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This happened some time ago, I was working as chief chowkidar in tourist bungalow where rich ladies from foreign came for spotting birds in every bush, shrub and tree.

How many years ago, Hari? Ten years, twenty years?

I answer your question with my own question. I ask you, sir, I ask you who wear expensive watch bought in foreign, what is time when our universes rise many times and fall many more times within one eye-wink of God Brahma? When this event came to pass, I was a fit fellow, I was carrying three-four suitcases on my head and running from the train station to the tourist guest house with no stop, no drop, no cough. No arthritis in neck nor knees, and my teeth … my teeth were so strong I used to chew sugarcane stalks …

So what was the crime you witnessed, Hari? What did the foreigners do?

The sahib and memsahibs? The ones who danced naked before they sacrificed one mem and one baby?

Here Mr. Raj resorts to summary. It was a cold night, because Hari was wearing a wool vest, a scarf and what the PI identifies as a “monkey cap” with slits for eyes and lips. Hari and three cronies were drinking country liquor in a dead rajah’s palace ruins when the sahib drove into view in a huge, fancy automobile. The sahib looked like a Bombay film “hero,” only more handsome. Hari described him as wearing blue jeans like Bombay film stars, and moving the way a cheetah springs for the kill.

Then it’s back to transcript format.

Hari, did you witness the killings?

I am saying a killer’s hands began a job. Whether the hands were guided by the killer’s head or by the killer’s fate, who can say?

But you admit that you were present at the scene. Is that correct, Hari?

I was present and also not-present. How can we attain Nirvana if we say this is this and only this and that other is that other and only that other when this is a guise of that and when these are those and these-those are one single undifferentiated thing? I will say this much, sir, I was smoking bidi with my friends and we were drinking home-brewed toddy in palace ruins and the sahib and his two memsahib were visible smoking hemp and drinking bottled whiskey.

So what was the MO? Hari, how did the sahib do his killing?

First everybody was living. One, two, three and the baby, so altogether four dancing and singing. Then two became corpses and two kept dancing.

Then you reported the incident to the police.

You think I’m a fool, sir? You think police wouldn’t lock me up as low-caste chowkidar with toddy on his breath and accuse me of the killing and stealing?

Did you not report the murders?

I ran fast-fast to sore grease women. Sore grease are old women from foreign but they have been in Devigaon so long they no longer act like memsahib. I told the sore grease women about the dead baby and the dead memsahib.

[N. B. “Sore grease” caused me some extra time, for which I shall not bill your client. I consider it personal research. The phrase means “Gray Sisters,” but in French, bounced back to local English. “Sore grease” ’s original spelling may be “Soeurs Grises.”]

Life bytes. I didn’t try to get them to make sense.

After a run one morning Fred and I were standing side by side, looking down on the scummy water pooled in the ruined Sutro Baths, when Fred sprung Hari’s story about the ghost on me. Fred led into the ghost stuff by reading out a paragraph from a report faxed in the night before by Mr. Raj.

“ ‘ESP is not considered at all extraordinary in villages like Devigaon where villagers routinely encounter ghosts, gods, demons and headless monsters.’ ”

“Okay, so he’s not charging for the French lesson,” I interrupted, “but now he wants money to hire a psychic and an exorciser?”

“Okay.” Fred shrugged. “I’ll put it in words you can understand. Your father is one of the most notorious serial murderers in modern history. He’s rotting in an Indian jail even as we speak. One of his early victims, in fact, was his baby daughter. In other words, you. Hari saw you die. You died, Devi, and you turned into a ghost. You’re still haunting poor old Hari