by Vaseem Khan
Poppy said nothing, feeling guilt descend on her once more. Could her advice to Anjali have triggered the young bride’s decision to flee?
“There was something,” said Huma. “A few weeks ago, she witnessed an almighty row between her father and Gautam’s father. They were fighting about money again. I think Gautam’s father made some comment about buying the newly-weds a Rolls-Royce, so Anjali could visit her old home in the style befitting a Deshmukh daughter-in-law. And then Anjali’s father said, if that was the case, he’d be the one to pay, and it went on from there. She was very upset.”
“Those dolts!” fumed Big Mother.
A silence descended, broken by Poppy. “From what Huma tells me it is still not clear how Anjali actually got out of the bathroom.”
“Does it matter? She is gone, and she must be found. If she wishes to call off the wedding, then I must know. I must prepare. You see, Deshmukh insisted on the grandest wedding imaginable for his only son. He made the mistake of telling my son that he would foot the entire bill, given our financial situation. Well, that was a red rag to a bull. My son did something foolish, without consulting me. He mortgaged the palace, took out a loan that he has no hope of repaying, not without Deshmukh’s help. I am afraid, Poppy, that if Anjali does not go through with this wedding, then we really shall be out on the streets. All of us, including me.”
THE PLOT THICKENS
On his return to the hotel Chopra tracked Lisa Taylor down to her room.
He knocked on the door. It swung back to reveal the Englishwoman wrapped in a short towel, another twisted around her hair. She had just stepped out of the shower. “I-I am sorry,” stammered Chopra. “I shall return later.”
“Oh, nonsense!” Lisa waved him in. “I’m sure you’ve seen a half-naked woman before, Chopra.”
She turned, her towel snagging on the door handle. She caught it as it half swung away, revealing more than Chopra would have wished. His face turned scarlet and he felt, acutely, the unbearable lightness of seeing.
“Whoops!” said Taylor, juggling her assets back into the towel. “Sorry.”
She disappeared into the bathroom, much to Chopra’s relief.
When she returned, she wore a bathrobe and was towelling her long blond hair. “So, how is our investigation going? I’m afraid I am going to need regular progress reports to feed to my boss back in London.”
Chopra nodded, then took out the sketch. “Did the police show you this? It was found in Burbank’s possessions.”
“No,” she said, frowning. “They did not. And I don’t recognise it, though it does look oddly familiar. Who’s the artist?”
“That is what I was hoping you could tell me.”
“Is it important?”
“I’m not sure.”
“But you suspect.” Taylor grinned brightly. “It’s those famous police instincts at work, isn’t it? A little feeling in your gut.”
Chopra’s guts were doing something, and he distinctly did not like the feeling. “Can you help?”
“Leave it with me.” She took a picture of the sketch using her phone. “By the way, where’s that adorable elephant of yours?”
“Ah, he is with my wife.” Chopra felt the word “wife” sticking in his throat like a fishbone. This made him flush once more.
“She didn’t like me much, did she?”
Chopra frowned. “On the contrary, my wife is very much in favour of independent-minded, successful women.”
“Then we would probably get on famously. At any rate, I’ll contact a couple of colleagues who might know something about this sketch. Perhaps we can meet later? Let’s say eight? In the Banyan restaurant? It’s practically our special place now.”
She gave a breezy grin.
As Chopra staggered from the room, he had to remind himself that Lisa Taylor’s only interest in helping him lay in the fee she—and Gilbert and Locke—were still owed on Burbank’s purchase of The Scourge of Goa. As Padamsee had said, Burbank had been a golden goose to her, nothing more.
Someone had killed the goose, and she would not rest until she knew who and why.
Chopra spent the next two hours interviewing more employees of the hotel, meticulously working his way through the staff roster on the evening of the auction, and the night of Burbank’s death. He knew from Rohan Tripathi that the initial police interviews, hampered by Gunaji’s interference, had been cursory at best. He was also keen to follow up on some of the alibis he had been given by the likes of Agnihotri and the Padamsees.
It was while he was thus engaged that he was interrupted by the sudden, unexpected arrival of Tripathi, accompanied by the hotel’s general manager, Tanav Dashputra and the large, bullish form of Assistant Commissioner of Police Gunaji.
Gunaji introduced himself with a blast, then thundered: “What the hell do you think you are doing? This is a police investigation. You have no right to go charging around making a mess of our enquiries.”
“What enquiries?” said Chopra, his hackles instantly raised by the man’s overbearing attitude. “As far as I can make out you did nothing except try to force through a verdict of suicide.”
Gunaji snorted steam. “I heard about you, Chopra. Rao told me you weren’t a team player.”
Chopra bristled. ACP Rao was an old nemesis of his, also in the Central Bureau of Investigation.
Gunaji leaned over Chopra. “I order you to stop your investigation and vacate the hotel.”
Chopra glared at the man. “You have no authority over me.”
This only incensed the senior policeman further. “I’ll have you arrested, dragged out of here by the heels!”
“Arrested? On what charge?”
“Obstructing an official investigation.”
“Try it,” said Chopra. “I have been employed by Gilbert and Locke to investigate the death of one of their most prominent clients. If you attempt to stop me from completing my mission, I am sure they will want to know why. I don’t think it will have escaped your notice that they have access to the most powerful people in this city.”
Gunaji’s face quivered with fury. His lips squirmed as he struggled for his next words. “This isn’t over,” he finally choked out, then turned on his heel and stormed out, Dashputra fussing after him like a tugboat behind a runaway tanker.
“I’m sorry about that,” said Tripathi. “I have a feeling someone at the hotel tipped him off. Possibly even the general manager. I don’t think he’s too happy with you wandering around accosting his guests.”
Chopra waved his friend’s apology aside. “Just try and keep Gunaji off my back.”
Tripathi shrugged. Easier said than done. “Have you made any more progress?”
“Give me another day. There’s definitely something here. Too many questions left unanswered.”
“If anyone is going to find those answers, it is you, old friend.”
After Tripathi had left Chopra resumed his interviews.
It was while speaking to the front desk manager that he finally made a breakthrough.
He had asked the man to report anything unusual, anything at all, even if it seemed unrelated to Burbank. The manager had considered this, then said, “Well, there was one thing…”
Chopra found Adam Padamsee by the pool, enjoying afternoon tea with his wife.
“You lied to me,” he said. The sounds of splashing drifted over his shoulder.
Padamsee’s eyes swivelled, lizard fashion, towards his wife. He stood up, puffing out his chest. “What are you talking about?”
“You told me that after your altercation with Burbank you went back to your room, and spent the rest of the night asleep. I have just spoken with the hotel’s front desk manager. At 1:05 a.m. a call came through to the front desk. It came from room 224, the room next to yours. A complaint was made. Raised voices in your room. So loud that your neighbour was forced from his sleep. Following the complaint, the hotel reception sent someone to your room. By the time the porter arrived the noise
had subsided. He knocked repeatedly, but there was no answer. He assumed you had both left.
“I spoke with the guest in 224, a businessman from Orissa. He said that, shortly after he made the complaint, he heard your wife leaving the room. He couldn’t make out the details of what you were arguing about, but one thing he clearly recalled under questioning—the name Hollis Burbank.”
Padamsee swayed on the soles of his feet, as if Chopra had punched him in the gut. His round face had turned scarlet, and he seemed suddenly short of breath. “We had nothing to do with Burbank’s death.”
Chopra turned to Layla Padamsee. “Soon after you left your hotel room Hollis Burbank was dead. I must ask you: where did you go?”
“You don’t have to answer that, Layla,” snapped Padamsee. “He has no authority to question us.”
Layla chewed her lip.
She was wearing another halter top. Chopra’s gaze drifted down to the thick plaster around her right wrist. Once he had realised that the Padamsees’ alibis were no longer credible, he had gone over his initial interviews with the pair. His thoughts had flashed to the plaster, the way Layla Padamsee had unconsciously fingered the injury as she had talked.
And, just like that, it had come to him.
He reached into his pocket and took out his phone. He flicked through to a photograph, held it up for them to see. “These are the remains of a broken bangle. They were found in Burbank’s room, after his death. He had no other bangles in his possessions, and they do not belong to any of the hotel staff. The housekeeper swears that the room was personally inspected by her before Burbank’s arrival. There was no bangle.” He pointed at Layla’s wrist. “How did you get that injury, Mrs. Padamsee?”
Layla blinked, looked at her husband, but said nothing.
“It is my belief that this bangle belongs to you,” continued Chopra. “It is my belief that you sustained that injury when this bangle was broken. And that means you were in Burbank’s room on the night that he was killed.”
“This is preposterous!” exclaimed Padamsee, causing a white man on a nearby sunlounger to lift the newspaper from his face and crane his sunburned neck in their direction. “That bangle could belong to anyone.”
“I am certain that if we examine your wife’s possessions, we will find other bangles to match it.” Chopra waited. He sensed the woman’s inner turmoil. “There is blood present on the shards. If necessary, I can have it tested.”
Finally, the sculptor spoke. “You are right—” she began, but was cut off by her husband. “Layla!”
She reached out, took Padamsee by the hand, gave him a watery smile. “I want to speak, Adam. I want to tell him the truth. It’s been eating away at me. I need to confess.”
If there was one thing Poppy had learned it was that if you really wanted to know what was going on, you had to go the people at the bottom, the people no one thought to ask because they considered their opinions to be of little value. The silent witnesses to the foolishness of the world.
She found the Grand Raj Palace’s head butler, Aryan Ganesham, in the staff meeting room, down in the basement of the Grand Raj Palace, a place of echoing whitewashed corridors, bare cement floors, fleets of broken luggage trolleys and a humming sense of below-stairs anarchy.
Ganesham was deep in discussion with the head housekeeper, Reshma Panang.
The two sprang to their feet as she entered, and looked at her with confusion.
“I understand that you were the first person to enter Anjali Patwardhan’s bathroom when she was reported missing?” said Poppy, addressing Ganesham.
The old man, smartly trim in his black butler’s outfit, gave a bird-like nod of his lacquered head. “That is correct, madam.”
“And the door was locked?”
“We were forced to break the lock.”
“The windows too?”
“Yes.”
“So, barring a miracle, Anjali could not have vanished into thin air?”
“That is correct, madam.”
Poppy thought about this. “There has to be a logical explanation.”
“It could be the ghost,” said Panang, suddenly.
Poppy’s ears perked up. “What? What ghost?”
“Mrs. Panang misspoke,” said Ganesham sharply. “There is no ghost.”
Poppy stared at the man, then folded her arms. “Mr. Ganesham. My husband was a policeman for thirty years. I cannot claim to possess his instincts, but I have picked up a thing or two in that time. Now, would you like to tell me what is going on?”
Ganesha blinked, his thin moustache twitching above his lip.
“It is an old wives’ tale,” he said finally. “Just over fifty years ago, a woman staying in that suite was murdered by her husband on their wedding night. The man in question was the son of a powerful politician, so powerful that he was never arrested, never charged. Ever since then it has been said that the woman’s ghost haunts the suite, waiting for another unhappy bride.”
Poppy’s eyes betrayed her incredulity. “Well, I met Anjali. And I do not think she is the type to be carried off by anyone, ghost or otherwise.”
Ganesham sighed. “You are right, of course. Perhaps it is not my place to say this, but the most likely explanation is that if Miss Anjali was unhappy with her impending marriage she probably found a way to arrange her own disappearance. She is not the first bride to do so, and I dare say she will not be the last.”
“But she must still be found,” persisted Poppy. “If only so that her family can assure themselves that she is safe.”
“I agree. But what else can we do? We have discreetly searched the hotel, to no avail. And the family have asked us not to involve the authorities.”
“No,” agreed Poppy. “That would create a scandal that neither family is willing to countenance. They are hoping that she will return in time for the wedding.”
Ganesham gave a sad shake of the head. “I have been here for more than half a century. The things that I have seen…! Actors and actresses, presidents and princes. I once saw the American saxophonist Miles McGrady shoot jazz legend ‘Happy’ Franklin in the foot for singing a birthday song for his wife. It later transpired that the pair were involved. The first year I was here, at the New Year’s celebration of 1956, I was in the Mughal Ballroom when the Rani of Cooch Nahin’s leopards savaged the French actor Marcelle Maximilien while he was performing his mime act. The poor man was not to know that the Rani had an intense hatred of mime. And then there was that time the magician, Om Shanti Om, wowed the chief minister on the fiftieth anniversary of Independence by climbing into a box and vanishing!”
Poppy had seen this latter event on television. The great magician, India’s finest, had locked himself into a steel box—subsequently wrapped in chains, and set on fire—only to emerge unscathed moments later from a second box yards away.
She had always suspected that the first box had held a secret compartment—
Poppy froze.
A thought had just flashed into her mind. Anjali had asked housekeeping to stay out of the bathroom. She had asked them not to clean in there.
Could it possibly be…?
“Mr. Ganesham, you are a genius!” she said. “I think I know how Anjali vanished from that room. But I will need your help to prove it.”
Ganesham straightened. The mantra that had become a part of him over the long decades instinctively arrived at his lips. “I am at your service, madam.”
“You are right,” said Layla Padamsee. “I was in Hollis Burbank’s room on the night that he died. After the auction, Adam and I fought. We fought because of Burbank, because of the obscene offer he had made at the after-party. At the time we had both reacted with horror. As you know, Adam took a swing at Burbank. For my own part, I was shocked, but I let it pass.
“The trouble started when we got back to our room later that evening.” Her lips quivered and tears welled in her eyes. “Adam… Adam began to speculate. He…” She hesitated, then plunged on, �
�he started to imagine what we could do with that much money. You see, Chopra, we are in debt, deeply in debt. Two years ago Adam took out a loan to set up a business venture with some partners, a modern art studio where I could sculpt, and we could nurture young artists. Unfortunately, his partners turned out to be crooks. Adam began to see Burbank’s offer as a way of getting us back on our feet.
“Of course, he was drunk, I understood that, but sometimes, when a person is drunk, they speak what is in their heart. I know that he feels trapped by our financial problems. Here was his chance.” She took a deep breath. “At some point, he stopped circling the matter, and just said it. What if…? What if we took Burbank at his word? What if I, his wife, went to Burbank’s room, delivered the…goods and collected my payment?” Her voice had become hard and brittle. “That was when I snapped. I couldn’t believe that he had asked this of me. We got into a furious fight. In the end, I told him that if he really wanted to sell his own wife, then I would do it. I would do it, and whatever happened after that would be on his head.”
“And that is when you went to Burbank’s suite?”
She nodded, sadly. “I don’t know why I went. I think it was just to spite my husband, I was so furious with him.
“Burbank was still awake. I remember how he seemed unsurprised to see me. I suppose he must have made such advances before. I found myself standing in front of a mirror. And suddenly I was overcome by a feeling of such utter self-loathing that I knew I could not go through with it. Burbank appeared behind me. I told him that I wished to leave, that it had all been a mistake. I tried to slip past him, but he grabbed at me—that’s when he crushed the bangle, cutting my wrist. I slapped him, hard across the face, twisted out of his grasp and ran from the room.
“That was the last I saw of him. I was barely with him for five minutes. And that is the truth.”
Chopra turned to Padamsee. “And you?”
Padamsee found it difficult to meet Chopra’s eyes. “I was drunk—” he began, defensively, but Chopra raised a hand. “I mean, where did you go after your wife left your room?”
