by Arjun Gaind
His eyes felt gummy; his purple satin pajamas were drenched with sweat. The inside of his mouth was as dry as a desert, and for some inexplicable reason, he could hear a dull hissing echoing through his ears, an insistent tinnitus, like the buzzing of a particularly excited beetle.
Turning, he saw that he was not imagining things after all. His manservant, Charan Singh, was standing by the door, clearing his throat discreetly as he waited patiently for his master to acknowledge his presence.
“What time is it?” Sikander croaked. His voice felt strange in his mouth, rasping at his throat like sandpaper.
“Just after noon, Sahib.” The manservant replied, pulling open the thick brocade drapes that cloaked the bedroom in claustrophobic darkness. Sikander blinked, temporarily blinded by this sudden onslaught of bright sunlight. A spasm of dizziness wracked through him, a sharp ache jagging downwards from his forehead, making him gasp with pain.
“I thought, Your Majesty, that perhaps you might wish to be awakened while it is still daylight.”
As his eyes met the Maharaja’s, the manservant stepped forward with a bow and offered Sikander a tray bearing a sparkling goblet of champagne. Sikander winced, trying not to retch. Ordinarily, he liked to begin his day by enjoying a Veuve Clicquot cocktail before breakfast, served to him in a decanter made of beaten gold, frosted lightly with fresh Kashmiri ice, but on this particular morning, much to his disgust, he found that he could hardly bear the thought of a drink, much less the taste of it in his mouth.
“Get that swill away from me.” Unsteadily, he rose to his feet, teetering as the sway of gravity began to exert itself upon his limbs, like a tree being buffeted by a squall of wind. “Fetch me a cup of coffee instead, you immense oaf,” he hissed crossly.
Without a word, the servant obeyed this command, impassive except for the slightest hint of a smile. Charan Singh was massive, almost seven feet tall, a bull-necked giant of a Sikh whose barrel-shaped body was surmounted by an enormous pugree and a leonine mane of a beard that swirled halfway down his chest. Like all Sikhs, he treasured his warrior heritage and did not trim his hair and whiskers, and was never to be seen without an ominous-looking dagger tucked into his belt, the iron kirpan that marked him as one of Guru Gobind’s stalwart chosen.
With a grace that belied his size, he retreated to a baroque side table upon which a covered breakfast service waited. Deftly, he measured out a draught of viscous Yemeni kahva from a steaming samovar into a delicate Sevres cup, stirring in two heaping spoons of sugar before returning to offer it to the Maharaja.
Sikander accepted the cup shakily, cursing as his trembling hands managed to slop half its contents onto the front of his satin dressing gown, causing Charan Singh to grin.
“What do you think you’re smirking at, you fool?”
“You are getting old, Huzoor,” Charan Singh replied. “It saddens me to see you in such a sorry state.”
“Oh, do shut up, won’t you?” Sikander snarled, and settled into a silver-backed Gouthier chair, taking a tentative sip of the cloying yet bittersweet coffee, which was so strong that it made him shudder with disgust.
While he waited wearily for its revitalizing warmth to spread through his aching body, he watched his manservant go about his duties. Over the years, Charan Singh had managed to turn even a task as mundane as laying out the Maharaja’s day-clothes into something of an art form, wasting not a single motion as he fetched each item of clothing from the Boulle cabinets in the dressing room next door and arranged them efficiently upon a black velvet Chippendale settee.
“Well,” Sikander asked, “what have I planned for today?”
“Oh, you have quite a hectic day ahead of you, Sahib. The shipment of books you ordered from Hatchard’s has arrived at last, and also the hamper of edibles from Fortnum and Mason. The Gamekeeper has a boar cull scheduled for this afternoon, and I have taken the liberty of cleaning and preparing the number two Purdey, if you should wish to attend. Also, the Chief Minister has asked for an audience, when you are feeling suitably recovered from your late night.”
In spite of the gentle tenor of recrimination in his manservant’s tone, the Maharaja could not help but smile. To most observers, Charan Singh might have seemed little more than a faithful retainer, but in his own manner, the Maharaja loved the old Sikh like a member of his own family, thus permitting him liberties in private that propriety prohibited in public. In many ways, Sikander mulled, he has been more of a parent to me than my own father ever was. It was Charan Singh who had been the Captain of Sikander’s honor guard during his childhood, and who had taught him to ride and shoot and duel with a sword. It was Charan Singh who had protected him stalwartly through the many dangerous escapades Sikander had managed to mire himself in over the years, and it was Charan Singh who, over time, had grown to become his closest confidante, the one person he trusted implicitly, without reserve.
“Sahib,” the manservant declared, unable to resist the temptation to needle his master, “perhaps I should hurry and fetch the English doctor, yes? You do not look at all well.”
“Silence!” Sikander exclaimed, feigning disapproval. “If you must fetch something, old man, go and get my newspaper. Run along, make yourself useful, or I will have to send you back to your farm and you can spend your dotage chatting with your cows.”
Giving his master an exaggerated bow, the large Sikh turned and vanished through the door. As for Sikander, he spared a moment to gulp down the remainder of his coffee before rising to stagger toward the bathroom.
His personal bath-chamber was vast, as large as a concert hall. Beneath a vaulted ceiling covered entirely with a sparkling carapace of glazed mirror-work, the floors and walls were lined with a mosaic of alternating black and white Carrara marble tiles, imported from distant Venice. At the center of the far wall, an arched picture window framed a vista of the snowcapped peaks of the Himalayas. Opposite this dramatic panorama, an immense sunken caldarium in the Roman style awaited the Maharaja, filled to the brim with searingly hot water that had been heated in the boiler room two floors below and cunningly piped upwards to pour forth in a torrent from six solid gold taps shaped like the mouths of roaring lions.
Biting back a groan, Sikander shucked off his dank nightclothes. Once naked, he paused briefly in front of an ornately embellished Louis Quatorze mirror, purchased in Paris and said to have belonged to the Sun-King himself. Grimacing, he studied his reflection critically. What he beheld was a slender, elegant man with a well trimmed beard, not tall, just a little over five and a half feet in height, but gifted with a regal bearing made him seem somehow more imposing. His eyes were peculiar and pale in contrast to his walnut-brown skin, as gray as a thunderstorm, and unlike most Sikhs, his hair was cut short, cropped almost to his skull, beneath which a hard angular face frowned back, hollow-cheeked with a strong jaw and a cruel, rapine hook of a nose, that saturnine beak which was the particular birthmark of the ancestral rulers of the kingdom of Rajpore.
It was the nose that made him an ugly man, for though his features were attractively formed, its angularity spoiled the symmetry of his face, making him seem ruthless, almost predatory. As a boy, Sikander had despised the immensity of his nose. At Eton, when he had been packed off by his father to learn how to be a gentleman, his classmates had never stopped making fun of its size, nicknaming him Corvo, the raven of ill luck. They had tormented him with such unforgiving relentlessness that he had sometimes wished that he could amputate the offensive appendage with a knife and make himself blandly handsome, with a plain, unremarkable face, the unexceptional visage of a commoner. But that was not my destiny, Sikander thought with a wry smile. I was born to be a King, and if an unfortunate nose is the price I must pay for it, then so be it. The Romanovs are hemophiliacs, the House of Hanover porphyritic, the Norwegian Oldenburgs have their heterochromic eyes, the Hapsburgs their prognasthic lips, and I have the monumental Rajpore nose. That is
my birthright, the surest sign of my regal lineage.
Unlike many of his princely peers, who were ample-bodied, almost Rubenesque, Sikander was lamentably thin, as skeletal as a laborer. But his wiry build did not mean he was weak. On the contrary, this slimness disguised a strength which had on more than one occasion surprised those who had tried to take advantage of the Maharaja during his youth, thinking him ineffectual because of his fastidious nature and fussy habits.
Arching his back, Sikander stretched like a cat. It never ceased to please him that despite his sybaritic lifestyle, he was just as strong as he had been at twenty. He made a great effort to take care of himself, not just out of vanity, but because if there was one fate which terrified him above all others, it was the thought of growing old and going senile and becoming so weak and helpless that he would have to come to depend on others for even the simplest of actions.
I would rather die tomorrow while I am still young and vital, than live a long life and become debilitated, he thought, gritting his teeth, remembering his own grandfather who had stumbled on till the ripe age of eighty-seven and gone utterly mad in the end, conversing with flowerpots and dancing with a hat-stand, thinking it his long dead English mistress.
No, although he had little interest in athletics—thinking perspiration to be entirely unsuitable for a man of his stature and much preferring pursuits that occupied his mind and his libido—Sikander had managed, thanks to a rigorous session of yoga daily and martial art instruction thrice a week with Yin, his Japanese cook, to ensure that his posture was still ramrod straight and his stomach admirably flat.
Satisfied with what he saw in the mirror, he hummed an old ghazal beneath his breath and dabbed some of his favorite Farina Eau de Cologne on his cheeks, before helping himself to a generous handful of pomade which he proceeded to daub liberally onto the drooping tips of his mustaches, twirling them with his fingertips until they stood erect with piratical abandon.
When he was finally satisfied with the state of his whiskers, Sikander retreated to the tub. Stepping slowly into the water, he eased himself into its scorching depths until he was immersed up to his neck. Sighing with satisfaction, he leaned back, savoring the heat as it seeped into his bones, refreshed by the aroma of rose oil and fresh lavender.
Closing his eyes, he began to hyperventilate, like a deep-sea diver, inhaling and exhaling deliberately, an old yogic trick which served to slow his heartbeat. Gradually, the worst effects of his hangover began to fade away, and a deep calm enveloped him, a rare sense of peace.
Sadly, it was not to last. Just as Sikander had begun to doze off, a tactful knock on the door shook him from his slumber. Struggling to contain his annoyance, the Maharaja sat up with a splash.
To his fury, he found that that Charan Singh had returned, but without the requested newspaper.
“What is it now, you tiresome toad?”
The Sikh stood framed in the bathroom doorway, his eyes glowing with excitement. “Sahib, you had better get yourself dressed double quick.”
“Why?” Sikander said, intrigued by the flutter of urgency in his manservant’s ordinarily imperturbable voice. “Whatever is the blasted hurry…?”
“Murder, Your Highness,” Charan Singh replied with a grim smile. “It seems that there has been a murder in Rajpore.”
Chapter Three
Grinning like a madman, Sikander swerved recklessly through the immaculately maintained palace grounds. In his wake, he left a broad swath of destruction—a row of trampled hedgerows, one very perplexed peacock who squawked in outrage as he trundled by, a herd of terrified silver antelope who skipped away as rapidly as they could, and worst of all, a maze of deep tire tracks in the grass that was certain to make his long-suffering gardener wail with despair.
It was an ungainly, noisy behemoth, a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost touring car painted in the royal colors of yellow and scarlet with the Rajpore coat of arms emblazoned on each door, a rising sun flanked by two rampant golden lions. Sikander had imported three of these magnificent vehicles at great expense the year before. Unfortunately, he was still not entirely accustomed to their raw power and heavy handling, as was evident when he rounded a corner sharply, and the car nearly got away from him, sideswiping a large flowerpot with a resounding crash and sending a scarlet shower of stricken geraniums tumbling into the path of the Ford lorry which was trailing behind at a discreet distance, bearing his personal bodyguard.
Beside him, Charan Singh gripped his seat desperately, jostling from side to side each time Sikander twisted the steering wheel. The Maharaja cast a sidelong glance at his manservant. The massive Sikh’s face was frozen into a rictus of terror so absolute that it made Sikander laugh.
“One of these days, old man,” he said, raising his voice to be heard above the drone of the engine, “you will have to let me teach you how to drive a car.”
“Never, Sahib,” the big Sikh groaned, shaking his head fervently in vehement refusal. “If God intended us to drive, then he would have had the foresight to provide us with wheels instead of legs.”
Sikander snorted. It never ceased to amuse him that while the old Sikh was willing to face down charging elephants and wrestle man-eating tigers, he was scared to death of cars. It was an attitude he had seen often, particularly amongst the poorer classes who had never had occasion to travel abroad beyond the borders of Rajpore. To a man, they were terrified by machinery, by progress of any kind, a fear so stubborn that Sikander, who prided himself on being a man of science, simply could not comprehend. Why would anyone be afraid of change? Change was a wonderful thing, something to be welcomed with open arms, not despised. The Maharaja relished the new, the modern, the innovative, and he was appalled by the way most of his subjects clung blindly to tradition, that unyielding rigidity with which the citizens of Rajpore, Charan Singh included, preferred to blunder along with both feet firmly planted in the Dark Ages.
As if to illustrate that very thought, his manservant chose that moment to speak up. “It is not too late to turn back, Huzoor. I cannot comprehend why you are so eager to get involved in this matter personally. Why not leave it to the Superintendent to sort everything out?”
“I think not,” Sikander snorted. “For one thing, I doubt that Superintendent Jardine could find his own feet, much less solve a crime of this magnitude. Besides, my friend, don’t you understand how long it has been since I have had any fun?”
The old Sikh clucked his tongue.
“You know, Your Majesty, you have a very strange sense of what is fun.”
Sikander laughed merrily. “Oh come on, old man, don’t be such a spoilsport. Would you deny me this small distraction?”
In reply, Charan Singh shook his head, his face taut with disapproval. “It is most undignified, Sahib. You are the King, not some bazaar thief-taker. It is very bad form for you to traipse around like a common Havildar, poking about for clues.”
But even the patent displeasure in the old man’s voice could not dull Sikander’s enthusiasm. A nervous tension quivered through him like a jolt of electricity, making him feel as if his very skin were ablaze with anticipation.
What a strange breed we princes of India are, he thought. What peculiar passions we have, eccentric fascinations that boggle the very mind. For Baroda, it was jewels, and for Junagadh’s boy heir, curiously enough, dogs. Jayaji Rao Scindia had been utterly mad about electric trains, and the mighty Nizam of Hyderabad, the éminence grise amongst India’s royals, was passionate about fashion to the point that he had dedicated an entire wing of his palace just to house his wardrobe. And then there was his old friend, Jagatjit, the prince of Kapurthala, who had a well recognized penchant for French tarts of the most vulgar kind.
But for Sikander Singh of Rajpore, well, it was mysteries he loved above all else. Try as he might, he simply could not resist an enigma. If asked to explain this unhealthy preoccupation with the baffling, Sikande
r would have been hard pressed to find the words to articulate precisely how he felt. How could he justify the depths of his obsession without seeming foolish or trivial? How could he describe the headiness of anticipation he felt when he encountered a riddle yet to be deduced, an inscrutable sense of mystification that was as utterly intoxicating as a drug? And how could he explain the thrill that seized him when he finally managed to unravel a conundrum which no other man had been able to solve, a sense of accomplishment so potent that it far exceeded any pleasures of the material realm?
It was a small vanity of his, but he preferred not to think of himself as a common detective. On the contrary, he imagined he was what the continental philosophers called a Ratiocanist, a solver of puzzles not on the basis of assumption and guesswork, but rather through careful and deliberate logic.
That was what Sikander had always believed himself to be—a creature of reason questing for meaning in an age mired in absurdity, a seeker after truth as the great Guru Nanak had intended every Sikh to be, searching for the faintest glimmer of illumination in a world shrouded by impenetrable darkness.
But the truth was rather more mundane. Sikander adored mysteries, not just because he had been blessed with a curiosity so perfidious it brinked on the crass, but also because he was cursed with an innately profane nature that only felt excited by the unknown. It never ceased to amaze him, but nothing else—not women or wealth, nor fame or power—gave him the same thrill he felt when confronted by a case of cold-hearted, bloody murder.
“Sahib,” Charan Singh’s urgent voice jolted him back to reality, “Watch out!”
Sikander had been so lost in the cadence of his daydreams that he didn’t realize he was on a collision course with a large and rather ugly Venetian marble statue depicting a very voluptuous Leda being ravaged by a reluctant-looking swan. Desperately, he twisted the steering wheel with all his strength. The car veered with a deafening screech, and almost managed to avoid the unfortunate monument, clipping it only slightly with one front fender to leave the unfortunate swan with a truncated wing.