The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing

Sixteen

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.”

Puri slapped his thigh with a festive cry.

“Shubho-dada, you’re the real miracle worker!” he exclaimed. “Such a mine of information you are. You should be a detective, actually.”

“But then I would miss all the free trips to international conferences on things like recent advances in inflammatory bowel disease!”

They made a second pass of the buffet. Puri went for the French toast this time.

“Time for a quick game?” asked Dr. Ghosh when their plates were clear again.

“Actually, Shubho-dada, I had better make a move, huh.”

“Come now, old pal, we see so little of each other. What’s an hour between friends?”

“So much work is there, actually,” insisted Puri, looking at his watch.

“You’re sure work is not just a convenient excuse?”

“Certainly not…”

“I’d understand if it was. Especially after the thrashing I gave you last time.”

“Listen,” said the detective good-humoredly, “you are ahead by one game, only.”

“I didn’t know we were counting. But if you put it like that…”

Five minutes later, they sat facing one another across a low coffee table in the colonnaded ballroom where tea and cucumber sandwiches were served. Some of the other armchairs were occupied by elderly guests whose rheumy eyes perused the Sunday edition of the Times of India.

Before Puri and Dr. Ghosh lay a chessboard. They arranged the pieces but ensured that the rajas, or kings, didn’t face one another – this being one of the rules of modern chess’s ancient Indian precursor, chaturanga, which they’d started playing for fun in the past year or so.

The detective, whose pieces were white, opened by moving a sippoy, or pawn, and his opponent matched his move. Puri then put one of his kuthareis, or horses, into play.

As Dr. Ghosh made his second move, they began to swap Gym gossip. There was a fierce battle underway for the club’s presidency. The air marshal of the Indian air force was up against the army chief.

“It’s warfare of a different nature,” commented the detective, who joked that it probably wouldn’t be long before trenches were dug across the lawns by the opposing sides.

Dr. Ghosh put his mantri, or counselor (the equivalent to a queen, but the piece can move only one square at a time and diagonally), into play. The move puzzled Puri; it was a hugely risky one and not in character with his opponent’s usually cautious tactics. But he decided to continue with his strategy nonetheless and positioned one of his yaaneis, or elephants, to strike.

The conversation strayed back to the topic of the murder.

“What saddens me is to see these Godmen types muddying the name of Hinduism,” said Puri.

“The clergy is always crooked in any religion,” said Dr. Ghosh.

“Hardly makes it right, Shubho-dada. They keep society hostage to superstition and nonsense. There’s nothing spiritual about them. Bloody goondas, the lot of them.”

By now, the detective had taken nine of his opponent’s pieces and had ten remaining. But Dr. Ghosh was far from beaten and quickly launched a counterattack on Puri’s left flank, taking his remaining iratham, or chariot (the equivalent of a rook). Puri’s defenses suddenly crumbled and within a few moves he found his raja standing alone, signaling the end of the game. He had lost again.

“You were bluffing, is it?” asked Puri.

“Forgive me, Chubby. I’ve been playing with my nephew. He’s brilliant, only eleven – going to give that Viswanathan Anand a run for his money one fine day. He bluffs a lot – often sets up the illusion that he’s losing.”

Puri stared at him blankly.

“What’s wrong, Chubby?” asked Dr. Ghosh.

No reaction.

“Chubby?” prompted his friend, looking worried.

“By God!” exclaimed the detective. And then louder: “What a bloody fool I’ve been these past days! Of course! It is an illusion within an illusion!”

He stood up. The geriatrics lowered their newspapers and stared.

“Finally I know! I tell you, this thing has been driving me mad!”

“Know what, Chubby?”

“Who it was who knocked me for six!”

“You were knocked unconscious? When? You didn’t tell me. Have you been examined?”

“Shubho-dada, I must go. No delay!”

And before Dr. Ghosh could say another word, the detective was out the door.

Fifteen minutes later, Puri reached the south end of Rajpath to find the road still barricaded by the police. A constable on duty informed him that it would not reopen until tomorrow; in the meantime, he was welcome to proceed on foot.

Frustrated but with no other option, the detective set off on his own, umbrella held aloft, retracing the steps Dr. Jha had taken five days earlier.

By now it was almost noon and the heat of the sun bore down on him like a blowtorch. He moved as fast as his left leg would allow him, the insides of his shoes squelching with sweat, until he reached the shade of the jamun tree where the Kali illusion had been staged. The police cordon around the crime scene had by now been removed, as had the incense sticks and offerings left on the ground by worshippers. On either side of the tree trunk lay a flea-bitten pye-dog and a laborer, both of whom were sleeping soundly despite the heat and the flies.

It took Puri a minute or so to recover from the walk and to wipe the salty perspiration from his eyes. And then he began to scour the murder scene.

He slowly circled around the area three times. Then he started to walk backward away from it to get a different perspective.

When he had gone about twenty feet, he noticed something odd. The grass in the vicinity where Kali had levitated was a shade darker, as if it had received more rainfall or perhaps been watered. It was a subtle difference, one that could easily be overlooked.

He hurried back to the spot, cast aside his umbrella and, with some difficulty given his girth, got down on one knee. Taking out his key chain, which had a Swiss Army penknife attached, he pushed the largest blade down into the grass. At a depth of two inches, it came into contact with something solid. He twisted the blade. It felt like metal.

“Heartiest congratulations, Mr. Vish Puri, sir!” he exclaimed out loud with a chuckle, pronouncing heartiest ‘hartees’.

He probed with his knife in six other spots, each time with the same result, before getting back to his feet. For a minute or so, he stood looking down at the ground, contemplating whether to go and fetch a helper with a shovel and dig up the grass, but decided this would have to wait.

He still needed proof that it had been Professor Pandey who had hidden the pieces of metal under the grass.

Given that it was a Sunday, this was going to take some time.