Murder at the Grand Raj Palace

by Vaseem Khan

Here they found the room packed with the star’s entourage, including his chief minder—the beautiful young woman Chopra had assumed was a film star. Her name was Shreya and she listened quietly as Chopra explained the situation. “I think I understand what has happened,” she said, eventually. “Three years ago, Rocky starred in a movie where elephants were involved. In one of the scenes he was supposed to ride on the back of an elephant. Unfortunately, for some reason, this elephant went into a rage that day, and stampeded off into the city. Poor Rocky somehow became trapped in the elephant’s headdress and couldn’t jump off. It was three hours later before we could rescue him, and by that time all the bouncing around had broken nearly every bone in his little body. Ever since that day he has harboured a hatred of elephants.” She gave Ganesha a sympathetic smile. “Come with me.”

  She led them into the master bedroom, where Rocky was sitting in a large padded cot strewn with fruit. As he saw Ganesha he stood up on his hind legs, nostrils flaring, teeth bared.

  Shreya began to speak to him, supplementing her words with hand signals. Chopra caught the word “friend.”

  Finally, the monkey seemed to understand.

  He looked at Ganesha through his black-button eyes, then extended a paw.

  Ganesha glanced at Chopra, then extended his own trunk.

  “There,” said Shreya, giving a delighted clap. “Friends! What a wonderful story this will make. And you don’t have to worry about the director pressing charges. He’s a bit of a blowhard, but now that Ganesha and Rocky are friends he wouldn’t dare upset him by taking things any further.”

  Chopra’s phone rang.

  It was Homi.

  He excused himself and stepped out of the room.

  “Radhika Sen,” said Homi. “Born in 1958 in Maharashtra. She qualified as an MBBS at the B. J. Medical College in Pune with top grades. Then, surprisingly, went to practise back in her native village, a place called Ramgarh, out in Chimboli. She died in 1986, a car accident.”

  Chopra breathed silently down the phone. “Family?”

  “Well, she never married, and no children, not officially anyway. Next of kin records cite an older brother, Gajendra Sen, resident of Ramgarh.”

  “Thank you,” said Chopra, and ended the call.

  He looked back and saw that Irfan, Ganesha and Poppy were all engaged with the monkey.

  A coldness settled into the pit of his stomach.

  He knew that tomorrow he would go to Ramgarh.

  He could only hope that what he would find there might bring him closer to the truth behind Hollis Burbank’s death.

  POPPY RETURNS TO FIRST PRINCIPLES

  Early the next morning, not long after her husband had left on the errand she knew would occupy him for much of the day, Poppy found herself back in Anjali Tejwa’s bridal suite.

  She had awoken with a renewed sense of purpose.

  In part this was due to the conversation she had had with Chopra the previous evening, following the incident with Irfan. Although they had not resolved things completely—she still felt a simmering anger towards him for his lack of sensitivity regarding their anniversary—she had discussed her efforts to help find the runaway bride.

  His reaction had been thoughtful, and measured.

  Instead of urging her to go to the authorities, he had considered the situation and said to her, simply: “Go back to first principles. Ask yourself why she has left. What is she hoping to achieve? What is her real motive in all this? Usually, when I am stuck on an investigation, I go through everything that I have discovered again, with the finest-tooth comb. I look for that one piece of information that doesn’t quite fit.”

  Poppy had heeded her husband’s advice.

  She had gone over everything she thought she knew about Anjali’s disappearance, writing each item down on a notepad, as she had often seen Chopra do. When this failed to reveal anything significant, she had returned to Anjali’s room. Something was nagging away at her, tickling the back of her mind…

  She stood in the bathroom, thoughtfully staring at the tub.

  Nothing.

  She walked back out into the bedroom.

  Huma Dixit, whom she had awoken for the room key, hugged herself by the bed as she watched Poppy circle the suite.

  Finally, she stopped in front of the wardrobe.

  The little alarm bell inside her had begun to ring loudly. It was something she had seen the last time she had searched Anjali’s possessions.

  But what?

  As she began to rifle, once more, through the missing bride’s paraphernalia, Poppy found her thoughts drifting back to the matter of her own upcoming anniversary. She had realised, soon after speaking with her husband the previous evening, that it wasn’t so much the fact that the celebration she had planned hadn’t gone to, well, plan; it wasn’t even that Chopra was both indisposed and not particularly engaged… The realisation had come to her that it was the event itself that was the source of her disquiet.

  Milestone. Landmark.

  Words that had settled inside her like lead weights, making her feel as if she had completed some sort of marathon. She almost felt obliged to hurl her weary body over an imaginary finish line.

  Yet this was exactly the opposite of how she wished to feel!

  She had always been a creature of spontaneity. This anniversary was simply a joyful marker, a sign of the wonderful years she and Chopra had shared. When had the whole thing turned into such a gruelling—?

  She stopped.

  She had been searching Anjali’s valise, going over the bundle of receipts and papers where she had discovered the travel itinerary, the itinerary that now appeared to have been planted by Anjali to throw them off the scent. In her hand was the receipt from the tailor called Lightning Lala.

  There was something incongruous about the receipt, something she hadn’t picked up on before…

  And then she had it.

  She stood up from the bed, held the receipt out to Huma. “What do you see?”

  The girl examined the little slip of paper. “It’s just another tailoring receipt. Anjali did a ton of shopping for the wedding. So what?”

  “Look at it again.”

  Huma’s brow furrowed as she scrutinised the receipt once more… and then her expression dissolved into surprise. “Oh.”

  “Yes,” said Poppy, triumphantly. “Exactly!”

  IN THE VILLAGE OF RAMGARH

  The journey to the village of Ramgarh would take at least three hours. As a consequence, Chopra had set off early, soon after dawn had broken over the city.

  Before leaving he had checked on Ganesha, downstairs in his garden “suite.”

  Since his heroics of the previous evening he had become the centre of attention. Chopra hoped it hadn’t gone to his young ward’s head—he knew how much the little elephant enjoyed the limelight.

  He found Ganesha dozing beside a mound of fruit and assorted foodstuffs. The offerings included, incongruously, a basket of fresh fish.

  Elephants, as far as he knew, did not eat fish.

  The little elephant had a contented smile on his face, dreaming his elephant dreams.

  Chopra patted him on the head. “Do you know what Gandhi said, young man? ‘The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.’ You are truly his disciple.”

  Ganesha stirred, and passed his trunk dreamily over Chopra’s face.

  “I wish I could take you with me,” he murmured. “But I think Poppy needs you more than me right now.”

  Chopra drove his Tata van out of Mumbai via the Eastern Freeway, then over the Vashi Bridge, and onto the Mumbai–Pune highway. He made good time through Panvel and Rasayani, slowing down only as he ascended the low-lying mountain pass of the Bhor Ghat into the tourist town of Lonavala. At this elevation, the air was cooled by a rare freshness, and Chopra found himself rolling down the windows and allowing the breeze to strike his face, ruffling his moustache.

  By the time he had descended dow
n into the Deccan plain, the temperature had climbed back into the low thirties.

  It was going to be another sweltering day.

  About an hour out from Pune, he left the highway and struck out northwards, passing fields of flowing wheat, their tops waving sinuously in the morning sun. Bullocks stood around, mired in low-lying pools of water, resembling postmodern sculptures. Rural women swayed through fields of lush grass, clay pots at their hips.

  Thirty minutes later, he arrived at the village of Ramghar, situated on the banks of the Indriyani River.

  Chopra parked his van on the outskirts of the village—in reality, a small town now—then walked inwards, passing a curious goatherder steering his flock towards the river. A group of boys tugging at a kite paused to watch him go by. A number of old men, with the seamed, leathery faces of those who worked outdoors, sat beneath a peepal tree, puffing away on hookahs.

  Chopra approached them, and asked directions to the home of Gajendra Sen.

  Sen’s home was a brick and thatch dwelling in a crowded lane in the centre of the village.

  The door was flung open, but Chopra knocked anyway.

  A small boy in a white shirt and blue shorts, with a school satchel on his back, peered up at Chopra in curiosity. “Hello.”

  “Hello,” said Chopra. “I am looking for Gajendra Sen.”

  “You mean Grandfather,” said the boy. “He is in the bathroom. Do you know how I know?”

  “No,” said Chopra.

  “Because he is singing. He always sings in the bathroom.” The child grinned.

  A woman materialised behind the boy. She was in her late twenties, Chopra guessed, dressed in a faded sari, hair pulled back in a bun. “Yes?” she said, her expression quizzical.

  Chopra explained that he was here to see Gajendra Sen.

  The woman hesitated, then invited him inside.

  The home was compact, three rooms, including the bathroom.

  Chopra was parked at a rickety wooden table. He looked around the room. The cracked plaster. The low ceiling. A blast of incense from a small shrine in the corner. And, taking pride of place beside the shrine, the garlanded photograph of a young woman.

  Radhika Sen.

  She seemed to stare out into some unfathomable distance, a future only she could see.

  The woman offered him tea, which he declined. The child sat beside him, wolfing down a breakfast of sanja, a spiced semolina mixture, served with coriander and yoghurt, eyes glued to a small TV.

  When Gajendra Sen finally entered the room, towelling his hair, he stopped and stared at the visitor. He was a tall, lean man with greying hair, rheumy eyes and a whiskery moustache, wearing a loose cotton shirt and dhoti.

  Chopra stood. “My name is Chopra. I have some questions regarding the death of your sister, Mr. Sen. Radhika.”

  It was as if he had physically struck the man.

  Gajendra Sen reeled backwards, the towel falling from his grasp. He blinked rapidly, seemingly on the verge of fleeing.

  Finally, he stumbled forward, and fell into a seat at the table.

  In the bedroom Chopra heard the woman rattling the doors of a steel wardrobe. The TV droned on. The sounds of a pair of men chattering as they passed by drifted in from the alley.

  “I knew you would come one day,” said Sen eventually. His voice was hollow, his gaze fastened to the table’s pitted surface.

  “I am not here to cause you distress,” said Chopra. “I am merely searching for the truth. A man has died, a man your sister knew many years ago. I am trying to determine if his death has anything to do with his past.”

  Sen said nothing. He seemed truly stricken, and Chopra knew that there was something, some hidden truth that sought to peck its way out from inside him. His journey had not been in vain.

  “How did Radhika die?”

  A great sob erupted from Sen, shocking the detective. He watched as the man dissolved into racking tremors of grief, a thrashing anguish. The woman rushed to his side. “Father, what is the matter?” She glared at Chopra. “Who are you?”

  Sen continued to weep. Finally, he ran a sleeve over his eyes, got to his feet and looked down at his grandson, who was staring up at him with an expression of astonishment. Chopra doubted the boy had ever seen his grandfather in such a state before.

  “Pratima, please take Piyush to school.”

  “But—”

  “Do it now! I must talk to this man. Alone.”

  Chopra waited as the woman finished readying her son for school.

  At the door, she turned and gave Chopra a last suspicious look. The boy waved at him, then frowned. “Please don’t make Grandfather cry any more. It is not his fault his singing is so bad.”

  “I won’t,” promised Chopra.

  When the pair had left, Sen went into the bedroom. Chopra heard the sound of a large tin trunk being dragged across the floor and Sen rummaging inside it.

  Sen returned, and set down a steel lockbox on the table. “Everything you need to know is in there,” he said.

  Chopra hesitated, then reached for the box, but Sen stopped him. “But first there are some things I must show you.”

  THE FASTEST TAILOR IN ALL OF INDIA

  Once upon a time Bombay had been the textile capital of the nation, with more than a hundred mills clustered around midtown, employing a quarter of a million labourers. This was the era of the local tailor, when thousands of workshops catered to the whims of both poor and rich, Indian and British. In the decades since those heady days, the mills had vanished, and the arrival of the ready-made garment industry had decimated the tailoring trade. A brand-conscious younger generation had turned their backs on personally crafted clothing in favour of fancy labels and swishy trademarks.

  And yet there remained outposts of sartorial resistance in the city, tailors who had not only survived, but continued to thrive.

  For there would always be those, in a place such as Mumbai, who preferred the personal attentions of a genuine craftsman, someone who could be relied upon to create something just so.

  The Lightning Lala tailor’s shop was located close to the Grand Raj Palace in a quiet corner of Cuffe Parade, fronted by centuries-old cobblestones and a bright facade with a cut-out of a plump and happy-looking tailor standing beside the door. The sign proclaimed: “Lightning Lala: The Fastest Tailor in All of India.”

  Poppy entered to find a brightly lit showroom, a long marble counter running down one side.

  Behind the counter, racked from floor to ceiling, were bolts of cloth of all colours and patterns: cottons from Gujarat, block prints from Jaipur, prismatic silks from the south, brocades from Benares. As she looked on, a tailor plucked a roll from the shelving and, with a magician-like flourish of the fingers, unreeled an embroidered crêpe silk fabric onto the counter. The customer—a buxom, older woman with designer sunglasses perched in her hair—seemed unimpressed. “You call that silk?” she said, with the bass-mouthed firmness of someone who intended to get a bargain even if it killed her. “I’ve seen better silk on my maid’s underclothes.”

  “Welcome, madam!”

  Poppy turned to find a reedy young man swaying before her, grinning invitingly. “How may we help you today?” He took a deep breath. “We can make for you sari, kurta, salwar kameez, blouse, trousers, jacket suit, skirt, miniskirt, formal dress, summer dress, party dress, evening dress, ball gown, churidaar, lehenga choli. We can make traditional design, modern design, Italian cut, French cut. We can do all customisation that your heart desires: imported fabrics, wool lining, box pleats, side pleats, split yokes, double darts, sweep cut, straight cut, V-cut, high neckline, plunge cut—” He stopped, purple in the face, as Poppy held up a hand.

  “I am looking for a girl,” she said, holding out a picture of Anjali Tejwa. “She came into your store for a tailored outfit.”

  The young man, who had been holding his breath, exhaled in disappointment. “In that case, I must take you to Mr. Lala.”

  Kashibha
i Lala turned out to be a small, round, avuncular man, with bottle-bottom glasses and a tape measure slung around his neck like a stethoscope.

  He took one look at Poppy and reeled off a list of numbers.

  With a momentary astonishment, she realised that they were her exact physical measurements.

  Lala smiled at her. “It is a skill I learned from my grandfather. I can tell a person’s measurements just by looking at them.”

  Lightning Lala—Mumbai’s self-proclaimed quickest tailor— had been around for five decades, Poppy learned.

  His ancestors had been tailors in what was now Pakistan. Following the upheaval of Partition, they had moved down into Mumbai with nothing but the shirts on their backs and the magic in their fingers.

  Poppy explained her errand.

  She showed Lala the receipt she had discovered in Anjali’s valise. The receipt said: One gentleman’s outfit, Rs 3800/-.

  That was the tiny discrepancy, the one piece of information that didn’t fit… Why would Anjali buy a gentleman’s outfit? It couldn’t be for Gautam, a man she didn’t even wish to marry. So why?

  “I remember her,” said Lala, and reeled off another set of measurements. “I tend to recall people by their statistics,” he added, apologetically. “It was not an unusual request. We have many contracts with big organisations for such outfits.”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you mean,” said Poppy. “Exactly what sort of outfit did Anjali buy?”

  “I can show you,” said Lala. “Nowadays, you see, we take a photograph of every piece of clothing we produce and put it onto our computer. My daughter’s idea.” He sighed. “In truth, she runs the business now. I suppose it is useful, as a catalogue of our work. Of course, in the old days, the only catalogue I needed was up here.” He tapped his forehead.

  Poppy followed Lala to a computer, then watched him fumble with it.

  Eventually, an image appeared on the screen.

  She stared at the garment. “Oh,” she murmured. “Now that I did not expect.”