Death at the Durbar

by Arjun Gaind

  “I was.” His brow knitted with the onset of sudden suspicion. “Hold on a minute! How can I know you are who you say you are? Do you have some identification?”

  “Here is Brigadier Granville-Bruce of the Gurkhas,” Sikander said, pointing at the Englishman, beckoning him to come closer. “He shall confirm what I am saying.”

  As the Brigadier gravitated toward them, Sikander gave him the discreetest of winks, to warn him to play along. The man was a bit slow on the uptake, but after a brief pause, he grinned and held up one thumb in approval.

  “Oh, yes! I will vouch for Mr. Singh. You can trust him completely.”

  Yaru Bhai looked at him with glazed eyes, obviously dazzled, overcome by hero worship.

  “My father speaks of you very highly, Brigadier,” he said. “He calls you the boldest man in India.”

  “I take it, then, that the Brigadier’s assurances will suffice?”

  “I guess so,” Yaru Bhai responded, but his tone was still surly, wary.

  Sikander lowered his voice to a whisper. “Let me lay my cards on the table. We believe the girl has been spirited away. Obviously, a man is involved, and we were hoping to find out if you happened to see anything or anyone out of place when you were at the King’s camp the day before yesterday. You did pay the girl a visit, didn’t you?”

  “I did,” he admitted, more a murmur than a declaration.

  “Might I ask why you went to see her?”

  Yaru Bhai hesitated. “It was a personal matter.”

  “Could you please elaborate? It could be vital to locating her.”

  The boy’s brows darkened. “She was my property. I went to claim her.”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  Yaru Bhai let out a solemn sigh, deciding to speak freely. “Some months ago, I was in Lahore and happened to see her perform. A friend had retained her services for the evening, and when I saw her dance, I was absolutely entranced. I cannot describe it, I do not have a way with words like my brother. Let me just say, I am not a drinking man, but I imagine that is what a stupor is like, the way I felt as I looked at her.

  “When I returned home, I happened to mention her to my father.” Beneath the moustache, his mouth curved into the tiniest of smiles. “We have a tradition in Palanpur. When a boy becomes a man, when he comes of age, his father gifts him his first concubine, so that he can be initiated in the ways of love. When my father heard about my passion for this girl, he decided he would purchase her to gift to me on my birthday, which is next month.”

  “But your bid was defeated by Kapurthala,” Sikander said, finally seeing what had driven Yaru Bhai to make such a scene in public.

  “Yes. We had already settled on a price with her to visit us at Palanpur for the season, but then Kapurthala swooped in and offered to outbid us, the snake!” He frowned, as petulant as a child from whose hands a toy has been snatched. “It just isn’t fair. She was supposed to be mine. We had an agreement, for god’s sake.”

  “So you went to confront her?”

  “Yes!” His face was mulish with outrage. “I was going to demand she honor her contract with my father and come back with me immediately. But the damn guards would not even let me in to see her. The nerve of those jemadars, they sent me packing like I was some bloody boxwallah.”

  Sikander studied him, biting his lip. The boy was a thug, that much was for sure. And it took only two small steps to go from resentment to indignation and finally to frenzy. Still, Sikander remained unconvinced. True, he had a palpable motive, but it was doubtful he possessed the temperament to commit such a brutal crime. He was too young, too credulous, too easily enslaved by emotion. It took a ruthless, savage man to strangle a woman with his bare hands, a man accustomed to killing, inured to the taking of life, not a callow, overindulged brat of a boy.

  “You say she has gone missing? You must find her, I insist.” Yaru Bhai leaned forward, and gave him a sickly smile. “And when you do, bring her to me, not to the English.”

  That clinched it. The boy was not even aware that Zahra was dead. That meant this was yet another dead end. Sikander stifled a curse. What a waste of time! he thought, another detour that brought him no closer to solving Zahra’ s murder.

  “Promise me you will bring her to me,” the boy continued to wheedle, so caught up in himself he did not even notice that Sikander had lost interest in him. “Return my property to me, and I will reward you well, I swear it. My father will fill your pockets with gold.”

  “Excuse me,” Sikander said brusquely, rising to his feet. Before he could take a step, though, the boy vaulted up as well, and grabbed him by the shoulder.

  “Hold on a minute!” Yaru Bhai exclaimed. “Aren’t we going to go find the girl? What do you need me to do? I can have my father’s men form a search party. We can offer a substantial reward for information about her whereabouts. You have to help me. I’ll pay you for your time. How much do you want? Name your price.”

  “You really are clueless, aren’t you?” Sikander shrugged off the boy’s hand with a restrained vehemence. “Grow up, Yaru Bhai, and do it quickly, before someone less scrupulous than myself decides to take advantage of your naïveté.”

  He strode to the door, pausing only to bid the Brigadier a fulsome farewell. Outside, Charan Singh was waiting for him patiently, the car already cranked over, its engine ticking away as smoothly as a metronome.

  “I take it the Nawabzada was not your man,” he said.

  “No, he is a buffoon. But a murderer, I think not.”

  “Well, then, where to next, huzoor? Would you like to question Prime Minister Asquith perhaps, or maybe the Queen?”

  “Stop trying to be witty, old man.” Sikander let out a vast yawn. “Back to the hotel, I think. We have enough time for a quick lunch and an even quicker drink.”

  “Are you sure?” Charan Singh made no effort to disguise his misgivings. “Didn’t you say you were running short of time? Wouldn’t it make more sense to carry on with your investigation?”

  “Patience,” Sikander said with more confidence than he felt. “We have several palpable leads, and besides, after the morning I have endured, I really could do with a pick-me-up.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  By the time they returned to the Majestic, Sikander’s earlier despondence had returned twofold.

  It would have been only too easy to dismiss this melancholy as an affectation, the sort of mal du siècle which the Romanticists were known to affect. But Sikander had always believed it was something more, an innate dissonance that was endured by all people of above-average intelligence. The Germans had a wonderful word to describe such a condition–sehnsucht, which translated roughly as a missingness, the innate dissatisfaction a man feels when he comes to understand that reality can never quite be as satisfying as his imagination, a deep, intense longing that consumes him for something more, something inexplicable.

  Charan Singh, who had grown finely attuned to his master’s changes in mood over the years, was quick to realise that Sikander had no appetite for food.

  “Shall I bring you a bottle of absinthe, sahib?” he asked instead.

  “No, a magnum of Bollinger, I think, the 1884. I am feeling festive this afternoon.” Sikander let out a sigh, and stretched his neck. “And one more thing, old man. What do you know about a nationalist named Bahadur Rao? Have you heard of him?”

  “Only by reputation,” Charan Singh replied, his face souring. “He is said to be a rabble-rouser, the worst kind of demagogue.”

  “I want you to find him. Pick him up and bring him in for questioning.”

  “That might be difficult, huzoor. He has many followers.”

  “Then be discreet about it, won’t you?”

  The old Sikh snorted. “I will see what I can arrange.”

  “Good! Now go away! I am tired of looking at your ugly
face.”

  As Charan Singh strode away, Sikander settled at his piano. At first he did not touch the keys. Instead, he squeezed shut his eyes and began to clench and unclench his fists, breathing deeply, first a long inhalation, then a series of short exhalations. It was an old Tantrist’s trick he had learned many years ago from a traveling yogi, a ritual to clear the mind of all thoughts and attain that rare state of emptiness called sunyata. It took almost ten minutes before he felt a peace settle over him. Only then did he commence to play, the first hesitant notes of Chopin’s “Étude,” but as his fingers warmed up, Sikander quickly grew more confident. The day’s frustrations began to melt away, metamorphosed into music, pouring from his fingers in a flood.

  Sadly, before he could lose himself in this sibilant symphony, once again the door crashed open and Captain Campbell came hurtling in. Close on his heels, Charan Singh followed, offering his master a sheepish apology.

  “I tried to stop him, huzoor, but he was very insistent. And you did say that he was working with you?”

  Sikander gave first him, and then Campbell, a brace of equally poisonous scowls.

  “What is so urgent, Captain, that it has made you forget your manners yet again?”

  “Well, sir, as it happens, I have been able to find you a clue.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Indeed!” Campbell exclaimed. “As a matter of fact, I have been able to deduce the identity of the women who paid a visit to our nautch girl.”

  “Have you now?” Sikander could sense how excited he was, buzzing with restless energy. “How did you manage to pull it off?”

  “Oh, I took a page from your book, sir. I investigated.” He grinned. “I recalled what the Sergeant said about our young woman being a redhead accompanied by an older woman who always stayed by her side. On a whim, I decided to pay a visit to the Army and Navy Store and inquire if such a mismatched duo had made an appearance there, and sure enough, it seems a Miss Eleanor Cavendish visited the store three days ago to purchase a pair of chukka boots and a tropical hat, accompanied by her chaperone, a Miss Eaton.”

  Despite the man’s unvarying ability to show up at exactly the wrong time, Sikander could not help but be somewhat impressed by Campbell’s initiative.

  “Well done,” he said, “perhaps you are of some use after all, Captain.” Sikander eased the piano lid shut, stretching his fingers until his knuckles cracked audibly. “I shall have my man track down this young memsahib’s whereabouts, and then we can go visit her.”

  “There’s no need for that, sir. Actually, I took the liberty of visiting her already, to suss her out. She is staying with the Hussars, as it turns out, with their Colonel, who is her uncle.” His smile grew even more raffish. “I happen to know him rather well, so I decided to pop by, so to speak.”

  “Did you now?” Sikander said coolly. Once more, he felt his blood pressure rising, whatever newfound affinity he felt diffusing as quickly as it had kindled. Who did Campbell bloody well think he was? How dare he question one of his witnesses without his permission? Did the man have no sense at all, or was he just that callow?

  “Oh, yes!” the Captain forged on, barely noticing the brittleness of Sikander’s tone. “She is a real peach, let me assure you. As lovely as Lillie Langtry, and an heiress, to boot. Quite a catch, really, just the sort of girl a poor soldier dreams of landing!” He let out a very masculine chuckle, in appreciation of the absent memsahib’s ample assets. “I happened to mention that I knew you, and offered to make an introduction. Naturally, she was rather excited at the prospect of meeting a genuine Maharaja, and jumped at the chance.”

  Taking out his hunter, an expensive Breguet, he brandished it at Sikander. “In fact, we are scheduled to meet her for tea and scones in precisely forty minutes.”

  Sikander’s irritation subsided. He realised he had misjudged Campbell, and quite gravely, he had to admit. The man was not callow after all. He was on the contrary, very clever, and not inconsiderably subtle. As a native, it would always have been difficult for him to solicit an interview with a memsahib, particularly one who was a stranger. He certainly could not visit the Hussars’ Camp and accost the lady in question, not without seeming a lecher. Nor could he dispatch Charan Singh with an invitation asking her to call upon him at the Majestic, not unless he wished to gain a reputation as a cad. However, by inviting the young woman to a neutral location, under the guise of making a formal introduction, the Captain had managed to solve both of these dilemmas, and rather neatly at that, to Sikander’s delight.

  “I shall need just a moment to make myself presentable.”

  “Very well! I will have the car brought around.”

  A little over ten minutes later, time which Sikander had used to change quickly into a pale white bundhgula paired with a rather rakish scarlet pugree, and to take a quick gargle with a thimbleful of Bollinger, they departed in the Silver Ghost. Charan Singh’s son Ajit had been deputed to drive, with the Captain riding pillion. Seated comfortably in the passenger seat, Sikander leaned back, feeling much more like himself. His mood, he found, was uplifted considerably, not just because of the prospect of meeting this Irish peach with whom the Captain seemed so smitten, but also because he was more than a little amused by the prospect of questioning a suspect over high tea.

  Their destination was at the northern edge of the Lothian Road, not far from St. James Church. It was here that an enterprising widow from Simla had opened a small tea pavilion in the style of Lyon’s famous Ludgate Street establishment. Mrs. Flander’s eponymously named Tea Room was housed in a small postal bungalow with a green tin roof and a wide verandah. From the looks of the crowd congregated at the tables out on the lawns beneath an assortment of gaily colored umbrellas, it was doing booming business, serving six types of tea and a variety of homemade cakes and biscuits.

  The Major led Sikander into the bungalow itself, explaining he had booked a private room for their rendezvous with the Irish memsahib. This turned out to be a rather dimly lit cubicle at one corner of the parlor protected from prying eyes by a thick muslin curtain, behind which stood a marble-topped table adjoining an arched window that overlooked a very woebegone bougainvillea bush.

  Upon entering they found somebody already seated at the table, a middle-aged woman with a prim hat and a disapproving frown who seemed to be waiting for them to arrive.

  Sikander struggled to disguise his disappointment. This was Captain Campbell’s ravishing heiress! She was forty if a day, with pinched lips accustomed habitually to scowling, and the sort of scathing squint a spinster gets when she has surrendered all hope. If this was what Campbell found attractive, Sikander thought, then perhaps the man needed a pair of spectacles even more than he needed a wife!

  “You’re Miss Cavendish,” he exclaimed, unable to hide his surprise.

  “No, this is Miss Eaton,” Campbell said, “the chaperone.”

  “Of course it is!” Sikander offered her his very best smile. To his dismay, she remained impervious, her disapproval deepening to palpable distrust.

  “I thought it best we have a brief word before you spoke with my ward,” Miss Eaton said with a sniff. “I have heard of you, Mr. Singh, and your reputation as a womanizer.”

  “Madam!” Campbell interjected. “You are being unfair.”

  “Perhaps I am. Forgive my forthrightness. Nevertheless, I must warn you, I will not allow you to beguile my ward. You are to limit yourself to topics that are respectable. Is that clear, sir?”

  Campbell blanched pale, utterly appalled by such a grievous breach of manners, but Sikander was amused, rather than offended.

  “I assure you, Madam, this is not a seduction. I give you my word, as a gentleman.”

  Miss Eaton did not seem convinced by such a declaration, heartfelt though it was, but she could not contradict him, not without adding injury to insult. “Very well, I shall fetch Eleanor, but r
emember, I have my eye on you.”

  With that admonition, as imperiously as a Romanov, she marched away. Sikander waited until she was well out of earshot before letting out a long, low whistle and shaking his head in disbelief.

  “What a terrifying creature!”

  “If little labour, sir,” Campbell said with a chuckle, “little are our gains.” His face brightened and he nodded toward the front door. “Here she is now!”

  Turning, Sikander was greeted by the sight of a very attractive young woman advancing toward him. She was every bit as lovely as the Captain had insisted, albeit a bit slender for his taste, very tall, with a diffident straightness of posture, elegantly dressed in an ankle-length silk dress he recognized as a Delphos, in a charming shade of soft silver that seemed to evoke the shimmer of moonlight when she moved. It perfectly matched her hair, which was indeed red, not the brazen ginger of the Celtiberians, but rather a very deep russet, so dark it was almost auburn.

  “Miss Cavendish, I presume.” He offered her a courtly bow. “I am Sikander Singh, the Maharaja of Rajpore.”

  He had expected her to blush and be somewhat at a loss for words. Sikander was accustomed to overawing women, especially Europeans, who could not help but become agitated by his hawkish good looks and piercing eyes. But Miss Cavendish was no wilting willow. She managed to surprise him, holding his gaze frankly, very sure of herself, with a quiet confidence he found rather alluring. Her mouth quirked into a half smile as she held out her hand for him to shake, very like a man.

  “Please,” she said, “call me Eleanor.”

  Reluctantly, Sikander gave her hand a perfunctory pat. Her grip was strong, her skin cool, and she smelt of sweat, he realised, and leather, which made him infer she must have arrived on horseback, rather than by car.

  “I have heard a great deal about you, Mr. Singh,” she said, her voice a delicate contralto. “I believe you know a dear friend of mine, Lady Sarah Wilcox.”