Murder by the Book, page 21
Soon afterwards I was called unexpectedly to London, and was away for two months. I would have stayed longer, but a letter from a mutual friend in Bombay worried me.
“Baburao looks as if he is going mad,” he wrote. “He hasn’t said a word to any of us, but I’m sure he would talk to you.”
I flew back to Bombay. Within an hour, Baburao was with me, looking old and broken, and with the shadow of dread in his eyes.
“But what is it?” I demanded. “What’s done all this?”
“It is Krishna,” he said brokenly. “It is my first-born, born also of the Devil.”
He could hardly bring himself to tell me the truth—that Krishna was using the travelling libraries, the bookstands, and some of the shops for distributing cocaine and heroin to the people of the crowded camps.
Baburao had proof, and Krishna admitted it.
“Help me, Malcolm,” he begged. “Tell me what I must do. He hates me. Understand, he hates me. He has no shame.”
I could find nothing to say. He stood gazing down at me, and I wished I could not see into his eyes.
“You say nothing, but you think much—and I know what you think,” he said. “That I can defeat this by going to the police. I can betray my son as he has betrayed me.” He clenched his fists. “They are the thoughts in your mind, Malcolm. Admit it.”
I said, slowly, painfully: “Yes, Baburao. You would spend a fortune hounding down anyone else who did this. Will you let Krishna undo everything that you and others have done?”
He whispered: “He is my son. I cannot betray my son.”
The hurt went almost as deep with me as with him. But I had to say: “The one certain thing is that you must stop it. Not soon—but now!”
I took him home and as I turned away and walked blindly towards the gate, another car pulled up. Light from a lamp fell on Krishna’s face.
He watched me, gloating. I could strike him, and it would be senseless. I could shout at him, and it would add to his sadistic triumph.
But I could not go away without trying to hurt him. As I approached, I asked: “Why?”
He said: “I am myself and he is himself.”
“I am his friend,” I said, “and I can do what he cannot—I can go to the police.”
Krishna’s expression did not change. He said: “Go to them, by all means. They will find that everything I have done has been approved—by my father. Without reading them, he has signed many letters which I have placed before him, and so I have made sure that he cannot drag me down without dragging himself down. I am going to tell him that now. Be good enough to let me pass.”
I waited outside when he had gone. There would be awful despair when he faced his father, and I did not believe that Baburao’s wife, or Rama, or his other son could help. So I had to go to Baburao. I went back to the house and rang the bell, and waited for a long time before the door opened.
Rama stood there. “Mr. Graham…” His voice was hoarse and frightened. “They are together, now.”
“I’ll go in,” I said. “Tell no one.”
He stood aside. Baburao’s room was on the left of a narrow hall, and there was a light under the door. I heard voices as I opened the door softly and stepped in.
Baburao echoed the question I had asked in a voice so quiet that I thought his spirit was already dead. He said, in a voice that was little more than a whisper: “You have not told me why, my son.”
“I am myself and you are yourself, that is why,” Krishna said. “But I am not here to talk of that. I tell you again that if you go to the police, you will bring ruin on yourself. It is done so that both of us must be free or both must be damned. There is no way out, and you will do as I do.”
His voice held no expression, he was so sure of himself. As they stood there, Krishna in western clothes, his father in his long black jacket and dhoti, they looked strangely alike.
“So there is no way out,” said Baburao, and he smiled.
“Therefore I shall not seek a way out,” he went on. “You are right, my son. I have wasted too much energy on attempting the impossible. I shall not do that again.” He moved, turning away from me, and neither knew that I was there. He went to a low table by the books and picked up the telephone, standing erect and smiling at Krishna.
Krishna moved, and his voice lost its calm. “What are you doing?”
“Can you not guess?” asked Baburao softly. “I am calling the police, my son. I could not and would not betray you alone, but I can confess for both of us. We have never really been together, but we shall be together now. Your crime is mine from now on; my punishment will also be yours.”
For a moment, Krishna was stunned to silence. So was I. But the sublime expression on Baburao’s face could not last; exaltation would surely die.
Then Krishna moved. “Come away.” He moved forward, hand outstretched, shouting. “You old fool, that won’t help either you or me, it—”
“I would like to talk to Mr. Patel—the Mr. Patel in the Unlawful Drugs Division, please,” Baburao said into the telephone. “Tell him that—”
Krishna reached out and wrenched the telephone away, but I moved, too. I struck Krishna a blow that knocked him off his feet, sent him crashing against the bookcase and then on to the floor. It was a golden moment.
Baburao recognised me as he backed away in alarm. He began to smile again, retrieved the telephone and said: “You won’t try to stop me, Malcolm.”
“I won’t stop you,” I said. “Just go ahead…”
I told the police what Baburao and Krishna had said to me. That was easy. I made Rama and another son break the vow of silence that their father had imposed on them. That was with the help of priests, and was much more difficult.
But perhaps my only true victory, won without help and over the mind of a man, was in my struggle with Baburao. I broke through the barrier of his absurd but noble folly, and when he came to trial his plea was “not guilty.” So was the verdict of the jury. But there was no mercy for his son…
Outwardly, after that, Baburao looked much older, but also more serene. I was never quite sure that he knew peace, and even wondered if he felt that I had made him betray himself, until the day, not long ago, when he brought the book.
It was a heavy book, bound in fine leather and with much beautiful scrollwork and heavy parchment pages. Without speaking he handed it to me, and without speaking I opened it at the first page.
Fastened to it was an old, yellowing sheet of paper; the unsettled account of many years ago. I turned the page. The next was headed: “To remind you of trust you showed without good reason.”
At the bottom, 200-rupee notes were fastened. Two more were on the next page, dated three months later. Two more on each succeeding page at three-monthly intervals; many, many thousands of rupees, with entries in Baburao’s own hand, telling of some talk between us, recording the history of nearly thirty years, not only of Baburao Munshi & Son, but of our friendship.
The last sentence explained the years of waiting.
“This is prepared for you as a record of our abiding friendship, and of my love; and a token of the love of all my family.”
We Know You’re Busy Writing,
But We Thought You Wouldn’t Mind If We Just Dropped in for a Minute
Edmund Crispin
Edmund Crispin (1921–1978) enjoyed conspicuous success in two distinct careers under two different names, an achievement all the more impressive because he was plagued by ill-health, and in later life, alcoholism. Born Robert Bruce Montgomery, he became a highly regarded composer of light music, writing the scores for nearly forty films as well as a number of orchestral concert works. He adopted the Crispin name for his detective fiction, which again was written with a light touch. By the time he was thirty, he’d published eight novels featuring the Oxford don Gervase Fen. After a gap of twenty-six years, a ninth book appeared; this was The Glimpses of the Moon (1977), which was published in the year before his death.
Crispin’s short stories were usually short and snappy, dependent on a single trick. Fen featured in many of them, but is absent from “We Know You’re Busy Writing,” an ironic tale about the troubles of the writing life which has appeared under a variety of titles over the years since first publication in Winter’s Crimes 1, edited by George Hardinge in 1969. It reflects Crispin’s own long-term struggle to rediscover his writing flair, and is in many ways the most personal piece of crime fiction that he wrote. In this centenary year of his birth, it also offers a pleasing reminder of his gift for entertaining the reader.
I
“After all, it’s only us,” they said.
I must introduce myself.
None of this is going to be read, even, let alone published. Ever.
Nevertheless, there is habit—the habit of putting words together in the most effective order you can think of. There is self-respect, too. That, and habit, make me try to tell this as if it were in fact going to be read.
Which God forbid.
I am forty-seven, unmarried, living alone, a minor crime-fiction writer earning, on average, rather less than £1,000 a year.
I live in Devon.
I live in a small cottage which is isolated, in the sense that there is no one nearer than a quarter of a mile.
I am not, however, at a loss for company.
For one thing, I have a telephone.
I am a hypochondriac, well into the coronary belt. Also, I go in fear of accidents, with broken bones. The telephone is thus a necessity. I can afford only one, so its siting is a matter of great discretion. In the end, it is in the hall, just at the foot of the steep stairs. It is on a shelf only two feet from the floor, so that if I had to crawl to it, it will still be within reach.
If I have my coronary upstairs, too bad.
***
The telephone is for me to use in an emergency. Other people, however, regard it differently.
Take, for example, my bank manager.
“Torhaven 153,” I say.
“Hello? Bradley, is that Mr. Bradley?”
“Bradley speaking.”
“This is Wimpole, Wimpole. Mr. Bradley, I have to talk to you.”
“Speaking.”
“Now, it’s like this, Mr. Bradley. How soon can we expect some further payments in, Mr. Bradley? Payments out, yes, we have plenty of those, but payments in…”
“I’m doing everything I can, Mr. Wimpole.”
“Everything, yes, everything, but payments in, what is going to be coming in during the next month, Mr. Bradley?”
“Quite a lot, I hope.”
“Yes, you hope, Mr. Bradley, you hope. But what am I going to say to my regional office, Mr. Bradley, how am I going to represent the matter to them, to it? You have this accommodation with us, this matter of £500…”
“Had it for years, Mr. Wimpole.”
“Yes, Mr. Bradley, and that is exactly the trouble. You must reduce it, Mr. Bradley, reduce it, I say,” this lunatic bawls at me.
I can no more reduce my overdraft than I can fly.
I am adequately industrious. I aim to write 2,000 words a day, which would support me in the event that I were able to complete them. But if you live alone you are not, contrary to popular supposition, in a state of unbroken placidity.
Quite the contrary.
***
I have tried night-work, a consuming yawn to every tap on the typewriter. I have tried early-morning work.
And here H.L. Mencken comes in, suggesting that bad writing is due to bad digestion.
My own digestion is bad at any time, particularly bad during milkmen’s hours, and I have never found that I could do much in the dawn. This is a weakness, and I admit it. But apparently it has to be. Work, for me, is thus office hours, nine till five.
I have told everyone about this, begging them, if it isn’t a matter of emergency, to get in touch with me in the evenings. Office hours, I tell them, same as everyone else. You wouldn’t telephone a solicitor about nothing in particular during his office hours, would you? Well, so why ring me?
I am typing a sentence which starts His crushed hand, paining him less now, nevertheless gave him a sense of…
I know what is going to happen after “of”: the appalling frailty of the human body.
Or rather, I did know, and it wasn’t that. It might have been that (feeble though it is) but for the fact that then the doorbell rang.
(I hope that it might have been something better.)
The doorbell rang. It was a Mrs. Prance morning, but she hadn’t yet arrived, so I answered the door myself, clattering down from the upstairs room where I work. It was the meter-reader. The meter being outside the door, I was at a loss to know why I had to sanction its being scrutinised.
“A sense of the dreadful agonies,” I said to the meter-reader, “of which the human body is capable.”
“Wonderful weather for the time of year.”
“I’ll leave you, if you don’t mind. I’m a bit busy.”
“Suit yourself,” he said, offended.
Then Mrs. Prance came.
Mrs. Prance comes three mornings a week. She is slow, and deaf, but she is all I can hope to get, short of winning the Pools.
She answers the door, but is afraid of the telephone, and consequently never answers that, though I’ve done my utmost to train her to it.
She is very anxious that I should know precisely what she is doing in my tatty little cottage, and approve of it.
“Mr. Bradley?”
“Yes, Mrs. Prance?”
“It’s the HI-GLOW.”
“What about it, Mrs. Prance?”
“Pardon?”
“I said, what about it?”
“We did ought to change.”
“Yes, well, let’s change, by all means.”
“Pardon?”
“I said, Yes.”
“Doesn’t bring the wood up, not the way it ought to.”
“You’re the best judge, Mrs. Prance.”
“Pardon?”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Prance, but I’m working now. We’ll talk about it some other time.”
“Toffee-nosed,” says Mrs. Prance.
Gave him a sense of—a sense of—a sense of burr-burr, burr-burr, burr-burr.
Mrs. Prance shouts that it’s the telephone.
I stumble downstairs and pick the thing up.
“Darling.”
“Oh, hello, Chris.”
“How are you, darling?”
“A sense of the gross cruelty which filled all history.”
“What, darling? What was that you said?”
“Sorry, I was just trying to keep a glass of water balanced on my head.”
A tinkle of laughter.
“You’re a poppet. Listen, I’ve a wonderful idea. It’s a party. Here in my flat. Today week. You will come, Edward, won’t you?”
“Yes, of course, I will, Chris, but may I just remind you about something?”
“What’s that, darling?”
“You said you wouldn’t ring me up during working hours.”
A short silence; then:
“Oh, but just this once. It’s going to be such a lovely party, darling. You don’t mind just this once.”
“Chris, are you having a coffee break?”
“Yes, darling, and oh God, don’t I need it!”
“Well, I’m not having a coffee break.”
A rather longer silence; then:
“You don’t love me any more.”
“It’s just that I’m trying to get a story written. There’s a deadline for it.”
“If you don’t want to come to the party, all you’ve got to do is say so.”
“I do want to come to the party, but I also want to get on with earning my living. Seriously, Chris, as it’s a week ahead, couldn’t you have waited till this evening to ring me?”
A sob.
“I think you’re beastly. I think you’re utterly, utterly horrible.”
“Chris.”
“And I never want to see you again.”
…a sense of treachery, I typed, sedulously. The agony still flamed up his arm, but it was now
The doorbell rang.
—it was now less than—more than—
“It’s the laundry, Mr. Bradley,” Mrs. Prance shouted up the stairs to me.
“Coming, Mrs. Prance.”
I went out on to the small landing. Mrs. Prance’s great moonface peered up at me from below.
“Coming Thursday next week,” she shouted at me, “because of Good Friday.”
“Yes, Mrs. Prance, but what has that got to do with me? I mean, you’ll be here on Wednesday as usual, won’t you, to change the sheets?”
“Pardon?”
“Thank you for telling me, Mrs. Prance.”
One way and another, it was a remarkable Tuesday morning: seven telephone calls, none of them in the least important, eleven people at the door, and Mrs. Prance anxious that no scintilla of her efforts should lack my personal verbal approval. I had sat down in front of my typewriter at 9:30. By twelve noon, I had achieved the following:
His crushed hand, paining him less now, nevertheless gave him a sense of treachery, the appalling frailty of the human body, but it was now less than it had been, more than, indifferent to him since, after, because though the pain could be shrugged off the betrayal was a
I make no pretence to be a quick writer, but that really was a very bad morning indeed.
II
Afternoon started better. With some garlic sausage and bread inside me, I ran to another seven paragraphs, unimpeded.
As he clawed his way out, hatred seized him, I tapped out, enthusiastically embarking on the eighth. No such emotion had ever before—
The doorbell rang.
—Had ever before disturbed his quiet existence. It was as if—
