The Rhythm of Riddles: 3 Byomkesh Bakshi Mysteries Read online

  ‘Haripada, the servant, had heard someone in Natabar’s room at six in the evening. What if that person had killed Natabar? And had then pushed back the supposed time of the killing in order to create an alibi for himself? A difference of fifteen minutes in the time of death cannot be detected by a postmortem.

  ‘I was convinced that the murderer was not an outsider, but someone who lived in the boarding house. But who was it? Was it Shibkali-babu? Rashebhari and Banabehari? Or someone else? I did not know who had a motive, but only Shibkali-babu had the opportunity. Everyone else had a watertight alibi.

  ‘My mind was fogged; I could not see anything clearly. I had noticed that Natabar’s room was directly beneath Bhupesh-babu’s, and Natabar-babu’s window was directly beneath Bhupesh-babu’s. But the thought of a cracker hadn’t even occurred to me then. Yes, a cracker. The kind that explodes when hurled, or when it is dropped from a height on a hard surface.

  ‘I was on my way to the police station this morning in the hope of some fresh information. As I was leaving, I thought of checking for clues in the lane near Natabar’s window.

  ‘I did find a clue. The discoloured stain left behind by a cracker which burst on the paved surface of the lane directly beneath Natabar’s window. When I sniffed it I discovered a faint tang of gunpowder. All my doubts were now dispelled. An excellent alibi had been created. Who had created the alibi? It could not have been anyone except Bhupesh-babu. Because he was the one who had opened the window. Rashbehari and Banabehari had gone up to the window after hearing the bang.

  ‘Bhupesh-babu went downstairs quietly at six that evening under cover of darkness. The pistol had already been procured; he entered Natabar’s room, introduced himself and shot him. Opening the window looking out on the lane, he placed the pistol on the window sill and returned to his room. Fortunately no one saw him on his journey to and from Natabar’s room. But just in case they had, he needed an alibi. Returning to his room, he waited. Rashbehari and Banabehari arrived in ten minutes for their game of bridge. But Ajit had not arrived yet, so the three of them waited for him.

  ‘Then Bhupesh-babu heard Ajit’s sandals flapping on the staircase. He was prepared, holding a marble-sized cracker in his clenched hand. On the pretext of stuffiness in the room, he opened the window looking out on the lane and dropped the cracker. There was a bang downstairs. Rashbehari and Banabehari rushed to the window; Bhupesh-babu showed them the imaginary murderer in the brown shawl.

  ‘Bhupesh-babu did not have to do anything more; the corpse was discovered in due course. The police came and took the corpse away. Curtain.’

  Byomkesh stopped. Bhupesh-babu had been listening without a word, without stirring, he remained the same way. ‘Any errors?’ Byomkesh asked him, arching his eyebrows.

  Bhupesh-babu stirred now, shaking his head with a smile. ‘None whatsoever. I was the one who made the error. I didn’t imagine you’d be back so soon, Byomkesh-babu. I had expected Natabar’s case to have died down by the time you returned.’

  ‘Two questions remain unanswered,’ Byomkesh smiled. ‘First, what was your motive? Second, how did you muffle the sound of the pistol being fired? Even if you fire a pistol in a closed room, the sound is likely to be heard outside. Did you take no care to prevent this?’

  ‘I shall answer the second question first.’ Removing the shawl folded over his shoulder, he unfolded it and held it out before us with both his hands; we saw a small hole in the new shawl. ‘I was dressed in this shawl when I went to Natabar’s room, hiding the pistol under it. I shot Natabar without taking the pistol out of my shawl; the sound was muffled by it, no one heard.’

  Byomkesh nodded slowly. ‘And the answer to my first question?’ he said. ‘I can guess some of it; you had shown us your son’s photograph yesterday. Still, I want to hear it from you.’

  A pulse began to beat in Bhupesh-babu’s forehead, but he spoke calmly. ‘I had shown you my son’s photograph because I realized you would discover the truth. So I was justifying myself in advance. Natabar tricked my son into accompanying him from school on the day the riots broke out in Dhaka. That evening he came to my house to tell me he would return my son for a ransom of ten thousand rupees. I did not have ten thousand in cash, I gave him whatever I had; my wife took off all her jewellery and handed it to him. Natabar left with all of it, but we did not get our son back. We did not see Natabar either. Several years had passed since then. When I came to Calcutta after losing my wife and son, one day I suddenly spotted Natabar on the road. And then …’

  ‘I see,’ said Byomkesh. ‘There is no need to say anything more, Bhupesh-babu.’

  Bhupesh-babu remained immobile for a few moments. Then he said, ‘What do you wish to do with me?’

  Byomkesh looked at the ceiling for a while. Then he said, ‘“No one hangs for killing a crow,” the writer Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay had said. I believe no one should hang for killing a vulture either. You need not worry.’

  Byomkesh and Barada

  1

  It wasn’t so very long ago that Barada-babu, the ghost-seeker, had run into Byomkesh, the truth-seeker. Byomkesh was by nature opposed to the outdoors; he preferred to spin his spider’s web in a corner of the room. But on that occasion he had surprised everyone with a journey of three hundred miles.

  A childhood friend of Byomkesh’s was employed as Deputy Superintendent of Police in the state of Bihar. He had been transferred to Munger some time earlier and had begun to hurl letters at Byomkesh at regular intervals. There must have been a hidden motive behind his cordial invitations; for the mind refuses to imagine that a DSP would want to revive an ancient, half-forgotten friendship without any reason.

  It was the middle of September; the clouds had lost their colour, perhaps due to their excessive extravagance. On a day such as this Byomkesh suggested with a kind of desperation on receiving a letter from his policeman friend, ‘Let us visit Munger.’

  I was ready. There’s something in the autumn air before Durga Puja that relentlessly pushes the resident Bengali away from home and the non-resident Bengali, towards it. ‘Let’s,’ I said happily.

  Arriving at Munger at the appointed hour, we discovered the DSP waiting for us. His name was Shashanka-babu. Probably the same age as ourselves, he had not yet crossed his thirties; yet his expression and behaviour had already acquired an air of middle-aged gravity. It seemed he had aged under the weight of additional responsibilities thrust on upon him while still relatively young. He took us to his official quarters inside the fort and settled us in.

  The part of Munger referred to as ‘fort’ retains none of its fortitude; but once upon a time it had in fact been Mir Kasim’s impregnable fort. It was a circular area with a perimeter of almost a quarter of a mile, surrounded by ramparts and a moat, with the Ganga flowing on the left. There were only three exit gates. At present the fort held—besides the living quarters for high-ranking state and judicial officials, the jail, and an extensive playground—the residences of a handful of ordinary citizens too. The town, the market and actual human habitation were outside; the fort was seemingly a sovereign, upper-class enclave for royals and noblemen.

  I became acquainted with Shashanka-babu at his residence over breakfast and a cup of tea. He welcomed us profusely; but I observed that the man was exceedingly cunning, considerably adept at conversation. Unless you paid close attention, you would not realize how he had unobtrusively got to the point during seemingly aimless chatter about memories of old friendship and a list of sights worth seeing in Munger. At least, there was no doubt that he was a man of action, bringing up the real issue with such verbal finesse that there could be no scope for resentment or dissatisfaction.

  As a matter of fact I had not even grasped that he had raised the real issue within half an hour of our reaching his residence; but a hint of amusement in Byomkesh’s eyes alerted me. ‘I shall not disappoint you with sights like historic ruins or hot water springs alone,’ Shashanka-babu was saying at the time. ‘If yo
u are interested in the supernatural, I can show you something of that too. A mysterious ghost has arrived in our town lately—I am somewhat perturbed by him.’

  ‘Are you normally perturbed by ghosts in your line of duty?’ asked Byomkesh.

  ‘Not at all,’ Shashanka-babu smiled. ‘But the way things have turned out … The thing is, a gentleman died rather mysteriously in this very fort about six months ago. The mystery of his death has not been solved yet, but his spirit has already started haunting the house he lived in.’

  Byomkesh put down his empty cup; I observed deep amusement playing in his eyes. Wiping his mouth carefully with a handkerchief, he drawled, ‘Shashanka, I can see your conversational skills are as strong as ever—constant application has refined it further. It has been less than an hour since we set foot in Munger, yet I am already drawn to your local drama by the description you gave. Give me all the details.’

  A meeting of true minds. Grasping what Byomkesh was hinting at, Shashanka-babu may have been slightly embarrassed. But his expression betrayed none of this. ‘Another cup of tea?’ he said casually. ‘No? Some paan? Here you are, Ajit-babu. All right, let me recount the incident; although it is not particularly spine-tingling. It took place six months ago …’

  Popping some paan into his mouth, Shashanka-babu began his story.

  ‘There is a particular house in the fort, near the southern gate. Although small, it is two-storied, with a clearing around it. The houses inside the fort are all at some distance from each other; not as congested as the houses in cities. Every house has its own compound. The owner of this house is a rich local nobleman—he rents it out.

  ‘This man who had occupied the house for the past fifteen years was named Baikuntha Das. He was getting on in years—a goldsmith by caste. He had a gold-and-silver shop in the market, but that was only for show. His real business was with jewels. His account books showed that he had fifty-one precious jewels in his possession when he died—diamonds, pearls, rubies and emeralds whose value amounted to some two-and-a-half lakh rupees.

  ‘He used to keep all these precious jewels at home and not in his shop. And yet the strange thing was that he did not even have an iron safe at home. No one knows where he stashed his precious jewels. When a customer came he would take him home, and then, giving him a seat in the drawing room, he would go upstairs to fetch the jewels from his bedroom to display them.

  ‘You can understand from the extent of his riches that he was a wealthy man. But no one would suspect as much from his appearance. Rather a harmless middle-aged man, extraordinarily devoted to the gods, a holy necklace of tulsi leaves draped around his neck—his palms were permanently joined in supplication. But were anyone to approach him for a donation for a good cause, he would sink into such gloom and despair that the local young men had stopped asking him for contributions. His name too had been distorted in the process; he was laughingly called Miser, rather than Mister, Baikuntha. The entire Bengali population of the town referred to him as Miser Goldsmith.

  ‘The man was indeed uncommonly parsimonious. His monthly expenses ran to seventy rupees, forty out of which was his rent. He paid for his own, his daughter’s and an idiot servant’s food and clothing with the remaining thirty rupees. I have seen his accounts book; his expenses never crossed seventy rupees. Unusual, is it not? I used to wonder why a miser like him paid such a high rent to live inside the fort. He could have lived outside on a far lower rent.’

  Byomkesh was lying back in his deck chair, his eyes on the entrance to the none-too-distant fort of stone. ‘The interiors of the fort must be safer, with fewer thieves or robbers,’ he observed. ‘Someone in possession of two-and-a-half lakh rupees’ worth of jewels is bound to seek a residence in a secure area. Mister Baikuntha may have been a miser but he was probably not careless.’

  ‘I assumed as much,’ responded Shashanka-babu. ‘But as the story reveals, he could not escape the eagle eyes of thieves despite the security offered by the fort. The theft must have been planned quite some time earlier. Munger may be a small town, but do not dismiss it as inconsequential.’

  ‘Of course not, why would I do that,’ protested Byomkesh.

  ‘There are a couple of great souls here whose skills at theft, shooting and murder even your Calcutta might be hard put to match. What can I tell you, even the government is concerned about them. You know there are many gun-foundries here dating back to Mir Kasim’s time, don’t you? But never mind all that now; let me first tell you the tale of Baikuntha the goldsmith.’

  Having used these slightly irrelevant details to drop significant hints about the vital responsibilities borne by the police and himself, he continued …

  ‘On the 26th of April, Baikuntha-babu returned home from his shop at eight in the evening. He was a simple man, with no premonition of the imminent mishap. After dinner, he went to sleep in his first-floor room at approximately nine o’ clock. His daughter used to sleep in the prayer room downstairs. After giving her father his meal, she went to her room and locked the door. The idiot servant used to guard the shop at night; he left as soon as the owner returned. Nobody knows what happened in the house after that.

  ‘When Baikuntha-babu didn’t emerge in the morning, the door was broken down. The police found his corpse on the floor in a sitting position, its back against the wall. There were no injuries—the assailant had strangled him to death, and then escaped with all his jewels.’

  ‘So the murderer entered through the open window?’ asked Byomkesh.

  ‘So it seems,’ answered Shashanka-babu. ‘Since the only door to the room was locked, there was no other way in besides the window! I suspect Baikuntha-babu went to sleep with the window open; it was summer—and a particularly hot night. There were no bars on the window, which made it simple for the thieves to climb into the room using a ladder.’

  ‘All of Baikuntha-babu’s jewels were stolen?’

  ‘All of them. Jewels worth two-and-a-half lakh rupees gone. Not a single one was found. The thieves didn’t spare the money in his personal wooden case either, they took everything.’

  ‘Did Baikuntha-babu keep his jewels in this case?’

  ‘Where else could he have kept them? Of course, there’s no proof that he did. No one was allowed into his bedroom; not even his daughter knew their whereabouts. But as I told you already, his room didn’t even have a safe; and yet he used to keep all the diamonds and pearls and all else in his bedroom. So it must be assumed he kept them in the case.’

  ‘Was there no other box or case in the room?’

  ‘Nothing at all. You will be amazed to know the room held nothing but a mat, a pillow, that case, another case for his paan, and a pitcher of water. Not even a picture on the wall.’

  ‘A paan-case. You did examine it carefully?’ asked Byomkesh.

  Shashanka-babu offered an unhappy smile. ‘Look, we’re not as stupid as you think we are. We went through everything in the room with a fine-tooth comb. The paan-case had a hunk of lime and some of the things that go into a paan, including the leaves. The case was made of brass, with separate compartments for each of the ingredients. Baikuntha-babu was addicted to paan—and because he didn’t like the way others made it, he prepared his own paan. Is there any other information you need?’

  ‘Oh no, this is sufficient,’ responded Byomkesh with a laugh. ‘There is no doubting the patience and application of the police; everyone agrees there. If only they were accompanied by a little intelligence … but never mind all that. The long and short of it is that one or more thieves murdered Baikuntha-babu and fled with jewels worth two-and-a-half-lakh rupees. Have you heard whether there have been attempts to sell the jewels anywhere?’

  ‘The jewels have not been put up for sale yet. We would have heard if they had been. We have observers everywhere.’

  ‘Very well. And then?’

  ‘That’s as far as it goes. Baikuntha-babu’s daughter is in a sorry state. He did not leave any money behind; there wasn’t a single r
upee to be found anywhere. All she has is the little money she got by selling the gold and silver in the shop. It is distressing to see a Bengali girl from a respectable family being forced to be a dependant of someone else in a foreign land because of poverty.’

  ‘Whom is she a dependant of?’

  ‘A veteran lawyer from hereabouts—his name is Tarashankar-babu. He has volunteered to have the daughter stay in his house. You have to say he’s a decent sort despite being a lawyer. He was on good terms with Baikuntha-babu—they used to play chess every Sunday afternoon …’

  ‘Hmm. Is the girl a widow?’

  ‘No, she’s married. But it wouldn’t be incorrect to call her a widow. She was married young, her husband soon became wayward. A drunkard and a debauch, he used to act on stage till he suddenly left with a circus troupe. He has been missing since then. That was why Baikuntha-babu had got his daughter to live with him.’

  ‘How old is she?’

  ‘About twenty-three or twenty-four.’

  ‘Character?’

  ‘Upright, so far as I know. Her appearance also favours morality—you could describe her as a veritable hag. The poor husband cannot really be blamed …’

  ‘I see. No family anywhere?’

  ‘None to speak of. Her father’s younger brother’s sons live in Nabadwip. Some of them rushed here when they heard. But when they saw there was not a drop of juice left, that the thieves had taken everything, they peeled off one by one.’

  Byomkesh was silent for several minutes; then he said, exhaling, ‘Quite a novel affair. But it is probably too late to do anything about it now. Besides, I am a visitor, here today gone tomorrow. I should not interfere with your work. You will probably not approve either.’

  ‘Oh no, why should you interfere?’ declared Shashanka-babu. ‘I’m not making an official request to you; but you’re a fellow-traveller, if your observations lead you to certain ideas you can always help me personally. You’re here on holiday; I do not wish to burden you with responsibilities.’