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Murder Most Foul - 11

by Bala
(Mumbai)



Back to Chapter 10 of the Mystery Novel


Story so far

Bollywood's reigning queen Sudha's ex husband Sudhir goes missing. Speculations rise as to whether she alone, or she along with the upcoming actor Pritam, have a hand in his missing. Sudhir's mother gives a statement to the press that she does not suspect Sudha. So where is Sudhir? Prior to that Sudha and Sudhir meet in a musical program, become popular singers, Sudha becomes a star, they get married secretly, gets a job in Bangalore, but unable to meet her often, he is worried about his marriage....


Chapter 11

Sudha and Sudhir managed to meet each other through many manipulations through his close college friends and also through a few of her very trust worthy journalist friends who she had helped in their careers coming up and who promised to help her in this respect without letting the cat out of the bag.

But since life is never a bed of roses people came to know about their meetings at different times and articles kept appearing in magazines. While Sudha found it increasingly embarrassing to fend off the pesky reporters, Sudhir's condition was more serious.

His official bosses began asking about such rumors about them and warned him to come clean about it, so that their company reputation does not get damaged. Otherwise they told him that they would have to terminate his services.

Though the helpful reporters had promised Sudha that they would help her meet Sudhir without revealing anything to others, they could not keep their promises for long since their career competition demanded that they deliver such news items which would be unique for their respective magazines.

Hence one of the helpful scribes began slowly leaking snippets about their secret meetings at different times to her office photographer with whom she was a little intimate.

Bursting with uncontrollable curiosity the photographer demanded that she should let him know when they were to meet the next time so that he could secretly capture their meeting with his very sophisticated camera without their knowledge. After successfully declining to side with him on a couple of occasions initially she fell for his constant reminders.

Selfishness triumphed over her promises to Sudha.So the next time when Sudha and Sudhir met secretly in a safe place, he managed to click them together from different angles.

Since they were only attending a dinner engagement in which they were present as invitees of different hosts they thought that there was no scandal in such a meeting, but the problem was created when they sneaked in to meet secretly for a few minutes without anybody else's knowledge as they thought and they thought that everything was fine.

But they were aghast when their secret and intimate meeting's photos were published in the entertainment section of a newspaper in a couple of days following which there was a flood of articles about them in various magazines.

Sudhir's bosses were boiling with anger after reading such news items and after looking at their photos. They called him and demanded his immediate resignation.

Since Sudhir had been anticipating this development he quietly took out his marriage photos and the printed marriage invitation card showing the details of the marriage with regard to the date, time and the place of the marriage.

He quietly explained to them what happened 2 years previously when they got married and so he told them that he was not going anything illegitimate. He was sorry that somebody had somehow learnt about their secret rendezvous and had exploited the situation.

"So what are you to going to do now? Our customers and share holders will like us to remove any doubts on this. Otherwise it will become a scandal".

Sudhir said after a little thought "I will talk to Sudha. It seems that the time has come to announce our marriage to the public".

They said "Do that immediately".

Sudhir duly met Sudha as soon as possible and discussed the situation with her. He told her that they could no longer keep their marriage under the wraps.

Sudha smiled and said "Exactly. Why should we keep it a secret any more and meet secretly as criminals? I will call a press meeting immediately. Let us jointly address them and inform them that we are already married. Not only that we will tell them that we are going in for a proper marriage now and get it also registered with the authorities".

The press meet was the most eagerly attended event in the Kannada film industry for a long time.

*******

To be continued........


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