Epilogue

By the time Rakhalbabu arrived at the hospital with Byomkesh, it was ten o’clock. The waiting room had emptied out by then. In one corner, a young woman sat on a bench, rigid as a statue. An old manservant huddled at her feet looking despondent. The young woman’s eyes were eloquent with imagined horrors.

A nurse noticed Byomkesh and came forward. Rakhalbabu announced, ‘We are from the police.’

‘Please follow me.’ The nurse led them to a room inside, sat them down with the words, ‘Please wait here. Dr Gupta is expecting you,’ and left.

A little later, Dr Gupta entered. He was a middle-aged man of average build and seemed to be blessed with inexhaustible reserves of energy despite the battle he had been waging against death on behalf of his patients for the last twenty years. In fact, he looked the stronger for it. When Rakhalbabu introduced himself and Byomkesh, the doctor laughed pleasantly and remarked, ‘Well, well! It’s a day marked out for miracles, it would appear. Or I wouldn’t have got to meet Byomkeshbabu in this way. Do sit down.’

All three of them took their seats. Rakhalbabu said, ‘So tell us, what is the matter?’

‘How do I go about it? It’s a miracle, a truly amazing phenomenon!’ the doctor exclaimed. ‘In my twenty years of practice, I have yet to come across something of this kind. Yes, I have read about a few such cases in medical textbooks, but to experience it at first hand! In my estimate, there couldn’t be more than a handful of such cases in a few billion.’

Byomkesh smiled, ‘Well, we deal with miracles all the time, but it seems you’re in a position to surprise me as well. Looks like we have a mystery at last that’s after my own heart. Do start at the very beginning, Doctor.’

Dr Gupta began. ‘Right. Around eight-thirty this evening, three young men arrived here in a taxi. With them was another young man. He was unconscious. The three had gone for a stroll to Rabindra Sarobar and found the stranger lying unconscious on a bench under a tree. They had struck a match to have a better look and noticed a porcupine quill protruding from the left side of his chest. But the man wasn’t dead. He was merely unconscious. One of the three men recognized the victim. He was his employer, Debashish Bhatta, the owner of the factory where he worked. So they brought him to the hospital.

‘I had the unconscious man laid out on the table and examined him. Everyone knows by now of the porcupine-quill murders. I surmised, at first, that the quill had probably missed the man’s heart in this case. But when I tried to check his heartbeat—wonder of wonders! I couldn’t find it! Then I discovered that his heart was located on the right side of his chest! By some freak of nature, the man had been born thus.

‘Although the porcupine quill