house of the Death

Second Day of investigation.

Second Day of investigation.  

The next day as told by the officers no one leaves the bungalow. The sun rises as usual and the morning comes. But, nothing is usual in the family. Mr. Singhania does not come out of the house to sit in the armchair and have his coffee, listening to the sweet songs (chirping) of the birds and getting mesmerized by the sweet scents of different kinds of flowers mixed together. In the same way, Mrs. Singhania does not conduct his regular exercise and yoga which she rarely misses. Both of them are sitting on the sofa in the living room from the morning and their faces look very pale, one can easily recognize from their faces that they have not slept well at night. They are eagerly waiting for the officers to arrive with some good news. No one can understand their mental condition and how are they feeling as they do not know where their children are? They are alive or not? They know nothing.

Near eleven-thirty, in the morning the officers arrive at the location. They enter the house and realizes that the Singhania couple is eagerly waiting for their arrival. After sitting the officers tell that they do not have any news of the brother or sister. But, they have found a shoe mark outside the house which they think is that of the person who is trying to get inside the campus and may have some connection with the disappearance of the children. So, they have decided to search the servant quarters and talk to the servants one by one if they give the officers permission to do so. The Singhania couple has no objection as they only want their children back. So, like the previous day, the team of four cops gets divided into two one goes towards the village and one team stays in the house to search the servant quarter and integrate the servants.

The second team now starts its investigation. First, they decide to search the servant quarter which is located on one corner of the lawn. It is a single-story house with three to four rooms. Upon entering the building one first finds himself in a dark corridor. After passing the corridor there are three consecutive small rooms. Each room is occupied by two single beds in each room. There is no such furniture in these rooms, except a cupboard and two-three chairs. In one corner of the first room, there is the wash area and a shower room with a washbasin. Then, to go to the second room one has to pass through a small passage. Both the second and third rooms are adjacent to each other. The officer checks the cupboard where they find nothing significant which can help them in the investigation. There also lies three-four small suitcases that attract their attention. They search inside the suitcases and do not find anything important except some clothes. In one of the suitcases, they find a portrait of a mountain range that is well maintained in a designer frame. It looks not so expensive as it is maintained. The portrait is a little large in length and occupies nearly the length of the entire suitcase. The officers find nothing significant other than this which can help them in their investigation.

Finding nothing significant in the servant's quarter, they go out the quarter. Now they decided to interrogate the servants who work in the Singhania house one by one. Most of the servants say to the officers that they are doing their work as usual and don’t see anything or anyone suspicious in the house or near the house. And by spending the entire day doing the household work they are so much tired that they are having a deep sleep due to exhaustion and tiresome body caused by the whole day work. So, they don’t see anything or heard the cry of the children or anybody else.

Now the officer talks to the security guards to see if they know anything or have seen anything. They also want to re-establish the entire incident which has happened with one of the security guards outside the house at night. So, they ask the guard to tell them the details of the incident once more. They select one of the servants to climb the fence and the other security guard to hide in the dense wilderness. The scene is performed at night so that the officer can know the exact incident that has happened. It is important so that they can know that the guard is telling the truth. In the night if anybody hides in the wilderness, it’s possible that he gets camouflage between the trees and it’s not too far from the house so they concluded that the guard is telling the truth.

After further conversation with the security guard, the officers come to know more about the person who tries to climb the fence that night. The guard tells them that:

“When J gets out of the house to see the matter who is there the person jumps down the fence seeing me. When he jumps down his hat falls down in the mud. When he is picking up the hat, I see that the hat is like a cowboy shape hat which is worn by the Western people.“

Now the investigating officers have more information about the person that they think is somehow associated with the disappearance of the children. The other team has returned with no such news so the chief official among them decides to return to the district of Shimla to their police station. After talking to the Singhania couple and assuring them to find their children the four cops get in the vehicle and go towards the district of Shimla.