On closure scrutiny, it was obvious that the suicide note was an odd tear-out from a foolscap paper and the tone and tenor of the text suggested that it could have been a part of some story, obviously penned by the deceased. That amused him for muse or no muse, these days; all are at writing, which made it difficult for the readers to separate the originals from the imitations. What if Neha got hold of some manuscript with the suicide note and all, returned by some magazine or the other and derived the idea to script Murali’s end with it, so Dhruva went round the magazine houses, in one of which, an assistant editor readily recalled the queer story with that suicide pitch, whose manuscript was returned to the sender only recently. And that naturally tilted the needle of suspicion towards Neha’s involvement, which made him confront her with his finding.
Owning up her guilt, Neha lamented that Murali used to treat her merely as a sexual object, that too when he could not take some whore or the other to bed and adding insult to injury, whenever he had her, he made that clear to her. How mean men can become to demean women, she lamented, and slighted thus, she seduced Mohan, Murali’s friend, for sex and self-worth. As Murali got wind of it, he calibrated his responses cunningly; as his cruelty towards her sunk to the depths of depravity so as to sponge on Mohan, he showed incredulous warmth towards him. Soon, she realized that her man was scheming to avenge himself on her paramour, by estranging his wife Nalini from him; well, Mohan owed his wealth and all to the benevolence of his in-laws. Not wanting to be the cause of Mohan’s ruin, she alerted him to Murali’s designs, and offered to end their liaison. But afraid of Murali’s potential for mischief, Mohan thought of eliminating him through a supari killing, but fearing that the foolhardy of a third party could ruin it all for them, she chartered the course of that murder as by then she had in her hands that fatal manuscript.
On that fateful day, she induced Murali to drink all day and when he was dead drunk, and as planned, for an alibi, Mohan and she purchased those first-show tickets at the Odeon Theatre, which they left as soon as the movie began. Reaching home hastily, she induced the drunken Murali to let her take him to the outskirts for fresh air, and drove him to the earmarked place in their Standard Ten, followed Mohan in his Maruti, which he had earlier parked in a lane nearby her house. Steering the Standard Ten onto the desolate railway tracks, and having helped the drunken Murali to rest on the steering wheel, she herself sat next to him until the scheduled train speeded in. Glad for the good riddance of the bad rubbish and proud of that perfect murder, they drove back to the city in Mohan’s Maruti.