Chap 2 - Brown Bottle

Brown color signifies dependability

Vipin sat on his haunches on the floor where the dead body of Pawan had been found. The room had not been cleaned ever since the day of the death. The police personnel had taken the trouble of checking everything inside the room and it had created a huge mess but Shalini, with Deepak's help, had stuffed things inside the drawers and the cupboard.

“All the stuff is in here,” Deepak told Vipin, “but not in their right place. I mean, Shalini was not even paying attention to what was being pushed in which drawer. She wouldn't let me touch the chess pieces so those were left alone.”

“What about the window?” Vipin stood up and walked to the window. It was fastened closed at that point in time.

'It was closed from inside,” Deepak said. “The police inspector spent a lot of time trying to close the window from the outside just to eliminate the possibility of an intruder getting in unobserved and getting away after committing a murder. I had reached by then. I was with Shalini. She was taking it too nonchalantly and the inspector began to suspect her role in her husband's death. If she could have shed some tears or howled pitiably, perhaps the inspector would have been satisfied but she sat outside without showing any emotion and the inspector took offence at her behaviour. I was not spared either. The moment the inspector came to know that I was Shalini's friend, he made me the prime suspect and interrogated me with a lot of hostility. My alibi was rock solid and so I was spared after an hour but Shalini was interrogated till 2 AM that night and then the next day too she was harassed by them. It was awful. She suffered through it like a champ. It was awesome to watch her handle the questions with aplomb. She is a unique girl, boss. Truly unique.”

“And you want to know if she is the murderer?” Vipin asked Deepak point-blank. Deepak yelped and glanced outside to check if Shalini had overheard them.

“You don't have to be so loud about it,” he whispered, “but, yes, it is true. Before I marry her, I need to know otherwise I would keep suspecting her and it would poison my relationship with her.”

“But the police gave her a clean chit, didn't they?” Vipin unfastened the window panes.

“They had to,” Deepak stood near Vipin and felt the breeze on his face. “The room was locked. No one was seen entering or leaving the room. There was a suicide note on the table. And then, a black rose was delivered at the victim's instructions after some hours of his death. It all pointed to the fact that Pawan decided to commit suicide.”

Vipin jumped out of the window and landed on the soft grass. He then asked Deepak to close the window from inside. For the next ten minutes or so, Vipin tried to find a way to open the window but all his attempts to pry open the window failed. He then made Deepak open the window and then spent some time trying to lock the window from outside. When he was thoroughly convinced that an entry or an exit through the window was not possible without leaving the window open, he took Deepak's help to clamber up the window and enter the room through the window.

“It is actually easy to get inside the room through the window,” Vipin observed aloud, “provided the window was open. There is no way to open it from outside though.”

He asked Deepak about the poison that Pawan had ingested to commit suicide.

“It was mixed in a juice,” Deepak told him. “Pawan had some heart problem and he had to take medicines on a daily basis. He had a nasty habit of mixing his medicine with juice. He also added sugar cubes to the juice to sweeten it. In fact, he kept a bowl of sugar cubes in his room. He had a habit of sucking on them. On the fateful day, he mixed poison in the juice and then drank it. When I came to the scene, I noticed that the container with the sugar cubes was knocked down and the cubes were scattered about. One of the policemen collected them all wearing a glove. The brown bottle with the poison was placed in a corner. The bottle of poison, his heart medicines, and the container of sugar cubes are with the police now but I saw the forensic report. It was pretty brutal.”

“Where did he buy the poison from?”

“He ordered it online. The chemical is used to kill rodents. He mixed it with the juice and then gulped it all down.”

Vipin used the internet to look up the name of the rodent killer. He found himself staring at a big brown bottle that had the mandatory sticker of poison imprinted on it. It read “You can depend upon it to do the job.”