Tarquin Hall - The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing

“Keep it on your person at all times. After waking up, press it to your forehead. It will help cleanse your ajna chakra. Return to me when you are ready.”

“Thank you, Swami-ji! But how will I know when to return?”

“You will know,” he said. “You must learn to listen to your intuition and not your mind.”

Maharaj Swami closed his eyes again. The audience was over.

Facecream backed out of the chamber with her hands pressed together. In the hall, she found Damayanti waiting with her parents. The mother and father both wanted to hear about her audience. What wisdom had Swami-ji imparted? Did he perform any miracles?

But their daughter was sullen. And when the senior devotee informed them that Swami-ji had asked to see her on her own, she avoided eye contact with Facecream.

“You’re not joining her?” Puri’s operative asked the parents.

“If Swami-ji calls us, then we will go to him with open hearts. Today Damayanti has been blessed with a private audience.”

Blankly the young woman walked toward the open doors.

Puri arrived early at the Gymkhana Club – on Sunday mornings there was less traffic on the road – and sat in the bar waiting for his old friend, Dr. Subhrojit Ghosh. Sometimes it was important to get away from work for purely social pleasure. And the weekend all-you-can-eat brunch buffet, a bargain at 295 rupees, was always a welcome respite.

But the Jha case was impossible to avoid. The TV was showing one of India’s Oprah-style talk shows. Dr. Jha’s murder had been grist to such programs for four days now. Debate over belief and superstition, a topic that stoked nothing short of hysteria in some quarters, was rife.

“Our poll says eighty-five percent of us do believe in miracles. Are we being fooled? That’s the question we’re asking on today’s show,” announced Kiran, the host of Kiran! “We’ll be talking to one woman who says her baby daughter died and was brought back to life by this Godman, known as Engineer Baba.” A guru with the obligatory beard and saffron robes appeared on-screen. “He’s best known for his prophecies and for staying buried underground for weeks on end. He’ll be taking your questions after this short break. Don’t go away!”

Puri asked the barman to ‘reduce’ the volume as his thoughts turned to the latest developments in the case.

After Pandey’s liaison with Mrs. Jha last night, Puri had ordered their telephones to be bugged. A couple of Tube-light’s boys had taken up position outside the Jha residence as well.

Puri had also called his researchers into the office to start picking through the two suspects’ financial records.

The next step was to search Pandey’s house.

Puri had ruled out doing this legally. Calling Inspector Singh and asking him to get a warrant could jeopardize the case: inevitably the chief would come to know and start demanding arrests be made. Once the lawyers and the media were involved, Puri would never see justice served.

He had decided to break in tomorrow afternoon when the professor would be teaching at the university. And if he came across any incriminating evidence… well, he would call in Singh when the time was right.

What else?

He opened his notebook and read through his witness interview notes.

Now that there was no doubt in his mind that Pandey was, at the very least, an accomplice to the murder, two details that had seemed unimportant during the preliminary stages of the investigation struck him as significant.

1. Pandey had told the knock-knock joke that had caused everyone to laugh hysterically before Dr. Jha had been killed.

2. Pandey had been the first to declare his inability to move his feet.

As for the professor’s statement that he had seen the murder weapon turn to ash… Puri had doubted its veracity from the start. Pandey might well have removed the sword himself and then deposited the ground charcoal next to the body.

Something else also occurred to the detective while he was ruminating over the clues.

In the past couple of days, he had watched three magicians perform: Akbar the Great, Manish the Magnificent and, of course, Maharaj Swami. All three had performed in environments where they could make use of concealed props. Prior to putting on their acts, they could set the stage, so to speak. In Puri’s book, it was called cheating, but that was an argument for another time.

What had made Dr. Jha’s murder seem so baffling was that it had been done out in the open.

What if the setting for the murder, the spot where the Laughing Club always met, had been rigged long beforehand? Perhaps in a way that had not been obvious to him when he had inspected the crime scene? Had he overlooked something? Something hidden?

Puri decided to return to Rajpath and take another look.

Just as soon as his long-standing brunch date with Shubho was over.

Dr. Subhrojit Ghosh had returned from his annual two-week walking holiday in Shimla.

“What news of Shorn?” asked Puri. Shorn was the eldest Ghosh son, studying in Chicago.

“World-class. He’s loving his internship. Getting all As. Dali thinks there’s a girl, but who knows?”

“What kind of girl?” asked Puri with a disapproving frown.

“Presumably of the female variety.” Dr. Ghosh laughed.

They sat down together in the dining room where the brunch buffet was laid out – upma, poha, French toast, the works.

“How is Mummy-ji?” asked Dr. Ghosh.

“Up to her usual tricks. Such a handful, I tell you. Seems she’s doing investigation again.”

“Investigating what?”

“Who knows, Shubho-dada? I’ve not got time nor inclination to find out.”

‘Dada’ meant older brother in Ghosh’s native Bengali.

“And Rumpi?”

“Very fine. Jaiya’s having twins, did I tell you?”

“Wonderful! Many congratulations, Chubby.”

They made a first pass of the buffet. Puri returned to the table with an unlikely selection of poha and baked beans. From his pocket he produced a red chili carefully selected earlier from one of his plants on the roof. It was a Naga Jolokia, better known as the Ghost Chili, the hottest in the world.

The detective dipped the end in salt, bit into it and began to chew.

“These ones are not for fainthearted,” he said, looking satisfied. He offered Dr. Ghosh a bite.

“You must be joking,” he said. “Those things are lethal. I was reading recently they’re thinking of using them in crowd-control grenades!”

A waiter filled up his chipped Gymkhana Club cup with strong, acidic black tea from a silver pot that leaked onto the tablecloth.

“So, Chubby, tell me, I’m dying to know: How’s your investigation into Dr. Jha’s murder going? I keep reading such conflicting things in the papers. Seems the whole country’s talking about little else.”

“Most certainly, it is one of the most extraordinary cases I’ve come across till date,” said Puri, outlining the case and his trip to Haridwar and how Maharaj Swami had conjured the rishi oracle onstage.

“Most remarkable it was. Is it any wonder people are fooled by this fellow?”

“It’s certainly a very realistic trick,” said Dr. Ghosh. “But by no means original.”

“You’ve seen it before, is it?”

“When I was fourteen or fifteen. Old Professor Biswas demonstrated it in our physics class. ‘Pepper’s Ghost’, he called it, after the Britisher who perfected it.”

Puri’s enthusiastic nod was encouragement to go on.

“All that’s required are a couple of silvered mirrors and a strong light source. Your subject stands hidden and his image is reflected off… I think it’s a couple of mirrors… and then through a pane of glass. The image appears behind it, translucent like a spirit.”