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SO(U)L(E)  SEARCH – Detective Short Story

Detective Short Story – SO(U)L(E)  SEARCH
Photo credit: wintersixfour from morguefile.com

The Park Street Cemetery in the city of Kolkata is one of  the most eerie and bizarre places to find oneself in. To visit graveyards and old cemeteries had been a childhood fascination of mine. Lover that I was of detective novels and crime fiction. Agatha Christie, P.D. James, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and my most favourite fiction writer in the vernacular language , Satyajit Ray, had been my staple diet , along with my dal, roti, sabzi and rice. These authors used to transport me to a world, albeit fictional, which encapsulated me with its magic and magnetic appeal. I used to ( still do) devour these with a relish , and these are always my bed-time companions. I am also an ardent follower of Hitchcock films  – master par excellence in the genre of suspense and thriller. I have watched Psycho several times , the first being when I was in school. Neither Norman Bates nor the famous shower scene in the film could arouse in me, a sense of fear or of evil.

“But that’s most  extraordinary! Don’t you think your child should be treated by  doctor? A shrink, perhaps?”

That was me, a teenager deeply into stories that delved deep into the human psyche and dealt with, sometimes, Freudian unconscious. That is where all our guilt lie hidden. That is the epicentre of the human mind from where the angst of modern living arises. First and foremost, all investigators of crime, in fiction and in real life, try to unravel all the mysteries of the unconscious of the prime accused or the so-called criminal brain. I had gone through Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretations of  Dreams , when I was still in college. Our professor used to harp on Freud while analysing Joseph Conrad. Yes, I was an English Literature student. Truly speaking, I haven’t changed course since then. My reading habits were inculcated  in me by both my parents and my college and university professors.

It so happened that I had chanced upon the first volume of Alexander McCall Smith’ s No.1 Ladies Detective Agency series. The picture of rural Botswana, of Mma Ramotswe and the travails of her assistant Mma Makutsi, got me engrossed and its pages had kept me in thrall for days. The author had been invited by the Publishers and Booksellers Guild of Kolkata to inaugurate the Kolkata Book Fair , an annual event in the city’s literary calendar , a couple of years back. The theme of that year’s fair was, quite obviously, Africa. People were jostling with each other to catch a glimpse of the celebrated author, better still to have a book autographed by him. I was one of the lucky few in the latter group.

Crime is a social evil which spreads like poison through the meandering latticed veins of  a city. Villages are not exempt from it, as far as the newspapers and the audio-visual media are to be believed. But the crimes committed in a city proper  are of a more heinous nature. We ( myself, my cousins Sam and Sonya, and a few of our mutual friends ) decided to float a detective agency , comprising of an exclusively female gang of justice-perpetrators.

“ Let us make the garage at my house, the office of our new agency”, quipped Sam (shortened form of Sanjukta).

By the way, our detective agency has been christened WOT (Women On Trail). It is our pledge that we would sincerely deal with whatever case comes our way, in the most just manner. Arpita, one of Sonya’s friends, added woe to worry.

“ What would be our remuneration , per case dealt?”

“The remuneration would be directly proportional to the magnitude of the case undertaken”, I tried to answer her queries.

“ But how do we procure a case in the first place? People would not confide in us unless we earn their trust and moreover, an all-women detective agency is  big put-off in our society where the ultimate decision lies with the masculine segment in our social hierarchy”, pondered Sonya, aloud.

We at WOT decided to give an advertisement in a prominent local English daily. The insertion ran thus :

“ We solve crimes done both surreptitiously  as well as overtly. If you want to solve a problem , tantamount to a criminal offence, without going to higher legal authorities, Contact….”

The first few days post insertion, ran a big blank. On the fifth day, a rich baritone contacted us and said that he would like us to investigate the recent theft of his SUV (“ Sports Utility Vehicle”, he had elaborated, as if we didn’t know already). On enquiry , he revealed that his car was chauffeur-driven. Which was in itself an amazing revelation! For, to most of our knowledge , such expensive cars were exclusively owner or master driven ones. The voice revealed himself as Mr. Nandi. He has contacted us because he did not want to make a hullabaloo of the affair. My first question was ,

“ Give us the name and contact number of your chauffeur-cum-driver.”

Mr. Nandi, a renowned architect by profession, had acquiesced. Over his mobile, Ram who was our first client’s driver , denied our allegation as to his being the prime suspect in masterminding the theft. On further probing, he told us to meet him at the Park Street Cemetery ( which he said was near to the place where he himself resided).

Graveyards, in general, are hardly popular meeting places for people. But at the insistence of Ram, we had to go and visit this notable and heritage site of the city in the evening, after sunset. I was clutching The Complete Casebook of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle , to my chest. This was our first official case and we wanted to get to the bottom of it as soon as possible. Park Street Cemetery has the tomb stones of such luminary figures like Henry Vivian Derozio, one of the first Indian educators to disseminate Western learning and science among the young men of Bengal. Derozio had held a profound influence on the social movement that came to be known as the Bengal Renaissance in the early nineteenth century Bengal.

Ram , for the sake of personal records, failed to arrive at the appointed hour and appointed place. When we enquired at the insurance agency of the makers of the particular automobile, it turned out that Mr. Nandi had evaded the payment of the requisite taxes. Hence in order to explicate himself, the latter had foiled a case of theft of his own car which he had masterminded . The driver was nothing but an accomplice in the crime. Despite the jubilation at solving and cracking our first ‘case’, we were also upset by the fact that we failed to get any ‘remuneration’ for it. But playing detectives and solving impregnable crimes were our passion before it could be turned into our professions.

I had always stayed away from cemeteries and places of other-worldly and occult significance. The white tomb stones at Park Street Cemetery had inculcated in me a sense of ultimate peace and of a presiding order of things, that night. I overcame my fear of visiting such paces and frankly, I make it a point to pay this cemetery a visit whenever I pass through that way. Albeit, in the daytime.  WOT continues to operate , offering solutions to people’s worries and woe .

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