Murder at the Grand Raj Palace

by Vaseem Khan

  Halfway through the deserted room, a shriek turned their heads.

  Boy and elephant looked up.

  The golden-furred langur was perched above them on an enormous chandelier, holding what looked like an orange in its hand.

  “Go away!” shouted Irfan. “I know you’ve been trying to get Ganesha into trouble. You’re a bad monkey!”

  The langur bared its teeth and launched the orange at them. It struck Ganesha on the top of his knobbly skull, and bounced off towards the feet of a cut-out of a famous soap star. Ganesha gave a little bleat of distress and hunkered behind Irfan, hoping to ward off further aerial bombardment.

  Irfan’s eyes narrowed.

  He scampered to the orange, picked it up and, in one swift movement, hurled it back at the monkey.

  The langur’s eyes widened. At the last instant it leapt from the chandelier, landing on the shoulders of the cut-out of Sachin Tendulkar. The momentum of the leap rocked the cut-out from its moorings; it swayed forward, causing the langur to scrabble furiously at Sachin’s neck, wrapping its tail around his cardboard head. This served only to further push the cut-out downwards, teetering it on its base. For one brief second it seemed as if it might realign itself… but then, as the monkey leapt away towards the safety of another cut-out, pushing off with its hind legs, the added thrust sent the great cricketer toppling forward, to crash into the cut-out of a well-known local politician just yards away. The politician, caught in a pose of transcendental self-congratulation, hands raised aloft, fell instantly forwards, seeming to clutch lustily with his outstretched arms at the sari-clad screen siren before him.

  Irfan and Ganesha watched in thrilled horror as the giant cut-outs began a ceremonial procession of destruction around the room, crashing to earth like giant dominoes, taking with them the meticulously laid out lighting and flower arrangements and shattering vases and glass ornaments from tables.

  When the last tinkles of broken glass had stuttered into silence, a deathly quiet descended upon the grand ballroom.

  Irfan and Ganesha looked at each other with round eyes.

  “What is the meaning of this?”

  They turned to see a large, red-faced man in a navy suit descending on them. The man’s vertiginous head of hair swayed atop his skull like a roosting chicken. A brass tag on the breast pocket of his suit declared him to be Sreedhar Pillai, deputy assistant general manager. “You have wrecked the ballroom!”

  “It wasn’t us,” said Irfan. “It was him!” He pointed at the langur… or at where he had thought the monkey was, except that it was now conspicuous only by its absence. “It was the monkey,” he said.

  “Monkey?” Pillai raised himself up. “You wish me to believe that a monkey caused all this? And what monkey are you talking about anyway? There is no monkey here.”

  “But it’s true,” protested Irfan.

  The man folded his arms. “I may only be the deputy assistant general manager,” he said, “but you cannot make a monkey out of me. You two are in serious trouble.”

  “Wow! What happened in here?”

  They all turned to see Gautam Deshmukh, Anjali Tejwa’s prospective groom, approaching. His stunned gaze took in the destruction of the ballroom. “Did we get hit by an earthquake?”

  “I must apologise, sir,” said Pillai. “It is these miscreants who are responsible. But you need not worry. We will have the ballroom back in shape in no time at all. And, rest assured, these two will be severely punished.”

  “Punished?” echoed Gautam.

  “Severely!” Pillai nodded.

  Irfan avoided looking up at the big man, his face red with embarrassment. Ganesha shuffled his toes, and hung his head.

  Gautam crouched down and looked Irfan in the eye. “Did you really cause all this damage?”

  “It wasn’t our fault,” mumbled the boy. “There was a monkey.”

  “They are talking nonsense, si—” began Pillai, but Gautam cut him off with a wave of his hand.

  “You know, when I was young, I once destroyed my father’s favourite car. A brand-new Bentley. My feet could barely reach the pedals and I ended up driving it into a lake.” He winked, then stood up. “I don’t think punishment will be necessary, Mr. Pillai.”

  “But, sir! What will your father say? He has ordered that everything must be perfect for your wedding.”

  “Mr. Pillai,” said Gautam, “it is my wedding, not my father’s. And as there is nothing here that cannot be fixed I do not think we need trouble him about this, do you? He has enough on his plate at the moment.”

  Pillai blinked. “Very well, sir.”

  Irfan stared at Gautam in amazement. He realised that perhaps the unhappy groom wasn’t quite the oaf everyone was making him out to be. Certainly, anyone willing to help out an unjustly accused elephant must be a decent person. He hoped they found his runaway bride soon. Irfan would be sure to tell her about how Gautam had come to their aid. Perhaps she’d have a change of heart about marrying him once she realised he was basically a good person. And maybe everyone would pat Irfan on the back for bringing the two of them together. There might even be a reward in it, from the grateful fathers…

  He felt a tug on his arm.

  He looked down.

  Ganesha was pulling at him with his trunk.

  He watched as the little elephant trotted away, his trunk in the air.

  “Come on,” said Irfan. “I can prove that we weren’t responsible for this.” He knew that Ganesha’s sense of smell was extraordinary. There was nowhere for that devious monkey to hide.

  As it turned out the monkey in question had made no attempt to hide.

  It was back in the hotel garden, lounging in its deckchair.

  As they approached, it gave them a brazen stare, lips bulging with insolent menace.

  Irfan flung an arm at the langur. “There! He did it!”

  Pillai stared from the monkey back to Irfan, and then said, “Him?”

  “Yes.”

  Pillai’s mouth twitched. “Have you any idea who that is?”

  “The pet of some famous movie star from the south,” said Irfan. “She is probably around here somewhere.”

  “He is not the pet of some famous movie star from the south,” said Pillai hotly. “He is the famous movie star from the south. That is Rocky, the Wonder Langur. The star of such blockbuster films as Rocky’s Revenge, Rocky goes to Tollywood, Rocky and the Seven Ninja Buddhists and, of course, Boom 1 and Boom 2. He is one of my favourite actors.”

  Irfan stared at the man as if he had lost his mind.

  “You do not seriously expect me to believe that one of the south’s biggest stars wrecked my grand ballroom?” continued Pillai, practically frothing at the mouth.

  Irfan tuned the man out. Instead, he turned and glared at the langur.

  Rocky.

  The monkey pulled back his lips, and bared his teeth.

  “Okay,” muttered Irfan. “If that is how you wish to play it. No one gets away with making fun of me and Ganesha. Not even a famous movie star.”

  HOMI HAS THE ANSWERS

  It took Chopra almost an hour to drive back north.

  By the time he arrived at the Sahar Hospital, inching through rush-hour evening traffic, he was almost regretting his impulse. It would have been simpler to call his old friend, Homi Contractor, the senior police medical examiner stationed at the hospital.

  Then again, Chopra knew that Homi was a queer old bird.

  Though they had worked together for years, the old Parsee was possessed of a streak of bloody-mindedness that, if handled improperly, could make him as recalcitrant as a rhino with toothache. Besides, now that Chopra was no longer dealing with him in his capacity as the officer in charge of the local police station, it behoved him to show his friend a little consideration.

  He quickly navigated his way through the bustling corridors of the hospital. When he reached the morgue, it was to discover that Homi was in the operating suite.

  Chopr
a made his way back up to the ground floor, peered through the portal of Operating Theatre Four, then pushed open the door and stuck his head inside.

  He was immediately confronted by the sight of Homi’s round, perennially flushed face, with its bulbous, whisky-drinker’s nose below a blue surgical cap. Homi, like the six students around him, was resplendent in scrubs, but had pulled his face-mask down below his rubbery chin so that he could articulate his displeasure. On the operating table was a cadaver, the flesh peeled back from the sternum in the familiar Y-shaped autopsy incision, though the “Y” appeared to Chopra—who had seen more than his fair share of post-mortems—rather erratic in design.

  “Mr. Sarnath,” growled Homi, “you are a disgrace. By God, man, even Frankenstein’s monster would refuse to let you near him!”

  “Sorry, sir,” mumbled the offending Sarnath, eyes downcast. “I was very nervous.”

  Chopra knew that his old friend was a hard taskmaster.

  As well as performing autopsies for the local police cantonments, the old Parsee was also the Chair of the College of Cardiac Physicians and Surgeons of Mumbai, a responsibility he shouldered with utmost seriousness. Homi was a gregarious, outspoken and highly intelligent man, but one with a short fuse that seemed to be perpetually lit.

  Chopra coughed.

  Homi turned. His expression of anger instantly melted into one of welcome.

  “Chopra? What are you doing here?”

  “I need some information.”

  “Can it wait? I’m a little busy.”

  “Of course. I’ll be down in the morgue.”

  Homi arrived half an hour later, flopping down into his customary seat behind his overloaded desk.

  “It’s exam week,” explained Homi. “My interns are busy practising. Just pray that your corpse doesn’t come before this lot one day,” he added grimly.

  Usually Chopra would indulge his friend, listening to Homi rant on about the shortcomings of the “modern generation,” but today he cut him off before he could work up a head of steam.

  “I need your help with something.”

  “You usually do,” said Homi, archly. Modesty, Chopra had long ago realised, was not among his friend’s many sterling qualities. “I presume this is to do with the Burbank investigation? As I told you yesterday, I cannot say for sure that the man killed himself.”

  “That’s not why I’m here,” said Chopra. Quickly, he laid out for Homi the trail that had led him to the engineer Ravinder Shastri. He took out the photograph of Shastri, Murthi, Faulkner and Sen. “I need your help to identify this woman,” he said, tapping the picture. “Her surname is Sen, and she was a doctor, in or around Pune, back in 1985.”

  “With so much information to hand, I’m surprised you need my help.”

  “Normally, I wouldn’t ask,” said Chopra. “But time is of the essence here. The senior echelons of the police department are keen to label Burbank’s death a suicide, sweep it all under the carpet.”

  “But you’ve convinced yourself there is more to it?”

  Chopra hesitated. “My instincts say yes. And if it was murder, I must explore every avenue.”

  Homi rapped his knuckles on his desk. “Well, in that case, consider it done. I shall wave my magic wand, and you shall have your information, Cinderella.”

  “What? Who is Cinderella?”

  Homi rolled his eyes.

  He was a man who prided himself on his literary knowledge, but sometimes felt that it was wasted on his friends. Chopra was a bright man, but the minutiae of Western fiction was not his strong suit.

  He took out his phone and made a call to the President of the Medical Council of India.

  In Homi’s capacity as Chair of the College of Cardiac Physicians and Surgeons of Mumbai, he had run into the man on numerous occasions. Homi covered the phone with his hand. “The man’s a buffoon,” he revealed. “About as much charm and personality as a crushed slug—Ah, Prabhakar, how are you, old chap?”

  Chopra listened to Homi making pleasantries—a task he knew ill suited his friend—before getting down to business. Homi quickly explained what he needed. He was given a number for the head of the council’s record-keeping section. He made the call, and engaged in another lengthy conversation, in which, it seemed to Chopra, he was given the runaround. By the end of the call he felt certain Homi was about to hurl his phone at the wall.

  When he eventually did hang up, he wilted into his chair. “I am learning to manage my temper better,” he explained. “Rekha signed me up for classes with a well-known spiritual guru.”

  “Oh, really?” said Chopra, intrigued. “How is it going?”

  “Very well. In our first session I threw him out of the window.”

  Chopra stared at his friend.

  “Relax, Chopra. We were on the ground floor. The old charlatan started talking about the mystical energy of the cosmos, and whatnot. You know what that sort of talk does to my blood pressure. Mind you, I haven’t felt this good in years, since chucking him out of that window.” Homi beamed. “At any rate, the Medical Council will get back to me shortly. You can wait, or I can call you.”

  Chopra stood up. “I should be getting back to the hotel. Poppy will be waiting.”

  “You know, my great-grandfather knew the man,” mused Homi as he escorted his friend to the door.

  “Who? Burbank?” said Chopra in confusion.

  “No, of course not. I’m talking about Khumbatta. He met him when he was a boy. Khumbatta was knocking on a bit, by then, of course, but he was still sharp as a tack. You know he used to do card tricks? He was notorious for pulling out a fifth ace in the last knockings of a poker game.”

  Chopra smiled.

  There were a million anecdotal stories about the legendary Peroz Khumbatta, founder of the Grand Raj. It didn’t surprise him that Homi’s great-grandfather had bumped into him. The Parsee community of Mumbai had always been a small, highly select bunch; in many ways, the Parsee industrialists of the nineteenth century had shaped the city. Mumbai owed them a debt, even as their voices dwindled away to just an echo in the great slipstream of time.

  “Call me as soon as you know,” he said. “And try not to throw any of your students out of a window.”

  “I make no promises,” said Homi, with a grim smile.

  “Well, there you are, then,” said Kejriwal, sitting back with a shimmer of nervous relief. “She is not there.”

  Big Mother hunched forward in her wheelchair, staring at the bank of monitor screens before her.

  They were gathered in the control centre of Victoria Station, a state-of-the-art facility that had been recently installed to much fanfare and speech-making. Kejriwal had spent his earliest years on the rail network out in the Maharashtrian hinterlands, when the system was still mechanical, and stationmasters in the smaller outposts still rang a cymbal to alert dozing rural passengers to the arrival of each train. And now they had this abundance of technology, the precise workings of which often caused his head to throb when the junior technicians took it upon themselves to explain it to him.

  Yet this was modern India, he supposed. Hurtling forward with unstoppable abandon like the Flying Ranee of his youth.

  They had spent the past hour examining the CCTV footage for Platform 15, from which the Mumbai to Pondicherry express train departed, focusing on the narrow window of time when Anjali Tejwa should have been boarding that very train. They had pored over the faces of those making their way into the carriages, a patience-sapping endeavour in the company of the ill-tempered old woman. Kejriwal felt quite drained.

  “We may have missed her,” said Poppy. “Some of those passengers were wearing hats, or headscarves. It was difficult to make out their faces.”

  “She is not on the train,” announced Big Mother.

  She wheeled her chair sharply around, requiring the stationmaster to jerk backwards or risk losing his knees.

  “How can you be so sure?” said Poppy.

  “Because I k
now my granddaughter. Did I not tell you that she is a highly intelligent woman? She has orchestrated this whole thing. Do you think that after planning her escape so cleverly from that bathroom, she would be so careless as to leave the details of her onward journey for us to find?”

  “You think she left the travel itinerary there on purpose?” said Huma.

  “Almost certainly,” said Big Mother. “She knew someone would search her belongings. If not her family, then the police, at some stage. She knew we would conclude that she has made off for Pondicherry.”

  “I had a look at her computer,” said Huma. “I couldn’t find any friends in Pondicherry that she had made through social media. That’s not to say she didn’t have them, but…”

  Big Mother waved her concerns away. “Anjali is not in Pondicherry, nor anywhere near it.”

  “Then where is she?” said Poppy.

  The old woman’s certainty wavered. “I don’t know.”

  “What do we do next, Big Mother?” asked Huma.

  “Perhaps it is time to involve the authorities?” suggested Poppy.

  “No,” said Big Mother. “We cannot risk the scandal. And besides, I do not believe that Anjali is in any danger. She knows exactly what she is doing.”

  “What is she doing?” said Huma. “I mean, if she doesn’t want to get married, then why not just come out and say so? What’s the point of putting us all through this?”

  Big Mother sighed. “Anjali is very smart,” she repeated. “But even the smartest of us can become lost in the maze of emotions that make us human. Perhaps she doesn’t want to marry Gautam; perhaps she doesn’t want to marry at all. On the other hand, she understands what is at stake here. She feels responsible for the rest of us; we are her family, after all. She has no wish to see us destitute. She knows that the wrong decision could signal the end of the Tejwa royal heritage, such of it as now remains. It is a great burden for one so young.”

  “And if you did find her,” said Poppy. “What would you say to her? I mean, ultimately, is she free to make her own decision?”

  “As free as any of us truly are in this world,” said Big Mother cryptically. “I am no tyrant. Anjali means more to me than you could know. But I am a pragmatist. I see the greater good that can come from this union.”