Tarquin Hall - The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing

“I know. You can lead camels to water but not force them to drink. Come.”

The two women walked out into the street where their cars were parked.

Behind them Kumar and the constables were chortling conspiratorially.

“Seems Miss Mar-pel is here,” one of them joked.

“Bloody duffers,” cursed Mummy. “No wonder so many of crimes are going unsolved.”

“Perhaps we should call Chubby,” suggested Rumpi.

“Why we should ask for his help, you tell me? He’s no better. Just he’ll do bossing and tell us don’t get involved. Mummies are not detectives and all that. No need for him, na?”

“What do you mean ‘us’, Mummy-ji?”

“We two. We’ll solve this case together, na? Who better? It’s an insider job for sure.”

“You think the servants were involved?”

“Those poor fellows? Most unlikely.”

Rumpi’s eyes widened. “Are you saying it was one of the other ladies?” she asked, lowering her voice.

Mummy nodded gravely.

“How can you be so sure?”

“Simple, na? Those goondas were knowing how much our kitty would be. Today with my share there was some extra bonus. Also they failed in their duty to do robbery of our jewelry. So many bangles, earrings and mangal sutras and all were present. That Mrs. Azmat was wearing platinum worth lakhs and lakhs. But not one single item they took. Why?”

Shivraj Sharma, whose very first visit to the Laughing Club had ended so dramatically and in such turmoil, was first on Puri’s list of interviewees. His title was superintending archaeologist; it said so on the door to his office deep in the vaults of the National Museum, a stone’s throw from Raj-path.

The contents of his office also left the visitor in no doubt as to his occupation. Crates containing broken bits of pottery and fragments of idols coccooned in Bubble Wrap were stacked on the shelves. The walls were papered with maps indicating the territory occupied by the Harappan Indus Valley Civilization, which flourished between 2,600 and 1,900 BC. Pinned to a board were satellite images of the area lying between the Himalayas and the Arabian Sea, with a line indicating one of the possible routes of the lost Sarasvati River.

“I am happy to see you, but I spoke with the police yesterday and told them everything I know,” Sharma explained to Puri. His tone was amiable but betrayed a boyish insouciance common amongst India’s so-called creamy layer.

“As you can see I’ve a good deal of work to get on with,” he added, indicating the manuscript that lay on the desk in front of him. “I do hope this won’t take too long.”

Sharma was pushing fifty, smartly dressed in a striped shirt, silk tie and blue blazer. He had visited the temple that morning and was wearing a fresh, rice-encrusted tilak on his forehead and a knotted kalava on his wrist. He wore thick glasses, and like so many people in Delhi today, his eyes suffered from the pollution – hence the bottle of eyedrops, which, judging from his damp eyelids, the archaeologist had used moments before the detective had been shown into his office.

“Sir, just five minutes is all that is required,” said Puri.

The plump man in the safari suit and Sandown cap standing in front of Sharma’s desk, business card in hand, was not the boisterous Vish Puri who had kept his son-in-law Har-tosh entertained last night with generous amounts of Royal Challenge. Nor the supremely confident, tough-talking version, either. Face-to-face with a learned, well-to-do type, he was deferential.

This was an instinctual reaction. Academics were up there with ministers and virtuoso musicians, and such erudite surroundings genuinely awed him. But his deportment did his cause no harm. Obsequiousness was what Indians of such standing – barre admi, big men – were used to, and as Puri was well aware, allowing their conceit and assumption of intellectual superiority to go unchallenged often proved beneficial.

“Very well, but five minutes is all I can spare,” said Sharma with a sigh, not deigning to stand or shake his visitor’s hand. He motioned Puri into a chair.

“Most kind of you, sir, and quite an honor, I must say,” said Puri. He glanced around the office with a childish glint in his eye. “Such a fascinating field you work in. So much of history and culture. I myself take great interest in the Mauryan dynasty. Something of a golden age we might call it.”

“India was certainly a very different place in those days, Mr…” Sharma referred to the detective’s business card. “… Puri,” he read, squinting down through his bifocals. “But my speciality is Harappan culture.”

“Fascinating,” Puri said, beaming.

“Currently my department is involved in extensive underwater marine work off the coast of Gujarat. There is every indication that we have located Dvaraka.”

“The lost city of the Mahabharata.” Puri’s eyes widened in awe.

“This find, together with the discovery of the Sarasvati River and a good deal of other evidence unearthed in the past forty or so years, leaves no doubt as to the indigenous origins of Vedic culture,” added Sharma.

The controversial nature of this statement was not lost on Puri. It suggested a Hindu nationalist bent, a rejection of the theory that Aryan tribes brought the holy Hindu scriptures to India from elsewhere. But he merely said, “Just imagine what India would be like had we not had so many of invasions. Is it any wonder everything has gone for a toss?”

Sharma met Puri’s gaze in silent, meditative appraisal.

“It is undeniable that certain, shall we say, alien belief systems have been foisted on us that have no place here and have done considerable harm to our indigenous culture.” A slight smile played across his lips. “But that’s not what you came here to talk about, now, is it, Mr. Puri?” said the archaeologist.

“Correct, sir,” answered the detective, fishing out his notebook and opening it to a new page. “Just a few questions are there.”

Sharma gave a vague nod of encouragement.

“I would be most grateful if you told me what happened yesterday morning exactly,” said Puri.

Sharma sighed. “As I already told the police,” he said slowly and deliberately, “it is extremely difficult for me to answer that question.”

“I understand you dropped your glasses, is it?”

“That’s right, Mr. Puri. And without them I can hardly see a thing. Everything is just a blur. So I was groping around in the dark for a while, so to speak.”

“What point exactly you dropped them, sir?”

“Just after Professor Pandey started telling his silly knock-knock joke and everyone started laughing again. I saw this mist forming on the ground. Where it came from I can’t say – and then there was a flash. It startled me and I fell over backward. That’s when my glasses came off.”

“You started laughing, is it?”

“I did not. The others were all howling, though. I could hear them.”

“You were able to move?”

“Perfectly able, Mr. Puri.”

“And by the time you got your glasses back on, Dr. Jha was lying dead and the Kali apparition, she was gone?”

“Exactly.”

“So you never saw her?”

“I saw a figure but it was blurred.”

Puri asked if he had seen the murder weapon.

“Again this is all in the statement I made to the police.”

“Yes, sir. Just I am cross-referencing. Sometimes these things get in a muddle.”

“I did not see the murder weapon,” Sharma stated categorically.

Puri scribbled in his notebook and then asked: “Sir, how you felt afterward?”

“Awful, obviously. It was a great shock. It’s not every day this sort of thing happens.”