“I want all of you to get down on your knees and face the ground. Do it now!”
One by one, with varying degrees of success, the ladies did as he instructed.
“Now stay where you are for five minutes and don’t call the cops! Remember, I know where you live!”
The gunman glanced around the room at the array of bottoms sticking up in the air. Then he was gone.
The ladies breathed a collective sigh of relief. All of them stayed put apart from Mummy.
“Call the police and don’t touch my things,” she whispered to Rumpi.
“Mummy-ji, where are you going?” asked Puri’s wife, sitting up on her knees. “It’s dangerous!”
Ignoring her, the elderly lady put her head around the sitting room door in time to see the gunman escaping out the back of the house.
She headed outside to the front gate, where all the ladies’ drivers were sitting on the pavement playing teen patti.
“Some goondas have done armed robbery of our kitty party!” she announced. “Where’s my driver, Majnu?”
“Toilet, madam,” answered one of the men.
“Typical! But we’ve got to give chase, na? One of you must drive. Come. Don’t do dillydally.”
The drivers all put down their cards and stood respectfully, but none of them jumped into action. They needed permission from their respective madams before they could leave their posts, one of them explained.
Mummy went back inside and fetched Lily Arora. But her Sumo was penned in behind four other vehicles.
By the time they had been moved, the thieves had got clean away.
The police reached the house in record time and in record numbers, thanks to Mrs. Devi, whose husband was a childhood friend of the chief.
Two servants were soon discovered in the pantry, bound and gagged. Once untied, they were summarily taken away on suspicion of being accomplices to the crime.
Lily Arora’s poodle was also found lying on the kitchen floor unconscious and was immediately rushed to the vet’s.
A young assistant subinspector then took the ladies’ statements in the living room. He was dismissive of Mummy, so she sought out his senior.
Inspector I.P. Kumar was standing by the front gate along with three gormless constables, giving the hapless drivers a grilling.
“Madam, you gave your statement?” he asked her wearily when she insisted on talking to him.
“What is point? So stupid he is, na? Got rajma for brains seems like. Now, something is there you must know. So listen carefully, na? I’ve some vital evidence to show.”
Mummy held up her right hand; she had wrapped it in a plastic freezer bag.
“You’re hurt, madam?” asked Inspector Kumar.
“Not at all,” she replied. “Just I scratched the gunman most deliberately.”
“Why exactly?”
“For purpose of DNA collection, naturally,” she said impatiently. “That is what I have been telling. Fragments of that goonda’s skin and all got under my nail. Just his fingerprints are on my compact, Gita and hand phone, also.”
Mummy held up another freezer bag, which contained the other evidence she had collected.
“Madam,” Inspector Kumar said with a weary sigh, “this is not Miami, US of A. For everyday robberies we’re not doing DNA testing. That is for big crimes only. Like when non-state actors blow up hotels and all. Also, your fingernail does not constitute evidence. Could be you scratched yourself or petted the dog. How are we to know?”
Mummy bristled. “I will have you know my late dear husband was himself a police inspector and I was headmistress of Modern School – ”
“Then better you stick to teaching and leave police work to professionals, madam,” interrupted Inspector Kumar before turning away and continuing with his interrogation of the drivers.
Mummy felt Rumpi’s hand on her arm.
“Come, Mummy-ji, we should be getting home,” she said.
“But police are being negligent in their duties,” she complained, still brandishing the evidence she had collected.
“I know. You can lead camels to water but not force them to drink. Come.”
The two women walked out into the street where their cars were parked.
Behind them Kumar and the constables were chortling conspiratorially.
“Seems Miss Mar-pel is here,” one of them joked.
“Bloody duffers,” cursed Mummy. “No wonder so many of crimes are going unsolved.”
“Perhaps we should call Chubby,” suggested Rumpi.
“Why we should ask for his help, you tell me? He’s no better. Just he’ll do bossing and tell us don’t get involved. Mummies are not detectives and all that. No need for him, na?”
“What do you mean ‘us’, Mummy-ji?”
“We two. We’ll solve this case together, na? Who better? It’s an insider job for sure.”
“You think the servants were involved?”
“Those poor fellows? Most unlikely.”
Rumpi’s eyes widened. “Are you saying it was one of the other ladies?” she asked, lowering her voice.
Mummy nodded gravely.
“How can you be so sure?”
“Simple, na? Those goondas were knowing how much our kitty would be. Today with my share there was some extra bonus. Also they failed in their duty to do robbery of our jewelry. So many bangles, earrings and mangal sutras and all were present. That Mrs. Azmat was wearing platinum worth lakhs and lakhs. But not one single item they took. Why?”
Eight
Shivraj Sharma, whose very first visit to the Laughing Club had ended so dramatically and in such turmoil, was first on Puri’s list of interviewees. His title was superintending archaeologist; it said so on the door to his office deep in the vaults of the National Museum, a stone’s throw from Raj-path.
The contents of his office also left the visitor in no doubt as to his occupation. Crates containing broken bits of pottery and fragments of idols coccooned in Bubble Wrap were stacked on the shelves. The walls were papered with maps indicating the territory occupied by the Harappan Indus Valley Civilization, which flourished between 2,600 and 1,900 BC. Pinned to a board were satellite images of the area lying between the Himalayas and the Arabian Sea, with a line indicating one of the possible routes of the lost Sarasvati River.
“I am happy to see you, but I spoke with the police yesterday and told them everything I know,” Sharma explained to Puri. His tone was amiable but betrayed a boyish insouciance common amongst India’s so-called creamy layer.
“As you can see I’ve a good deal of work to get on with,” he added, indicating the manuscript that lay on the desk in front of him. “I do hope this won’t take too long.”
Sharma was pushing fifty, smartly dressed in a striped shirt, silk tie and blue blazer. He had visited the temple that morning and was wearing a fresh, rice-encrusted tilak on his forehead and a knotted kalava on his wrist. He wore thick glasses, and like so many people in Delhi today, his eyes suffered from the pollution – hence the bottle of eyedrops, which, judging from his damp eyelids, the archaeologist had used moments before the detective had been shown into his office.
“Sir, just five minutes is all that is required,” said Puri.
The plump man in the safari suit and Sandown cap standing in front of Sharma’s desk, business card in hand, was not the boisterous Vish Puri who had kept his son-in-law Har-tosh entertained last night with generous
