While the police searched the house for the obvious things, Sukumar searched it as only a man who had known Gulabi for twelve years could.
Two small matters stopped him.
The first was a steel cup. It stood freshly washed, set down in a place it did not belong. Gulabi had been particular to the point of obstinacy; she drank from one steel tumbler of a certain kind and would let no other soul use it. Yet a different cup had been taken out that night, used, rinsed clean, and put away carelessly. To the police it meant nothing at all. To Sukumar it meant a great deal. She had made coffee for someone.
The second was the coffee itself. A new packet sat upon her shelf, unopened, and it had come from the Malenadu Coffee Shop at Hallikere. For twelve years Sukumar had carried her groceries up the hill himself, and her coffee had come, always, from Mudremane in Mudigere. Never once from Hallikere.
A visitor she had trusted enough to serve. A packet from a shop she had never used. The two things together turned his thoughts away from his brother, and toward a stranger from the Hallikere side of the hills.