Foreign Bodies Read online

  A little huffily I said, ‘All right then, why don’t you explain?’

  Byomkesh took a chair and put his feet up on the table. Indolently, he lit up a cheroot and asked, ‘Have you understood why blank sheets come by post?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you figure out why the Jewish woman is paid every month?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Haven’t you at least worked out why Nandadulalbabu needs to underline his obscene stories?’

  ‘No. Have you?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Byomkesh took a long drag on the cheroot and said, his eyes closed, ‘But unless I am absolutely certain about one fact, it will not be fair to make any comments.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘I need to know the colour of Nandadulalbabu’s tongue.’

  It looked like he was pulling my leg. Brusquely I said, ‘Are you trying to be funny?’

  ‘Funny!’ Byomkesh opened his eyes and saw my expression. ‘Are you offended? Honestly, I am not joking. Everything hinges upon the colour of Nandadulalbabu’s tongue. If the colour of his tongue is red, then my guess is right, and if it is not—you didn’t happen to notice it, did you?’

  Irritated, I said, ‘No, it didn’t occur to me to notice his tongue.’

  Byomkesh grinned and said, ‘Yet, that should have been the first thing to look at. Anyway, do something—call Nandadulalbabu’s son and ask him about it.’

  ‘He may think I am being facetious.’

  Byomkesh waved his arms and recited poetically, ‘Fear not, oh fear not, there is no need for thee to quail—’

  I went into the next room, located the number and dialled it. Mohan was still there and it was he who answered. ‘I didn’t tell you about it because I hadn’t thought that piece of information mattered,’ he said. ‘Nandadulalbabu’s tongue is a deep crimson in colour. It seems a bit unusual because he doesn’t take much paan either. But why do you ask?’

  I called Byomkesh. He asked, ‘It is red, right? Well then, it is solved.’ He took the phone from me and said, ‘Doctor, it’s good that I got hold of you. Your riddle has been solved. Yes, it was Ajit who solved it—I just helped him a bit. I was so busy with the forger…yes, I’ve got him too…You don’t have to do too much, just remove the bottle of red ink and the red fountain pen from Nandadulalbabu’s room…Yes, you got it. Please drop in sometime tomorrow and I shall explain everything. Goodbye. I shall certainly convey your gratitude to Ajit. Didn’t I say that his intellect has grown really sharp nowadays?’ Laughing to himself, Byomkesh put the receiver down.

  After returning to the living room, I said a trifle bashfully, ‘I think I am beginning to get it in bits and pieces, but please tell me in greater detail. How did you work it out?’

  Byomkesh glanced at the clock and said, ‘It is time for dinner. Putiram will be here at any moment to announce it. All right, let me go over it briefly with you. You were on the wrong track from the very beginning. It was important to find out how the stuff entered the room. It doesn’t have limbs of its own, hence obviously it was being brought in by someone. Who could that be? Five people have access to the room—the doctor, the two sons, the wife, and one other person. The first four people would not deliberately bring the poison to Nandadulalbabu. So this was the work of the fifth person.’

  ‘Who is the fifth person?’

  ‘The fifth one is—the postman. He comes in once a week. It was through him that the poison entered the room.’

  ‘But the envelopes contain nothing but blank sheets of paper.’

  ‘That is the trick. Everyone thinks that the envelope might contain the stuff and so nobody pays attention to the postman. The man is smart; he switches the red inkpot with ease. The point of sending blank sheets of paper by registered post is to give the postman access into Nandadulalbabu’s room.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘You made one more error in your judgement. The money that is sent to the Jewish woman—it’s not a pension: that custom doesn’t prevail anywhere. It is payment for the drug; the woman supplies it through the postman. So now you see, the venom comes into Nandadulalbabu’s hands and nobody even suspects how. But the room is under surveillance at all hours, so how would he consume it? This is where his writing comes in useful. The paper and ink is always at hand and there is no need to get up in order to take in the drug—the task can be accomplished from his seat on the bed. He writes with the black pen, highlights with the red one and at every chance, sucks on the nib of the fountain pen. When the ink runs out he refills the pen. Now do you understand why the colour of his tongue is red?’

  ‘But how did you know it would be the red one? Couldn’t it be the black one too?’

  ‘Oh no, can’t you see? The black ink is used much more profusely. Would Nandadulalbabu want any superfluous use of that precious stuff? Hence the highlighting—hence the red ink.’

  ‘I get it. So simple—’

  ‘Of course it is simple. But the brain that has come up with such a simple plan is not to be slighted. It is because of its simplicity that all of you were fooled.’

  ‘How did you figure it out?’

  ‘Very easily. In this case two facts seemed to stand out as entirely unnecessary and therefore suspicious. One, the arrival of blank sheets by registered post, and two, Nandadulalbabu’s excessive writing and highlighting habit. When I began to mull over the real reasons for these two, I stumbled upon the solution. You see, my forger too—’

  The telephone shrilled into action in the next room. Both of us hurried to it. Byomkesh picked it up and said, ‘Yes, who is it?…Oh, Doctor, yes, tell me…Nandadulalbabu is creating a racket?…He is ranting and raving? Well, well, that is inevitable…What was that? He is cursing Ajit? He is using the “f” and “b” words?…That is very wrong…very wrong indeed. But if he cannot be shut up, it can’t be helped…Of course Ajit doesn’t take it to heart, he is well aware that good deeds seldom go uncriticized in this world! You have to take the brickbats with the bouquets…such is life…all right then, goodbye!’

  Murder à la Carte

  Jean-Toussaint Samat

  Jean-Toussaint Samat (1865–1944) was born in the Camargue to a family with literary connections; his grandfather founded Le Petit Marseillais, and he too was heavily involved with the newspaper, both on the business side and as a journalist. Although little-known today, he wrote crime and adventure novels with considerable success. A notable example is The Shoes That Had Walked Twice (L’Horrible Mort de Miss Gilchrist), a mystery concerning the death of a female English landscape artist, which was translated into English in 1933, a year after becoming the third winner of Le Prix du Roman d’Aventures. The prize was inaugurated by the Librairie des Champs-Élysées in 1930 to stimulate interest in detective fiction in France, and pre-dated the establishment of the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Allan Poe Awards (1946), and the Crime Writers’ Association’s Dagger Awards (1955).

  Samat’s other novels included The Dead Man at the Window (1934), which again was among the handful of translated French mysteries published by Lippincott in the US in the Thirties, perhaps because of heightened interest arising from creation of the prize. His principal series character was a detective called Levert. This story was first translated into English in 1931 for the magazine Living Age.

  ‘If I tell you the truth, you will not listen to me…

  You will listen to me only if I say, “This is a story.”’

  Kalamatra to his disciple

  His voice had such a profound ring of truth in it that when he stopped talking the rest of us could not help staring at each other. Then one of us—I do not recall which—said aloud what we had all been thinking: ‘You’ve got to tell people about this. If you really know such things to be true, you can’t let it go at that. It ought to be published, at once.’

  His only reply was a shrug of the shoulders.r />
  Then someone else asked: ‘Why don’t you want to?’

  He pushed back his chair, blew a smoke ring toward the ceiling. ‘Bah. What’s the use? No one would believe me!’

  Immediately we all started talking at once, loudly, like a crowd of people gathered about a street accident, each trying to make his opinion heard without a thought for what the others were saying. Then we realized what idiots we must seem, and with equal abruptness fell silent.

  He went on smoking his cigar and watching the blue smoke drift quietly toward the ceiling. He seemed detached from us, detached from everything save those bluish smoke clouds and the smoke rings that he was conscientiously blowing.

  I stepped forward—we had by this time all risen from the table save him—and said: ‘All right. If you don’t want to do it, I will. If I publish it, they’ll believe me!’

  He was a scholar and a man of profound human understanding. He spoke twenty languages, and never once used a false word.

  Since he continued to look at me with doubt in his eye, I stamped my foot and shouted—yes, shouted in what must have seemed a ridiculously loud voice, ‘I tell you they will believe me!’

  Finally he laughed and murmured, ‘Poor man!’

  Well, here is the story.

  Last night I dined at the home of my friend Georges Rainfort, the traveller. There were six of us altogether, six globe-trotters come to honour the One who was the Great Globe-Trotter, the eldest of us all and our acknowledged master. He knows all the highroads and bypaths of all the world. He has examined the seven continents, forged through the seven seas. There is not an island in any ocean that he has not picked up with a curious hand, turned over, studied, felt, weighed, only returning it to its native waters when he was certain that it concealed nothing from him. One of those men of whom one can honestly say that what they do not know of this earth is not worth knowing.

  During the course of the meal he said almost nothing. Our own conversation he followed with an air of abstraction; his mind was elsewhere. We tried in vain to find the note that would set him vibrating in sympathy with us. Whether through pride or through disdain or through mere coquettishness, he refused to give in.

  Then someone said: ‘Queer, wasn’t it, that Montblanc case? Do you suppose strychnine is at the bottom of every poisoning? How did it happen that all the guests at both weddings were taken ill? How do you explain that? A monstrous plot against them all, or mere coincidence? Poisoning? But with what?’

  At this point he raised his eyes. His hands were still occupied in mechanically twisting and crushing a crust of bread. Suddenly he set it down on the table, brought his fist down with a sharp, decisive blow, and began to speak. His tone was even and low, as in a monologue, which was really what he was about to deliver.

  ‘Poisoning? What with? With anything you choose! Or with nothing whatever! I mean just that. People don’t realize it, that’s all. They think they know; they really don’t know anything about it. They think that you have to use a poison. Strychnine? Obviously strychnine is a poison. A killer. But the symptoms of strychnine poisoning are too well known. And besides, you have to get strychnine. But why bother with strychnine? You talk about poisons. There are hundreds of effective poisons. Ah, but their symptoms, too, are all known? And even those whose symptoms aren’t known reveal themselves in the autopsy? Well? There are things which are poison, and things which are not poison. Poison and nonpoison. There’s no trick about murdering with poison; any fool can do it, provided he has the killer instinct, or the desire, or the need. There are so many people, and they commit murder for so many different reasons: vengeance, jealousy, cupidity, ignorance, hate, love, to see what will happen, or never to have to see again. Imbeciles!

  ‘We want to murder someone. We haven’t the courage to walk up to him and attack him, or for that matter to strike him from behind. So we go to the corner drug store, buy a penny’s worth of rat poison, and give it to the son-in-law, the rich heiress, the man across the street, the husband, the lover. Then we have only to wash the cup carefully and wait until death strikes. But—there is a gauntlet to run: the family of the dead man, the coroner, the police, the judge, the jury, the jailer, and, at the end perhaps, the executioner.

  ‘Our only chance of escape is that somewhere in that line is a man who will not do his duty, or will not realize it, or will do it badly—or who has better things to do. But there is always the chance that they will all do their duty, and then…?

  ‘All in all, not a very clever method. But there is a possibility that the crime will not be discovered? Of course. Out of every ten cases of poisoning, four are due to carelessness. To drinking or eating poison by error. These four cases are banal, uninteresting. Five cases have criminal intent at their origin. Of these five, three are never suspected of being crimes, two are prosecuted as such. Only one of these two results in a conviction. A conviction, I said—not punishment. Four cases plus three cases plus two cases; that makes nine. Nine deaths due to poison. Banal, all nine of them. But the tenth? Ah, there is something worthy of real admiration! Yes, I mean admiration. For the tenth case is one of poisoning by a nonpoisonous substance!

  ‘A poison which is not a poison! Ah, the man who discovered that I consider to be a genius. A criminal genius, perhaps, but a genius nevertheless. An expert. A man who knew. And I know what I’m talking about. Poisoning without poison? What with? Why, with the best dishes you ever ate in your life. With a whole series of them. In short, with a menu. A delicious little menu—or, if there is no hurry, a whole series of delicious little menus! Ah, gentlemen, that is art! Criminal, perhaps. Cowardly. But art! And I have known artists…

  ‘One was a cook. An Annamite cook. Name was Nug-Hyen. Thû-Nug-Hyen from Phô-Vân-Nhoc. There was a man who knew how to plan a “menu” like no one else! I can tell you his name because he is dead now—poisoned. He had it coming to him. Another—Abbas-Ilahim, a Batavian innkeeper. He too knew his “menus”—those delicious-meals-that-strike-you-dead. He, too, died of poison—indirectly. And then there was Randriajafy, concession-holder and governor at Tsifory in Madagascar. His speciality was a “banquet for the inspector general.” And a beast named Pitacunca, the sorcerer on the upper Amazon. He died early in his career. And an old scoundrel named Dolorès-Maria-Virgine Alvarez, who kept an inn (my God, what an inn!) in the Andes, on the highroad to Cuzco, over which the gold prospectors passed on their way back home, after two or three years of successful mining. And—there were so many others! Bah. Gone, all gone! In the long-run, they were all stricken down by the same hand with which they had struck so many others—and no one can say that they didn’t richly deserve it. The hand of God—with a good bit of human assistance.

  ‘Still, what masterpieces they were—those marvellous, deadly meals, dish after delicious dish that the host himself was the first to eat and enjoy! What reason is there for suspicion when the cook, or one’s host himself, one’s delightful, attentive host, eats as heartily as you?

  ‘What reason for suspicion? None, of course. Naturally. One never thinks of it, never realizes what is happening—unless one knew.

  ‘Take milk, for instance. Delightful drink, isn’t it? Finest example of a healthy food, isn’t it? And then the artichoke! Is there any more delectable vegetable (is an artichoke a vegetable or a flower?) than the artichoke, especially when it is young and tender? Healthy, too. Good for you. Milk is good for you. Artichokes are good for you. Of course. But if you eat a French artichoke after having drunk a glass of milk, the milk curdles in your stomach and you are ill. Milk plus artichoke means something harmful. Now do you follow?

  ‘Nature contains quantities of foods that are all excellent if eaten alone but that have a reacting mate, another food that acts as a catalytic agent which, if allowed to enter the stomach at the same time, brings about the formation either of a harmful substance or of a deadly poison. Nearly any food, given the proper catalytic
, may decompose into a dangerous acid or salt. It all depends on the proper constitution of the menu.

  ‘Sometimes the deadly menu is positive, so to speak; sometimes negative. We may call positive those menus that include certain dishes whose combination provokes a chemical reaction in the stomach or intestines which in turn brings about the formation of a poison. When the poisoner uses such a “positive” menu, he has merely to avoid eating one of the dishes in the mortal combination. Let us say, for example, that we have Ramon, José, and Josélita at table together. José and Josélita wish to kill Ramon. The two dishes which, when combined, will form the poison are, let us say, a stew (often it is a stew) and a salad. Ramon is on his guard, watches his hosts suspiciously. José passes the stew by. But Josélita eats hers heartily, takes a second helping—and naturally Ramon eats his. He doesn’t know how these things are done. Then comes the fish and the roast; all three eat fish and roast. The salad is brought on. Josélita says: “I’ve had enough. I can’t eat any more.” “You’re making a mistake,” answers José, and plunges into his salad with a will. Why should Ramon be suspicious? He helps himself to the salad also. Now the two necessary elements are together. Stew plus salad equals death. He dies—almost immediately, or after a long interval, depending on the requirements of the case. But the meal was excellent, throughout!

  ‘On the other hand, we may call “negative” those menus arranged in such a way that if one fails to eat a certain dish, the combination of the others is fatal. Let us say, for example, that Pierre is stopping for the night with Paul and Julie, on his way back from a successful season’s gold washing. He is tired and hungry. They sit down to supper together. Pierre, vaguely suspicious, watches the others and says nothing. Hors-d’œuvre, entrée, fish—all are brought on and all are partaken of heartily. Then comes the roast—a tender young monkey. Paul says in an offhand manner:

  ‘“Curious how much it looks like the corpse of a newborn baby!” Pierre’s appetite disappears. “I don’t believe I’ll have any,” he says, disgusted. “Don’t force yourself,” says Julie kindly. “Paul and I are used to it; you’re not. Let me get an antelope steak for you instead.” They all eat some of the antelope. Pierre has eaten nothing which the other two have not eaten also. In fact they have eaten even more than he—the monkey. There was where he made his mistake. He should have tasted the monkey in spite of his revulsion, for in the sauce or in the stuffing was the saving substance that would have prevented the poison from being formed. Neat, isn’t it?