A Son Of The Circus (68 page)

‘Not at all,’ said Mrs Dogar. ‘He’s doing it deliber ately.’

‘He wants to kill the flowers?’ Mr Sethna asked.

‘I’m glad you understand,’ Mrs Dogar replied. ‘Poor man.’ With a wave, she indicated the surrounding golf course. ‘Naturally, he wanders out there only after dark. Like a dog, he always goes to the same spots!’

‘Territorial, I suppose,’ said Mr Sethna.

‘I’m glad you understand,’ Mrs Dogar said. ‘Now, where’s our cab?’

In the taxi, old Mr Dogar looked as if he wasn’t sure if he should apologize or complain. But, before he could decide, his younger wife once more surprised him.

‘Oh, darling, never let me treat you like that again –at least not in public. I’m so ashamed!’ she cried. They’ll think I bully you. You mustn’t let me. If I
ever
tell you that you can’t drive a car again, here’s what you must do … are you listening, or are you too drunk?’ Mrs Dogar asked him.

‘No … I mean yes, I’m listening,’ Mr Dogar said. ‘No, I’m
not
too drunk,’ the old man assured her.

‘You must
throw
the keys on the floor and make me pick them up, as if I were your servant,’ Mrs Dogar told him.

‘What?’ he asked.

‘Then tell me that you always carry an extra set o keys and that you’ll drive the car home, when and if you choose. Then tell me to
go —
tell me you wouldn’t drive me home if I
begged
you!’ Mrs Dogar cried.

‘But, Promila, I would never …’ Mr Dogar began to say, but his wife cut him off.

‘Just promise me one thing – never back down to me,’ she told him. Then she seized his face in her hands and kissed him on his mouth. ‘First, you should tell me to take a taxi – you just carry on sitting at the dinner table, as if you’re smoldering with rage. Then you should go to the men’s room and wash your face.’

‘Wash my face?’ said Mr Dogar with surprise.

‘I can’t stand the smell of food on your face, darling,’ Mrs Dogar told her husband. ‘Just wash your face –soap and warm water.
Then
come home to me. I’ll be waiting for you. That’s how I want you to treat me. Only you must wash your face first. Promise me.’

It had been years since Mr Dogar had been so aroused, nor had he ever been so confused. It was difficult to understand a younger woman, he decided –yet surely worth it.

This was a pretty good first draft, Rahul felt certain. The next time, Mr Dogar would do as he was told. He would be abusive to her and tell her to go. But she would take the taxi no farther than the access road to the Duckworth Club, or perhaps three quarters of the length of the driveway – just out of the reach of the overhead lamps. She’d tell the driver to wait for her because she’d forgotten her purse. Then she’d cross the first green of the golf course and enter the clubhouse through the rear door, which she would have previously unlocked. She’d take off her shoes and cross the dark locker room and wait there until she heard her husband washing his face. She’d either kill him with a single blow from one of the ‘retired’ golf clubs in the locker room, or (if possible) kill him by lifting his head by his hair and smashing his skull against the sink. Her preference for the latter method was because she preferred the swimming-pool ending. She’d be careful to clean the sink; then Mrs Dogar would drag her husband’s body out the rear door of the clubhouse and dump him in the deep end of the empty pool. She wouldn’t keep her taxi waiting long –at the most, 10 minutes.

But killing him with a golf club would certainly be easier. After she had clubbed her husband to death, she would put a two-rupee note in his mouth and stuff his body in his locker. The note, which Mrs Dogar already carried in her purse, displayed a typed message on the serial-number side of the money.

…
BECAUSE
DHAR
IS
STILL
A
MEMBER

It was an intriguing decision – which ending Rahul would choose – for although she liked the appearance of the ‘accidental’ death in the deep end of the pool, she also favored the attention-getting murder of another Duckworthian, especially if Inspector Dhar didn’t give up his membership. The second Mrs Dogar was quite sure that Dhar
wouldn’t
resign, at least not without another killing to coax him into it.

It was an embarrassed and exhausted-looking Mr Dogar who appeared at the Duckworth Club before 7:00 the next morning, looking every inch the portrait of a hangover. But it wasn’t alcohol that had wrecked him. Mrs Dogar had made violent love to him the previous night; she’d scarcely waited for the taxi to depart their driveway, or for Mr Dogar to unlock the door — she’d given him back his keys. They were fortunate that the servants didn’t mistake them for intruders, for Mrs Dogar had pounced on her husband in the front hall; she’d torn the clothes off both of them while they were still on the first floor of the house. Then she’d made the old man run up the stairs after her, and she’d straddled him on the bedroom floor; she wouldn’t let him crawl a few feet farther so that they could do it on the bed – nor had she once volunteered to relinquish the top position.

This was, of course, another first-draft possibility … that old Mr Dogar would suffer a heart attack while Rahul was deliberately overexciting him. But the second Mrs Dogar had resolved that she wouldn’t wait as long as a year for this ‘natural’ ending to occur. It was simply too boring. If it happened soon, fine. If not, there was always the golf-club, locker-room ending; in this version, it amused the second Mrs Dogar to imagine how they might finally find the body.

She would report that her husband had not come home for the night. They would find his car in the Duckworth Club parking lot. The wait-staff would relate what had transpired after the Dogars had eaten their dinner; doubtless, Mr Sethna would convey more intimate information. It was possible that no one would think to look for Mr Dogar in his locker until the body began to stink.

But the swimming-pool version also intrigued Rahul. The Bannerjees would confide to the authorities that such a dive in the pool was reputed to be the old fool’s inclination. Mrs Dogar herself could always say, ‘I told you so.’ For Rahul, the hard part about this version would be maintaining a straight face. And the rumor that old Mr Dogar was pissing on the bougainvillea was already established.

When the ashamed Mr Dogar appeared at the Duckworth Club to claim his car, he spoke in apologetic tones to the disapproving Mr Sethria, to whom the very idea of urinating outdoors was repugnant.

‘Did I seem especially drunk to you, Mr Sethna?’ Mr Dogar asked the venerable steward. ‘I’m really very sorry … if I behaved insensitively.’

‘Nothing happened, really,’ Mr Sethna replied coldly. He’d already spoken to the head mali about the bougainvillea. The fool gardener confirmed that there were only isolated patches of the blight. The dead spots in the bougainvillea bordered the greens at the fifth and the ninth holes; both these greens were out of sight of the Duckworth Club dining room and the clubhouse – also, they couldn’t be seen from the Ladies’ Garden. As for that bougainvillea which surrounded the Ladies’ Garden, there was only one dead patch and it was suspiciously in a spot that was out of sight from any of the club’s facilities. Mr Sethna surmised that this gave credence to Mrs Dogar’s urine theory — poor old Mr Dogar
was
peeing on the flowers!

It would never have occurred to the old steward that a [_woman – _]not even as vulgar a member of the species as Mrs Dogar – could be the pissing culprit. But the killer was no amateur at foreshadowing. She’d been systematically murdering the bougainvillea for months. One of many things that the new Mrs Dogar liked about wearing dresses was that it was comfortable not to wear underwear. The only thing Rahul missed about having a penis was how convenient it had been to pee outdoors. But her penchant for pissing on certain out-of-the-way plots of the bougainvillea was not whimsical. While in the pursuit of this odd habit, Mrs Dogar had been mindful of her larger work-in-progress. Even before the unfortunate Mr Lai had happened upon her while she was squatting in the bougainvillea by the fatal ninth hole (which had long been Mr Lai’s nemesis), Rahul had already made a plan.

In her purse, for weeks, she’d carried the two-rupee note with her first typed message to the Duckworth– ians:
MORE
MEMBERS
DIE
IF
DHAR
REMAINS
A
MEMBER
.

She’d always assumed that the easiest Duckworthian to murder would be someone who stumbled into her in one of her out-of-the-way peeing places. She’d thought it would happen at night – in the darkness. She’d imagined a younger member than Mr Lai, probably someone who’d drunk too much beer and wandered out on the nighttime golf course — drawn by the same need that had drawn Mrs Dogar there. She’d imagined a brief flirtation – they were the best kind.

‘So! You had to pee, too? If you tell me what you like about doing it outdoors, I’ll tell you
my
reasons!’ Or maybe: ‘What
else
do you like to do outdoors?’

Mrs Dogar had also imagined that she might indulge in a kiss and a little fondling; she liked fondling, Then she would kill him, whoever he was, and she’d stick the two-rupee note in his mouth. She’d never strangled a man; with her hand strength, she didn’t doubt she could do it. She’d never much liked strangling women – not as much as she enjoyed the pure strength of a blow from a blunt instrument – but she was looking forward to strangling a man because she wanted to see if that old story was true … if men got erections and ejaculated when they were close to choking to death.

Disappointingly, old Mr Lai had afforded Mrs Dogar neither the opportunity for a brief flirtation nor the novelty of a strangulation. Rahul was so lazy, she rarely made breakfast for herself. Although he was officially retired, Mr Dogar left early for his office, and Mrs Dogar often indulged in an early-morning pee on the golf course – before even the most zealous golfers were on the fairways. Then she’d have her tea and some fruit in the Ladies Garden and go to her health club to lift weights and skip rope. She’d been surprised by old Mr Lai’s early-morning assault on the bougainvillea at the ninth green.

Rahul had only just finished peeing; she rose up out of the flowers, and there was the old duffer plodding off the green and tripping through the vines. Mr Lai was searching for a challenging spot in this jungle in which to deposit the stupid golf ball. When he looked up from the flowers, the second Mrs Dogar was standing directly in front of him. She’d startled him so – for a moment, she thought it would be unnecessary to kill him. He clutched his chest and staggered away from her.

‘Mrs Dogar’/ he cried. ‘What’s happened to you? Has someone …
molested
you?’ Thus he gave her the idea; after all, her dress was still hiked up to her hips.

Clearly distraught, she wriggled her dress down. (She would change into a sari for lunch.)

‘Oh, Mr Lai! Thank God it’s you!’ she cried. ‘I’ve been … taken advantage of!’ she told him.

‘What a world, Mrs Dogar! But how may I assist you?
Help
!’ the old man shouted out.

‘Oh no, please! I couldn’t bear to see anyone else –I’m so ashamed!’ she confided to him.

‘But how may I help you, Mrs Dogar?’ Mr Lai inquired.

‘It’s painful for me to walk,’ she confessed. They hurt me.’

‘
They
!’ the old man shouted.

‘Perhaps if you would lend me one of your clubs … if I could just use it as a cane,’ Mrs Dogar suggested. Mr Lai was on the verge of handing her his nine iron, then changed his mind.

‘The putter would be best!’ he declared. Poor Mr Lai was out of breath from the short trot to his golf bag and his stumbling return to her side through the tangled vines, the destroyed flowers. He was much shorter than Mrs Dogar; she was able to put one of her big hands on his shoulder – the putter in her other hand. That way, she could see over the old man’s head to the green and the fairway; no one was there.

‘You could rest on the green while I fetch you a golf cart,’ Mr Lai suggested.

‘Yes, thank you – you go ahead,’ she told him. He tripped purposefully forward, but she was right behind him; before he reached the green, she had struck him senseless — she hit him just behind one ear. After he’d fallen, she bashed him directly in the temple that was turned toward her, but his eyes were already open and unmoving when she struck him the second time. Mrs Dogar suspected he’d been killed by the first blow.

In her purse, she had no difficulty finding the two-rupee note. For 20 years, she’d clipped her small bills to the top half of that silver ballpoint pen which she’d stolen from the beach cottage in Goa. She even kept this silly memento well polished. The clip – the ‘pocket clasp,’ as her Aunt Promila had called it – continued to maintain the perfect tension on a small number of bills, and the polished silver made the top half of the pen easy to spot in her purse; she hated how small things could become lost in purses.

She’d inserted the two-rupee note in Mr Lai’s gaping mouth; to her surprise, when she closed his mouth, it opened again. She’d never fried to close a dead person’s mouth before. She’d assumed that the body parts of the dead would be fairly controllable; that had certainly been her experience with manipulating limbs –sometimes an elbow or a knee had been in the way of her belly drawing, and she’d easily rearranged it.

The distracting detail of Mr Lai’s mouth was what caused her to be careless. She’d returned the remaining small notes to her purse, but not the top half of the well-traveled pen; it must have fallen in the bougainvillea. She hadn’t been able to find it later, and there in the bougainvillea was the last place she recalled holding it in her hand. Mrs Dogar assumed that
the
police were presently puzzling over it; with the widow Lai’s help, they’d probably determined that the top half of the pen hadn’t belonged to Mr Lai. Mrs Dogar speculated that the police might even conclude that no Duckworthian would be caught dead with such a pen; that it was made of real silver was somehow negated by the sheer tackiness of the engraved word,
India
. Rahul found tacky things amusing. It also amused Rahul to imagine how aimlessly the police must be tracking her, for Mrs Dogar believed that the half-pen would be just another link in a chain of meaningless clues.