I asked, ‘What is this “Inquisitor” business?’

‘That is my identity. I don’t like the sound of the word “detective”; “investigator” is even worse. So I call myself an Inquisitor, a Seeker of Truth. What’s the matter—don’t you like it?’

Byomkesh had the entire second floor to himself—there were four or five rooms in all, quite decently kept. I asked, ‘Do you live alone?’

‘Yes. My only companion is Putiram, the domestic.’

I gave a sigh and said, ‘It is a very nice place. How long have you been living here?’

‘Almost a year now; I was away for just a short period in between when I had moved temporarily to your boarding- house.’

Putiram had quickly lit the stove and prepared some tea. Byomkesh took a sip of the hot liquid, ‘Aah! I must say these few days in disguise passed quite pleasantly indeed at your mess. But the doctor had caught me out towards the end. Of course, I was to blame for that.’

‘How was that?’

‘It was my mention of the window to the police that gave me away—can’t you figure it out? It was through the window that Ashwinibabu—’

‘Oh no, please begin at the beginning.’

Byomkesh took another sip from the cup and said, ‘All right, I will. Some of it I have already told you last night. Now listen to the rest. The police authorities were beginning to get quite worked up about the series of murders that were being committed in your neighbourhood every month. There was also a lot of pressure on the police from the government as well as the press, who didn’t miss a dig at them. Since this was the case, I sought an interview with the Commissioner of Police and said, “I am a private detective and I believe I can solve the mystery behind these crimes. “ After much deliberation the Commissioner granted me permission to pursue my investigations. The only condition was that this was to remain strictly between him and me.

‘I landed up at your mess. In order to conduct an inquiry it is necessary to have a base of operations which is close to the situation at hand; it was for this purpose that I chose your mess. At the time I had no idea that the opposition’s “base of operations” was located in that very boarding-house!

‘From the very beginning the doctor struck me as excessively nice. It also occurred to me that it would be only too convenient to have a homeopathic practice to camouflage an illegal drug-trafficking setup. But I hadn’t yet arrived at the conclusion that it was he who was the ringleader.

‘I suspected the doctor for the first time on the day before Ashwinibabu died. Perhaps you remember, that day an impoverished non-Bengali’s corpse had been found on the road right in front of the mess. When the doctor heard that the dead man had been carrying a thousand rupees in a pouch tied to his waist, an expression of thwarted greed crossed his face for an instant. Immediately all my suspicions were directed at him.

‘Then there was that incident of Ashwinibabu eavesdropping on us. Actually he hadn’t come there to listen in on our conversation, but to speak to the doctor. But when he found us there, he dished out some lame excuse and hastened away.

‘Ashwinibabu’s behaviour threw me in a quandary again and for a while I considered the possibility that he might be the culprit. When I overheard his conversation with Anukulbabu that night, things still weren’t any clearer. But I did sense that Ashwinibabu had witnessed something terrible. Then when he was murdered that night, everything became crystal clear to me.

‘Can you figure it out now? The doctor used to traffic in illegal drugs, but maintained complete secrecy about his role as the leader of the gang. If anyone stumbled onto his secret, he did away with them immediately. That is how he had remained unscathed for all this time.

‘The man who was murdered on the street was perhaps Anukulbabu’s broker or maybe it was he who supplied the drugs into the market. This is my assumption and I may be wrong. That night he came to the doctor and they had a fallout. Perhaps the man tried to blackmail Anukulbabu or threaten him about going to the police. And then—when he left the house, Anukulbabu followed him and finished him off.

‘Ashwinibabu happened to observe this from his window and some misguided notion made him go to the doctor with his story. I do not know what his intentions were. He was indebted to Anukulbabu and perhaps he wanted to caution him. But the result was the exact opposite. In the eyes of the doctor Ashwinibabu had just forfeited his right to live. That very night, at some point when he got up to go to the bathroom, he was murdered brutally.

‘I cannot say whether the doctor had suspected me initially, but when I mentioned to the police that the window was the cause of Ashwinibabu’s death, the doctor concluded that I was on to something. So I too earned the right to quit my mortal body! But I was not the least bit eager to comply. Hence my days began to pass in great caution and watchfulness.

‘It was then that the police committed a blunder and arrested me. Anyway, the Commissioner came and released me, and I returned to the mess. That was when Anukulbabu became convinced that I was an investigator. But he hid his emotions and magnanimously allowed me to stay the night. This benevolence masked a single purpose—to put me to death at some point in the night. Perhaps nobody else knew as much about him as I did.

‘Until then there really was no proof against the doctor. An inspection of his room at this point would have produced some cocaine and it would be enough to send him to