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Dead on Time. H. R. f. Keating
Читать онлайн.Название Dead on Time
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781448303991
Автор произведения H. R. f. Keating
Жанр Ужасы и Мистика
Серия An Inspector Ghote Mystery
Издательство Ingram
“He is a good man, this one remaining?”
“No, no, no, no. Ganpatrao is the greatest rogue in all District Ramkhed. He is drinking. And the girls he has seduced … the people he has ridden down on that motorbike of his also … chee, chee.”
Ghote, walking steadily along the narrow, dust-powdery path between the fields beside his splendidly useful source of information, wondered if he dared push the talk yet nearer his objective.
“The greatest rogue in District Ramkhed?” he said. “And does he, this Ganpatrao—it is Ganpatrao?—does he go so far as to do these wicked things beyond Ramkhed? Does he go to Nagpur? To Bombay, even?”
Had he risked too much? Would the barber feel he was being asked unnecessary questions? Wonder then whether this too-hopeful watchmaker really was what he had said he was? Would he go and talk to the Patil about him?
But it seemed not.
“Oh, Ganpatrao has been in Bombay,” the barber answered, clearly happy to be able to relay so much juicy gossip to someone who had heard none of it before. “Yes, that is where he was learning such bad habits. The Patil sent him to college there. He sent both his grandsons. But while Ramrao did well and learned much about getting rich, Ganpatrao learned just only about drinking and whoring. Oh, if he could have got more of money out of his grandfather he would have stayed and stayed in Bombay. Often he is saying it.”
“So does he go there still when he can? Was he … was he perhaps there just only three-four days ago?”
It was not a very clever question. It risked, if anything did, alerting the barber. But he had been able on the spur of the moment to think of no more cunning way of obtaining that one vital piece of information.
However, the barber simply wagged his head ambiguously.
“Perhaps yes. Perhaps no. Who can say? With that motorbike where can he not go? To Nagpur it is easy. And then all places are there for him on the train.”
Ghote sadly admitted to himself that he had failed to have had the tremendous piece of luck he might have done. For a little he walked in silence along the dust-soft path scarcely wide enough for the two of them.
“The Sarpanch was away three-four days ago,” the barber suddenly said, turning with happy crudeness to an as yet untouched subject for gossip-mongering.
“The Sarpanch?”
Ghote’s mind was at once awhirl with questions, hopes. Surely that memory-dazed old soldier had said that the Sarpanch of the village was the Patil’s son-in-law. Indeed, that must be why the barber had abruptly mentioned him. And had he himself not just learned that after Ganpatrao the Patil had no other male heir? Just his one daughter? So this Sarpanch would have almost as much to gain from Ramrao’s death as Ganpatrao. And the Sarpanch had definitely been away from the village at the time Ramrao had been beaten to death in the Tick Tock Watchworks. So could it be …?
“Yes, our sarpanch, Jambuvant Dhoble by name. He is the husband of Patilji’s daughter, you know. Patilji said he was to be voted sarpanch when Bapurao, the father of Ganpatrao, was no more.”
Yes, so he was right. Here, surely, was another suspect. And, if what that muzzy idiot of an old soldier had told him was true, that the Sarpanch took bribes from both sides, then he was probably as much of a bad hat as Ganpatrao himself.
But how to obtain some hard evidence against him? Or against Ganpatrao? How to get hold of something more definite to set against A.I. Lobo’s case than the mere fact that someone with a motive had been away from his home at the time of the victim’s death? Something that would make his own name with the D.G.P.?
Till now all he had learned had been rumor and guesswork, better though it was than the state of total ignorance he had been in when he had first set foot in the village. But very likely the D.G.P. would dismiss mere hearsay out of hand. And the barber, plainly, had little more to tell, if anything.
Then it came to him.
If what the old soldier at the chaikhana had said, though muddled, was more reliable than he had believed, as the barber’s gossip tended to confirm, then perhaps one other thing the old man had spoken of was more than the mere confusion of a mind that had lost all sense of time.
The boy brahmin. The old soldier had said that a boy brahmin, presumably the son of the regular village priest who had perhaps died early, was accustomed to visit the Patil’s house every day to perform the necessary rituals. Surely that boy would know, if anybody, whether Ganpatrao had been absent from the family home.
So how to find the boy? Not easy without asking direct questions that, in a village like Dharbani, would at once provoke questions in return, questions it might be difficult to answer.
He thought.
“Tell me,” he said at last, “does the Patil keep to all old customs? Are prayers said in his house each day?”
“Oh, yes, yes. Patilji is a good man, I was saying it. He would not think any day had begun unless the brahmin had visited his house.”
“And the brahmin … I expect he has been going to that house for year after year?”
Once more the barber was delighted to put this ignorant stranger right.
“No, no, no. The brahmin we had for some years was expiring. So now it is his son who goes to the Patil’s house.”
“Ah, yes. And if your brahmin was a man of many years, I suppose this son of his is well used to the work?”
“No, no, no, no. No, the brahmin now is a boy only. Luckily he was old enough to take up the task when his father was dying. He was just past twelve. He had received his sacred thread.”
“So he is twelve-thirteen only now? You know, I would like to see that boy. To do a brahmin’s work at that age, it is something Dharbani can be proud of.”
“Yes, yes. You are right for once. That boy is very, very good.”
“So where is it I could see?”
Was his inquiry too sudden? Apparently not.
“Oh, that is easy. The boy goes each day after he has visited the Patil’s house to the old temple on the hill. No one else is going there these days, but the boy goes. He is saying the god has called him. He is a boy in a thousand. In two thousand.”
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