Eighteen

The three of us sat in silence, sipping the ginger-scented tea. The night was drawing to a close. Lighting a cigarette, Byomkesh began again, “When Nanibala Devi first came to me, I viewed the whole affair from the opposite angle. The question was whether there was any danger to Prabhatbabu’s life. From what Nanibala told me, I saw no cause for fear. Still, one can never be sure. These are troubled times; people’s scruples regarding murder have greatly diminished. A primitive savagery seems to have settled over our minds—”

Byomkesh Samagra

I set out to investigate.

I saw Prabhatbabu; I saw Nimai, Nitai, Anadi Halder, Nripen, Kesto Das—all of them. Nanibala came again; I told her, “No one stands to gain by killing Prabhatbabu. On the other hand, there is profit in killing Anadi Halder.” And then, on the night of Kali Puja, Anadi Halder was indeed murdered.

In the last hours of the night, Kesto Das came and fetched me. Everyone believed Kesto Das was the murderer. But when I went and observed everything, I realized—this was not a crime of passion, but a murder carefully planned. If Kesto Das had committed the murder, he would not have quarreled with Anadi Halder before killing him. Besides, no matter how heated the quarrel, Kesto Das is not such a fool as to kill the goose that lays golden eggs.

However, there is one thing. If Kesto Das could get his hands on a large sum of money by killing Anadi Halder, he might well commit murder. But this logic applies equally to the other members of the household. If we accept this reasoning, we must also accept that Anadi Halder kept a large amount of cash in his house.

If Anadi Halder kept large sums at home, he would have kept them in his steel almirah. The key to the almirah was always at his waist. When I opened the almirah, I found only about two hundred and fifty rupees. Did Anadi Halder buy a steel almirah just to keep such a paltry sum?

No money was found in the almirah, but it was noticed that several books were missing from the shelf inside. The remaining books were the usual Ramayana, Mahabharata, and the like. The question arises: what is the point of keeping such ordinary books in a steel almirah?

There was a bank checkbook in the almirah, from which it was clear that Anadi Halder had given his new house’s contractor, Gurudutt Singh, more money than he had withdrawn from the bank. Where did the rest of the money come from? Surely, Anadi Halder had earned black money and kept it in the almirah. Now that the money is missing, it must have been taken by the murderer.

The motive for the murder was found. But who was the murderer? And how did he enter the house? At the time of death, Anadi Halder was alone in the house, and the door was locked from the inside.

Anadi Halder was shot while standing on the main balcony. From the window of the Srikanta Hotel, it would have been easy to shoot him, but not to steal the money from his almirah. Therefore, there was no benefit in shooting from the Srikanta Hotel.

When Nimai and Nitai arrived with a lawyer and claimed that they were Anadi Halder’s heirs, that Prabhatbabu was not his legal adopted son, another motive emerged. If Anadi Halder could be removed before he formally adopted Prabhatbabu, all property would go to the nephews. Anadi Halder had certainly not made a will. In this country, the uneducated and half-educated rarely make wills.

It is not at all unbelievable that Nimai and Nitai could arrange for their uncle’s Ganga-yatra. Let us now consider their actions. Six months before the murder, they rented a room at the Srikanta Hotel and frequented it regularly. The hotel staff had come to recognize their faces. For those plotting to murder their uncle, is such openness normal? As I have already said, this was a planned murder; the killer had decided to strike on the night of Kali Puja, so that the sound of firecrackers would muffle the gunshot. If so, what was the point of renting a room six months in advance? Besides, how could they be sure that on the night of Kali Puja, their uncle would step out onto the balcony?

Adimriphu 505

But what certainty is there? No one makes a plan based on such uncertainty. And then, the bullet had pierced through Anadi Halder’s body, yet it was not found on the balcony. That too is worth considering.

“So, the proposition that Nimai or Nitai Khuro fired from the window of the Srikanta Hotel does not hold water. Whoever did it, shot from inside the house. Let us see if it was possible to shoot from within.

“The main door was locked. But the door at the back of the house, leading to the roof, used to remain open—Anadi Halder would close it himself before going to bed at night. Besides, the latch on that door was not very strong; with a few shakes, it would come undone. Let us suppose, that night, around eleven o’clock, someone quietly entered Anadi Halder’s new house. The roof of the new house had been completed up to the first floor, with scaffolding all around. The murderer climbed onto the roof; between the two houses was a narrow alley, and from the scaffolding, the murderer took a long plank and built a bridge between the two houses, then crossed over to the old house using that bridge. The roof door would be open, since Anadi Halder had not yet gone to bed.

“It seems, then, that for a nimble person, entering the house would not be a difficult task. But who is this nimble person? Not Nimai or Nitai, for they could not have known about the large sum of black money in the almirah; only someone from the