by Arjun Gaind
“Huzoor, please,” Charan Singh groaned, an abject look of terror distorting his bearded features. “I beg of you, keep your attention on the road! I would like very much to live long enough to see my grandchildren become grown men.”
Sikander stifled a chuckle and slowed down marginally to reassure the old man. Up ahead, he spotted the grand edifice of the wide gateway that led out of the Fort, an immense arched doorway called the Elephant Darwaza, because it was flanked on each side by a pair of monumental sandstone pachyderms, each thirty feet high, their trunks raised in perpetual salutation to trumpet a stern greeting to all who passed beneath.
As the Rolls-Royce rattled through this colossal portal and surged across the drawbridge spanning the deep moat that surrounded the inner citadel, a platoon of the Rajpore Lancers, resplendent in pink breeches and lemon yellow tunics piped with scarlet braid, crashed to attention in a royal salute even as the brass band on duty struck up the state anthem, a stirringly martial thunder of drums and flutes which never failed to rouse Sikander’s passions.
Rajpore was not a large kingdom, one worthy of just a twelve-gun salute, but its strategic position on the map of India made it an important ally of the British.
To the north it was bordered by the Hill States and the vale of Kashmir. To the east lay Chamba and the Kangra Valley, and to the west, Sialkot and Rawalpindi. To the south was Lahore and the vastness of Punjab with its five noble rivers, bisected by the ancient Sadak-e-Azam, Sher Shah Suri’s great highway, undulating like a plump snake towards the bustling entrepôts of Delhi and Agra and Benares, and on towards distant Calcutta, the capital of British India. The capital city of Rajpore, from which the kingdom drew its name, was located at the center of this ancient trade route, at the very cusp where the grasslands of central India ended and the great crags of the Himalayas began to rear like a giant’s broken teeth.
Rajpore was actually two cities spread across a pair of neighboring hills: the English settlement covering the lower of the two hillocks and the valley below, and the native town that sprawled across the escarpment of the larger crag, overlooked by the imposing edifice of the Golden Fort, the famed Sona Killa, which could be seen from miles away.
Built atop the implacable heights of a sheer cliff-face, poised almost a thousand feet above sea level, the Sona Killa’s impenetrable ramparts could proudly boast that they had never fallen to an invading army, not even to the Highlanders with their mournful pipes and tartan kilts. Hidden behind four concentric walls built of yellow Palitana sandstone which gave the fortress its name, the Sona Killa was a miniature city in itself. At the center of the fort stood the Raj Vilas, an imposing sixty-eight-room palace built in the old Saracenic style. Beside it was the smaller Sheesha Mahal, the Mirrored Palace, whose walls were covered with glass mosaics in the Rajput style And finally, at the very edge of the cliff, looking down at the distant plains beneath, was the Hawa Mahal, the Pavilion of the Winds, its façade decorated with a hundred arched windows from which it was said Sikander’s ancestors had flung their enemies to be dashed to pieces upon the jagged rocks far below.
Surrounding these palaces spread a neat array of well tended gardens, and bordering them, an impregnable barrier of tall ramparts which could only be entered by two gates, the Elephant Darwaza to the south, and to the north, the Lahori Gate. Beyond these two doorways, encircling the killa, shored up against the walls like the flotsam of a great shipwreck, the old city sprawled, a hodgepodge of gaily painted bright yellow houses separated by a network of teeming lanes and gullies that seemed as complex as a maze. It was an oddity unique to Rajpore, the startling shade of yellow that all citizens were expected to paint their walls to complement the Sona Killa’s tawny façade, but it was one of his grandfather’s few whims that Sikander still enforced. As a result, yellow had become the trademark of old Rajpore, not just mere ornament, but also a useful device because it reflected away much of the sun’s unforgiving heat and kept the havelis cool during the hottest months of summer.
Much to Sikander’s consternation, as he entered the crowded lanes of the old town, he was forced to slow the Rolls almost to a crawl. Since it was the first day of a new month, it was market day in Rajpore and the vegetable bazaar, the sabzi mandi, was swarming with people. Every street, every single lane was as thick as flies with farmers and workmen and ruffians and thieves, jugglers and peddlers and hawkers galore.
Irritated by this unexpected obstruction, Sikander honked the car’s horn raucously, but it did little to disperse the crowd. As the trailing lorry caught up with him, with a nonchalant flick of his wrist, he commanded his guards to dismount and clear the way. Immediately, a troop of burly Sikh sepoys poured forth, resplendent with their matching yellow pugrees and puttees, fanning out to force a passage through the unruly mob.
At first, in typical Indian fashion the crowd resisted, jostling and hooting and screeching vehement abuses at the Sikhs, but then, when they noticed the royal pennant fluttering on the bonnet of the Rolls, that resplendent red sun that was the stanchion of the House of Rajpore, they moved aside hurriedly. As soon as a wide enough path had been cleared, Sikander sped up once more, sending a tardy camel-drover scattering out of his way, followed by his strident beast. Once past the old city’s massive outer gateway, he ground down eagerly on the throttle lever until it could yield no further. Hurtling down towards the base of the hill, throwing up a thick cloud of dust behind him, the Maharaja pushed the six-cylinder engine to its very limit. It buzzed as loudly as an infuriated mosquito and the speedometer slowly crept up towards its maximum speed of forty miles an hour.
“Sahib,” Charan Singh cried, “slow down! We are leaving the escort behind.”
Sikander ignored the old Sikh’s entreaties. Instead, almost as if to spite him, he flung the car around each hairpin bend at breakneck speed. Six times the highway undulated sharply, six jagged switchbacks before the new city came into sight, gleaming beneath the haze of the sun like a mirage. At the base of the hill languished a teardrop shaped lagoon called the Khamosh Jheel, the Silent Lake, because it was rumored that another of the Maharaja’s ancestors had drowned all who had dared to question his rule in its murky depths, thus guaranteeing their eternal obedience. Skirting the Silent Lake, the verdant expanse of the polo ground flanked the gated enclosure of the Army Cantonment, where the British Garrison was housed. Bordering the Cantonment was the railway station with its Gothic watchtower, and next to that the deep gorge of the river Oona, now straddled by a modern suspension bridge built at Sikander’s behest, gleaming dully like a rusty metal cobweb.
On the other side of the bridge lay the neat expanse of the English town. At its center stood the whitewashed edifice of the Town Hall, flanked on one side by the High Court with its Doric colonnades, and on the other by the imposing spire of the Afghan Church, rising above the city like a broadsword. A few meters away from the Town Hall, the City Palace was visible, a sprawling monument built in the Saracenic style which Sikander’s father had chosen to formally hand over to the English upon his ascension to use as their permanent Residency. Beyond the Residency sat the Royal Hospital, and the smaller, less ostentatious façade of St. Mary’s Catholic Church, and beside it, the walled expanse of the English cemetery, with its tidy rows of graves, like an orchard of macabre marble crosses, baking bone white beneath the noonday sun. Then came the Lower Mall with its row of Indian shops and, and past that, the Upper Mall where all the English boxwallah shops were located. And finally, the Civil Lines, an orderly rank of neat bungalows that housed the British population of Rajpore, dotted across the heights of the English Hill, at the very crest of which was the walled compound where the Resident had lived, and towards which Sikander was now headed with such great haste.
Even as the Rolls-Royce’s wheels clattered loudly across the suspension bridge, raising a thunderous din, Sikander found himself thinking, rather unexpectedly, of his mother. It was from her that he had inherited
his intelligence and wit, his icy eyes and impeccable manners, and most of all, his love of mysteries. That had been Maharani Ayesha Devi’s one abiding passion—mystery stories, like those written by Paul Feval and Emile Gaboriau and Arthur Conan Doyle and her personal favorite, Pierre du Terrail and his clever rogue Rocambole. While her husband had preoccupied himself with hunting and polo and pig-sticking, Maharani Amrita Devi had found refuge for her razor sharp intellect not in card-play or zenana gossip, but in her books. How well Sikander remembered her delight each time a fresh parcel arrived from Paris, or a new copy of La Presse, with its tidbits of true crime and its serialized feuillitons…!
His mother had made it a habit to read these macabre tales out to him over breakfast each morning, peculiar, convoluted adventures of deception and discovery that had quickly become his passion as well. Although he knew that his rank and birth made it quite impossible, as a boy it had been his most cherished dream to become a professional detective, an unraveler of conundrums like Auguste Dupin. In fact, it was this very dream that had driven Sikander to travel to Europe so that he could learn about the nascent science of criminology, studying phrenology and sociology under Lacassagne in Lyon and forensic psychology and criminal anthropology with Cesare Lombroso in Turin.
Sadly, upon his elevation to the throne, he had been forced to abandon this boyish dream. Quite naturally, the role of investigator was an entirely unsuitable profession for a prince from one of the most exalted royal houses in India. Nevertheless, that did not mean Sikander had not found ample opportunity to put his analytical skills to the test since becoming the Maharaja of Rajpore. On the contrary, in spite of Charan Singh’s constant and unwavering disapproval, he had managed to make quite a name for himself as an amateur sleuth. There had been the case of the Maharani of Jodhpur’s missing diamonds, and the supposedly unsolvable Ferguson triple murder in Bombay which Sikander had unraveled in less than a day. There had been the murder at the Savoy, and the Cotswold affair, and of course, the incident of the Nawab of Palanpur’s racehorse last year which had been the talk of princely India.
Much to Sikander’s chagrin, very little of interest had occurred either to test his ingenuity or tease his imagination for almost six months. Instead, he had found himself restricted to the tedious rigmarole of statecraft, day after endless day of placid inaction which had grated at his nerves and very nearly driven him to the brink of despair. While Sikander was a prudent man, not a profligate and a philanderer like his cousin Bhupinder of Patiala, or a pervert like Jey Singh, the Kachhawa king of Alwar, who was said to be a sadist and a pederast with a preference for ball boys from his local tennis club, he knew all too well he lacked the temperament to be a good bureaucrat. Try as he might, he simply could not bear the mountain of work that went with being a Maharaja, the endless, tiresome red-tape that accompanied the day-to-day running of a kingdom, albeit one as small as Rajpore. No, he had always much preferred to leave those annoying details to his Chief Minister, Ismail Bhakht, who had served his family with great loyalty for more than five decades, choosing instead to expend his energies indulging his three great passions: mysteries, books, and women, in that order precisely.
At least, he had until Major Russell had arrived in Rajpore. Sikander stifled a grimace as he thought of the recently deceased Resident. He had disliked the man immensely, thinking him a martinet, a bounder of the worst kind. He let out a sigh as he remembered the man who had preceded the Major. Sir James Foote had been a gentleman in the truest, most meaningful sense of the word, a man of gargantuan size and Dionysian appetite, quick to laugh, always more than a little drunk and a great connoisseur of port and sack and female flesh alike. In many ways, he had been as much of a local institution as the Sona Killa. An inveterate Orientalist from the John Nicholson school, he had spent the better part of his life in Rajpore, from his arrival in Sikander’s grandfather’s time as a humble under-secretary, through four long and tumultuous decades during which he had managed to weather the terrors of the Mutiny and the turmoil of Lal Singh’s ascension and Sikander’s father’s all-too-brief reign and, finally, played a pivotal part in seeing Sikander’s own elevation to the throne.
Sikander had been a great admirer of the late Sir James. Scandalous though the man may have been, the Maharaja had thought him a thoroughly charming fellow, a scholar who spoke Urdu and Punjabi with the fluency of a native and was rumored to have sired sixteen illegitimate children with five different Indian bibis. He smiled fondly as he recalled the many evenings he had spent in heated debate with Sir James, arguing about Voltaire and Rousseau. How he missed the old scoundrel, not just because he had been a staunch ally and an entertaining raconteur, but also because as long as Sikander had kept him well supplied with generous amounts of alcohol and tender young girls well versed in the arts of love, the man had left him entirely to his own devices, preferring to indulge his insatiable appetites rather than nag the Maharaja about the duties inherent to his position.
Sadly, it had been those very appetites that had led to Sir James’ untimely demise. Late in 1904, during a banquet in Lucknow, he had choked to death on a chicken leg while trying to sing a verse from Pirates of Penzance.
A few months later, early in 1905, the new Resident had arrived to take his place. Unfortunately, Major William Russell had turned out to be a man quite the opposite of the insouciant sir James, one of those lamentable Utilitarians cut from starched Victorian cloth. Sikander had held great hopes for the man before his transfer, praying that they would forge a fine partnership based on mutual trust and respect, but to his infinite regret, his high expectations had quickly been dashed. Within weeks of his arrival, Major Russell had managed to make himself a righteous pain in Sikander’s regal behind with his tiresome attention to custom and formality, a canker that had continued to fester even further, due to his insistence that the Maharaja leave all major decisions concerning the governance of Rajpore to the Crown.
As if such blatant self-righteousness hadn’t been enough to invite Sikander’s scorn, the Resident had proven himself to be one of those insufferable Englishmen who took great pride in harboring the post-Mutiny attitude that Indians could not be trusted to manage their own affairs. Rather than seeing the Maharaja’s many merits, he had chosen to treat Sikander as if he were little more than a spoiled, unruly child, thinking him a playboy and a wastrel like most of the other rulers of princely India. Why, on more than one occasion, he had even dared to lecture him with tiresomely Christian zeal about the extravagance of his lifestyle and the unsuitability of his penchant for mysteries, haranguing him like a common nag until Sikander had been reduced to inventing exceedingly imaginative excuses to avoid him entirely.
And now he is dead, he mused, and part of me cannot help but celebrate. That consideration inspired an uncharacteristic tremor of guilt, a chill that had little to do with the misty morning. Was he somehow responsible for the man’s death? He had certainly cursed the Major often enough, imagined how good it would be to be rid of him, not unlike Henry the Second praying to be free of Thomas Becket. Could some higher power, or for that matter, a lower one, finally have decided to answer his prayers, and struck the Resident down?
“Bite your tongue, Sikander Singh,” he muttered to himself, knowing that he was being unnecessarily macabre. He did not even know for a fact yet that the Major had indeed been murdered. All that was certain was that the man had been found dead. How and why, that could only be determined after a thorough and exacting investigation.
Still, he thought mordantly, the Major could not have chosen a more opportune time to kick the bucket. Frankly, Sikander had been bored halfway to death himself, all but ready to quit the city and set off on a jaunt to London in time for the start of the season, or to Paris for a brief dalliance at the Ritz and a spot of shopping at the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré—anywhere where he could experience a change of scenery and rid himself of his doldrums.
But then, on this, the ver
y first day of a new year, here was a most unexpected puzzle, and that, too, at his very doorstep.
And not just any old mystery, Sikander thought, letting out a ghoulish chuckle of anticipation, but for once, what I suspect could in all likelihood turn out to be a very pukka one!
Chapter Four
The Resident’s bungalow was located at the very peak of the English Hill. To get there, the Maharaja had to first maneuver his way through those serried rows of whitewashed colonial bungalows where the majority of the British denizens of Rajpore resided.
As the Rolls lurched through these serene streets, Sikander took the time to cast a jaundiced eye around him. He rarely strayed this far into British territory. It was an unspoken part of the detente he had with the Colonials: he kept to his side of Rajpore and left the Sahibs to their own devices. On the rare occasions he did venture over to the British settlement, it was only to go as far as the Rajpore Club. But now, as his vehicle lurched through this utopian enclave, it struck him quite forcibly how different a world this was from that which he ruled. The Indian side was as chaotic and colorful as Hieronymus Bosch’s proverbial Garden, a maddening maze of ancient, mismatched kothis and narrow, cobbled alleys that seemed to twist towards nowhere in particular. In utter contrast, the English Lines were tidy and well-planned, a fine testament to the orderliness of Empire. Here, there were no stinking middens, no wandering cows foraging in the middle of the road, no overflowing drains, no rickshaws and bullock carts jostling against each other for space. Most of all, he was surprised by the complete absence of noise, unlike the old city, where the din was always deafening, a thousand voices speaking in unison, Hindi and Urdu and Punjabi, bargaining and arguing and gossiping, all mingling into one boisterous cacophony.
