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. Lal?" 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. Lal'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--I 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.
Farrokh Remembers the Crow
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. Lal?" 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 a real 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.
"You can do it!" Dr. Daruwalla declared to Dhar.
"That's not the question," Nancy said.
"The question is, do you want to do it?" Detective Patel asked Dhar. "I think you really want to."
"All right," Dhar said. "Okay. Yes, I want to."
For the first time in the course of the long lunch, Patel smiled. "I feel better, now that I've bribed you," the deputy commissioner told Dhar. "Do you see? That's all a bribe is, really--just something you want, in exchange for something else. It's no big deal, is it?"
"We'll see," Dhar said. When he looked at Nancy, she was looking at him.
"You're not sneering," Nancy said.
"Sweetie," said Detective Patel, taking her hand.
"I need to go to the ladies' room," she said. "You show me where it is," she said to Dhar. But before his wife or the actor could stand up, the deputy commissioner stopped them.
"Just a trivial matter, before you go," the detective said. "What is this nonsense about you and the dwarf brawling with prostitutes on Falkland Road--what is this nonsense about?" Detective Patel asked Dhar.
"That wasn't him," said Dr. Daruwalla quickly.
"So there's some truth to the rumor of a Dhar imposter?" the detective asked.
"Not an imposter--a twin," the doctor replied.
"You have a twin?" Nancy asked the actor.
"Identical," said Dhar.
"That's hard to believe," she said.
"They're not at all alike, but they're identical," Farrokh explained.
"It's not the best time for you to have a twin in Bombay," Detective Patel told the actor.
"Don't worry--the twin is totally out of it. A missionary!" Farrokh declared.
"God help us," Nancy said.
"Anyway, I'm taking the twin out of town for a couple of days--at least overnight," Dr. Daruwalla told them. The doctor started to explain about the children and the circus, but no one was interested.
"The ladies' room," Nancy said to Dhar. "Where is it?"
Dhar was about to take her arm when she walked past him untouched; he followed her to the foyer. Almost everyone in the dining room watched her walk--the woman who'd stood on a chair.
"It will be nice for you to get out of town for a couple of days," the deputy commissioner said to Dr. Daruwalla. Time to slip away, Farrokh was thinking; then he realized that even the moment of Nancy leaving the Ladies' Garden with Dhar had been planned.
"Was there something you wanted her to say to him, something only she could say--alone?" the doctor asked the detective.
"Oh, what a very good question," Patel replied. "You're learning, Doctor," the deputy commissioner added. "I'll bet you could write a better movie now."
A Three-Dollar Bill?
In the foyer, Nancy said to Dhar, "I've thought about you almost as much as I've thought about Rahul. Sometimes, you upset me more."
"I never intended to upset you," Dhar replied.
"What have you intended? What do you intend?" she asked him.
When he didn't answer her, Nancy asked him, "How did you like lifting me? You're always carrying me. Do I feel heavier to you?"
br /> "We're both a little heavier than we were," Dhar answered cautiously.
"I weigh a ton, and you know it," Nancy told him. "But I'm not trash--I never was."
"I never thought you were trash," Dhar told her.
"You should never look at people the way you look at me," Nancy said. He did it again; there was his sneer. "That's what I mean," she told him. "I hate you for it--the way you make me feel. Later, after you're gone, it makes me keep thinking about you. I've thought about you for twenty years." She was about three inches taller than the actor; when she reached out suddenly and touched his upper lip, he stopped sneering. "That's better. Now say something," Nancy told him. But Dhar was thinking about the dildo--if she still had it. He couldn't think of what to say. "You know, you really should take some responsibility for the effect you have on people. Do you ever think about that?"
"I think about it all the time--I'm supposed to have an effect," Dhar said finally. "I'm an actor."
"You sure are," Nancy said. She could see him stop himself from shrugging; when he wasn't sneering, she liked his mouth more than she thought was possible. "Do you want me? Do you ever think about that?" she asked him. She saw him thinking about what to say, so she didn't wait. "You don't know how to read what I want, do you?" she asked him. "You're going to have to be better than this with Rahul. You can't tell me what I want to hear because you don't really know if I want you, do you? You're going to have to read Rahul better than you can read me," Nancy repeated.
"I can read you," Dhar told her. "I was just trying to be polite."
"I don't believe you--you don't convince me," Nancy said. "Bad acting," she added, but she believed him.
In the ladies' room, when she washed her hands in the sink. Nancy saw the absurd faucet--the water flowing from the single spigot, which was an elephant's trunk. Nancy adjusted the degree of hot and cold water, first with one tusk, then the other. Twenty years ago, at the Hotel Bardez, not even four baths had made her feel clean; now Nancy felt unclean again. She was at least relieved to see that there was no winking eye; that much Rahul had imagined, with the help of many murdered women's navels.
She'd also noticed the pull-down platform on the inside of the toilet-stall door; the handle that lowered the shelf was a ring through an elephant's trunk. Nancy reflected on the psychology that had compelled Rahul to select one elephant and reject the other.