A Son of the Circus

“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 sin

k. 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.

The Way It Happened to Mr. Lal

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. Sethna, 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 green 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. Lal had happened upon her while she was squatting in the bougainvillea by the fatal ninth hole (which had long been Mr. Lal’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 Duckworthians: 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. Lal, 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. Lal had offered 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. Lal’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. Lal 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. Lal! 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. Lal inquired.

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

“They!” the old man shouted.