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“By the time you saw the bodies,” Nancy suddenly began, “I suppose they were pretty bad.”
“Yes—I’m afraid the crabs had found them,” Dr. Daruwalla replied.
“But I guess the drawing was still clear, or you wouldn’t have remembered it,” Nancy said.
“Yes—indelible ink, I’m sure,” said Dr. Daruwalla.
“It was a laundry-marking pen—a dhobi pen,” Nancy told him, although she appeared to be looking at Dhar. With her sunglasses on, who knew where she was looking? “I buried them, you know,” Nancy went on. “I didn’t see them die, but I heard them. The sound of the spade,” she added.
Dhar continued to stare at her, his lip not quite sneering. Nancy took her sunglasses off and returned them to her purse. Something she saw in her purse made her pause; she held her lower lip in her teeth for three or four seconds. Then she reached in her purse and brought out the bottom half of the silver ballpoint pen, which she’d carried with her, everywhere she’d gone, for 20 years.
“He stole the other half of this—he or she,” Nancy said. She handed the half-pen to Dhar, who read the interrupted inscription.
“ ‘Made in’ where?” Dhar asked her.
“India,” said Nancy. “Rahul must have stolen it.”
“Who would want the top half of a pen?” Farrokh asked Detective Patel.
“Not a writer,” Dhar replied; he passed the half-pen to Dr. Daruwalla.
“It’s real silver,” the doctor observed.
“It needs to be polished,” Nancy said. The deputy commissioner looked away; he knew his wife had polished the thing only last week. Dr. Daruwalla couldn’t see any indication that the silver was dull or blackened; everything was shiny, even the inscription. When he handed the half-pen to Nancy, she didn’t put it back in her purse; instead, she placed it alongside her knife and spoon—it was brighter than both. “I use an old toothbrush to polish the lettering,” she said. Even Dhar looked away from her; that he couldn’t meet her eyes gave her confidence. “In real life,” Nancy said to the actor, “have you ever taken a bribe?” She saw the sneer she’d been looking for; she’d been expecting it.
“No, never,” Dhar told her. Now Nancy had to look away from him; she looked straight at Dr. Daruwalla.
“How come you keep it a secret … that you write all his movies?” Nancy asked the doctor.
“I already have a career,” Dr. Daruwalla replied. “The idea was to create a career for him.”
“Well, you sure did it,” Nancy told Farrokh. Detective Patel reached for her left hand, which was on the table by her fork, but Nancy put her hand in her lap. Then she faced Dhar.
“And how do you like it? Your career …” Nancy asked the actor. He responded with his patterned shrug, which enhanced his sneer. Something both cruel and merry entered his eyes.
“I have a day job … another life,” Dhar replied.
“Lucky you,” Nancy told him.
“Sweetie,” said the deputy commissioner; he reached into his wife’s lap and took her hand. She seemed to go a little limp in the rattan chair. Even Mr. Sethna could hear her exhale; the old steward had heard almost everything else, too, and what he hadn’t actually heard he’d fairly accurately surmised from reading their lips. Mr. Sethna was a good lip-reader, and for an elderly man he could move spryly around a conversation; a table for four posed few problems for him. It was easier to pick up conversation in the Ladies’ Garden than in the main dining room, because only the bower of flowers was overhead; there were no ceiling fans.
From Mr. Sethna’s point of view, it was already a much more interesting lunch than he’d anticipated. Dead bodies! A stolen part of a pen? And the most startling revelation—that Dr. Daruwalla was the actual author of that trash which had elevated Inspector Dhar to stardom! In a way, Mr. Sethna believed that he’d known it all along; the old steward had always sensed that Farrokh wasn’t the man his father was.
Mr. Sethna glided in with the drinks; then he glided away. The venomous feelings that the old steward had felt for Dhar were now what Mr. Sethna was feeling for Dr. Daruwalla. A Parsi writing for the Hindi cinema! And making fun of other Parsis! How dare he? Mr. Sethna could barely restrain himself. In his mind, he could hear the sound that his silver serving tray would make off the crown of Dr. Daruwalla’s head; it sounded like a gong. The steward had needed all his strength to resist the temptation to cover that appalling woman’s fuzzy navel with her napkin, which was carelessly lumped in her lap. A belly button like hers should be clothed—if not banned! But Mr. Sethna quickly calmed himself, for he didn’t want to miss what the real policeman was saying.
“I should like to hear the three of you describe what Rahul would look like today, assuming that Rahul is now a woman,” said the deputy commissioner. “You first,” Patel said to Dhar.
“Vanity and an overall sense of physical superiority would keep her looking younger than she is,” Dhar began.
“But she would be fifty-three or fifty-four,” Dr. Daruwalla interjected.
“You’re next. Please let him finish,” said Detective Patel.
“She wouldn’t look fifty-three or fifty-four, except maybe very early in the morning,” Dhar continued. “And she would be very fit. She has a predatory aura. She’s a stalker—I mean sexually.”
“I think she was quite hot for him when he was a boy!” Dr. Daruwalla remarked.
“Who wasn’t?” Nancy asked bitterly. Only her husband looked at her.
