The Cosmic Clues (18 page)

She picked up the receiver and quickly dialed Inspector Divekar's number. Her uncle was the only person who could help her at this hour. After a brief discussion with him, in which she outlined the details of her requirement, she hung up. The Inspector would certainly call as soon as he had the information. Next, she logged on to the Internet. Fifteen minutes of surfing and she had all the answers to her questions—well, almost all. No sooner had she disconnected than the phone rang. It was Jeevan Uncle.

“You're on the right track, Sonia,” Inspector Divekar boomed. “Here's what you need.”

Sonia swiftly jotted down the information and her hand shook with excitement. Finally she had all the pieces to this puzzle. She sighed as she replaced the receiver. And what a mess it was. What a clever plot! Here was an example of how an intelligent mind could use the human pyramid to his advantage. Flawless planning, masterly implementation and practiced exploitation of a human chain, climbing onto the shoulders of others, to achieve one's goals. The manifest meandering of an insensitive, warped, and invidious mind! Well, luck had finally backlashed. Retribution?

A cold gust of wind made her shiver and she instantly wheeled towards the window. And gasped. A figure in a black coat, a black hat drawn low over the face, stood framed against the window. A motionless, ominous figure! Her mouth went dry.
It was Anand Gandhi staring back at her.
But the dead man's body had been taken away hours ago by the police.

“Who's that!” she called out sharply, but only silence met her ears. The figure vanished.

She rushed out into the hall, calling out to Sub-Inspector Inamdar and Jatin.

“What happened?” Jatin asked.

Sonia opened her mouth to speak, then froze. The man in black stood at the entrance of the hall. The bearded face had an uncanny resemblance to that of Anand Gandhi. Thinner, more hollow-cheeked than the original, but definitely the same face.

The stranger stepped forward, his eyes boring straight into Sonia's.

“I've come to make a confession,” he said in a rough voice. “I killed Anand Gandhi.”

“No!” Mrs. Gandhi gasped, collapsing onto the sofa. Daaima ran to her mistress's aid.

Reema glared with bright eyes at the stranger, her fists curled into balls. Swiftly, Swapnil strode to her side and his hand covered hers.

“You can arrest me right away, Inspector, I'm ready to go,” the man said.

“But who are you? And why should you kill Anand Gandhi?” Inamdar demanded.

“I don't wish to say anything more. I've said all I have to!” the man retorted harshly.

“Sub-Inspector Inamdar, could we talk for a minute?” Sonia interposed.

The Officer nodded, looking confused. The others watched in bewilderment as Sonia led him aside and spoke to him in urgent, hushed tones. Surprise flickered on Inamdar's face. Jatin sat on a chair, his admiration for his boss showing through the anticipatory gleam in his eyes. His boss was at it again! The phone rang and Jatin answered it, handing it over to Inamdar. The conversation was one-sided, but Sonia noticed that the Sub-Inspector seemed startled. Some new revelation? When the Officer hung up, he immediately turned to Sonia.

“I have some news about Anand's death,” he murmured, and continued in muted tones. A sparkle of satisfaction rose in Sonia's eyes.

“What's happening here!” the man in the black coat rasped angrily. “Why are you wasting time?”

“I'd like to know what's happening, too.” Swapnil spoke up for the first time, throwing anxious glances in his mother's direction.

“I'm ready to explain,” Sonia replied. “But not to everyone at once. Mrs. Gandhi, will you please join us in the next room? And you, sir?” Sonia requested of the stranger.

Mrs. Gandhi rose, as if in a daze, and followed Sonia, Jatin, and the Sub-Inspector. The widow stumbled and the man's arm shot out instantly to support her. If Sonia had any doubts before, they were quite resolved now.

“Let me start at the beginning,” Sonia began, looking directly at Maya Gandhi and the stranger sitting opposite her, on the sofa. “This afternoon I received these two horoscopes by courier, with a letter from Anand Gandhi. Let me read the letter aloud to you.” Sonia read the letter, then paused. “I was, of course, quite curious. We arrived here, only to find that Anand Gandhi had been murdered. After having spoken to each one of you, I studied the horoscopes, and this is what I arrived at. One of the horoscopes I'd received belonged to Anand Gandhi himself. The second belonged to someone born just two minutes after Anand. The horoscopes were too similar to be a mere coincidence, I realized. So that left me with the one and only logical explanation. The horoscopes belonged to
twins
!”

Jatin gasped, wonderment written all over his face. Mrs. Gandhi sat like a statue, her tear-blotched face swollen and pale. The man beside her remained stiff with anger.

“Now, without going into a lot of technical jargon, let me explain what I deducted from these horoscopes. Two horoscopes of two brothers—one with Gemini as ascendant and the other with Cancer. For the sake of ease, I shall call these two boys Gemini and Cancer. Being twins, the two ought to have had similar destinies, but the difference of two minutes changed the course of their lives drastically. Gemini had a whole lot of planets in the seventh house, which revealed him to be a dramatic, eccentric, cruel personality, even sadistic. And his eighth house—the house of death—had the Sun and Moon, along with Rahu in Saturn's favourite sign—in short, he would prove to be his brother's biggest enemy! Now, Cancer—basically a good person at heart, but Saturn in the sixth house in conjunction with Uranus, Mars, and Venus, aspecting the house of siblings, turned him into his brother's victim. And this is the tough part—the Lord of the seventh house, Saturn, and the planet of siblings, Mercury, are both in the sixth house, in conjunction with Uranus, Mars, Venus, and Neptune—indicating that his wife would have relations with his brother!”

An audible gasp escaped Mrs. Gandhi and she rose unsteadily.

“Please sit down, Mrs. Gandhi. I haven't finished yet,” Sonia warned gently.

“I don't want to listen to any of this! I won't listen!” the woman exclaimed.

“I'm afraid you'll have to,” Sub-Inspector Inamdar insisted.

Mrs. Gandhi sank down heavily, the tears beginning to stream down her cheeks again.

“And now I come to a third horoscope. A lady's horoscope, with Virgo as the ascendant. A victim of happenings entirely beyond her control. A pawn in the hands of Destiny. Sun and Uranus together indicate melodramatic incidents with regard to her husband. But worse, the ninth house is also the brother-in-law's house. The Lord of the zodiac sign Taurus in the ninth house—Venus—is in her seventh house, which means that the lady had a relationship with the husband's brother! An extremely complicated charting of the horoscope and I admit that it startled me. But it also made the whole history stand out like a clear, rain-washed landscape.

“And so now I shall tell you a story which began several years ago and which shall lead us to what has actually transpired in this house this evening. I may be wrong, some parts may be totally construed, but I'm trying to string together a sketch of reality!

“Anand and Jayesh Gandhi are identical twins. Maya and Anand are happily married and they have a son. They live in Mulshi. Anand is constantly away on business, mostly to Mumbai, where his twin brother, Jayesh, handles the headquarters. One evening Maya's husband, Anand, calls her up and tells her that Jayesh has been arrested for murdering a client. It's an open-and-shut case and Jayesh has been sentenced to fourteen years in jail! It is sometime before Anand returns home, subdued and changed, and Maya of course puts this down to the heartrending experience of seeing his twin convicted of a terrible crime. What Maya doesn't know, however, is that the man who has returned to her is not her husband,
but her husband's brother
!”

The shocked gasp from Jatin was like a gunshot. Mrs. Gandhi's face now revealed a resigned expression. The man beside her stared unblinkingly.

“Jayesh has used their identical looks to fool the law and his brother. It was so cleverly enacted that not a soul suspected that Jayesh had switched places. Not even Anand's wife! Anand writes from jail to his wife, explaining the mess, but the letter never reaches Maya. At least not then. Fourteen years pass and finally Anand is released. His first impulse is to write a threatening note to his brother warning him that he's coming home to take his revenge. But Jayesh now has other plans. He's so used to being Anand, the soul of the Cotton Empire, that he's loath to relinquish his hard-acquired identity. He decides to keep it forever. His plan is simple. He asks his brother to meet him at the cliff—perhaps at Sunset Point. But first, he decides to reveal his true identity to Maya, the woman he has deceived all these years. He would then head towards the cliff, get rid of his brother once and for all, by perhaps pushing him over the cliff, and then return to the house as the indignant Anand Gandhi, newly returned from jail!

“His plan was perfect. Jayesh despatched two horoscopes to me, to ensure that I would land here as witness to the whole drama. Then he deliberately showed Maya the two letters that his brother had written. To say that it was a great shock for her to discover that the man she'd been living with all these years was not her husband, but her husband's brother, is an understatement! Reema arrived at that very moment to get some cheques signed, and Jayesh deliberately signed them with his left hand, so that Reema, as an additional witness, would help him reestablish his identity as Jayesh. This was after all necessary for him to do before he could kill his brother—whom everyone would believe was Jayesh—and return once more as Anand. However, he hadn't bargained for two things. One, that Maya would be so incensed that she would threaten to disclose his identity—”

“Only threatened, but
I
took his life!
I
killed him! He was insane and he deserved to die!” The man in black spoke up heatedly.

Sonia smiled at him. “No,
Mr. Anand Gandhi.
You did not kill Jayesh. And neither did your wife, Maya, for whom you are understandably trying to cover up. Though she did hit him with the vase in her rage. Tell me, Mrs. Gandhi: Did you go out into the garden after Jayesh revealed his identity to you?”

“Yes . . .”

“And you stormed back into the room, furious and determined not to allow Jayesh to get away with his scheme?”

Mrs. Gandhi nodded.

“Did something strike you as odd? The way he was sitting, perhaps?” Sonia prompted.

Mrs. Gandhi frowned. “Yes . . . He'd burnt up one of the letters he'd shown me. And suddenly he was leaning over his table. I remember thinking that it was odd—a moment before, he was laughing so cruelly—his laughter is still ringing in my ears! And the next moment, he was quiet and reflecting, with his head on the table! But that didn't stop me from picking up the vase from the chest of drawers and hitting him hard over the head like a crazy woman!”

“He wasn't reflecting. He'd just had a massive heart attack. He was dead!”

A thundering silence ensued. Maya's face blanched, and then she turned wildly to her husband. They stared at each other and hope flared in their eyes.

“Does that mean . . . ?” Anand stammered to Sonia, disbelief tainted with sudden longing.

“Now listen carefully. This is what really happened and this is the story you shall repeat. Jayesh Gandhi had a heart attack, and in his struggle for survival, he knocked the vase placed overhead on the chest of drawers. The vase crashed down on his head. But a split second before it fell, Jayesh was already dead! In Mrs. Gandhi's horoscope, Mars aspects the ninth house, which has Saturn in conjunction with Jupiter. This indicates that she will be
tempted
to murder him but Jupiter will not allow such a thing to happen! And this means that there's no murder, and hence no case. What passed between us in this room was mere speculation on my part. I was simply trying to outline a story out of the horoscopes that were sent to me! I may be wrong, of course, but I don't want any corrections!” A faint smile touched Sonia's lips.

She turned away discreetly as Mrs. Gandhi burst out sobbing and fell straight into her real husband's arms. Anand held her close, then he led her out of the room.

“Boss, there's something I don't understand. Why send us the horoscopes?” Jatin asked.