The Unwilling Will

There’s nothing better for a detective’s business than to be covered by the newspapers, right?

Wrong. First of all, the coverage was only on the inside page of the city supplement, and in only one newspaper. Then, they had given all credit to the DSP, which I don’t mind. Really, I don’t. You have to keep the police happy in the detective business. But the worst is that they named me as the victim. That’s technically true, but doesn’t match the image of the gun-toting denizen of the dumps, the deadbeat detective of Delhi. Me.

Ok, ok, I had been the one kidnapped. My elder brother had scrimped and scraped for the ransom. Over twelve years. However, I’d long since escaped from my rat-faced kidnapper cousin, though leaving behind my memory. Once I laid eyes on Bhaiya again, though, I’d not only recovered the ransom in double-quick time, but also my memory.

Since dear old ratty was the guest of the government as an under-trial, I had taken over his rooms in grandfather’s house. After all, he was my grandfather, too. Bhaiya had ferried me over on his putt-putt scooter. So far so good and all sister-brother love all around. But now Bhaiya was constantly hovering over me, and his Big Brother indoctrination from countless Hindi movies was getting annoying.

Plus, he had attempted to wheedle some of the ransom money back from me. Can you imagine? No respect for quality detective work, I tell you.

On top of it, he insisted on telling me all about how to detect (like he’s the one with twelve years’ experience in detecting instead of me) and about my gun and to abandon my hat (the horror - a detective without a hat?!). He keeps insisting I ought to call my bullets ‘rounds’. Well, would I call them squares just because he pesters me? If I want to call them rounds or bullets or chihuahuas, what difference does it make to him? I’d finally yelled at him, and he had puttered off in a hoity-toity-looking huff. Actually, he puttered off on his scooter, but it looks like a huff, and if I want to call it a huff, I shall. So there.

So, here I was, with surplus energy and not a lot of constructive things to work it off on. I decided to clear out ratty’s cupboard. Make space for my stuff and all that. Also, I planned to sell his stuff to the lady who comes around and gives you steel utensils for second hand clothes. I mean, I can use clean utensils, but not ratty’s clothes. Also, the government would supply him with clothes for several years, by which time his old ones would be out of fashion. He’d thank me, you just wait.

Ten minutes later, and I was wondering if the utensil lady would pay me to not offer to sell ratty’s clothes to her. I have never seen a more pathetic set of clothes, and mind you, I have seen my own wardrobe. I decided to pile them up in a corner and use them in case the gas ran out while I was cooking. It would be a kindness to the world.

Next, I decided to toss the paper which ratty had lined the shelves with. Weirdo that he is, he had used legal-sized paper to line them. The paper had old-style typing on it, and was signed and stamped with purple stamps and stuff. One of the pages even had that fancy looking stamp paper in multi-colours that was all the rage in the last century. All in all, there were four sheets of paper on four different shelves.

Even a non-detective like you would have got suspicious about his using only four sheets of legal sized paper, one each to line a whole cupboard shelf, leaving all that blank space around them. After all, newspaper sheets are much larger, and a lot cheaper.

So I spread some (cheap, leftover) newspaper on the dining table, got out my tweezers and carefully placed the sheets on the newspaper.

The first thing that caught my eye was my grandfather’s name on the last page. The second thing was the signature above it. That was certainly not grandfather’s signature, for a start, and you can wait for the second peculiar thing about the signature till the end of this paragraph. The third thing I noticed was the first witness’s name below the signature. It was ratty’s elder brother’s name. Unlike ratty, who has a face like a half-starved rat, his brother bore a close resemblance to a half-starved hyena, both in appearance and the sound of his laugh. I used to call him hyenaman when I was a kid, and he used to promptly beat me up for it, in a mutual cycle of petty revenge. The fourth thing I spotted was the second witness’s name. That was ratty’s name, all in capital letters. And this was most peculiar, because though ratty never really got along with anyone, he and hyenaman were mortal enemies. Each had put the other into hospital at least twice while I was still a kid (before the kidnapping). The fifth thing I noticed was the date. Yes, definitely around the time that the enforced hospital visits had happened, which made the whole thing most peculiar squared. The sixth and last thing I noticed on that page was that, although I had no idea if it was ratty’s signature or not, I was reasonably sure that whoever had signed for ratty was the same person who had signed for grandfather.

I turned over the yellowed pages carefully and found page one. It was titled LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT.

Before I could notice anything else, sudden blinding darkness fell over the entire room. I stood there, not knowing whether to scream or not. I checked to see if my gun and other tools were in my pockets. They were. I pushed the gun to one side and searched with my fingers till I found the coil of wire I carried around as a backup. Keeping a hand on it, but leaving it in the pocket, I shuffled forward slowly till I could feel the wall. Then I shuffled sideways till I reached the door. I yanked it open, blinking in the early afternoon light, and went to fix the electrical fuse under the stairs. I really do need to remove the grime from the windows.

I had wound the wire around the fuse and was just about to stuff it into the socket, when a shadow passed me. Someone was creeping into the open room.

I waited till the intruder had stumbled over a chair, before ramming in the fuse and darting to the door.

The light had come on, and the intruder was frozen in midstep. A good thing, too. Had he put his foot down, it would have gone through the cane seat of the only chair there. Certainly, I was less worried about injuries to the intruder.

Slowly, he turned his head to look at me. Hyenaman.

“Who are you and what are you doing here?” he demanded. It was pure bluster. He had less reason than me to be in there. In fact, he didn’t even have an excuse.

“I live here,” I said coldly. “What are you doing here, is the more pertinent question.”

His face went pale. He must have read about ratty’s arrest and thought the coast was clear.

“Uhh…” His eyes bugged with the effort of thinking. “How come you live here?”

Did he not know who I am? Time for a bit of cunning.

“I am Gunvanti Devi-e-Hind Bhatavadekar, the new tenant,” I said loftily.

“Oh.” He looked deflated. Clearly, I had a valid claim, while he did not. His eyes darted around frantically.

“Stop ogling my living space and remove yourself, you, you, you trespasser!” I hiss-yelled. The last thing I needed was for him to spot the alleged Will.

“I, uh, I need some papers from my brother,” he started.

“There is no brother here,” I pronounced, with a grand gesture, exorcising all brethren from my rooms. “So go find your brother and his newspapers, but get out. Now.”

I had his arm in a solid grip and frog-marched him out.

“Uh, madam ji, madam ji, please see if you can find my papers. My grandfather made a Will and left everything to me, and my wicked brother, who used to live here, has stolen the Will, and I am homeless. And an orphan. He is in jail now, my brother, may he stay there forever, and did you know that? That he is in jail?” He was pleading desperately by the time we reached the door. What a liar! His parents were very much alive, and lived on the second floor. But that may not be something for a mere tenant to know.

“Out!” I said firmly. “And do not harass ladies again in your life,” I scolded, for good measure, wagging my finger under his nose. “And I don’t care to hear the miserable life story of previous tenants.”

I shut the door in his face and bolted it. I waited with bated breath till I could hear his shuffling footsteps fade away.

I then sprang to the table and took some vital precautions.

It was time to read the Will.

An hour later, I was clutching my head and moaning from the sheer pain. Never before would any four pages have inflicted such torture on a human being.

Each individual word could be found in a dictionary. But it was a maze of words in which a second sentence put exceptions on the first, and the third sentence put exceptions on the second.

The first two pages were typical grandfather-ese (with added legalese). And then, children, turn to page 3. In this, suddenly, grandfather proceeded to abuse both his sons, his daughter, and all his grandchildren - with the astonishing exception of ratty and hyenaman. I didn’t even know that grandfather knew so many abuses, though I had heard most of them from ratty and hyenaman during their fights. After almost a full page of abuses, he said his property was to be divided between - ratty and hyenaman! I tell you, I find such coincidences very annoying.

I stared at the pages again. After my brain cooled down and my eyes uncrossed, a Clue appeared to me! Yes, despite your misgivings, I really am a good detective and I know a Clue when I see one, especially if I have been looking at it for an hour.

I was startled out of my brilliant deductions by a loud bang from the second floor, followed by a few more, punctuated with male yells, and the screams of my aunt. In a few seconds, I found that I had teleported onto the landing outside their front door (this mystery I have yet to solve). Hyenaman was laying about with a long stick, and Uncle was leaping nimbly out of his way, yelling along like a rock singer accompanying a demented drummer. Aunt was screaming for help and wringing her hands. It took me some time to do anything because I have never seen anyone wringing their hands outside of a Hindi movie.

In the meantime, hyenaman had spotted me and my dropped jaw. With a shriek that sounded mysteriously triumphant, he pushed past me and ran pell-mell down the stairs.

Aunt and Uncle both dropped to the floor, clutching their hearts. I ran around their kitchen, found a couple of mismatched tumblers and half a bottle of cold water in the fridge, which I made up to a full bottle with tap water. I then gave them both a good drink of water, and reluctantly suffered them to pat my head and utter blessings.

Within a few minutes, they gasped out the story. After his abortive excursion to my room, hyenaman had gone upstairs to meet his parents. At this unexpected filial visit, they had excitedly told him that I had been discovered and was occupying ratty’s room. At this point, both of them started mumbling, so I’m still not clear if they wanted hyenaman to evict me or were actually joyous that I had supplanted ratty. Truth be told, those were not sons they were particularly proud of, but blood is blood. Especially the four or five units each that they had donated at the hospital when their sons’ feuds had ended up there.

At any rate, I left them to their squeaks of outrage at hyenaman’s laying about with a stick, though it was clear that he was hitting the walls and floor more than aiming at his parents or their possessions. Why on earth would he pound the walls and floor? I abandoned my uncle and aunt when they started phoning up all their relatives to inform them of the excitement, and descended to my room to ponder this mystery.

One look at my dining table and the crumpled newspapers was enough to answer that. He had decamped with the document, after distracting me with his dynamic dancing. Sigh. I needed a new plan.

So I locked my door and pushed off to the office of the Sub-Registrar (I couldn’t locate the Registrar and the staff was getting annoyed at telling me none existed). After distributing a bit of largesse, they were happy again and I obtained a photocopy of a registered document. I then went to the cybercafe and got a few printouts.

Another 15 minutes saw me at hyenaman’s door. I found him crying in front of the Will, his tears wetting a small stack of pages of scratched out calculations. The stack looked like a confused crow had set up multi-storey nest housing, and then decided to bomb the built-up nesting, leaving mathematical twigs and fractionised debris all over. His phone was lying in a glass full of ice water. Apparently, his calculator app had overheated the poor battery. Not that he’s going to need a phone where he is now.

When he saw me, he shrieked and tried to run. I was having none of it. I had bought myself the biggest discount pack of bullets available online, and I donated one to him, right in his leg. Then I put a bandaid on it, and dragged him, hopping desperately on his other leg, all the way to the police station. It’s not such a big wound as you’d have guessed from all his yelling and writhing. Maybe he was just astonished. He probably expected me to still be the small girl he used to beat up as a kid, not a gun-toting detective. With a hat. Ok, a raincoat hat.

Now, he’s sitting in lockup, while the DSP and my newly-adoring family are standing around respectfully after I explained the story to them.

Ratty and hyenaman had forged the last two pages of the Will. With the original (ok, photocopy, same difference) from the Sub-Registrar’s office, I was able to prove that grandfather had not, in fact, left everything to the crooked couple, but had actually excluded them from any share at all!

I very kindly explained to everyone (again) all the Clues. There was a new typewriter in use on page 3, more broken down, if possible, than the one used for the first two pages. Then there were lots of words with xxx printed over them, as if the abuses were too much for the poor typist, or the person dictating the stuff was changing his mind every few seconds. See, ratty and hyenaman could never agree, even on shared abuses. The last two pages had a different yellowish colour and size (foolscap, fittingly). Grandfather’s signature on page 3 was the same as on the last page, not the first two. Both ratty’s and hyenaman’s signatures were all over page 3, too. They never did trust each other and needed the other’s signature to ‘prove’ (just in case) that ‘it’s all his fault’. The first two pages had grandfather’s signature all right. Nobody had quite that crabbed spider-crawl that proclaimed to all that Here Be Dragons. It was unduplicatable. Whoever had signed for ratty had made a valiant attempt to copy it. And, naturally, had botched it. Even non-detectives like you would be able to see that right away. I would have seen it faster, too, if it hadn’t been for a random ‘hereinbefore’ standing there like a dinosaur with its fat foot placed firmly on mine, painfully insisting on my continued presence and attention.

The two crooked geniuses had done everything else, but not specified their shares in the forged Will, so busy were they, signing all over page 3. So each was forever claiming any old amount, and beating up the other in assorted dark alleys to make him give up his ‘share’. Most of their ill-gotten rental gains were now in the coffers of various hospitals. One of the hospitals was so thrilled at the repeat business that it had even given them a ‘frequent patient loyalty card’. I suspect they will find a lot of use for it - but in a few years. For the near future, the costs of their x-rays and plasters will be covered by the generosity of the government.

My family was so very adoring because they were now legal owners of the places they lived in, and did not have to pay huge rents to ratty and hyenaman any more. The whole of the ground floor belongs to me and Bhaiya. The second floor belongs to Uncle and Aunt. And the middle floor belongs to three cousins who were settled in other countries, and their parents. All five were video-calling in, in the greatest of excitement. At owning 1/5 of 700 square feet each! I tell you, some people are too easily excited.

Everyone wanted to see the wicked Will and admire my detective work, so Bhaiya got them photocopies from a nearby shop.

Now, see, I don’t mind sharing credit with the DSP. That’s business sense. But Bhaiya strutting around, acting like he’d personally trained me? I needed something to calm me down.

So I thought of ratty and hyenaman sharing the same cell. The DSP had read the forgery despite my warnings. He still has an icepack on his head, and so he had taken out his frustrations on the dirty duo - by sticking them together. He has also gulped at least three paracetamol pills. Bhaiya insists that they are tablets, not pills.

I really do wish he would putter off on his huff.