Page 121 - Musings 2020

Raghav was let in by the butler and he made himself comfortable on the cozy purple velvet
couch, he was going to be there for long. He carefully removed the pictures of Gangamma’s
body along with several other medical reports from a folder and spread it on the glass table in
front of him. As he sat there looking at the photos and scratching his beard that now looked
like the nest of a small sparrow, he heard the flip-flops of several hurried footsteps as
everyone gathered around him. Few of them looked excited, few nervous, and few of them
looked annoyed at being awakened so early after the long harsh night.

“Well. Good Morning all, I hope everyone could catch up on some sleep last night because I
have something very important to tell you all.”
Raghav gave a slight pause before talking more trying to observe any subtle changes in the
body language of each family member.
“Your mother had been killed twice that night” he continued.
“What!! Twice, how is that possible now,” Vasu intervened.

“Let me explain, first, she was given a slow poison called hemlock, this poison paralyzes the
body parts one after the other till death is caused by the paralysis of the respiratory system.
Even though the person will not be able to move, they will be aware of things around them as
the brain remains intact till death. Along with this, she was also strangled with a telephone
cable which has left a permanent necklace mark around her neck,” he said pointing to the
picture on the table.

Raghav continued, “Either the same killer murdered her twice to ensure that she was really
dead or did this to confuse us into believing that two killers were involved or they may really
have been two killers, but someone surely wanted her dead and my job is to find out who it
is.” “And now coming to the interesting part which will probably give us some lead, the
forensic team has found three foreign objects from Gangamma’s room which are apparently
not hers. The first object is a broken piece of green glass, the second object is the torn pocket
of a checkered blue and green shirt and the third object is a lemon dipped in liquid red
kumkum,” Raghav said placing the objects in sealed Ziploc bags on the glass table next to
Gangamma’s pictures.

He gently called Nisha, the daughter of the fourth son Venkat, to come forward and identify
any of the objects. Nisha took a look at the green glass and then at Hari’s wife, Sakshi.
Sakshi’s eyes were wide open with fear as she tried covering her left wrist with her other
hand; this slight movement was enough for Raghav to grab her wrist before she made an
excuse to get out.

“That’s a deep gash,” said Raghav observing the cut on her wrist.
“I got this when I was removing my glass bangles yesterday night.” she sternly replied.
Before Raghav could continue, her eyes started filling with tears, she could not continue
anymore and requested Raghav not to bother her as she was already upset and worried that
her husband Hari was still missing.

Over the day, Raghav did not get anywhere close to finding the killer using the small piece of
shirt, but he learned an interesting fact that Venkat and his wife Uma had suffered huge losses
in business and were in dire need of money. Venkat was ready with his speech of how he was

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