Tarquin Hall - The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing

“Last thing I remember…” said Puri, who was suffering from mild amnesia, “I was… crossing the reception… I heard… something inside. But after… it’s all… there’s nothing. It’s a blank, only.”

“You saw who hit you, sir?” asked Ms. Ruchi, regarding him with a caring, sympathetic expression.

He hesitated before answering. “I don’t believe so… but…” he answered.

Puri had a nagging feeling, as if there was something he had forgotten to do, but he couldn’t remember what it was. “Could be it will come back to me,” he added. “How long I’ve been here?”

“I’m not sure, sir. I came five minutes back. The time is half past nine.”

Ms. Ruchi helped the detective up into a chair and then went to fetch him a glass of water. Puri sat surveying the office. Pinned to a board on the wall hung a collection of photographs of Dr. Jha and a group of young volunteers working in rural India during a recent DIRE ‘awareness’ campaign. They could be seen taking turns walking across red-hot coals, a feat performed by many traveling sanyasis to demonstrate their ‘supernatural powers’. Watching was a group of villagers. The idea was to impress upon these illiterate peasants that India’s holy men were con artists.

Could some of the volunteers or perhaps a rival rationalist have carried out the murder? the detective wondered hazily. Such types studied the tricks and illusions of Godmen, after all. Perhaps one of them had wanted Dr. Jha out of the way?

“Sir, I hope you don’t mind me asking, but what are you doing here?” asked Ms. Ruchi, breaking into his thought processes when she returned with a glass of water.

“Just I was passing by and found the door open. The lock had been forced. So naturally it was my duty to do investigation.”

“I suppose it must have been one of Maharaj Swami’s people,” said Ms. Ruchi.

“You saw him, is it?” asked Puri as he sipped the water and his head began to clear.

“I’m afraid I caught only a glimpse of his back as he climbed over the wall behind the building. He had a car waiting. I heard it drive away.”

“What all he was after?” asked Puri.

“Doctor-sahib’s file on the Godman, most probably.”

“He found it – the file, that is?”

“Fortunately not. Doctor-sahib keeps it hidden away. I mean…” Ms. Ruchi dropped her gaze to the floor; she looked suddenly overcome with sadness. “I mean… he kept it hidden away.”

“I’m most sincerely sorry for your loss,” said Puri, who had not had the opportunity to offer her his condolences at the cremation yesterday. “Dr. Jha will be sorely missed. An upstanding fellow he was in every respect.”

“Thank you, sir,” she said as the tears began to trickle down her face. She dabbed them with her handkerchief, quickly regaining her composure. “Is it true you’re investigating his murder?” She added quickly: “Mrs. Jha told me.”

“Most certainly,” he answered. “And let me assure you, my dear Ms. Ruchi, I will be most definitely getting to the bottom of it by hook or crook. Vish Puri always gets his man – or in this case I should say ‘his deity’, isn’t it?”

“I’m pleased to hear it, sir,” she said. “I’d be happy to help in any way I can. As much as anyone, I want Maharaj Swami to face justice.”

“You’re certain it was he who committed the act, is it?”

“Who else could it have been?” she exclaimed, wide-eyed, as if Puri had blasphemed. “Dr. Jha was Maharaj Swami’s enemy number one. He had been campaigning against him tirelessly. And recently he had been investigating a suspicious suicide of a young woman at the Godman’s ashram, the Abode of Eternal Love. Her name was Manika Gill. Dr. Jha believed she was murdered.

“And there’s another thing,” continued Ms. Ruchi. “Yesterday Dr. Jha received a death threat. I’ll fetch it for you.”

She disappeared into the reception and soon returned with the piece of paper pasted with letters cut from a Hindi newspaper. Puri read it out loud: “‘Whenever there is a withering of the law and an uprising of lawlessness on all sides, then I manifest myself. For the salvation of the righteous and the destruction of such as do evil, for the firm establishing of the Law, I come to birth, age after age.”

“That is from Bhagavad Gita – book four, I believe,” said the detective. “Some believe it means Lord Vishnu will appear on earth when humanity no longer understands right from wrong. It is a kind of doomsday prophecy. How this arrived?”

“It was hand-delivered – put through the letterbox the day before yesterday. That was Monday.”

“Dr. Jha’s reaction was what exactly?”

“He didn’t take death threats seriously, Mr. Puri – he’s had quite a few over the years, as you can imagine.”

“Ms. Ruchi, be good enough to give me one copy of this thing and keep the original safe here with you.”

“Absolutely, sir. There’s a photocopy wallah under the pilu tree in the street.”

“I would also be most grateful for one copy of Dr. Jha’s file on Maharaj Swami, also. That is at all possible?”

“Of course, sir. I’ll go and fetch it.”

She went to find the file while the detective stood up, still feeling unsteady, and made his way back into the kitchen.

Getting the lock dusted for fingerprints would be a waste of time, he reasoned. But Puri wanted to see if there were any other clues: perhaps a boot mark on the floor or a thread caught on a nail.

He was examining the door when Ms. Ruchi came to find him, clutching the bulging file.

“To tell you the truth, that lock was easy to open,” she said. “One time I forgot my keys and I managed to get in using a screwdriver I keep in the car. I’ve been meaning to get it fixed for ages. Later this morning I’ll get the lock wallah to come.”

“Anyone else knew it was broken?”

“Not that I’m aware. The only other people who use it are the cleaners.”

Puri had seen enough and accompanied the secretary out into the street to make use of the photocopy wallah’s services.

“Tell me, Ms. Ruchi,” he said, “why you came into the office today? You should be taking rest, no?”

“Someone has to be here to look after the office and…” Her eyes started to well up again. “I suppose I wanted to be here… to be, well, near him. Does that sound strange?”

“Not at all. It is quite understandable.”

Tears started to flood down her face.

“I just can’t believe he’s gone,” she said, straining to keep her voice steady. “Dr. Jha was like a father to me – so calm and kind. It’s like there’s a big hole in my heart. What am I to do without him?”

As Puri headed off to interview the surviving members of the Laughing Club, his wife was sitting down in Lily Arora’s five-bedroom house in Greater Kailash Part Two, a posh South Delhi colony.

This month’s venue for Rumpi’s kitty party club, the living room had been appointed with furnishings ‘inspired’ by the ancient world. The mahogany coffee table in the middle of the room was built like a Grecian altar. The Italian sofas, with their gold arms fashioned like great curling leaves, were suggestive of Roman licentiousness. Black and gold pharaoh heads and sphinxes purchased in the gift shop of a Las Vegas hotel adorned both the side tables and the marble mantelpiece with its decorative Zoroastrian winged lions. Bunches of plastic sunflowers in replica Phoenician vases were dotted around the place – along with Chinese dragon napkin holders filled with pink paper serviettes.

The sofas’ hard, slippery upholstery and curvy backs did not make them conducive to reclining or lounging. Rumpi and the fourteen other kitty party members – all housewives, most of whom she had known for years – had to sit on the edge of their seats. This suited Mrs. Nanda, who, with a straight back, a level chin and a sprinkling of gold jewelry, was a model of poise and elegance. Petite, bespectacled Mrs. Shankar, who practiced yoga and meditation and always dressed in long, loose capris and block-printed achkans, perched gracefully as well. But for the likes of Mrs. Devi, who by her own admittance had a ‘sweet tooth and a salty one, also’ and took up a much greater portion of seating space than the aforementioned ladies, Lily Arora’s furnishings were both an uncomfortable and unflattering proposition.