must know?’

Ghote felt himself, not for the first time in their marriage, up against a wall, high as the sky above. The wall of Protima’s knowing what she knew.

In a hundred different ways, some almost impossible to believe in, others clearly things to be reckoned with, he had come face to face time and again with these walls of not-to-be-questioned assertions. But you must be knowing: no mango except only an alphonso is worth buying. Or, looming as implacably, Why must we be staying and staying in this flat inside a police compound? No use whatsoever in replying that the rule is that Assistant Inspector accommodation in Dadar is laid down as being inside the compound.

‘Very well,’ he replied now, knowing it was useless, ‘it may be that Dr Pramash himself is not a Number One expert in knowing what a mother-to-be is knowing. But in all the books about childbirth, from all the experiences of all the mothers in India, it is well known the time a child is in the womb is nine months. Nine months. And our son—’

‘Why are you now saying son? My mother knew she was carrying a girl when she was carrying me, I tell you. Of course she knew. A girl is an altogether different feeling, and—’

‘No. No, last night only you were saying and saying that the child there, inside you, would be my son. Our son. Yes, you were saying the time for daughters would be later.’

‘And am I not to be allowed now to say what I am wanting? Yesterday was yesterday. Today is today.’

And it was then that it was Ghote’s turn, for once, to explode.

‘Yes. Today is today, and today I am going to Mahableshwar, and I must be there as long as my duty is calling for me to be.’

Not much more than ten minutes later he was once more at the wheel of Sir Rustom’s little noisy Ambassador, pushing through Bombay’s traffic, careless of every vehicle that came into his path. And conscious, too, that he had plunged out of the flat and run down and down the many stairs of the block without having said goodbye to his pregnant and waiting wife. And without having taken with him even the smallest suitcase of necessary clothes.

The galloping of a horse, the mind of a woman, whether the monsoon will be late or early, even the gods cannot predict these. The old Sanskrit saying beat and beat in Ghote’s head all the length of the coast road from Bombay to the beginning of the long climb up to Mahableshwar. Then at last the rage he felt at what his wife had proclaimed as being the only possible truth about her pregnancy fizzled to an end.

As the steamingly hot Ambasssador twisted round hairpin bend after hairpin bend the slopes of the hills ahead grew steeper and steeper. The vegetation to either side became ever more rough and tangled, trees among it sprouting up here and there at their wild will.

At last, suddenly in the trackless waste feeling himself altogether abandoned, he began to think about where he was and why. And, with urgency, about what he would soon have to be doing.

I am on the way to Mahableshwar. I have never been there before, although I am well knowing it is one of the hill-stations where the rich of Bombay are staying when the weather is getting unbearable for them in, say, the scorching month of Jyestha while all are waiting and waiting for the rains to come. But there is this also. In the story of Krishna that my mother was telling me time and again in my childhood days, it is now the month when the blue god, at last united with his Radha, knows he must depart on his travels, even though his going will rend her heart.

Yes, it is in just this way that I also am departing, as is my bounden duty, on travels that – will they? – rend the heart of my Protima. Yes. Yes, as soon as I am getting there and finding some hotel, I must telephone and—

But, no. No, no, no. No telephone in our altogether miserable flat there at the top of that block in Dadar PS. No, the best I will be able to do now is just only to write to her. And how long will it be before the postwallah is again putting a letter through our door? Not a letter telling Assistant Inspector Ghote that he is to be a full inspector, and in Crime Branch, but a letter telling Inspector Ghote’s pregnant wife that he is loving her still, and that, if he could, he would be with her at every minute.

A zoom-down of depression.

But my duty now is to be far away in Mahableshwar investigating. Investigating what? How to tell Protima, if I should at all reveal the secrets of an old, retired English sahib, that the sahib’s young wife has, for no reason he is able to guess at, killed herself? How to tell her that this duty of mine will be to find out what that reason was? And how, myself, will I be able to find that out?

And, even, I cannot say to Protima that my duty will keep me in Mahableshwar itself only. I may have to go – Sir Rustom was hinting such – to other parts of India, parts where the lady who became Dawkins memsahib may have lived before she was married. And I am at this moment not even knowing where in Mahableshwar I will find Dawkins sahib.

Oh God, that address Sir Rustom was giving me. Where it is? Did I leave it behind when I took off my uniform jacket when I was coming into the flat?

But, no. No, I am wearing same at this moment. No wonder I have been so hot. And, yes, feel in the pocket. And, thank God, there is, yes, a sheet of stiff writing paper, and on it, the address, Primrose Cottage. One very English-sounding name, altogether right for Hawkins sahib. No. For Dawkins sahib. Must remember. Dawkins, Dawkins, Dawkins.

But something else. Hawkins. Like only a hawk, fierce bird of prey, carried for hunting by some rajah on his thoroughbred horse with the chained bird digging its claws into the leather gauntlet on his wrist. But in one of those English books my father was giving me to read as a boy was I seeing the name Hawkins? Yes. Yes, the brave sailor who fought some Armada with, yes, Sir Francis Drake. A sahib of sahibs in the days long before there was even one British sahib.

So will I be meeting a sahib like Sir Hawkins? A sahib not at all wanting, now he has had some time to think after writing that letter to Sir Engineer, to have some Indian police officer come poking his Indian nose into things he should never even have heard about. Is it that Sir Rustom, feeling a little of guilt at neglecting a one-time friendship, was going too far in sending myself to inquire about one altogether private matter?

And then, before he was at all ready for it, he found the tricky and laborious climb was over and he had arrived in Mahableshwar. For a long moment, sitting in the car wondering why it suddenly seemed so quiet – Oh, yes. I was just only one minute past switching off engine – he tried to decide what he ought now to do. Yes, of course. I must first of all be finding some hotel, as Sir Rustom was saying, not at all realising I was not someone used to going about here and there and just only booking into whatsoever hotel was best. How am I to know what is the most suitable hotel for a full Inspector of Police?

He looked up. And there on the far side of the wide road was a painted sign. Hotel Restful. Restful … Without another thought he thrust the car door open and stepped out. To find himself after the long days in sultry Bombay, after the hours and hours imprisoned in the ancient Ambassador, suddenly in the cool. The cool of the hills. Into his head came the words ’tis a nipping and an eager air. Where had they come from? Of course, Hamlet. Often and often he had heard Protima say them when she had insisted on reading aloud the whole of the ghost scene, taking all the parts herself, full-out.

Yes, one good omen.

He went across, steps almost tottering after his six hours or more at the Ambassador’s wheel, and stepped unhesitatingly into the hotel’s welcome shade.

At the desk he saw, appropriately nodding in restful sleep, a bulbously fat man. His face, propped on a podgy hand, wore a contented smile as if the last thought drifting across his mind before sleep had descended had been an altogether pleasant one.

Wake him? Or look elsewhere for someone to make inquiries of? But there was no one in sight, no sound of voices from anywhere further inside.

He stepped forward and gave a gentle two-fingered tap to the podgy hand resting on the desk.

The moon-like face raised itself just an inch or two. And fell back.

Leave him? But, no. I am too much of exhausted not to need to find out if I can stay here.

A shake now of the uppermost fat-encased shoulder. Not a very gentle shake.

The fat man heaved himself upright.

‘Hotel Restful. Proprietor speaking,’ he intoned into space.

‘I am sorry to have woken you, but I—’

‘No, no. I am not sleeping. I am never sleeping when it is day.’

Ghote, on the point of telling him how untrue this was, decided in a flick to produce the tactful response.

‘No, no, Proprietor sahib, I was not at all thinking you were asleep. Not at all.’

Satisfied with the denial, the flesh-mountain immediately fumbled under the desk and produced a large greasily stained black book.

‘You are wanting to stay? Particulars, please.’

Very good, Ghote said to himself some ten minutes later, after arranging for Sir Rustom’s Ambassador to be put safely out of harm’s way behind the building and being promised a clean and comfortable room, I have made one swift decision in choosing this place. And it is seeming to be a good one. Altogether restful. What nonsense for Protima to be comparing and comparing me to Hamlet and the story of a man who could not make up his mind.

But, as he sat with a cup of tea, he found he could not altogether decide – it was still quite early in the evening – whether he should go straight away to see Dawkins sahib and tell him he was the officer Sir Rustom Engineer had arranged should come and discuss with him the suicide of his wife.

He sat for a long moment, teacup halfway up to his mouth, and tried to envisage how that interview might go.

Can I say straight out Mr Dawkins, I am here to talk with you abou—? About what? About how your wife was killing herself? No, it must be in some way that Dr Hans Gross would have managed to use. What is there in the very first words in his great book? Tact is indispensable for many awkward situations will be circumvented by its use. There must be some more tactful way of doing what I will have to do. Mr Dawkins, I am here to discuss with you a certain matter, the matter I am here to-to ask about …? No, equally impossible.

And, after all, would it now really be the best time for such a talk? When, no doubt, at the end of the day, Dawkins sahib will be altogether tired out and not wishing to hear about any sort of business, never mind such a delicate matter as this. Or when he would be – yes – expecting at any moment to have dinner, to sit at his table in the cool, with in front of him a glass of … Yes, of beer, of good British beer sent from England. He would be just only waiting for his bearer to come in with a deliciously smelling curry, hot-hot the way British sahibs are always liking it. An enemy to be daringly overcome, Hawkins, the raider.

No, I cannot go there to Primrose Cottage at such a time as this.

But … but is it really now the hour for a British sahib’s dinner? Is it altogether too early for that?

He glanced at his watch.

Half past six. Yes, too early.

But perhaps my watch has stopped? It might have done. Sometimes I am altogether forgetting to wind. It cannot be as early as half past six. No, it is. I was hearing just only now the clock of that Christian church I saw sounding out the half-hour, a long humming boom. So, should I get up from this comfortable canechair, although it is sagging a little, and walk to Primrose Cottage? Proprietor was saying it is just a short distance after taking the road to the right at the church.

But what if in those few minutes only I will find myself standing face to face with one angry Englishman? A sahib who, perhaps, is no longer asking and asking himself why his wife was committing suicide.

No, it would really be better to face that man when, at the start of a new day, he is ready to deal with whatsoever may come his way.

Or, will it be best?

Very well. No, it would not. Not truly. But I am exhausted now. I have driven all the way from Bombay. I am hot, and—

Yes, this is it. I cannot be going to see an English sahib unless I am having one good long cool shower. What would Protima say if she was knowing I had at all thought of going to him, so sweaty as I am?

Yes, decided. Tomorrow morning, nine ack emma. At the door of Primrose Cottage.