Murder at the Grand Raj Palace Read online

  He examined her anew, his eyes travelling the length of her, the unease in her face, the nervous body language. His gaze fell on a large plaster wrapped around her right wrist. “What happened?” he asked.

  She followed his gaze. Her left hand involuntarily attempted to cover her right wrist. Then she seemed to realise what she was doing, and smiled uncertainly. “Oh, just a little accident.”

  “What sort of accident?”

  “I, uh, had an accident with my pottery wheel.”

  “Are you certain about that, Mrs. Padamsee?” Chopra asked softly.

  She hesitated, looking at him with troubled eyes. Chopra felt the truth bulging at her lips, but in the end, she said, “Yes. I am.”

  “In that case is there anything else you can tell me about that evening? Anyone else that Burbank might have argued with?”

  She began to shake her head, but then stopped. “I don’t know about any arguments, but I did see Burbank talking in a corner with Swarup. It seemed to be a very intense conversation. Swarup didn’t look very happy about it, whatever it was.”

  “By Swarup do you mean the artist? Shiva Swarup?”

  “Who else would I mean?” said Layla scathingly. “I take it you’ve heard of him?”

  Of course Chopra had heard of Swarup.

  Shiva Swarup was, according to the national media, India’s most famous living artist. A painter whose work had risen to prominence three decades earlier, and continued to headline major art exhibitions around the country. He was often called “India’s Matisse,” renowned for his bold use of colour and heavy-handed brushstrokes, and his work routinely sold for extravagant sums. Indeed, a number of his contemporary paintings had sold well at the Grand Raj Palace auction.

  “Did Burbank buy one of Swarup’s paintings?” asked Chopra.

  “No.”

  “Do you know what they were talking about?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Chopra examined the woman’s handsome face, the trace of belligerence that swelled her beautiful jawline. “Do you know where I can find Swarup?”

  “He has a studio on Marine Drive. Spends most of his time holed up there. Frankly, he is known for being reclusive. It took a great deal of pleading by Gilbert and Locke to get him to participate in this auction at all.”

  Chopra thanked the woman, then turned to leave, before turning back. “May I ask how long you are staying at the hotel?”

  “I am here for another week, running classes.”

  Chopra nodded. “I may return to ask further questions.”

  Layla blinked uneasily. “Will that be necessary?”

  “Let us just say that I am not quite inclined to take everything that you and your husband have told me at face value.”

  The wedding parties, Poppy discovered, had taken up a large proportion of the hotel. By trailing the guests, and eavesdropping on their animated chatter, she discovered that Anjali had been staying in a bridal suite on the same floor as her own room.

  Arriving at the suite, Irfan and Ganesha padding along behind her, she discovered Anjali’s gum-chewing friend slouched against the wall outside the door.

  “You again,” said the girl.

  “Me again,” said Poppy brightly. “I want to help.”

  “Don’t you think you’ve done enough?”

  Poppy decided that she had had just about as much sassiness from this slip of a girl as she could tolerate. “Stand up straight!” she said, in her most no-nonsense voice.

  Reluctantly, the girl straightened.

  “Tell me this,” Poppy continued. “Do you consider yourself to be Anjali’s friend?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then start acting like it. From what I can see the people who should be sitting down calmly and trying to work out what has happened are too busy running around like headless chickens. Which means that someone with a sensible head on their shoulders must take charge of the situation.”

  “Possibly,” conceded the girl grudgingly.

  “Well, that is what I do,” said Poppy. “You might even say that solving problems is my middle name.”

  “Funny middle name,” muttered the girl under her breath.

  Poppy ignored her. “Now, what is your name?”

  “Huma. Huma Dixit.”

  “Tell me about Anjali, Huma.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Everything.”

  “Well—”

  “Wait,” said Poppy. She rummaged in her bag, and took out a tissue. “Your gum, please.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Very. We cannot give this matter its due attention if you are chewing gum all the time.”

  The girl stared at Poppy in disbelief, then seemed to surrender. “Fine.” She plucked out the gum and put it into the tissue, which Poppy wrapped up and put back into her bag. “By the way, why do you have an elephant following you around?” She glared at Ganesha, who was looking on with some interest.

  “He is not following me around. I am his guardian.”

  “Well, I don’t like the way he’s staring at me.”

  “He is just being friendly.”

  “Tell him to be friendly somewhere else,” said Huma belligerently.

  Ganesha continued to stare at her, perhaps hoping for some chewing gum.

  “You were telling me about Anjali.”

  Huma focused again on Poppy. “Anjali’s always been a high achiever. Top marks in school, the first girl in her family to go to university, a real pioneer.”

  “Is it true that she is from a royal dynasty?”

  “Yes. Her family can trace their ancestry back to the Peshwa rulers of the Maratha empire. Her full title is Rajkumari Anjali Tejwa Patwardhan, and her father is the Raja of Tejwa.”

  Poppy’s eyes sparkled. How incredible that the seemingly simple girl she had met earlier had turned out to be a princess! “Anjali told me that she wished to focus on her career. She said that she ran a hotel.”

  Huma Dixit released a bark of laughter. “Hah! Trust Anjali to call it that. The ‘hotel’ she is talking about is the Rajwada, the Royal Palace of Tejwa.”

  Poppy considered this, uncertain whether the girl was joking. Another question occurred to her. “Who exactly is she getting married to? I mean, when I spoke to Anjali she seemed unsure of the match. Is he, perhaps, much older? Or, ah, lacking in certain departments?”

  “What departments would those be?”

  “Well, Anjali is beautiful, educated, ambitious. I am sure she would not wish to be chained to some sort of gargoyle with the brains of a lumbering ox. There are plenty of men in this country who don’t appreciate a woman with a mind of her own, you know.”

  “No, I suppose not,” said Huma. Her eyes suddenly gleamed with a mischievous light. “And gargoyle is about right.”

  “What does this groom-to-be think of Anjali’s desire to focus on her career?” continued Poppy.

  Huma smiled wickedly. “Why don’t you ask him? The lumbering ox is standing behind you.”

  Poppy turned to find a tall, handsome young man lurking nervously in the corridor behind her. “I am sorry, Aunty,” he began. “Do you know Anjali?”

  Poppy turned to look behind her.

  But the only ones present were Irfan and Ganesha, staring up with interest at the newcomer.

  And then it dawned on her that the young man was referring to her.

  Her face coloured.

  Aunty? The cheek.

  “My name is Poppy,” she said stiffly. “And I am not your aunty. I am a friend of Anjali’s, and I am helping to locate her.”

  The young man, who was dressed in a dashing charcoal grey Nehru suit, and twisting a silk turban around in his large hands, looked downcast. “I can’t understand it,” he said. “They say she just vanished. Into thin air.”

  “No one vanishes into thin air,” said Poppy firmly. “My husband is a detective, and one of the things I have learned from him is that there is always an explan
ation.”

  “I hope you are right, Aunt—er, Poppy Madam,” said the boy.

  “What is your name?” asked Poppy. She could see that the boy seemed quite put out.

  “Gautam. Gautam Deshmukh.”

  “He means Yuvraj Gautam Deshmukh Patwardhan,” said Huma. “Or Prince Gautam the Great, as we like to call him.” Her voice had a sarcastic sneer to it that did not escape Poppy.

  “It is true,” said the boy sadly. “I am the sole heir to the Deshmukh branch of the Patwardhan royal dynasty. We are the neighbouring princely realm to the Tejwa family landholdings.”

  “What you mean is that you are the neighbouring enemies,” snapped Huma.

  “Enemies no more,” protested Gautam. “That is the point of this marriage, isn’t it? So that finally, after centuries of enmity, the Deshmukh and Tejwa clans may be united as one?”

  “Hah!” said Huma. “Why don’t you tell that to your father?”

  “My father agreed to the marriage.”

  “Well, now he seems to think we have deliberately spirited Anjali away.”

  “I am sorry,” mumbled Gautam. “He is just worried. We all are.”

  Poppy patted the boy on the arm. “I am sure there is a simple explanation for all this. Many brides become nervous just before their wedding. It is, after all, a daunting prospect. To leave everything and everyone you have ever known and enter a new household, a new life. Particularly if, as in this case, there is bad blood between the two families.”

  “It isn’t that,” said Huma. “Anjali isn’t afraid of anyone, let alone his mob.” She jerked a thumb at Gautam. “I’m afraid that if you’re looking for a simple explanation here, there isn’t one.”

  Something in her tone jarred. “What do you mean?” asked Poppy.

  The girl hesitated. “Okay. If you’re serious about helping, then come with me. I had better show you what happened. The fact is that Anjali has vanished—and none of us can work out how, let alone why.”

  WHEN A COW IS NOT A COW

  Chopra drove the short distance from the Grand Raj Palace to Marine Drive, taking the scenic route past the Oval Maidan. It always gladdened him to see young cricketers playing on the palm-lined field, with its patchy grass and kutcha wickets. No matter the season or the weather, they were out there, hollering and shouting, running and jumping, not a care in the world. They may not have known where their next meal was coming from, but he was certain that even if the field had been under two feet of water they would still have been happy to play.

  The Tata van puttered past the Bombay High Court, and Bombay University with its iconic Rajabhai Clock Tower, modelled on Big Ben in faraway England. The tower was one of many Raj-era buildings dotted around the city. It had originally been commissioned by a prosperous Indian stockbroker, Premchand Roychand, as a means of alerting his blind mother to mealtimes.

  Once, Chopra knew, it had played “Rule Britannia” and “God Save the King,” but those days were now well in the past.

  Shiva Swarup’s studio was located halfway along Marine Drive, not far from the Wankhede cricket stadium, taking up five floors of one of the ubiquitous white towers that graced the Drive.

  Even beneath the full heat of the afternoon sun, pedestrians thronged the curving Back Bay promenade, offering a brisk trade to the dozens of cart vendors selling coconut water, lime juice, jasmine flowers, peacock-feather fans and pani puri snacks. A yogi sat atop one of the giant tetrapods lining the promenade, gazing mysteriously out to sea, a mirror-flat expanse of deep blue, blazing with prisms of light. The air quivered in the heat, giving the impression that both yogi and tetrapod were levitating above the water.

  The ground floor of the studio comprised a gallery of Swarup’s work—and the work of other young artists that the maestro had deigned to nurture—and was a bold white space that gave the eye little else to focus on.

  Chopra supposed that was the point.

  With no distractions, the only thing to hold the gaze was the artwork… If indeed that was what one could call it.

  It hung from the ceiling, jutted from the floor and adorned the walls. Art of all manner and description. Paintings, sculptures, installation pieces that, frankly, left him puzzled as to whether they were exhibits or part of the building’s superstructure.

  A group of men in business suits were gathered around what looked like a stuffed cow standing on a podium. A reedy-looking man in a white kurta, blue jeans, Kashmiri sandals and a thick moustache that seemed to weigh down his head described the piece to them in a nasal drawl. “We are now gazing upon the secrets of infinity,” he said, haughtily.

  Chopra was as mystified as the visitors. The cow suddenly moved its head and he realised, with a start, that it was alive.

  One of the businessmen raised a tentative hand. “Excuse me, but isn’t that a cow?”

  The man reared back. “This is not a cow, sir.”

  “Umm. It looks like a cow to me. I mean it has horns and everything.”

  “Those are not horns. Those are physical manifestations of the essential duality of conflict and harmony evident in the cosmos.”

  “Ah. Because I could have sworn they were horns.”

  “Really?” sneered the artist. “And I suppose these are just udders, hmm? And not the intrinsic symbols of the succour that each soul craves from the teat of the ultimate being?”

  A second businessman raised a hand. “But what if the cow wanders off?”

  “It is not a bloody cow!”

  “Sorry. I mean what if the manifest symbol of the cosmos wanders off?”

  “It is the nature of art to be fluid,” said the artist archly. “One cannot cage art. Art must be free to express itself.”

  At that precise moment, the manifest symbol of the cosmos chose to express itself by raising its tail and defecating onto the podium.

  The first businessman spoke confidently. “I get it now. That’s a searing indictment of the capacity of mankind to pollute everything it touches.”

  “That, sir,” said the artist, his eyes bulging with fury, “is a pile of excrement.”

  Chopra had had enough. “I’m looking for Swarup,” he said, brandishing his identity card. “Police business.”

  The artist stared at him, his eyes growing cautious. “He is in his studio.”

  “Thank you,” said Chopra, moving towards the grand spiral staircase at the rear of the space.

  “But, sir! Maestro is not to be disturbed when he is painting!”

  “It seems to me everyone around here is pretty disturbed already,” muttered Chopra.

  Shiva Swarup’s personal studio was on the fifth floor.

  Chopra entered the studio and found himself in a large, high-ceilinged space, lit by a swathe of light that fell in from a bank of high windows running across the far wall of the room. The room itself was whitewashed, and littered with a jumble of large easels, some covered in tarpaulin sheets and some holding half-finished paintings.

  Beside the door, a workman in white gloves carefully unpinned a canvas from its wooden frame with a pair of pliers. He watched for a moment, then made his way to the far end of the room where a naked dwarf was standing on a plinth holding what looked like a cuddly snake toy. The dwarf, Chopra realised, was quite old, his small, hairless body wiry, the ribs prominent across his malformed chest.

  The dwarf watched him approach, then said: “If you’re looking for Shiva he’s just gone out onto the balcony for a smoke.”

  “Thank you,” said Chopra.

  “Have a quick look at the painting and tell me what you think,” said the dwarf. “He won’t let me see it until it’s finished. He’s very particular about that.”

  Chopra hesitated, then walked to the easel set up opposite the dwarf.

  Once again he found himself mystified.

  On the canvas was an Olympian, godlike figure, standing atop a cloud, wrestling a mighty, seven-headed cobra. If he squinted his eyes he could just about make out the face of the dwarf
on this Herculean being.

  “Well?” said the dwarf.

  “Ah, it’s, er, very good.”

  The dwarf’s face fell. “You hate it, don’t you?”

  “No. Not at all,” said Chopra, hurriedly. “It is very, ah, potent.”

  The dwarf sighed. “I suppose I should have expected it. Something’s been off the past couple of weeks. He’s not been his usual self.”

  Chopra’s interest was suddenly piqued. “What do you mean?”

  “Ever since this auction rolled into town, he’s been as tense as an elephant on a hot tin roof. He should never have agreed to do it, if you ask me.”

  “Why did he agree to do it?”

  “I have no idea. I suppose he just felt he had to be there. You know, with it being the ‘biggest auction of Indian art ever.’ How would it have looked if India’s number-one artist wasn’t there?

  “He’s a good man, you know,” continued the dwarf conversationally. “I’ve posed for all sorts. There was this one chap, from the Absurdist school, very emotional fellow. Used to get into terrible rages. Burned his own studio down three times, twice with me in it. I never minded. I was his muse, you see. Though, sometimes, I wondered why I was bothering to pose for him. He’d ask me to stand on a stool, holding a clay pot; or do a handstand; or pose as if diving from a high board. Then he’d paint an ass in a sombrero. He once told me that the real world was duplicitous. That it takes a true artist to look beyond the falseness of reality, to the truth within.

  “He was a big one for Truth,” said the dwarf with a sigh. “In the end, I think it was Truth that killed him. One day he asked me to hold a rose in my teeth while I posed. When he was done, he took one look and then shot himself with a revolver. Before I called the police I snuck a peek. He’d painted me as a baby, my thumb in my mouth, an expression of beatific innocence on my face. I still don’t know what made him shoot himself, what he saw in that painting. I like to think he’d reached the pinnacle, that he’d realised he just couldn’t paint any better than that.” He sighed again. “There’s not many careers around when you’re a dwarf. It’s all: you’re a dwarf? Welcome to the circus, and a lifetime of being shot out of a cannon or having custard poured down your pants. I mean, what sort of demented mind even finds that funny?” His eyes glinted briefly. “I always wanted to be a miner, but they told me dwarfs don’t know the first thing about mining. We don’t have the hands for it, apparently.”