John Irving - A Son of the Circus

In the Ladies’ Garden, the early-afternoon sun had slanted past the apex of the bower and no longer touched the lunchers’ heads; the rays of sunlight now penetrated the wall of flowers only in patches. The tablecloth was mottled by this intermittent light, and Dr. Daruwalla watched a tiny diamond of the sun—it was reflected in the bottom half of the ballpoint pen. The brilliantly white point of light shone in the doctor’s eye as he pecked at his soggy stir-fry; the limp, dull-colored vegetables reminded him of the monsoon.

At that time of year, the Ladies’ Garden would be strewn with torn petals of the bougainvillea, the skeletal vines still clinging to the bower—with the brown sky showing through and the rain coming through. All the wicker and rattan furniture would be heaped upon itself in the ballroom, for there were no balls in the monsoon season. The golfers would sit drinking in the clubhouse bar, forlornly staring out the streaked windows at the sodden fairways. Wild clumps of the dead garden would be blowing across the greens.

The food on Chinese Day always depressed Farrokh, but there was something about the winking sun that was reflected in the bottom half of the silver ballpoint pen, something that both caught and held the doctor’s attention; something flickered in his memory. What was it? That reflected light, that shiny something… it was as small and lonely but as absolutely a presence as the far-off light of another airplane when you were flying across the miles of darkness over the Arabian Sea at night.

Farrokh stared into the dining room and at the open veranda, through which the shitting crow had flown. Dr. Daruwalla looked at the ceiling fan where the crow had landed; the doctor kept watching the fan, as if he were waiting for it to falter, or for the mechanism to catch on something—that shiny something which the shitting crow had held in its beak. Whatever it was, it was too big for the crow to have swallowed, Dr. Daruwalla thought. He took a wild guess.

“I know what it was,” the doctor said aloud. No one else had been talking; the others just looked at him as he left the table in the Ladies’ Garden and walked into the dining room, where he stood directly under the fan. Then he drew an unused chair away from the nearest table; but when he stood on it, he was still too short to reach over the top of the blades.

“Turn the fan off!” Dr. Daruwalla shouted to Mr. Sethna, who was no stranger to the doctor’s eccentric behavior—and his father’s before him. The old steward shut off the fan. Almost everyone in the dining room had stopped eating.

Dhar and Detective Patel rose from their table in the Ladies’ Garden and approached Farrokh, but the doctor waved them away. “Neither of you is tall enough,” he told them. “Only she is tall enough.” The doctor was pointing at Nancy. He was also following the good advice that the deputy commissioner had given to Mr. Sethna. (“Try to improve your noticing.”)

The fan slowed; the blades were unmoving by the time the three men helped Nancy to stand on the chair.

“Just reach over the top of the fan,” the doctor instructed her. “Do you feel a groove?” Her full figure above them in the chair was quite striking as she reached into the mechanism.

“I feel something,” she said.

“Walk your fingers around the groove,” said Dr. Daruwalla.

“What am I looking for?” Nancy asked him.

“You’re going to feel it,” he told her. “I think it’s the top half of your pen.”

They had to hold her or she would have fallen, for her fingers found it almost the instant that the doctor warned her what it was.

“Try not to handle it—just hold it very lightly,” the deputy commissioner said to his wife. She dropped it on the stone floor and the detective retrieved it with a napkin, holding it only by the pocket clasp.

“‘India,’” Patel said aloud, reading that inscription which had been separated from Made in for 20 years.

It was Dhar who lifted Nancy down from the chair. She felt heavier to him than she had 20 years before. She said she needed a moment to be alone with her husband; they stood whispering together in the Ladies’ Garden, while Farrokh and John D. watched the fan start up again. Then the doctor and the actor went to join the detective and his wife, who’d returned to the table.

“Surely now you’ll have Rahul’s fingerprints,” Dr. Daruwalla told the deputy commissioner.

“Probably,” said Detective Patel. “When Mrs. Dogar comes to eat here, we’ll have the steward save us her fork or her spoon—to compare. But her fingerprints on the top of the pen don’t place her at the crime.”

Dr. Daruwalla told them all about the crow. Clearly the crow had brought the pen from the bougainvillea at the ninth green. Crows are carrion eaters.

“But what would Rahul have been doing with the top of the pen—I mean during the murder of Mr. Lal?” Detective Patel asked.

In frustration, Dr. Daruwalla blurted out, “You make it sound as if you have to witness another murder—or do you expect Mrs. Dogar to offer you a full confession?”

“It’s only necessary to make Mrs. Dogar think that we know more than we know,” the deputy commissioner answered.

“That’s easy,” Dhar said suddenly. “You tell the murderer what the murderer would confess, if the murderer were confessing. The trick is, you’ve got to make the murderer think that you really know the murderer.”

“Precisely,” Patel said.

“Wasn’t that in Inspector Dhar and the Hanging Mali? ” Nancy asked the actor; she meant that it was Dr. Daruwalla’s line.

“Very good,” Dr. Daruwalla told her.

Detective Patel didn’t pat the back of Dhar’s hand; he tapped Dhar on one knuckle—just once, but sharply—with a dessert spoon. “Let’s be serious,” said the deputy commissioner. “I’m going to offer you a bribe—something you’ve always wanted.”

“There’s nothing I want,” Dhar replied.

“I think there is,” the detective told him. “I think you’d like to play a real policeman. I think you’d like to make a real arrest.”

Dhar said nothing—he didn’t even sneer.

“Do you think you’re still attractive to Mrs. Dogar?” the detective asked him.

“Oh, absolutely—you should see how she looks him over!” cried Dr. Daruwalla.

“I’m asking him ,” said Detective Patel.

“Yes, I think she wants me,” Dhar replied.

“Of course she does,” Nancy said angrily.

“And if I told you how to approach her, do you think you could do it—I mean exactly as I tell you?” the detective asked Dhar.

“Oh, yes—you give him any line, he can deliver it!” cried Dr. Daruwalla.

“I’m asking you ,” the policeman said to Dhar. This time, the dessert spoon rapped his knuckle hard enough for Dhar to take his hand off the table.

“You want to set her up—is that it?” Dhar asked the deputy commissioner.

“Precisely,” Patel said.

“And I just follow your instructions?” the actor asked him

“That’s it— exactly ,” said the deputy commissioner.

“You can do it!” Dr. Daruwalla declared to Dhar.

“That’s not the question,” Nancy said.

“The question is, do you want to do it?” Detective Patel asked Dhar. “I think you really want to.”

“All right,” Dhar said. “Okay. Yes, I want to.”

For the first time in the course of the long lunch, Patel smiled. “I feel better, now that I’ve bribed you,” the deputy commissioner told Dhar. “Do you see? That’s all a bribe is, really—just something you want, in exchange for something else. It’s no big deal, is it?”