It was a wonder she had not screamed.
On the bed that filled most of the narrow room there was sprawled the naked body of a woman, face down. And it was clear beyond doubt that she was dead, that she had been murdered. Round her neck, biting deeply in, was the mark of whatever it was that had been used savagely to strangle her. Her whole head was twisted to an angle that no living body could have sustained.
But there was more than that to make a fellow prostitute scream out. All down the back of the body were the deep weals of a brutal beating, the very cross-thongs of the coarsely plaited whip clearly visible.
Ghote, just inside the little room, was aware, as a small unnecessary irritation, that Dr Framrose and the Svashbuckler had crowded into the doorway behind him. Then there was a sudden crashing sound and, as he turned, he saw that the Svashbuckler had swung round and was now vomiting comprehensively in the passageway outside.
That is all I am needing, he thought. A VIP visitor put into my charge, and I have led him straight to the sight of an appalling murder. And now I shall have to get him back as soon as I can to his five-stars hotel and everyone in the lobby there will see him come in covered with his vomit only. And there is the murder also. It must be my duty to stay here to see that nothing is done to the body until an investigating officer from the Nagpada station can come. Because it is altogether certain that if Heera had succeeded to get us out then that little girl — what a cool head in one so young, what other terrible sights she must have witnessed in her short life — would have made damn sure the body disappeared before anyone else saw it.
He gave the gharwali a glare of rage for what she had attempted to do and then turned to Dr Framrose as the most reliable person to hand.
‘Doctor Sahib,’ he said, ‘you have seen that woman on the bed. Undoubtedly she has expired. Do you have telephone in your dispensary? Can you call up the Nagpada police and inform?’
‘Yes, yes, my dear Inspector. It will be a pleasure to assist our noble police in the performance of their duties, and perhaps also I could relieve you of this encum — Perhaps I could give myself the pleasure afterwards of putting Mr Kerr into a taxi and even seeing that he gets safely back to his hotel. By the most discreet entrance, I think.’
Ghote felt a waft of relief. At least that burden would be off his shoulders.
And then, as the doctor not without wild exaggerated gestures ushered the vomit-spattered Britisher down the narrow stairs and away, he realized that the Svashbuckler was by no means the most oppressive of his troubles.
What now weighed down on him was the possibility, perhaps even the certainty, that the brute who had inflicted those wounds on the girl in the room behind him, who had at last taken his whip and frenziedly strangled her, was none other than the Sheriff of Bombay. And, worse, he himself, and perhaps only fat Heera as well, was aware of the exact identity of the man who had been visiting the brothel when the frenzied killing had taken place.
Certainly Heera would never tell the investigating officer from the Nagpada station who it was who had been the murdered girls’s last customer. The possibilities for magnificent blackmail would clearly be too tempting. Nor would she at all know that he himself had caught that one revealing glimpse of the well-known face. As to any of the girls in the house being in on the secret, it was unlikely. They would be among the few Bombayites who were hardly interested in cricket, even at the sensational Test match times.
No doubt, too, the Sheriff had taken pains on any previous visits to the house not to be seen by more of its occupants than necessary. He would have slipped in always, if he had indeed visited the place regularly, by the same insanitary back way through which he had been smuggled out. Perhaps even Heera knew no more than that the man who had patronized her house was someone rich and influential.
No, the presence of the Sheriff of Bombay in a brothel where a horrible murder had taken place, perhaps the fact that he had actually committed that murder, was something that he alone, by the merest of chances, had had entrusted to him by fate. And he knew at once without having at all to think it out that, despite the nature of the crime, there would be tremendous opposition to any attempt he might make to get the Sheriff brought in as a witness. As to trying to assemble a case against him, should no one else appear to have been the killer, the very thought was too overwhelming even to contemplate.
All because of that single, swift sight of a face. Could he forget that he had seen it? Was he sure enough that he had seen what he had seen?
What a mountain of tribulation to have resting on his own slight shoulders.
FOUR
As Ghote stood in the doorway of the murder room staring unseeingly at the huge bulk of the gharwali blocking the narrow passage further along — and no doubt busily working out where her own best advantage would lie now that she had failed to get rid of her unwelcome visitors — a sudden thought came into his head.
Looking at that brutalized body he had seen, without in that first moment taking full note of it, something else.
He had seen the weapon.
He had seen the very whip which the killer must have used, first to flog his victim, then to strangle her. It had been flung carelessly back where perhaps it usually rested, a luxury item of the cheap brothel’s equipment, across a pair of long nails crudely driven into the wall beside the door next to a garishly coloured calendar depicting the god Shiva and his consort Parvati, the pair of them almost as amorously bent as when Shiva had in legend ignored the greeting of the sage Bhrieu and had been transformed into a stone-pillar lingam for the insult.
And on the handle of the whip — there could be little doubt about it — would be what must link the killer to his deed. With scientific certainty.
Fingerprints.
True, they might be smudged. True, they might not be the only ones there. But the Fingerprint Bureau were extraordinarily skilled in deciphering smudges, in allocating overlays. If they had the prints of a suspect to check against, it was a very good bet that they would be able to produce proof. Proof that would stand up at a trial against even the wiles of the cleverest Defence advocate — perhaps one day in the Quarterly Court of Sessions when someone other than the present Sheriff of Bombay rose to read out the charge.
Yes, as soon as the investigating officer arrived from the Nagpada station, and that could not be long now, he would draw his attention to the whip. Perhaps it would be best even to make sure, with an officer possibly not as experienced as might be in murder inquiries, that the fellow took the proper precautions over seeing that the transfer of such evidence to the Fingerprint Bureau was duly witnessed at every stage. If it was going to be the Rajah of Dhar who was to stand at last in the dock, every step in the prosecution case would have to be conducted altogether beyond the possibility of being undermined by the most cunning lawyers money could buy.
He saw that the little prostitute who had so levelheadedly warned her madam had come creeping back from the rear of the house. Fat old Heera had seen her too.
‘Munni,’ she said abruptly, ‘get water. The angrezi sahib was sick. Sweep it away.’
So much by way of thanks for a warning cleverly given, Ghote thought, pitying the girl a little.
But she did not seem to feel she was being ill-rewarded. Without a word but without any sign of sulkiness either, she disappeared again out to the back and returned in a minute or so with a bright blue plastic pail and a short twig-bundle broom. When Heera saw that her order had been obeyed she gave Ghote one swift venomous look and waddled off up the next flight of stairs, the wooden treads creaking sharply under her weight.
Ghote, standing on guard at the door of the murder room, watched little Munni as she swished water from her pail on to the floor, stooped and with energetic sideways strokes of her broom dealt with the Svashbuckler’s mess.
Something in the very liveliness and straightforwardness with which she had