Tarquin Hall - The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing

“If he is the guilty one, proving as much will be a challenge, that is for sure,” said Puri. “We would need someone to get on the inside of his ashram. That is the only way.”

On the hot tawa, the koki mixture spat and sizzled.

“How did you get on last night?” asked the detective in Hindi.

Puri had charged Tubelight with tracking down Constable R.V. Dubey, the first police wallah to have reached the murder scene, to find out if he had seen or heard anything that had not appeared in the offical panchnama.

This was Most Private Investigators’ standard procedure given that constables often failed to report key information to their superiors – either through sheer incompetence (anyone with the ability to sign their own name could become a beat cop and they received no investigative training whatsoever) or deliberately (usually because someone bribed them to keep their mouth shut or they were just plain scared).

“I befriended Constable Dubey at the liquor store,” answered Tubelight, who combined a gift for getting people to talk with an ability to hold his liquor like few men could. “We enjoyed some Old Monk rum together.”

“And?”

“Approaching the scene, he passed an ice cream wallah pushing his cart. He was with a rag picker. Male, twenties, black skin.”

“Paagal!” bawled Puri. “That was the murderer! He just let him walk away, is it?”

“Of course, Boss.” Tubelight shrugged.

Their kokis were served with a dab of fresh butter and some curd and garlic pickle on the side.

As they greedily tore them apart with their fingers, the detective asked: “Did this prize Charlie see the murder weapon?”

“Didn’t see it, Boss.”

“You believe him?”

“Yes, Boss. By the end of the evening he was chattering away like a parrot. Believe me, I learned all his secrets. Most of them I’d have preferred not to have heard.”

“Now I’ve another assignment for you,” said Puri, adding in English: “No rest for wicked, huh?”

Tubelight did not reciprocate Puri’s mischievous smile. He had been working long hours over the past few weeks, and thanks to the heat and constant ‘load shedding’, or power cuts, he and his family had taken to the roof of their small house at night. Sleep had been in short supply, what with the mosquitoes and the incessant arguing of the husband and wife next door. The operative badly needed a few ‘offs’. But now did not seem the time to broach the subject; Boss had that unstoppable look in his eye.

“You know any magicians?” asked Puri.

“Jadoo wallahs?” Tubelight’s eyes widened. “You want to stay clear of them.”

“Why exactly?”

“They’ve got powers. I’ve known them to put curses on people.”

Puri could not help but smile at his operative’s superstitious nature.

“All the same I would need to talk to them,” he insisted.

Tubelight regarded him warily.

“They live in Shadipur Depot, in the slums,” he said. “Have their own language – a magician’s language passed down father to son. No one else understands it. Not even me. But there is one old babu who might help. Calls himself Alcbar the Great.”

Puri’s task for the day was to call on the surviving members of the Laughing Club. Before that, he planned to break into Dr. Jha’s office at DIRE. The detective was certain the institute would be closed and wanted to take the opportunity to snoop through the Guru Buster’s desk and files without anyone else knowing he had done so.

This was typical of Puri’s approach to detective work. ‘Less everyone knows what I know, the better’ was one of his credos.

Handbrake drove him to Nizamuddin West, once a self-contained village abutting the tomb of India’s most revered Sufi saint, but now a South Delhi colony. The India of narrow alleyways filled with Muslim pilgrims, beggars cradling drugged babies and the smoke of sizzling lamb kebabs gave way to well-swept residential streets lined with houses and apartments owned by wealthy Muslim merchants, lawyers and the odd gemstone dealer.

DIRE HQ was a 1950 sbungalow. There were rusting bars on the narrow windows and buddleia growing from cracks in the grime-stained walls. A poster on the gate read:

DO YOU HAVE SUPERNATURAL POWERS?

CAN YOU CURE A TERMINALLY ILL PERSON?

REPAIR A TRANSISTOR WITH USE OF REIKI?

WALK ON WATER?

READ OTHER PEOPLE’S MINDS?

FLY TO THE MOON AND BACK WITHOUT AID OF

SPACESHIP?

IF SO YOU COULD WIN 2 CRORE RUPEES!

JUST PROVE YOUR POWERS IN A LOCATION

SPECIFIED BY RATIONALIST AND ‘GURU BUSTER’

DR. SURESH JHA.

APPLY WITHIN.

IT MAY BE NOTED: THE TWO-CRORE-RUPEES AWARD

IS NOT KEPT IN OUR OFFICE.

As he had anticipated, Puri found the front door padlocked. It was still only nine o’clock and Dr. Jha’s secretary would not be along for at least an hour, if indeed she was coming to work at all, which he doubted. According to Mrs. Jha, with whom Puri had spoken briefly after her husband’s cremation yesterday, the future of DIRE was uncertain. The old Guru Buster had run it more or less single-handedly and had not appointed a successor.

The detective made his way down the side of the building to the kitchen door and found it already open. The lock looked as if it had been forced, probably with a strong, metal implement like a knife.

He could hear activity inside the bungalow – drawers being opened and closed; the rustle of papers; a cough.

Puri stepped inside but had to proceed slowly on account of the squeaky rubber soles of the orthopedic shoes he wore to account for his short left leg.

He crossed the stone kitchen floor on tiptoe without making a sound and entered the reception-cum-administrative office. It was a large room, dark and musty and simply furnished with a couple of desks and chairs, and an old Gestet-ner stencil printer with fresh blue ink on the roller.

The door to Dr. Jha’s office was on the right-hand side of the room. It was closed, but someone was moving around inside.

The detective continued on tiptoe. But as he reached the door, he felt a painful cramp shoot through his left leg. This forced him to stop, and in shifting his weight onto his right foot and almost losing his balance, his shoe squeaked like a child’s bathtime rubber duck.

Puri froze, his heart beating wildly. He waited for the cramp to ease off, not moving a muscle. It was almost a minute before the pain passed. Then slowly he pushed the door to Dr. Jha’s office open.

It was empty. To the right of the room stood another door that was ajar. Puri approached it cautiously. He pushed it gently open.

Just then he was hit on the back of the head with a hard object. He heard someone say, “Oh, bugger!” before he fell to the floor, unconscious.

When Puri came around, it was to a throbbing head and the sound of a woman’s voice asking him if he could hear her.

Gradually, his vision came into focus. The first thing he saw was a wavering, large red dot. When his sight cleared, he recognized the face of Dr. Jha’s secretary, Ms. Ruchi, who had been at the cremation yesterday. She was wearing a big red bindi.

“Mr. Vish Puri, sir, are you OK?” she asked, staring down at him.

The detective tried to respond, but his words came out slurred.

“Better take rest, sir,” she said. “You’ve had a nasty bash. Fortunately there’s no blood.”

The detective felt the back of his head; a large lump had already formed.

“Whoever it was got you with this, sir,” said Ms. Ruchi, holding up a cricket bat. “Knocked you for six, looks like.”

Another five minutes passed before Puri was able to sit up. The floor around him was scattered with papers, the contents of Dr. Jha’s desk drawers and the drawers themselves. Someone had evidently turned the place over.