Tarquin Hall - The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing

The detective held up both his hands and shook them, a gesture that communicated ‘Why worry?’

“Trust me, sir,” he said smugly. “I have taken care of everything.”

Rathinasabapathy stared at the floor for a while, weighing it all up in his mind, and then said, “Well, if you say so. But I still can’t believe how much people in this city go through to get their kids into schools.”

“I told you when we met few days back, no, schools in India are a huge racket. Any business is about supply and demand. In this case there is excess of demand and nowhere near the supply. Thus schools can charge a premium for admittance. I tell you parents in Delhi go to hell getting their children into good schools.

“What all my niece Chiki went through you wouldn’t believe,” continued the detective. “She made applications to six schools total. All demanded a registration fee of four hundred to seven hundred rupees. Naturally there were countless forms to complete. Each and every time, the boy had to sit a test and do the interview. And each and every time, his parents were interviewed, also.”

“The parents?” exclaimed Rathinasabapathy.

“Most certainly. They were interviewed separately in order to cross-reference their answers. What all were their aspirations? Their views on discipline? Chiki joked she and her husband had to cram for the test themselves. Made University look like ABC.”

“So what happened?”

“Thank the God, Ragev got a place at Sunny Dale. But only after his father made a donation toward the new school bus.”

“Unbelievable.”

“Sir, I tell you, that is nothing. I know one family – they run a dry-cleaning business. In return for admittance to Vallabhbhai Jhaverbhai School, they agreed to do the head teacher’s family’s laundry! Six years now they’ve been washing their shirts and undergarments.”

“Why don’t people send their kids to state schools?”

Puri clicked his tongue dismissively.

“Sir, my maid’s son goes to our local school. As it is, I had to intervene to get him in, such is the demand. Standards are quite frankly shocking. Teachers don’t turn up. Food is substandard. Her boy often complains of bugs in his daal. For females, there are not even toilet facilities. Nowadays standards are only getting worse. What with the liberalization of the economy, government is withdrawing from its responsibilities more day by day.”

Rathinasabapathy shook his head in disbelief. “Can’t something be done?” he asked. “What about this evidence you have against the principal of Ultra Modern School? We should go public with it!”

“Most certainly we can,” said Puri. “TV channels love such footage. But then your children won’t get admittance. And you will be back at square number one dealing with Mr. Ten Percent – or one of his many competitors.”

The nuclear physicist paused for thought and then said: “Yeah, well, I guess maybe we should let sleeping dogs lie, right? I mean the main thing is we didn’t have to pay a bribe and the kids are going to go to a good school.”

“Sir, I can see you’re getting a hang of how things work here in India,” said Puri with a smile, rising from his chair and handing Rathinasabapathy his money. “And now if there’s nothing else, I’ll take my leaves. I have a most puzzling murder to look into.”

As soon as Rathinasabapathy had left, Elizabeth Rani called Puri over the intercom and suggested he turn on his TV.

“Apparently there’s some amazing video of the murder,” she said.

Action News! was indeed running exclusive footage taken by a French tourist that morning.

At exactly 6:37 AM, Edouard Lecomte had been riding in a tour bus toward the Presidential Palace. While filming out the window, his attention had been drawn to what looked like some kind of ‘exotic Hindu ritual’ being enacted by a small group of people on one of the lawns. Only later did he realize what he had captured: Dr. Jha’s murder.

The footage was unsteady and hazy thanks to the smog and the distance at which it had been shot. But it showed the goddess Kali, complete with four writhing arms and a hideous red tongue, floating three feet above the ground. She could be seen driving her sword through Dr. Jha and cackling wildly. Then came a bright flash. Evidently, this had startled the Frenchman, who had lowered his camera and could be heard muttering, “ Putain de merde! ”

The channel was playing the thirty or so seconds over and over again, slowing it down, enlarging key frames and drawing little circles around certain details. It proved beyond doubt that whoever or whatever had killed the Guru Buster had not hung from wires suspended from overhanging branches. The graceful manner in which ‘the apparition’ glided through the air suggested it was standing on neither stilts nor a box.

“Could it be someone wearing a jet pack?” postulated one of the Action News! TV anchors.

“You’d see evidence of that,” a science commentator answered. “There’d be an exhaust and the movement would be jerky. Those things are hard to control. I can’t explain what we’re seeing here.”

Puri, who watched the footage numerous times on the small set he kept in his office, agreed with this last assessment.

“Absolutely mind-blowing,” he kept muttering to himself.

A part of him wanted to believe that it was a genuine supernatural occurrence – that the goddess Kali really had materialized on earth. Believing in something fantastic, something inexplicable, was always easier than accepting the mundane truth. But Puri was certain that his eyes were being deceived, that a mere mortal had killed Dr. Jha, and he felt roused to the challenge of hunting down the murderer.

The video convinced him of one other thing: the general public would believe there had been a miracle.

The authorities had evidently come to the same conclusion.

Riot police armed with lathis, tear gas and water cannons had sealed off all the approach roads to Rajpath. And as Puri soon discovered, setting off in his Ambassador complete with new windscreen, this had brought gridlock to the British bungalow-lined streets of New Delhi. The many roundabouts, congested and chaotic at the best of times, were a logjam of cars and auto rickshaws playing a discordant symphony for horns.

After ninety minutes, the detective had only reached Safdarjung Road, and it was here that he decided to abandon his car. Having made arrangements with the incharge at the front desk of the Gymkhana Club to leave the Ambassador unattended in the car park (and passed up the opportunity to have some lunch – the special was kadi chaaval followed by moong daal halwa), he and Handbrake continued on foot.

Puri found the going hard. By now it was blisteringly hot and muggy and it was not long before he felt as if he were swimming in his safari suit. The unusually high curbs built by the Angrezi along their fastidiously laid-out avenues – presumably to deter bicyclists and motorcyclists from using the pavements – presented Puri with a formidable challenge thanks to the shortness of his left leg. Every time he had to cross the road or the entrance to one of the many bungalows, he needed a hand up.

For Handbrake the going was hardly easy either. While exposed to the full force of the midday sun, he had to walk alongside Boss, shielding him with a black umbrella. But of the two men, the driver reached the corner of Janpath and Maulana Azad Road (where police barriers prevented them from going any farther) in better shape and without complaint. Puri, on the other hand, looked close to fainting and had to rest in the shade of a tree for ten minutes in order to recover. Glugging down a bottle of chilled water purchased from a passing ice cream wallah, he bemoaned the fact that he could go no farther and thanked the heavens when Inspector Jagat Prakash Singh came to the rescue in his air-conditioned jeep.