The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Mysteries And Impossible Crimes

THE LEGS THAT WALKED by H.R.F. Keating

H.R.F. Keating (b.1926), known to his friends as Harry, is best known for his novels featuring the Bombay detective Ganesh Ghote. The very first of this series, The Perfect Murder (1964), which won an Edgar Award as that year’s best first novel, included an impossible crime involving the disappearance of a one-rupee note, though Go West, Inspector Ghote (1981), set in Los Angeles, involves a much more gory impossible death. Keating is also a well-read student of crime fiction and has written several reference books about the genre, such as The Bedside Companion to Crime (1989), and he knows his way around the impossible crime field. His books and stories have an irrepressible sense of humour, which is much evident in the following story, which I’d classify as a “locked-tent” mystery!

The Deputy Commissioner looked at Inspector Ghote standing at alert attention in front of his wide semi-circular desk with its piles of papers, each held down under the breeze of the overhead fan by a round silvery paperweight bearing his initials.

“You’re a man who admires our Indian classical music, Ghote?” he said.

Ghote experienced a washing-over wave of absolute puzzlement.

“No, sir, no, not at all,” he answered with the truth almost before he had gathered himself together.

The Deputy Commissioner continued to look at him, blank-faced.

“You are a first-class connoisseur of same, isn’t it?” he asked again, each word heavy with meaning.

And now Ghote ceased to be puzzled.

“Yes, sir, yes,” he replied. “Yes, I am.”

“Good man. Right, I am sending you to the Annual Festival of the Indian Music Society this evening, out at Chembur. Just keep an eye on things, yes?”

Puzzlement returned.

“Sir, what sort of things it is?”

The Deputy Commissioner frowned.

“Just go there, Ghote, and- And – And keep your eyes open.”

“Yes, sir.”

Should I leave now, Ghote asked himself. Should I just only click heels to Deputy Commissioner sahib, turn smartly and march from his cabin?

But, he thought then, if I am going out to this festival and fail to see whatever I am meant to be keeping my eye on, then that will be worse than seeming not to understand here and now.

“Sir,” he said, “can you be telling anything more?”

The Deputy Commissioner brought his lips hard together in a puff of barely suppressed fury.

“Very well, very well,” he snapped. “So, listen. It has just come to my attention – never mind how – that Gulshan Singh, our damned Number One ganglord, believes something which the police should take note of will happen out at the festival this evening.”

“What sort of something, sir?” Ghote asked, before he realized that the Deputy Commissioner had already said more than he wanted to.

“Something, Ghote. Something. Do I have to dot every i, cross every t?” A glower at the twirling fan above. “Well, I suppose it may be relevant that tonight’s singer is, as it happens, the daughter of Vasudev Kalgutkar, otherwise known as plain Vasubhai.”

“The Number One ganglord?” Ghote could not help exclaiming, acutely aware of the contrast between the high-class culture event he was being sent to and the murky world of the city’s gangs. And then in another heart-sinking moment he realized that the Deputy Commissioner had already given the Number One title to Gulshan Singh.

“Yes, yes. Vasubhai,” the Deputy Commissioner answered, mercifully unaware, it seemed, of Ghote’s unwitting rival claim. “And Vasubhai, let me tell you, had the damn cheek a couple of weeks ago to send me – myself, Deputy Commissioner, Crime Branch – an invitation to the recital, or whatever it is, some damn daughter of his is giving tonight. So I am sending you there, Ghote. To keep your damned eyes open. Yes?”

“Yes, sir.”

Nevertheless out at the recreation ground at Chembur that evening, shortly before the swift onset of darkness, Ghote was still conscious of not knowing much more about what to keep his eye on than he had done in the Deputy Commissioner’s cabin. Yes, most probably the place to watch was the gaily coloured tented shamiana under which The Beauteous Bhakti, as according to the posters Vasubhai’s daughter was called, was to sing. At no doubt interminable length. Whatever it was that had caused Vasubhai’s deadly rival, Gulshan Singh, to hint that a police presence would be needed was most likely to happen there. So far, so good.

Ghote had already taken every sensible precaution that occurred to him. Two tough constables had been posted at the entrance to the fenced-off audience area with its rows of slatted wooden chairs. Along each one of those rows he had marched himself, looking for anything that might possibly be suspicious. He had trodden over every inch of the luxurious carpet, supplied no doubt by Ganglord Vasubhai, on which Bhakti was to sing. But he had made no discoveries at all. He had even traced the thick black cable supplying the lighting for the evening’s performance all the way back to the generator gently throbbing on a truck in the road outside. But, again, there was no sign of anything untoward. Only, at the far side of the deserted recreation ground a mali was urging on a bullock pulling an ancient lawn-mower. Peace under the still light, cloudless sky.

The beauteous Bhakti was to put on her costume in a small dressing-room forming the back part of the shamiana. Going into its darkened shade, Ghote saw the room was as bare as it could possibly be. Its floor was no different from the rest of the neatly mown grass all round. Its walls were the canvas of the shamiana, supported at their corners by thin poles. A number of these, apparently unneeded, protruded indeed from a small green tarpaulin in one corner. But, besides this, the little room contained nothing but a bare trestle table, a single little gilt chair and, on a stand, a full-length mirror in which Bhakti could make sure she was truly beauteous before coming out from its single doorway to sing.

Satisfied, Ghote as a last precaution made a careful inspection of the rear of the whole shamiana. All the lower edges of its colourful canvas, he found, were well pegged into the ground. Its roof was firmly sewn down. Beyond any doubt no one could creep in that way so as to – Was this what Gulshan planned? – attack the beauteous Bhakti. Of course, when eventually Bhakti stepped out someone could perhaps shoot her from a distance. But, if this was what was to happen and not something else altogether, bar looking out for any places where a marksman could hide, there was nothing sensible to be done.

Ghote had hardly sat himself down to wait and wonder at the end of one of the rows of wooden chairs when a big all-white Contessa came motoring fast across the grass and up to the entrance gate. Its driver brought it to a fine screeching halt, and from it stepped none other than Ganglord Vasubhai, a somehow impressively powerful figure, despite his short, almost squat frame made all the more arrogant by the brick-red safari suit he was wearing. He was hastily followed by one of his bodyguards carrying a small suitcase, his flapping kurta barely concealing a pistol holster.

Ghote jumped to his feet and ushered the ganglord past his two solid constables.

“Vasubhai sahib,” he greeted him. “You are remembering myself, Inspector Ghote, Crime Branch?”

The ganglord confronted him, contriving to look down at him although in fact he was a little the shorter.

“Yes, yes. Ghote. Once, when I was very young, you took my knife from me. My best and sharpest knife. Forgiven now. That was long ago, and I have had many others since. But why is Deputy Commissioner sahib not here? I was sending invitation, full-colour picture of my Bhakti, plenty-plenty gold lettering, red silk string also.”

“Deputy Commissioner is sending myself in advance,” Ghote lied. “To be making sure everything is hundred per cent in order.”

“Fine, fine. And he is coming himself? In good time also?”

Ghote thought it wisest to avoid a direct answer.

“But, excuse me, Vasubhai sahib,” he said quickly. “If I am to be doing my duty to my level best, I must be asking to see inside that case your bodyguard is carrying.”

He feared that the ganglord would be too conscious of his own dignity to agree. But he need not have worried.

“Good, good. Maxi precautions. One very fine dancer is to perform here, each and every thing must be fully pukka.”

The surly, silent bodyguard planked the suitcase on the ground and opened its catches. A magnificent green Kanchivaram sari was revealed.

“Yes, I may take inside?” the ganglord asked, picking up the case the bodyguard had snapped closed.

“Certainly, certainly.”

Ghote waited at the edge of the big carpet, the bodyguard a stony pillar beside him. He decided to take the opportunity to give the whole area one more careful scrutiny. Was it Vasubhai that Gulshan Singh was planning to kill here? Was that what was going to happen? But, he thought, it is not very likely. There are rules to their game. Neither top gangster would get rid of his rival directly: doing so would bring instant and equal reprisal. Only gang members at the bottom of the heap were expendable.

So, what was to happen after all? Seemingly nothing.

There followed a terrible thought. Had the Deputy Commissioner become alarmed for no good reason? And how would he tell him, if it was so, that he had been tricked?

Minutes passed. Ghote began to wish that Vasubhai would come out of the dressing-room. It would be something if he could be sure where the ganglord actually was. But no doubt the beauteous Bhakti’s doting father was taking his time to arrange that Kanchivaram sari to its best effect, draping it perhaps first across the bare wooden table and then over the little gilt chair. And next changing his mind and doing it the other way round. He even might be holding it up against his ugly brick-red safari suit and looking at himself in the tall mirror.

“Vasubhai must be very-very proud of his daughter,” he said to the hulking, silent bodyguard.

The fellow simply grunted by way of answer.

Ghote took another look all round. A few early comers were making their way across the neatly mown grass towards the entrance gate, the women in their best, bright glowing saris, the men less colourful in smart shirts and trousers. Behind them the musicians had also arrived, a drummer with his pair of tablas, a woman who would pluck the droning accompaniment from her tall-necked, deep-bowled instrument, a big fat man lugging his heavy, much decorated harmonium.

Then, bursting out from between the canvas flaps of the dressing-room entrance like a bull released from its stall – or a bullet from a gun even, Ghote thought – Ganglord Vasubhai took two striding paces out on to the big carpet and stopped dead.

“Inspector, Inspector. Something you must be seeing.”

There was such a note of urgency in his voice that Ghote could not stop himself running across.

“Inside, inside,” Vasubhai yelled at him, voice hoarse with emotion.

Ghote, going past him towards the dressing-room, found himself recording that a thick sheen of sweat had sprung up all over the ganglord’s formidable face.

The moment he broke through the entrance curtain behind him he understood why Vasubhai had been so alarmed. Evidently for some reason or other he must have flicked back the green tarpaulin on the bundle of unused tent poles. And he had revealed that more than tent poles were tucked away there out of sight. He had revealed a body.

Ghote had immediately smelt blood.

But, going closer, he saw that the corpse had, in fact, been strangled. The mark left by the cord was unmistakable. The dead man was small and utterly nondescript in appearance. His face, Ghote thought with a quick flick of pity, could be that of a hundred, of a thousand, other people. Not a single distinguishing mark. Nor was what he was wearing any more an indication of who he might be, just a simple, much-stained white banian vest and a pair of equally dirty khaki half-pants. But, blotting out everything else, was the monstrous fact that, right up close to the bottom of those greasy old khaki shorts, both the man’s legs had been cut off.

It was from the two hacked-off stumps, Ghote realized, that the smell of blood must be coming. But in that case – the thought came crashing in – it must have been Vasubhai himself, inside the little room for longer than expected, who was responsible. Certainly, if the dead man’s legs had been cut off before Vasubhai had gone into the dressing-room he himself would have smelt blood when he had taken a glancing look at the heap of tent poles under the tarpaulin.

Why, why, he cursed himself, had he not done what Vasubhai must have done and lifted the tarpaulin to make sure nothing suspicious was under it? But he had not. There had not seemed to be any reason to lift up the sheet when the ends of the poles were projecting from it, though now it was plain there had been many fewer of those than it had seemed. The ones scattered now on the grass must have been carefully arranged round the body of the small man whose corpse had been put in the dressing-room. For some reason? For what reason?

And why had this man been strangled, this scrawny little figure, who might be any one of a thousand, no, of ten or twenty thousand other almost anonymous people going about the city scraping out some sort of a living? Certainly his murder was not going to be a case for the elite Crime Branch. The local police would have to carry out some sort of an investigation, though there was almost no chance that the murder of such an almost faceless victim could be tied down to some equally anonymous killer.

Unless… Unless the killer could possibly be Vasubhai, there for so long in the little darkened dressing-room? But, no. No, that little insignificant corpse must have been put under that green tarpaulin long before Vasubhai had entered.

But Vasubhai, did he still carry the sort of knife he always had so long ago? Very likely, though if so it was well concealed now. So, demand to search him? Not all that easy a thing to do. Vasubhai, ganglord though he is, is definitely a man of influence in this crime-dominated city of ours. Politicians by the dozen in his pocket. Offend him and I could find myself posted to the Armed Police in some distant, distant part of the State. All right, if it was plain he had committed a murder, I would arrest the fellow here and now. But it is not, not at all.

In any case, if he was busy in here hacking off the poor blank-faced victim’s legs, why should he have done such a thing? And, more to the point, much more, where on earth are those legs now? Or, rather, where in this little room are those legs?

Ghote took a deep breath and gave the whole small canvas-walled place a careful inspection. But, even before he had begun, he had been all but certain he would find nothing. There was nowhere at all under the canvas roof where any objects as evident as two human legs could be kept out of sight. Not under the bare table. Not behind the solitary standing tall mirror. Not beneath the little gilt chair. Nor among the litter of tent poles beside the body. There was not the least sign either that, somehow, the well-pegged edges of the canvas had been prised up enough for Vasubhai to have thrust the legs outside, or even any knife he might have had.

Close inspection will be necessary fully to confirm that. But, peer as I may at the pegs and the grass beside them, I am damn sure I will find no signs of disturbance.

He took another good look at Vasubhai, still standing just inside the entrance. One thing was patently evident: the fellow was certainly not holding two such bloody objects as those legs. Nor, after rushing out of the dressing-room, had he had any opportunity whatsoever to have hurled them one after another anywhere out of sight. And nowhere in that brick-red safari suit could he possibly have concealed anything as bulky as two human legs, however short in stature their owner.

Wait. That suitcase. But surely it must be altogether too small?

He strode across to where it had been put on the bare table and flicked it open. And there was the gorgeous Kanchivaram sari, just as he had seen it before. He even plunged his hand in, for all that logic told him it was a ridiculous act, to see if the legs were inside, shallow though the case was. But, if there were no legs, there was something else. There was a long-bladed knife.

But it was, as far as a single hard look told, unstained by any blood. And, of course, it could have been in there untouched the whole time.

Ghote cursed himself. Why didn’t I make a thorough search of this case when I was first been shown its contents? But there was no reason why I should have done. I was not at all knowing there was a body inside the room here, or that somebody was going to cut off that anonymous fellow’s legs? If they had? If Vasubhai has? But, if, if, if he did, where are the legs? Where?

All right, make one final, final check.

Calling to one of the constables by the entrance gate, Ghote quietly told him to keep a strict watch on the waiting ganglord. Then a quick race round the whole exterior of the shamiana.

But it served only to confirm beyond any possibility of doubt that the dead man’s legs had not been somehow pushed out into the open.

Ghote gave a great sigh.

Only one thing to do now. From his back trouser pocket he pulled his mobile and swiftly tapped out a number.

“Deputy Commissioner sahib? Ghote here, sir. At the music festival. And, sir, there has been a murder. Sir, with one most hard to explain circumstance. Sir, you must come.”

The Deputy Commissioner came. But not alone. When over the air Ghote had answered all his questions he had plainly come to the conclusion that the extraordinary circumstances required extraordinary measures. So, there was the Crime Branch-trained search team, and the Branch dogs, Akbar, Moti and Caesar, with their handlers. There was Sergeant Moos, in charge of Headquarters Fingerprint Section. There was even someone Ghote had seen only once before, the Deputy Commissioner’s wife’s favourite guru, Swami Mayananda, believed to have mystic powers far beyond the everyday.

Snapping out commands, the Deputy Commissioner rapidly put everyone to work. Each square inch of the grass floor of the dressing-room was examined by the hands-and-knees searchers. The carpet outside was equally subjected to a comprehensive patting examination. Akbar, Moti and Caesar were set to tugging their handlers here, there and everywhere, sniffing and sniffing. At the entrance gate the handful of early arrivals were each subjected to questioning, even though Ghote had assured the Deputy Commissioner that none of them had penetrated the fenced-off audience area. The musicians were body-searched from head to foot, although they, too, had never come beyond the surrounding fence. Sergeant Moos, crouching and kneeling, stretching and peering, spread clouds of his dark and light dusting powders over every surface he could find, likely and unlikely. Everywhere there was buzzing activity. Only the swami, who ignoring the Deputy Commissioner, had sat himself down cross-legged beside the neglected body of the nondescript victim and had entered into a trance, provided a small aura of stillness.

But no results of any sort emerged.

“Damn it,” the Deputy Commissioner shouted eventually. “That man’s legs are somewhere. Somewhere. Find them, find them. The damn things can’t have just walked.”

Then he realized the dreadful pun his fury had caused him to perpetrate, and, for want of a better person to vent his rage upon, directed a glare of unrestrained ferocity towards Ghote, who, after having on the Deputy Commissioner’s own orders escorted the Beauteous Bhakti’s father to wait in his car, had placed himself on one of the audience chairs in the back row. Solitary and ignored, he had sat there waiting, feeling all he could do was to keep an eye on the two constables keeping their eyes on the brick-suited ganglord.

At last Vasubhai rolled down a window in the big Contessa, its engine softly running in order to operate the air-conditioner; driver and bodyguard two stone-still presences in the front seats.

“Deputy Commissioner sahib,” he called out. “My daughter would be coming at any minute. She is late already. What to do?”

The Deputy Commissioner shot him a glance, still sparking with fury.

“Oh, take her back home, man,” he shouted. “Take her back home. You are not thinking she will be giving her recital now, are you?”

“No, no, Deputy Commissioner. Out of question, a singer of my Bhakti’s status. So I will be saying goodbye itself.”

A tap on the shoulder of the Contessa’s driver and the engine was revved up.

And then Ghote jumped from his chair. With a wildly launched leap he vaulted the fence behind him. And, as the ganglord’s big car began to move off, he flung himself into its path.

“Stop,” he shouted. “Stop. Police orders.”

From inside the car Vasubhai yelled to his driver “Go on, man, go on.”

But Ghote stood his ground. And, with the car’s gleaming chrome bumper actually touching his legs, the driver brought it to a halt.

The Deputy Commissioner came striding up.

“What the hell is going on?” he demanded.

“Sir,” Ghote said. “Sir, I have just only realized how the legs of the murdered man were coming to disappear.”

“Nonsense, man, nonsense. Legs cannot just disappear. They are here somewhere, I tell you. They are somewhere inside that shamiana. They must be.”

Ghote drew in a breath.

“Sir, no,” he said.

“What the hell do you mean No, Inspector? Have you gone out of your head?”

“Sir, it is simple. Sir, I am believing this is where we were going wrong. Not looking, sir, for one obvious answer.”

Rapidly he corrected himself.

“Sir, it is where I myself was going wrong when I was telephoning yourself, sir.”

“You were going wrong? That I can believe. So, how was it you were making the mistake of calling out the whole of Crime Branch?” Eh, man? How? How?”

“Sir, as I was saying, sir. It is altogether most simple. Sir, I am realizing now who that fellow dead inside there must be. Sir, he would be someone Vasubhai here was planting in the gang of his rival, Gulshan Singh. A spy, sir. A jasoos. And, sir, Gulshan Singh must have discovered same. That is why he was sending some message to yourself, sir, saying there was something at this festival now that would interest police. He was wanting us, and whole world also, to see what happens to anyone who tries and attempts to infiltrate his gang.”

“Ha. Well, I dare say you could be right there, Inspector. I thought something on those lines might be in the air. That’s why I sent you here to keep an eye on things. And what did you do? You let that jasoos be murdered right under your own eyes.”

“No, sir.”

“No? Are you contradicting me, Ghote? To my face?”

“Sir, answer is simple. Sir, this spy was not strangled here in that dressing-room and his legs cut off. If they had been, sir, I would have smelt blood as soon as I was entering to carry out inspection. But, sir, I was not. I was smelling blood just only later when Vasubhai was calling to me to go in there.”

“Now, what the hell are you saying?”

“Sir, just that the jasoos was strangled and his body put under that tarpaulin before even I was coming here. He must have been murdered by Gulshan Singh at his own place and then brought here so that, when time was ripe, he would be found and Vasubhai would be losing very much of respect with each and every member of his own gang.”

“Inspector, how the hell can you have the face to say that a body that was found by you yourself, with the mutilated stumps of its legs still bleeding, was put here before you were even coming?”

“Sir, quite simple. The fellow was never having any legs.’

He paused a moment in the hope that what he had brought himself to say would penetrate to the Deputy Commissioner in time.

“Sir,” he went on, gulping a little, “that man must have been one of the legless beggars that are everywhere in the city, sir, going here-there on their little wheeled platforms. And only if Vasubhai’s gang members were seeing a legless beggar, would it be plain to them that the hundred per cent nondescript spy put into Gulshan Singh’s gang had been found out, sir. Sir, because of that man having no distinguishing feature except for not having any legs, what was it Vasubhai had to do when he was find his body? Sir, he must at each and every cost make it look as if the body was not that of his jasoos. He must make it look, sir, as if it was the body of a man who was having as many legs as any other person. Then there would be no rumour or gup, sir, about a legless beggar having been murdered. You must be well knowing, sir, what I was remembering: in cases of asphyxia, such as death by strangling, blood clotting is by no means immediate. Sir, you will find, I am thinking, those cut-off layers of flesh in the pockets of Vasubhai’s safari suit, or, if they are now inside his car itself, there may be some blood stains on the inside of the pockets.”

And find the two layers of flesh they did, and some bloodstains. But who took all the credit? The Deputy Commissioner, of course.