Murder at the Grand Raj Palace Read online

  A man in a blue safari suit was peering down at her from the top of a ladder as he fiddled with a light fixture beside Sachin’s ear. “And mind that elephant, too,” he said, belligerently.

  “Why don’t you mind yourself?” said Poppy, glad of something else to focus on. “Why are you cluttering up the place with these ridiculous things, anyway?”

  “They are for a wedding,” said the man, unfazed. “The hosts have invited many celebrities and want to greet them with twenty-foot-high cut-outs of themselves. Only in Mumbai.” He gave a wolfish grin.

  “Who is getting married?” asked Poppy, glumly. She couldn’t seem to get away from the subject, apparently. Marriages and anniversaries!

  “Some real big-shots. The heirs of two royal families, apparently.” He scratched the side of his nose with a screwdriver. “It is the most lavish wedding I have ever seen at the Grand Raj. Half the city is coming. Anyone who is anyone. There’s a cut-out of the royal couple out in the garden,” he added, pointing with the screwdriver to a door at the far end of the ballroom. “Some people have more money than sense, if you ask me. When I got married, we had a rice menu. Rice dumpling to start, plain rice for mains and rice pudding for dessert. God, I hate rice.”

  In the garden, Poppy found a number of people milling about, and what looked like a film crew winding up a shoot.

  She saw a beautiful young Indian woman with oversized sunglasses sitting on a chair beneath a parasol. A pet monkey in a ridiculous yellow waistcoat lurked on a chair beside her. Attendants fawned around them.

  Poppy caught hold of a passing waiter bearing a tray of drinks. “What is going on here?”

  “They are shooting a movie, madam,” said the waiter excitedly. “Boom 3.”

  Poppy, who prided herself on being a lifelong devotee of Bollywood, had not heard of the production.

  “They are from the south,” said the waiter.

  Ah. That explained it.

  India was so vast that one movie industry was simply not enough to cater for the multiplicity of languages and cultures that divided the subcontinent. Bollywood, based in Mumbai, was just the largest and most influential of India’s movie machines. Others centred in regions around the country inspired equally fanatical devotion.

  This production must be from the Telugu film industry based in the state of Andhra Pradesh. She knew that recently there had been a trend for crossover movies between Bollywood and Tollywood—as it was known—with actors and producers looking to expand their reach to new audiences.

  She re-examined the beautiful starlet, wondering if she could place her.

  Unable to do so, she instead resumed looking for the cut-out of the wedding couple.

  She found it at the far end of the garden, stationed beside a garlanded wedding podium set up in the lee of a banyan tree. A saffron-robed priest impatiently paced up and down beside the podium, glancing at his watch every few seconds. The twenty-foot-tall cardboard apparition of a young couple in traditional dress smiled breezily down on him.

  They made a very handsome pair, Poppy thought wistfully, once again taken back to her own wedding day.

  And, then, as she looked at the female figure, she realised that there was something familiar about her. It was the girl she had met on the ninth floor… Anjali!

  The girl who had had doubts about getting married at all.

  This realisation set off a shrill alarm in her stomach.

  Suddenly, the gaiety of the planned occasion seemed to sour. Anjali had been decidedly unsure about her upcoming nuptials. And now that Poppy knew what a grandiose occasion it was going to be, she could almost sympathise. Though she herself loved this sort of over-the-top spectacle she knew it was not for everyone, particularly not for a young woman—a young princess, in actual fact, if Ladder Man was to be believed—who seemed unsure of the direction in which her life was headed.

  She looked around the garden, wondering if Anjali was present.

  Perhaps another heart-to-heart might be in order…

  At that moment, a party of voluble Indians burst into the garden, propelling themselves across the lawn towards the podium. They were all ostentatiously dressed, in shimmering silk saris, embroidered churidar trousers, loose-fitting, ankle-length lehenga skirts and brocaded jodhpuri suits. A gaggle of overstuffed peacocks. As they approached, Poppy realised that they were split into two factions, with an older couple at the head of each group.

  It was these two senior couples whose voices rang the loudest.

  “For God’s sake, all you had to do was keep an eye on her,” griped the tall, thin man at the head of one group, flailing at the air with a mahogany walking cane as he made long strides across the lawn. The man had grey hair, a pinched, clean-shaven face and pitted cheeks.

  “What do you mean?” retaliated the rounder specimen leading the second mob, a heavy-browed man with a shaggy moustache, wearing a shimmering jacket, the buttons of which appeared in imminent danger of popping off like champagne corks. “She is a grown woman. She does not need anyone to keep an eye on her.”

  “Well, where is she then?” replied the first. “We are already two hours late for the rehearsal.”

  The two parties seemed to run out of steam as they reached the wedding dais. They milled around in aimless confusion, like chickens pecking at grains of rice, as the two irate leaders continued to squabble.

  Poppy singled out a young woman who was standing apart from both groups, scrolling on her mobile phone. “Excuse me,” she said, “Can you tell me what is going on?”

  The young woman—who was cudding gum, Poppy couldn’t help but notice, a habit she loathed—gave her the evil eye. “You must be from the other side.”

  “The other side?”

  “The groom’s mob,” clarified the girl.

  “No,” said Poppy. “I am… a friend of Anjali’s.”

  The girl lowered her phone. “Is that so?” she said, in a tone that suggested she would struggle to believe this if someone painted it on her forehead in neon yellow. “Well, I have known Anjali since we were both in school, and I have never seen you before, Mrs…. ?”

  “My name is Poppy,” said Poppy. “And I am not that sort of friend.”

  “What sort of friend are you then?”

  “I met Anjali upstairs earlier today. She seemed anxious about her upcoming marriage. I offered her a few words of advice.”

  “Really?” said the girl, her interest suddenly quickening. “What did you say to her exactly?”

  “I merely suggested to her that she must follow her instincts. Sometimes, when one is uncertain about a particular course of action, it is best to trust one’s own feelings.” Poppy felt pleased with herself for phrasing her thoughts so elegantly.

  The girl stared at her. “Well, good for you Mother Teresa,” she said flatly. “But maybe that explains why Anjali has now vanished.”

  “What?” Poppy’s alarm rang sharply through the garden. “What do you mean ‘vanished’?”

  “Is it such a difficult word?” said the girl sarcastically. “Vanished. Disappeared. No longer around.”

  “But she is due to be married!”

  “Really? And here’s me thinking we were all here for a pyjama party.”

  Poppy felt flustered. “I assure you I said nothing to her that would make her just… leave.”

  The girl continued to eye her sourly, then her face compressed into worry. “I knew she had doubts, but I never expected anything like this. And the worst thing is: we can’t work out what happened.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that she simply couldn’t have vanished from her room. Not unless she’s a magician.”

  Poppy began a reply, but was forestalled by raised voices behind her.

  She turned to find that the two men who had been arguing had now squared up to each other.

  “Have you any idea how much money I have spent?” bellowed the tall, thin one.

  “I have spent no less,” counte
red the plumper man, his voice shaking with indignation.

  “She is your responsibility,” said the first, waggling his cane.

  “Give him a good belt,” piped up a voice from the back of the crowd. “Who do they think they are, blackening our faces like this?”

  “Yes,” came another voice from the rear. “Show him we won’t be trifled with.”

  This set off another round of belligerent grumbling.

  “I missed an appointment for my bunions for this.”

  “I knew this was going to happen. My astrologer told me—don’t go, he said, it’ll all end in tears.”

  “Best bunion doctor in the state. Took me four months to get an appointment.”

  “They should have locked her up. This is what happens when a girl gets modern ideas in her head.”

  “It’s not easy living with bunions. Everyone thinks if you just buy the right shoes, but—”

  “Will you shut up about your bloody bunions!”

  With each complaint the two men—presumably the fathers of the bride and groom—were pushed closer together, a circle of baying, not-so-well-wishers closing in around them like the jaws of a steel trap. A light of panic entered the patriarchs’ eyes as they suddenly realised that their bloodthirsty guests expected them to somehow settle the matter there and then, in the time-honoured tradition. After all, just that week there had been chaos in the Lok Sabha—the Lower House of Parliament—when one member had thrown a shoe at another over a new bill demanding a state pension for cows, resulting in an unseemly brawl that had lit up the media for days.

  A shriek scythed through the din.

  Poppy turned.

  The priest was hopping around, holding his hands over his private parts. His lungi—the cloth that wound around his lower limbs—had disappeared.

  The remarkable spectacle finally stuttered the mob into an awed silence.

  “That elephant!” spluttered the priest, his bulbous eyes contorted with rage.

  Poppy swung her gaze to Ganesha.

  The little elephant was under the banyan tree, sensibly avoiding the sun, investigating a hole in the gnarled trunk. An incriminating orange splash behind his rump indicated the presence of the missing lungi.

  Oh dear.

  Poppy knew that Ganesha possessed a mischievous streak, a trait encouraged by little Irfan. Although she was learning to accept this as part of the young calf’s burgeoning personality, sometimes, inevitably, this put her and Chopra into embarrassing positions.

  Such as now.

  Denuding a holy man was more than a prank—it was a sacrilege. She couldn’t imagine that the frayed tempers of the two wedding parties would be improved by the situation.

  She strode over to the elephant.

  “Ganesha!” she scolded, scooping up the priest’s lungi and holding it out in front of her. “Bad boy!”

  “But he didn’t do it!” yelled Irfan, from somewhere above her head.

  She looked up to see the boy perched in the upper branches of the tree, all but concealed by the banyan’s leafy canopy.

  “What are you doing up there!” cried Poppy. “Come down before you fall and hurt yourself!”

  “Ganesha didn’t take the priest’s lungi,” protested the boy. “I saw everything. It was that stupid monkey. He pulled it off the priest and planted it behind Ganesha.”

  Poppy turned.

  Behind the priest, perched malevolently on the edge of the wedding dais, was the langur in the yellow waistcoat they had seen earlier, the movie star’s pet. The monkey was shelling and eating peanuts, plucking them from a pocket sewn onto its jacket.

  Poppy hesitated. Could Irfan be telling the truth?

  “What nonsense!” came a voice from behind her. “That elephant should be locked up! Humiliating a man of God!”

  “And see how the boy shamelessly lies for his friend,” echoed another. “They should both be given a sound thrashing. Children these days are a menace to society.”

  Poppy’s eyes narrowed, scanning the mob.

  “Who said that?” She shook the lungi at the crowd. “If my boy says it wasn’t Ganesha, then it wasn’t him. And if anyone dares lay a finger on either of them they’ll answer to me.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence as the mob considered the wisdom of a confrontation with this clearly insane woman.

  The silence was broken by the priest’s voice. “Madam, may I have my lungi back?”

  Poppy handed the lungi back to him, averting her eyes as she did so.

  The priest snatched the cloth, wound it around himself, then stalked away with the tattered remnants of his dignity. “Find yourself another priest,” he muttered as he passed the prospective fathers-in-law.

  “What? Wait! You can’t leave!” cried the taller of the two in alarm.

  “We’ve paid you a fortune!” spluttered the other.

  Poppy watched as the wedding crowd trailed off after the indignant holy man, leaving her alone with the girl she had first spoken to.

  “Well done,” said the girl sourly. “Just when I thought things couldn’t get worse. That was the top priest in the city. All the big movie stars use him. Do you know how difficult it was to convince him to officiate at this wedding? And now he’s gone too.”

  “But we didn’t do anything!” protested Poppy.

  The girl shook her head and wandered away.

  Irfan clambered down from the tree, and took Poppy’s hand. Ganesha plodded over and slipped his trunk into her other hand.

  She bent down and looked them both in the eye. “You know that I would never be cross with you—as long as you tell me the truth.”

  “But I am telling the truth,” said Irfan. “It was the monkey.”

  Poppy hesitated. “I believe you,” she said eventually, and gave them a hug. “Come on, let’s go and find out more about this runaway bride.”

  THE SCULPTOR

  The Bhagat Singh garden was named after the Indian freedom fighter and folk hero who, in 1929, had thrown a bomb into the Central Legislative Assembly in Delhi. To the bemusement of the British soldiers guarding the assembly, he had subsequently hung around waiting to be captured, chanting revolutionary slogans and scattering badly printed leaflets into the smoking chaos. Shortly thereafter, at the tender age of twenty-three, he had been hanged, marking another seminal moment in the Independence struggle.

  The garden was an enclosed space in the Grand Raj Palace’s west wing, surrounded on all sides by the hotel’s looming walls. The green oasis consisted of a tiled courtyard, a short lawn hemmed in by willow trees and a water fountain from the centre of which rose an imposing stone statue of Bhagat Singh himself, complete with his trademark felt hat and insouciant moustache.

  A group of a dozen people—mainly foreigners—were stationed around the lawn, working lumps of glistening clay on top of pedestals. Chopra thought that the provisional sculptures were intended to be busts of Bhagat Singh, but, if this were the case, he was glad that the man himself was not around to judge the results.

  An attractive, middle-aged Indian woman in a bohemian skirt and halter top circulated among the amateur sculptors, offering advice and words of encouragement.

  As Chopra looked on she paused behind a small, mousy woman with ginger hair wearing a broad-brimmed summer hat. “That’s very good,” said the Indian woman. “But he doesn’t really look like Bhagat Singh, does he?”

  “No,” agreed the white woman, in an English accent. “That’s because this isn’t Bhagat Singh. It’s my ex-husband.”

  The Indian woman gave an encouraging smile. “Well, bravo to you. It’s a rare woman who would make a bust of her ex-husband. You must be on good terms.”

  “Oh, we aren’t on good terms,” said the woman brightly. “I’m making this bust so that I can keep it by my bedside and stab it in the eyes with a fork every night before I go to sleep.”

  “Mrs. Padamsee?” said Chopra, as the Indian woman noticed him hovering on the edge of the lawn and turned to
wards him.

  “That depends on who is asking.”

  Chopra quickly explained his mission. A cloud passed over Layla Padamsee’s face.

  Her curly hair—highlighted by a single blond zigzag down the middle—was scrunched back behind her head into a messy ponytail, and she flicked at it now, nervously, as she considered her response. “I must apologise for my husband,” she said. “He suffers insanely from jealousy. And he isn’t very good with liquor.”

  “Not many people are in my experience,” said Chopra dryly. “Your husband tells me that Hollis Burbank was, shall we say, indiscreet with you on the evening of the auction.”

  “My husband tends to exaggerate,” said Layla. “Yes, Burbank was a boor, but have you any idea how many men behave in that way at these sorts of things? An art exhibition is like a watering hole in the desert. It attracts all sorts of predators because they know easy prey will be around. There’s a reason the big art houses employ lots of beautiful young women. It’s part of the allure for rich older men like Burbank. They somehow think everyone is fair game, that if you’re involved in the art world—particularly if you happen to be a female artist—you must be up for anything.”

  “But you were not so… amenable?”

  “No,” said Layla, coldly. “I most certainly was not. I love my husband. And I know how to fend off men like Burbank without alienating them. There was no need for Adam to get involved.”

  “Did your husband seek out Burbank later, to finish the argument?”

  “No. He went back to his room and slept off his evening of free Scotch.”

  “And you?”

  “I went with him,” she said promptly. “Neither of us left our room again that night.”

  Chopra paused.

  This last statement by Layla Padamsee had been unusual. She had answered a question that he had not yet asked. In his time as a policeman, such a response would have set alarm bells ringing. He made a mental note to examine the alibis of both Padamsees. Effectively, they were alibi-ing each other. Given that they were husband and wife, this deserved closer scrutiny.