Menagerie & other Byomkesh Bakshi Mysteries Read online

  SARADINDU BANDYOPADHYAY

  The Menagerie and Other Byomkesh Bakshi Mysteries

  Translated from the Bengali by

  SREEJATA GUHA

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Contents

  About the Author

  The Menagerie

  The Jewel Case

  The Will That Vanished

  The Quills of the Porcupine

  Translator’s Note

  Copyright Page

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  THE MENAGERIE AND OTHER BYOMKESH BAKSHI MYSTERIES

  Saradindu Bandyopadhyay was born on 30 March 1899 in Jaunpur, Uttar Pradesh. His first literary venture was a book of poems, published in 1919. At the time he was a student in Vidyasagar College, Calcutta, and lived in a mess on Harrison Road (now Mahatma Gandhi Road). His room at the mess was later to become a model for Byomkesh Bakshi’s famous first residence. He married in 1918, while he was still a student. Subsequently he studied law, and then dedicated himself to writing. By 1932, when the first Byomkesh mystery appeared, he was already an established writer.

  In 1938, Saradindu moved to Bombay to work on screenplays for Bombay Talkies and later for other banners. He worked in Bombay till 1952, when he gave up his ties with cinema and moved to Pune to concentrate on his writing. He went on to become a popular and renowned writer of ghost stories, historical romances and children’s fiction in Bengali. But the Byomkesh series remains his most cherished contributions to the world of contemporary Bengali fiction.

  Saradindu Bandyopadhyay was a recipient of the Rabindra Purashkar in 1967 for his novel Tungabhadrar Tirey. He was also awarded the Sarat Smriti Purashkar by Calcutta University in the same year. He passed away on 22 September 1970.

  Sreejata Guha has an MA in Comparative Literature from State University of New York at Stony Brook. She has translated Saradindu Bandyopadhyay’s Picture Imperfect (a collection of Byomkesh Bakshi mysteries) and Band of Soldiers (a collection of the Sadashiv stories), Rabindranath Tagore’s A Grain of Sand: Chokher Bali, Home and the World and The Prince and Other Modern Fables, Saratchandra Chattopadhyay’s Devdas, Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay’s Rajani and Taslima Nasrin’s French Lover for Penguin.

  The Menagerie

  1

  Calcutta, soon after the Second World War. Summer was at its peak. Satyaboti’s brother, Sukumar, had taken her and the child away to Darjeeling. Byomkesh and I were on our own in the Harrison Road flat, left to roast in the heat.

  Work was a little slow for Byomkesh just then. This was nothing new; but this time, the length of the slack period and the sheer monotony of leisure were getting on our nerves. We were urgently in need of some diversion. To compound our misery, Satyaboti and the baby too were away. In sheer desperation, we had taken to playing chess.

  I had an aptitude of sorts at the game and I had taught it to Byomkesh. At the outset, he was quite easy to trump. But with time, it became increasingly difficult to beat him at the game. Eventually, the day arrived when he checkmated me with the unexpected move of a pawn. I was aware of the saying that there is no shame in being defeated by one’s disciple. But when you start losing to someone whom you have only just initiated into the game, you begin to lose faith in your own abilities. I was quite disconsolate.

  It didn’t help at all that it was unbearably hot. Ever since that morning in March when I had woken up with my bed soaked in sweat, the last month and a half had seen a gradual rise of the mercury with no respite in sight. It was not as if it didn’t rain a couple of times, but this only served to step up the humidity level. The fan whirred overhead relentlessly, night and day, but this brought no relief either. I felt as if I were immersed from head to toe in rasgulla syrup.

  With mind and body in this despondent state, we had set the chessmen out on the charpoy again one morning. Byomkesh was on the verge of checkmating me with his rook and I was perspiring profusely from the anxiety his anticipated move generated when there was an intrusion.

  It came in the form of a soft but persistent knocking on the door. It couldn’t be the postman—his knock carried a note of aggression. So who could it be? We looked at one another in eager anticipation. Could it be that the long-awaited new mystery crying for a solution had come to our door at last?

  Quickly, Byomkesh slipped on a kurta and opened the door. Meanwhile, I too made myself decent for company by draping a thin muslin stole over my naked torso.

  The door opened to reveal a middle-aged gentleman. He was of medium build, a little stolid, with a sharp, clean-shaven face. On his nose sat a pair of frameless spectacles with tinted lenses. He had on a pair of snow-white trousers and a half-sleeved silk shirt. He wore no socks, but was shod in a pair of braided, Grecian sandals. All in all, a well-turned-out look.

  In a very cultivated voice, he asked, ‘Byomkeshbabu …?’

  ‘That’s me,’ Byomkesh replied. ‘Come in, please.’

  He offered the gentleman a seat and adjusted the regulator to increase the speed of the fan whirring overhead. The man took out a visiting card and handed it to Byomkesh. The printed card said:

  Nishanath Sen

  Golap Colony

  Mohanpur, 24 Paraganas

  B.A.R.

  The other side of the card carried the telegraphic address ‘Golap’ and the telephone number.

  Byomkesh raised his eyes from the card and said, ‘Golap Colony. That’s sort of an unusual name.’

  A slight smile appeared on Nishanathbabu’s face. ‘Golap Colony is the name of my garden,’ he explained. ‘I have a wholesale business marketing flowers, mostly roses. Of course, we grow vegetables too and there is a dairy unit as well. I have named the place Golap Colony.’

  Byomkesh gave him a piercing look and said, ‘Oh, I see. How far is Mohanpur from Calcutta?’

  Nishanathbabu replied, ‘From Sealdah, it is about an hour’s journey by train. But it doesn’t exactly lie on the railway route. It’s about a couple of miles from the station.’

  Nishanathbabu’s manner of speaking was unhurried, almost indolent. His warily alert countenance indicated however that this apparent torpor was not really laziness or apathy, but a practised performance. I would surmise that this habit had developed from years of speaking in carefully measured tones.

  Under the influence of our visitor’s slow and studied speech rhythms, Byomkesh’s own speech pattern seemed to have grown a trifle indolent as well. He said very slowly, ‘You did say you were in business. But you don’t look like a trader, not even like an agent for a foreign merchant company. How long have you been in the business?’

  ‘A little over ten years,’ Nishanathbabu replied. ‘What, in your opinion, could be my profession?’

  ‘I would think you were a civil servant—perhaps even a judge or a magistrate.’

  Behind the tinted glasses, Nishanathbabu’s eyes glittered for an instant. But he continued in his calm and contained voice, ‘I do not know how you guessed that. I was, actually, in the justice division of the Bombay sector and went on to become the sessions judge. Then I retired and have been running this floriculture business for the last ten years.’

  ‘Do forgive me, but how old are you now?’ Byomkesh asked.

  ‘I am going on fifty-eight.’

  ‘Which means that you retired at the age of forty-seven. As far as I know, the retirement age in a government job is fifty-five.’

  Nishanathbabu remained silent for a few seconds and then said, ‘I have high blood pressure. The first symptoms surfaced ten years ago. The doctors said I’d have to give up all cerebral activity or I would die. So I retired from the job. Then I moved to Bengal and bega
n growing flowers and vegetables. There are no worries or tensions in this job, but the blood pressure seems to continue rising with age.’

  Byomkesh said, ‘You mention that there are no worries. But there must have been some cause for great stress recently, or you would not have come to me.’

  Nishanathbabu smiled—a fleeting flash of pearly white teeth from the corner of his mouth. He said, ‘Yes. That, of course, does not require superior powers of deduction. For a while now, something strange has been happening on my farm …’ He stopped short and turned towards me, ‘You are Ajitbabu?’

  Byomkesh said, ‘Yes, he is my associate. You can speak freely in his presence.’

  Nishanathbabu said, ‘Oh, there’s no secrecy involved in what I have to say. But Ajitbabu is a man of letters and I thought perhaps he might be able to enlighten me about something. Ajitbabu, is there a Bengali synonym for the word “blackmail”?’

  I was flustered by this unexpected question. I had been intimately involved with the Bengali language for many years now and it wasn’t unknown to me that the Bengali idiom was not entirely in step with modern Western education; in most cases, Western ideas had to be articulated in a Western language. I floundered and stammered, ‘Blackmail—the extortion of money by threatening to reveal a secret; as far as I know, there is no corresponding term in Bengali.’

  In a tone laced with scorn, Nishanathbabu said, ‘I thought as much. Anyway, that is irrelevant. Let me narrate the incident to you in brief.’

  ‘There is no need for brevity,’ Byomkesh interjected, ‘please go into details. That would help us get a better understanding of the case.’

  Nishanathbabu said, ‘All the people who work under me in Golap Colony, apart from the gardeners, belong to a respectable class of society—but each is different or odd in his own way. Not one can be called a straight or simple person. The usual ways of earning a livelihood are closed to them. So they have all congregated on my doorstep. I give them a place to stay, food to eat and some pocket money every month. These are the terms under which they work at the farm. It is a little like a sanctuary. It may not be the most comfortable life, but at least they are saved from the threat of destitution.’

  ‘Can you elucidate a little?’ Byomkesh asked. ‘Why are the normal channels of earning a living closed to these people?’

  Nishanathbabu said, ‘Some are handicapped by one physical disability or another and are, therefore, unable to work at normal jobs. For example, Panugopal—a perfectly healthy lad, but he has a hearing problem and his speech too is laboured; he has defective adenoids. He is illiterate. I have placed him in charge of the dairy and he is content looking after the cattle.’

  ‘And the others?’

  ‘Some have a dubious past. Say Bhujangadharbabu, for example. It is rare to come across so keen an intellect. He was a doctor; surgery was his specialization and he was skilled in plastic surgery. But he committed such a nefarious felony that his medical licence was revoked. He is now the farm’s local doctor.’

  ‘I see. Please carry on.’

  Byomkesh opened his cigarette case and extended it to the visitor, but he declined the offer politely and said, ‘I gave up cigarettes after my blood pressure shot up.’ Then, in his unhurried, leisurely style, he continued, ‘There is no novelty in running the daily business of the farm. The same routine is followed every day. Flowers bloom, vegetables grow, chickens lay eggs and the milk is turned into butter and ghee. The farm owns a horse-drawn wagon which is loaded with stuff every morning and sent to the station. From there, the goods are transported to Calcutta by train. We have two stalls at the municipal market: one is for flowers and the other for garden vegetables. The earnings from these shops are enough to cover the costs of running the farm.

  ‘The days were passing uneventfully, but then suddenly, nearly six months ago, something unusual happened. I was asleep in my room at night when the sound of glass shattering woke me up. I got up and switched on the lights. Lying on the floor was the spark plug from a car.’

  I exclaimed, ‘Spark plug?’

  Nishanathbabu said, ‘That’s right. Someone had thrown it from outside and smashed the windowpane. It was a dark winter’s night and it wasn’t possible to find out who the culprit was. I reasoned that some miscreant outside was merely playing the fool. The compound of Golap Colony is open to all and sundry. There are padlocks on the gates to prevent the cattle and goats from wandering, but these pose no great hurdle to humans.

  ‘After this incident, nearly twelve days went by with no further trouble. Then one morning, I opened the main door and found a broken carburettor lying on the doorstep. Two weeks later came a motor horn. Then some ragged remnants of car tyres. And so it goes on.’

  Byomkesh observed, ‘It appears that someone is trying to bequeath an entire automobile to you in bits and pieces. Have you been able to make any sense of it?’

  I noticed an element of uncertainty hovering on Nishanathbabu’s face. After a slight pause, he said, ‘It could, of course, be a madman’s prank. But something tells me it isn’t. Which is why I am here.’

  For a while Byomkesh stared at the fan whirring on the ceiling. Then he asked, ‘When was the last time you received a broken motor part?’

  ‘Yesterday. Only, this time it was no part, but an entire toy car.’

  ‘Really! The man seems to have a real sense of humour. Of course, everyone in the farm is aware of what has been happening?’

  ‘They are. This has become a joke for them.’

  ‘Tell me, do you own a car?’

  ‘No, I don’t. We don’t really go anywhere or socialize much—our interactions are restricted to the farm. So we made a conscious decision not to buy a car.’

  ‘Is there anyone on the farm who ever had anything to do with automobiles?’

  Nishanathbabu’s lips parted in a derisive smile as he replied, ‘Our coachman, Mushkil Mian, used to be a motor car driver. His licence was suspended on account of repeated charges of rash driving.’

  ‘What was that name again—Mushkil Mian?’

  ‘His name is actually Nuruddin, or some such. Everyone calls him Mushkil Mian because he has a habit of saying, “The problem is …”’

  ‘I see. Anybody else?’

  ‘Well, my nephew, Bijoy, once owned a motorbike which worked as often as it didn’t. Last year, he sold it off.’

  ‘Your nephew. Does he also live on the farm?’

  ‘Yes, he looks after the flower stall at the municipal market. I have no children. From the time he was fifteen, my wife has brought Bijoy up as though he were our own son.’

  Once again, Byomkesh fixed his eyes on the fan overhead and pondered for a while. Then he asked, ‘Mr Sen, have you ever in your life—even if it were decades ago—come in contact with a man who dealt with motor cars? Say a car dealer or someone like that? A motor mechanic?’

  This time, Nishanathbabu lapsed into a long silence. When he finally spoke, his voice sounded even quieter than it had before. ‘Twelve years ago,’ he began, ‘when I was a sessions judge, a man called Lal Singh was brought before me on a murder charge. He owned a small car-repair workshop.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Lal Singh was a foul-tempered and belligerent man. He had brutally murdered an employee at his workshop with a spanner. In my court, he was awarded the death sentence. He was to be hanged.’ He gave a small laugh and said, ‘On hearing the sentence, Lal Singh hurled his shoe at me.’

  ‘Then?’

  ‘Then he appealed to the High Court against my ruling. The High Court upheld my ruling, but the death sentence was commuted to fourteen years of rigorous imprisonment.’

  ‘Fourteen years … So Lal Singh is still in prison?’

  ‘If a prisoner’s conduct is exemplary, he may get off earlier on parole,’ Nishanathbabu explained. ‘Lal Singh may have been released by now.’

  ‘Have you checked? The office of the jail divisions should be able to give you that information.’

&nb
sp; ‘I’m afraid I haven’t.’

  Nishanathbabu rose to his feet and said, ‘I won’t waste any more of your time, I’ll be on my way now. I have told you all I had to say. Please look into my case and see if you can do anything about it. I need to know who is behind these meaningless acts of aggression.’

  Byomkesh also stood up and said, ‘They may well be less meaningless than you think.’

  ‘In that case,’ Nishanathbabu declared, ‘there is all the more reason for me to get to the bottom of their meaning.’ He took out a wad of currency notes from his trouser pocket, unfurled a few and placed them on the table with the words, ‘I am leaving an advance commission of fifty rupees for you. I shall pay the rest if and when the need arises. Goodbye.’

  Nishanathbabu made for the door.

  ‘Thank you,’ Byomkesh said to him.

  At the door, Nishanathbabu hesitated and turned to say, ‘I just remembered something else. It’s hardly of any consequence; I don’t know if it would be of any interest to you.’

  ‘Please, feel free to tell me,’ Byomkesh urged.

  Nishanathbabu walked back a few paces and said, ‘A certain woman needs to be traced. She was a film actress called Sunayana. A couple of years ago, she played some roles in a few B-grade films, before disappearing from the scene. It would be ideal if you could actually find her; if not, please collect as much information about her as you can. And, if possible, try and get hold of a photograph of hers as well.’

  Byomkesh replied, ‘Since she was a film actress, a photograph should not be difficult to procure. I should have something for you within the next couple of days.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  After Nishanathbabu had left, the first thing Byomkesh did was to take off his kurta; then he picked up the bundle of notes from the table and counted them. An impish smile played on his lips. He went up to the almirah to keep the money there, observing as he did so, ‘Nishanathbabu may be a refined gentleman, but he certainly doesn’t have much business sense.’