Free Banquet on the Dead by Sharath Komarraju Page A

of course, that it was not an accident, but we’d like to—’
    ‘It was not an accident,’ she said in a flat, emotionless tone. Then she raised her glance to meet his fully. ‘It was not an accident, Inspector. I know it was not.’
    Nagarajan heard Hamid Pasha beside him stir with interest and settle back in his chair with a soft chuckle. He waited for the lady to speak, and she looked for a moment as if she had something to say, but then she fell into silence.
    Nagarajan asked, ‘What makes you so sure, madam?’
    ‘I know my mother.’ Her voice was also that of her daughter, he thought. It was mellower, and it did not contain the same shrill notes of excitement that the younger woman’s had, but it was made of the same stuff. Prameelamma had a stern, commanding voice—the sort of voice one would expect in a woman who had raised five children virtually on her own.
    ‘I know my mother,’ she repeated. ‘She was terrified of water—all kinds of water! It was a great mystery to me how she bathed every day, sir. She was that scared. Wild horses would not have been able to drag her to the well.’
    ‘And yet somebody did, behen,’ Hamid Pasha said softly.
    She looked at him, as if his presence had registered with her for the first time. ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘Someone—or some thing— did make her want to go to the well. But even if she did, bhaisaab, she would not have gone close to the well. She would have had to be pushed in.’ And then Nagarajan heard the catch in the throat, the quick quiver of the lip, but these only lasted a fraction of a second. She was back in control almost immediately. ‘Someone pushed her in. I have no doubt about that.’
    ‘But you hesitate, madam,’ said Nagarajan. ‘Do you not share your son’s wish to have the murderer caught, assuming this is a murder?’
    She gave him a smile, and it seemed to Nagarajan there was sadness in it. ‘What is the point, Inspector? She was a lady nearing eighty. Her grandsons and granddaughters have children now. She lived a full life.’
    Again, Hamid Pasha stirred. ‘Behen, are you not angry that your mother was killed this way, in cold blood?’
    ‘Angry, bhaisaab? What will anger resolve? I lost my daughter when I was twenty-five. My husband died when I was forty. All my other sons have had close shaves with death. My grandson almost died in the same well. Whom should I get angry at? How can you be angry at something that has no face?’
    Nagarajan saw the colour rise in her cheeks, and the eyes shine. This may be a woman ravaged and beaten by time, he thought, but there was still a lot of passion within her.
    Hamid Pasha said, ‘But this murderer has a face, behen.’
    ‘We have had such deaths before,’ she said dismissively. ‘This was not the first, and I doubt it will be the last.’
    ‘So you don’t want us to carry on further, hain?’
    She smiled at him. ‘If I say “no”, will you stop?’
    Hamid Pasha shook his head grimly. ‘No, madam. Allah alone has the right to take lives. When humans assume that right, Hamid Pasha will intervene.’
    ‘Maybe it is Allah’s will that my mother should die in the well, bhaisaab. How can anyone of us—even you— profess to know what He wills?’
    ‘It may be His will that your mother should die in the well, but it is not His will that her death should go unavenged, behen. Because if it were, He would not have sent me here.’
    She looked at him closely now, at the grizzled beard, at the Nehru cap, at the black waistcoat and the white shirt, at his wrinkled and freckled skin. Nagarajan could tell she did not share Hamid Pasha’s high opinion of his abilities. But she said in the indulgent tone one used with a stubborn child, ‘Sure, if it means so much to you, please stay and investigate.’
    They did not need her permission; after all a murder was a murder. One did not ask murder suspects if they minded being interrogated. One went ahead and did it anyway. Nagarajan