Death at the Durbar

by Arjun Gaind

  Above the shoulders, sadly, she was a monstrosity. The pashmina scarf bound around her neck had bitten deep into her throat, leaving her face suffused, bloated to almost twice its size, her mouth twisted open in a raw scream of horror. From between her teeth, her tongue protruded, swollen as fat as a slug. But it was her eyes that made Sikander gasp, so filled with accusation that, involuntarily, he broke his own cardinal rule and reached out to gently ease shut her eyelids, to block out the recrimination in those awful, staring eyes.

  Unexpectedly, the balsamic scent of whatever unguents she had used to oil her body filled his nostrils, combining with the faint scent of putrefaction to make him feel more than a little dizzy. Sikander let out a groan. From his breast pocket, he extracted a small pen knife, and folded it open with a click. Stepping forward, he wrapped one arm around the girl’s waist, hefting her meager weight easily, even as he stretched out and sawed the sharp blade back and forth, until the scarf’s woolen material came apart and she sagged down into his embrace.

  As reverently as a priest performing last rites, he eased the girl’s corpse to the ground. Shrugging off his coat, he draped it across her face to obscure her grotesque features, before straightening up and swiveling to face the trio of gentlemen who had been watching him expectantly.

  “I have seen all that I need to,” he declared, shaking his head sorrowfully.

  “What on earth?” Commissioner French erupted. “Aren’t you going to poke around a bit? Take some samples and so forth. Isn’t that what you detective fellows are supposed to do?”

  “What a crock!” O’Dwyer scoffed, making no effort to hide his dubiety. “They say you are a veritable magician, Mr. Singh. Go on then, dazzle the lot of us, if you can, unless of course you’re a rank pretender.”

  O’Dwyer’s words stung at him, making his hackles rise. He knew it was silly to take such obvious bait, but for once, suppressing his better instincts, Sikander decided to show off a bit, if for no other reason than to put the ponderous Irishman in his place.

  “Very well, if you insist! The girl is about eighteen, of Kashmiri origin, and she was very definitely murdered.”

  “Are you certain of that?” The Commissioner interjected. “She could have killed herself, yes?”

  “No, she was strangled, of that I am certain. Not more than ten hours ago, most likely a little before dawn this very morning. Also, the killer is a man, not more than thirty-five years old, between five-foot-eight and six feet tall. He is a meat-eater, I reckon, most likely either a soldier or sailor with broad shoulders and a strong build. Also, he was her lover. I am almost definite on that.”

  This analysis was greeted by a stunned silence, broken only by a loud snort from the commissioner.

  “Good God, are you making all that up?” He gave Sikander a piercing scowl. “Would you care to explain yourself, Mr. Singh? How have you arrived at these outlandish conclusions?”

  “I doubt you would understand me, Mr. French. You don’t seem terribly bright.”

  “Oh, do stop needling the commissioner, Sikander,” Malik Umar chimed in, unable to hide a smile.

  “Please, Mr. Singh,” O’Dwyer added, “for those of us who are amateurs, would you kindly elaborate?”

  “Very well! Let us begin with the fact that she was strangled. That much is really quite obvious from the livid ligature marks circling her throat and neck. If you take a careful look, beneath the striations left by the pashmina, you will see the imprint of a man’s fingers, left behind when the killer throttled the life from her. Even though he most likely strung her up precisely to disguise what had truly occurred, thankfully he could not erase every trace left behind.”

  “As for the time of death, the lividity of the girl’s flesh suggests she was killed within the last twenty hours, and since her skin is still supple and rigor mortis has only now begun to set in, I can conclude that she died very recently, most likely early this morning.”

  “Now, to the identity of her killer. It had to be a man who throttled her. She was young, in her prime and considerably healthy, judging by her physique, which means the killer had to be someone larger and stronger than her, not a woman. And of course, we must consider the violence of the crime. The imprints around her neck are quite widely spaced, which indicates the killer had large hands and a strong grip, which makes me believe he was either a sailor or a soldier, someone with fingers tempered to steel, whether from handling ropes or reins. Also, the poor child’s neck was broken, not just in one place, but two, which in turn suggests that the person who did this is uncommonly strong, and most likely a young man. Strangulation is a crime of heat and passion. Old men rarely act on such savage impulses, and even then, they are rarely quite so vicious.”

  “As for the inference to his height, she is almost five and a half feet tall. However, the inclination of the marks around her neck are angled downwards, which suggests that her murderer was taller. This is what I think happened. I believe that our killer overpowered her, and while he was throttling the life from her, he lifted her bodily off the ground, and that is when her neck broke, killing her instantly. Do you see?”

  “But how did you conclude that he was her lover?” O’Dwyer inquired.

  “That was a piece of carefully calculated guesswork,” Sikander replied. “I deduced that from the fact that she is in a state of déshabille, and because I can still smell the sour scent of musk and sweat on her, faint, yes, but perceptible to a nose as discerning as my own.”

  “Pure conjecture!” the Commissioner growled. “Perhaps she was undressing when the killer took her by surprise. Maybe he despoiled her, eh? Some sort of lust-crazed madman? Did you even consider that?”

  “Ah, but then where are the defensive wounds? There are no bruises on her wrists and arms, no blood under her fingernails, which can only mean that she did not fight him. That suggests that the killer was known to her, that she felt she had naught to fear from him—a belief, alas, which I think was the very thing that led to her murder.”

  O’Dwyer looked about ready to offer argument, to mount another diatribe, but when he realized that there were no refutations he could offer without looking foolish, he snapped his mouth shut, with such speed that his jaw clicked audibly.

  Commissioner Lee French was not quite so graceful. “That is all well and good, but nothing that a good policeman could not have pieced together as well. Besides, you don’t have a shred of evidence, do you, not one clue not a single lead to chase down?”

  “No, I do not.” Even as the commissioner puffed up, Sikander gave him a stiff smile. “However, there is a very good reason for that. The girl was not killed here, in this room.”

  “What makes you so sure of that?”

  “Have you heard of Locard’s Principle, Mr. French? An interesting fellow, Monsieur Locard. I met him while I was studying in France. As a matter of fact, he was Alexandre Lacassagne’s assistant for some years. He postulated a theory to me once, that every contact leaves behind a trace, that wherever a criminal steps, whatever he touches, whatever he leaves behind, even unconsciously, can be found by an observant investigator and used ultimately as a silent witness against him.”

  “What does that have to do with this poor girl’s murder?”

  “Patience, Commissioner! Just take a look around. Do you see anything out of place? Any signs of a struggle? A girl was strangled to death. Where are the torn tapestries, the broken vases, the shattered furniture? This place is absolutely pristine, is it not?”

  The commissioner shrugged. “Maybe the killer cleaned up after himself, and got rid of any incriminating evidence!”

  “No, I doubt he had the time.” Sikander’s jaw hardened. “I suspect that she was killed elsewhere and that the body was moved to this location. But why this particular tent? Why this particular camp? Those are the real questions we must find the answers to.”

  “Why would anyon
e want to embarrass the King and ruin the Durbar?”

  Chapter Five

  A stilted silence greeted this declaration, broken only when Malik Umar clapped his hands in approbation.

  “Well, that was quite impressive, I must say, Sikander! I can see your reputation is truly well deserved!”

  Unfortunately, judging by the identically sour expressions that continued to decorate both Commissioner French’s and Mr. O’Dwyer’s faces, they did not seem to share the same opinion.

  “I still say we just sweep this whole mess under the rug, Mr. Khan,” O’Dwyer said, “and be done with it. We cannot afford to run the risk of having Mr. Singh blundering about, not with the King’s arrival so imminent.”

  “I have to agree,” the commissioner chimed in. “Frankly, who is going to give a damn if a whore turns up dead, just as long as we dump the body somewhere far away?”

  Sikander clenched his teeth, scowling. It was a commonly held misconception, particularly by the British, that nautch girls were little more than prostitutes. This was an egregious and pejorative misconception. In reality, nautch girls, especially the tawaifs of Lucknow and Lahore, were courtesans of the highest quality, skillful performers educated from a young age in not merely the art of ada and andaz, but also tehfeez and tehmeez, culture and etiquette.

  It was a tradition as ancient as India itself, one that had traveled to the subcontinent from Persia via the Silk Road, reaching the peak of fashion during the age of the Mughals. Legend had it that a nautch girl named Anarkali had very nearly managed to cause Akbar to lose his throne, driving his son Jahangir, who became besotted with her beauty, to open revolt. Another legend was that of Rupmati, who had risen to become the queen of Malwa, possessed of such legendary grace that Akbar had invaded her husband Baz Bahadur’s kingdom just so that he could watch her perform. In the Punjab, too, there had been no shortage of famous, or rather, infamous nautch girls. Maharaja Ranjit Singh had taken not one but two to be his consorts, the fabled Moran Sarkar and of course, Jindan, the Messalina of India, who had hocked the Sikh Empire to the English.

  In many ways, they were the Indian equivalent of Japanese geishas, trained to captivate and entrance men, not merely titillate them. It was common practice in Nawabi India for the wealthy to send their sons to their salons, not to be taught the ways of lovemaking, but to be educated in courtly manners and acquire good taste. It was the nautch girls who were the purveyors of art and culture in the Urdu world, the proponents of music and poetry. In fact, it was at their mehfils that the golden age of shayeri had flourished, at least until the English had annexed Avadh. After that, the tradition had been condemned because it clashed with Victorian morality, and the tawaif class had acquired a seedy reputation, defamed as whores and tarts of the lowest order, branded as bayederes, or street dancers, as the Portuguese called them.

  It was precisely this regressive attitude Sikander saw writ upon the commissioner’s face, a leering contempt that set his teeth on edge.

  “She is not a whore,” he growled. “Her name is Zahra, and she is a dancer.”

  “How could you possibly know that?” O’Dwyer offered Sikander a suspicious frown.

  “I saw her perform once a long time ago,” Sikander murmured absently, still looking down at the dead girl’s lifeless form apprehensively. “She was exquisite, a rare and beautiful thing.”

  “What difference does it make? Whore or dancing girl, let’s just bury her and be done with the whole mess.” Commissioner French mimed washing his hands.

  “Lord Hardinge was quite explicit about his orders,” Malik Umar responded, making no effort to hide his disgust at such a duplicitous suggestion. “He wished for Sikander here to investigate, and that is exactly what I intend to let him do. If you have any disagreement, then I suggest you take it up with the Viceroy directly.”

  “I shall do just that,” the commissioner sniffed, giving Sikander one last black look before storming away.

  O’Dwyer made to follow, but not before approaching Sikander first. “This is not over, Mr. Singh, mark my words. As it says in the book of Isaiah, ‘According to their deeds, so He will repay, Wrath to His adversaries, recompense to His enemies.’ Remember that!”

  “Don’t pay O’Dwyer any attention,” Malik Umar interjected as the Irishman strode off. “He is an Ulsterman, and they are all full of biblical wrath and judgment. It’s all just hot air. Come along, let’s get out of this morbid place.”

  He led Sikander back into the sumptuous parlor where he had met the Viceroy, pausing to pull a chased gold flask from his pocket. Uncapping it, he brought it to his lips with a most ungentlemanly eagerness.

  “I did not take you for a drinking man, Malik Umar.”

  “On most days, I am not. But today, after what we just saw in there,” he shivered, “I cannot help but need a bit of liquid courage to fortify my resolve.”

  He proffered the flask to Sikander, who accepted it, taking a quick swig. To his surprise, it turned out to be a very decent anisette, a Del Mono, he guessed from the rich depth of flavor. Ordinarily, Sikander did not enjoy sweet liqueurs, but this once, he found himself relishing the warmth that spread through his chest. It went a long way toward dispelling the icy sorrow that had seized his heart when he had gazed down at Zahra’s face.

  “Do have some more!” Malik Umar said. “Don’t be shy!”

  Sikander obliged readily, taking another, more generous sip as Malik ushered them to a nearby chaise.

  “You said you knew the girl. Would you care to elaborate?”

  Sikander closed his eyes.

  “Zahra means blossom in Persian, did you know?” Tiredly, he massaged the bridge of his nose, assailed by a welter of disparate memories. A slender throat, the sinuous curve of a neck, a naïve laugh as brittle as freshly blown glass, the melodious clink of jeweled anklets, a fan of dull ochre blood sprayed across a red terra-cotta tile, two pale brown eyes, once bright, then dead, unseeing.

  “It was a long time ago,” he exhaled. “Before Paris, before my father died, before my mother was…” his voice caught in his throat, the wound of her loss still raw, in spite of the passage of time “…before she was taken from us so unexpectedly. I had just returned to India after rather an unfulfilling sojourn at Eton. One evening, I had become rather intoxicated in the company of a very intoxicating barmaid only to be caught by one of the beaks trying to sneak her into my garret, a misunderstanding that had ended with me being sent down for ungentlemanly behavior.

  “My father was not at all pleased, as you can imagine.” Sikander shuddered. To say that the Burra Maharaja had been displeased was an utter understatement. His father had threatened to cut him off, and the only thing that had prevented him from whipping Sikander with a belt was the intervention of his mother, who had come to his rescue, as she had always done whenever he got into an adolescent scrape.

  “I was a very different person back then, Malik Umar, just a boy, all knees and garters, you understand, filled with the fire and madness of youth. I was constantly getting into trouble. I confess I searched it out with the eagerness that only a child who believes he is indestructible possesses. All that has changed now. I would like to say that I am wiser, but the truth, I fear, is that caution comes with the crown. I have no stomach for controversy any longer, even though often enough it manages to seek me out.

  “Anyway, my father was determined not to let me out of his sight. As a result, rather than being permitted to travel to Simla to attend the season, I was forced to accompany him to Bikaner, to Gajner for the annual grouse hunt hosted by Maharaja Ganga Singh.”

  Sikander’s smile evaporated. “There were six of us there that year, my father and myself, Rajinder Singh of Patiala, Jagatjit of Kapurthala of course, who was banned from Simla after that mess he got into with Curzon’s sister, the Sahibzada of Malerkotla, and the young prince of Alwar.”

  The moue of dis
taste that flickered across his features as he said the last of those names was reflected on Malik Umar’s face.

  “Do you mean Jey Singh?”

  “Yes!” Sikander’s frown deepened. Jey Singh, now the Maharaja of Alwar, had been one year behind them in school. Even back then, he had been legendary for his unnatural inclinations, overly fond of torturing animals, dogs and cats mainly, but once Sikander had caught him in the act of ripping the wings off a crow. Sikander believed himself to be a difficult man to scare, but he had never forgotten the expression on Jey Singh’s face as he had torn that poor creature to pieces. It had been horrifying, a rapture, like something one saw on the face of a worshiper in a church.

  Once again, he found himself assailed by the bitter aftertaste of memories half-forgotten, as sour in his mouth as milk that has turned. A child’s face, red, streaked by tears, her mouth open, screaming, but no sound to be heard but a broken clicking. A hand, each finger curled into a question mark. A matted strand of hair from which curved a rivulet of blood, so unbearably red.

  “Was that was where you met this girl, in Bikaner?” Malik Umar asked, interrupting the macabre drift of his thoughts.

  “In a manner of speaking,” Sikander took a deep breath, struggling to regain his composure. “It turned out that was a bad year for grouse and after a week of shooting at everything from vultures to monkeys, we were all about bored enough to scream. That was when Jagatjit decided that what we needed was some culture to divert us.”

  “Oh, God!” Malik Umar rolled his eyes. Obviously, he knew enough of Kapurthala’s reputation to understand that whatever entertainments he had come up with had to have been nothing short of scandalous.