The Case of the Missing Servant

by Tarquin Hall

  A knock came at the door and the young maidservant reappeared carrying a glass of water on a tray. As she served the detective, Mrs. Kasliwal watched her every movement with a deep frown.

  “Will there be anything else, madam?” the girl asked timidly after Puri had taken the glass.

  “Bring tea,” came the icy reply.

  The maidservant nodded and withdrew in silence, closing the door behind her.

  “Mr. Puri, I should have told you that Chippy is running late,” Mrs. Kasliwal said while the detective sipped his water. “Some urgent business is there. You’ll find him at the District and Sessions Court. But first you’ll take lunch.”

  “He’s a busy fellow, is it?”

  “Never stops, Mr. Puri! One case after another. So many people seeking his advice. And he can never say no. He is far too accommodating, actually. That is his character. You will not find a more respected man in all of Rajasthan. And from such a well-to-do family. His grandfather was one of a kind and his father was a most distinguished person, also. Only problem is…” Here Mrs. Kasliwal faltered. “Frankly speaking, I fear for his safety, Mr. Puri. Such powerful people he is taking on. Even politicians and the like. I ask you, is it worth it? Sometimes it’s best not to get involved, no?”

  “Certainly one has to be careful,” said Puri, staying neutral despite his admiration for his client’s strong convictions and courage.

  “Exactly,” said Mrs. Kasliwal. “A man should put his family first and others after. Also, is it for lawyers to fix the whole country? Mr. Puri, such terrible things they are saying about Chippy. But that is why you are here, is that not correct? You’ll clear my husband’s good name and the family name, also. People are getting all kinds of ideas, I tell you. Everywhere there is talk.”

  “You can count on Most Private Investigators, madam,” he replied.

  “But how will you find this girl, Mr. Puri? She could be alighting anywhere, no? Who knows what has become of her? One day she is here, then absconding. Most probably she has made friendship with the wrong sort and paid the consequences.”

  Puri nodded. “Often shenanigans are taking place,” he agreed.

  “I tell you, Mr. Puri, I’m facing constant servant tension. I don’t dare take my eyes off these people for one minute. Give them an inch and they take more than a mile. You provide good salary, clean quarters and all, but every time, someone is making mischief. I tell you, drivers are making hanky-panky with maidservants. Cooks are stealing ghee. Malis are getting drunk and sleeping under trees. Then they are making demands, also! ‘Madam, give me advance. Madam, give my daughter education. Madam, give me two thousand bucks for Mother’s heart operation.’ Are we expected to take responsibility for every problem in India, I ask you? Don’t we have our own stomachs to feed?”

  Puri took out his notebook and asked Mrs. Kasliwal how Mary had come to be in her employ.

  “Just, she came knocking one day. I had need of one maidservant.”

  “You have records? A photocopy of her ration card, a photograph?”

  Mrs. Kasliwal regarded Puri with amused pity.

  “Why should I have a photograph of her?” she asked.

  “What about her last name? You know it?”

  “I never asked, Mr. Puri. Why should I? She was just a maidservant after all.”

  “Is there anything you can tell me about her, madam? She was a satisfactory worker?”

  “Not at all! Always things were going missing, Mr. Puri. One day my comb; the next, two hundred rupees. When absconding, she took one silver frame, also.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because it was gone! How else?”

  The detective wrote something in his notebook, ignoring Mrs. Kasliwal’s testiness.

  “Mary vanished on what date exactly?” he asked.

  “August twenty-first night. Twenty-second morning there was no sign of the girl. I found her room empty.”

  “Was Mary having relations with other staff members?”

  “You know these Christian types, Mr. Puri. Always putting it about.”

  “Anyone in particular?”

  “She and Kamat, cook’s assistant, were carrying on for sure. Twice or thrice, I saw him coming from her room.”

  Puri made a note of this.

  “You have been most cooperative, madam,” he said. “But just a few more questions are there. Tell me, when Mary left, her salary was owing, was it?”

  Mrs. Kasliwal seemed surprised by the question and took a moment to answer. “Yes, it was due,” she said.

  “You’re certain, madam?”

  “Quite certain.”

  “Did you report her disappearance to the police?”

  “And what should I tell them, Mr. Puri? Some Bihari-type maidservant absconded? Police have better things to do with their time.”

  “You are quite correct, madam,” he said. “The police suffer from case overload these days. That is why substitute batsmen like myself are making good innings.”

  Puri put away his notebook, but he wasn’t quite finished with his questions.

  “Madam, just you called Mary a ‘Bihari-type,’” he pointed out. “But earlier you didn’t say where she was from.”

  “A slip of the tongue, Mr. Puri,” said Mrs. Kasliwal. “So many servants these days are coming from Bihar and other such backward places. Naturally I assumed she was from there, also, being so dark.”

  “She was very dark, is it?”

  “Like kohl, Mr. Puri,” she said with disdain. “Like kohl.”

  After an excellent lunch, Puri inspected the servant quarters.

  The redbrick building stood in the back garden beyond a wide lawn and a screen of bushes.

  There were five small rooms as well as a shared “bathroom” equipped with a cold tap, an iron pail and a squat toilet.

  Mary’s room had remained empty since her disappearance. It was dingy and bare save for a cotton mattress that lay on the floor and posters of the Virgin Mary and the Bollywood hunk Hrithik Roshan on the wall. Puri knew that in winter, with no source of heating, it must have been brutally cold, and in summer, unbearably hot.

  He spent more than five minutes in the room, scouring the place for clues. There were rat droppings scattered across the floor, and in one corner ash from a burnt mosquito coil. Lined up on the windowsill, Puri also discovered a dozen smooth little colored stones. These he slipped into his pocket when Mrs. Kasliwal wasn’t looking.

  “Regrettably, I found nothing,” said Puri as he emerged from the room, noting that the door was warped and it couldn’t be closed or locked properly.

  Together they made their way back across the lawn and down the side of the house to the driveway, where Handbrake was waiting in the car.

  “Madam, one more question is there, actually,” said Puri before he headed off to the court. “What all were your whereabouts on August twenty-first night?”

  “I was playing bridge with friends, Mr. Puri.”

  “I see. And you returned at what time exactly?”

  “Quite late, Mr. Puri. Some time after midnight, if I’m remembering correctly. Before you ask, Mary’s absence came to my attention the next morning only.”

  “Must be there were other people around the house—servants and all?”

  “Certainly, Mr. Puri. But who knows what goes on when I’m not around. I shudder to think, really I do.”

  “Can you list all of those who might have been present at the time?”

  “But of course, Mr. Puri. Let me write the names down for you.”

  She wrote:

  Jaya, maidservant

  Kamat, cook assistant

  Munnalal, driver

  Dalchan, mali

  Seven

  Outside Jaipur’s District and Sessions Court, rows of male typists sat at small wooden desks bashing away at manual typewriters. The tapping of tiny hammers on paper punctuated by the pings of carriage bells was constant—the very sound of the great, self-perpetuatin
g industry of Indian red tape.

  Hovering behind each typist stood his clients: complainants, defendants, petitioners and advocates, all watching to ensure their affidavits, summons, wills, marriage applications, deeds, indentures and countless other types of form were completed accurately. A rate of ten rupees per page was charged for this service, an unavoidable fee given the court’s stipulation that all official documents should be typed (and one exploited to the full by the typing mafia, who ensured that there was not a word processor in sight).

  In front of the courthouse sat rows of advocates whose “offices” were out in the open. Each had a desk with his name prominently displayed on a plaque, a few chairs and a metal filing cabinet packed with bulging files tied with string.

  Schools of hangers-on circled the lawyers, like symbiotic fish feeding off the parasites on sharks. Chai-wallahs moved between the rows of desks with trays of small glasses of sweet milky tea, calling “Chaieee, Chaieee!” Grubby little urchins carrying wooden boxes with brushes, rags and tins of polish offered to shine shoes for four rupees.

  Hawkers sold roasted peanuts in newspaper cones.

  Various businesses had also set up under a banyan tree. There was a barber—a mirror attached to the gnarled trunk and a high chair—catering to those requiring a haircut or a shave before making their appearance in court. A table with a phone and a meter hooked up to a car battery also served as a “telecon center.”

  Like any place in India where people gathered, the courts attracted beggars and a collection of wildlife as well. A man with no legs rolled around on a makeshift skateboard, holding his hand up in hopes of a handout. Rats and crows competed for discarded peanut shells. Pye-dogs lazed in the winter sun.

  Puri passed through this throng with disdain written large across his face. His aversion to India’s courts had developed long before he became a private detective. In the mid-1970s, his father had been falsely accused of bribery and become embroiled in a court battle to clear his name, which had dragged on for nearly fifteen years and had sullied his reputation forever. As a teenager, the young Puri had spent many a morning or afternoon waiting patiently outside the Rohini courts complex, where he had seen for himself how corrupt and inefficient the system was. Often he would meet his cousin Amit there, trying to settle a property dispute that had started between his grandfather and great-uncle some twenty years earlier and embroiled the next two generations in pointless quarrelling and exorbitant legal fees.

  According to one newspaper article Puri had read recently, it would take half a century to clear the backlog of cases pending in India. And there were hundreds more being added every day.

  The detective passed some of the system’s victims in the corridors of the main building as he searched for the courtroom where Ajay Kasliwal was arguing a case. Many of them were poor and illiterate, unable to afford proper representation or the bribe money necessary to grease the palms of the countless gatekeepers to justice. They crouched on their haunches, resigned and helpless in the face of endless adjournments, incomprehensible legal jargon and unchallenged violations of their fundamental rights.

  A jostling crowd of advocates, defendants and their families blocked Puri’s entrance to Court 19. He found a space on a bench outside and waited for Kasliwal to emerge. Next to him sat an old man with the dry, cracked heels of a farmer who had spent long years plowing parched fields.

  Puri asked him what he was doing there and soon the farmer was telling him about his case. It had begun with a dispute over a water buffalo.

  “My neighbor stole the animal at night,” he said. “When I complained to the police, they beat me. The court said there was no evidence and I was ordered to pay my neighbor’s legal fees. Now I am in dispute with his lawyers because I cannot pay and my own lawyer is also charging to represent me. When I come here to appeal, either the lawyers do not appear or there is no time given to me in the court. Meanwhile the bills grow larger and still I cannot pay. In the end I will be bankrupt, they will take my land and I will have no choice but to take my own life.”

  Puri asked him how much he owed. The amount was two thousand rupees.

  “And how long have you been coming here?”

  “Three years.”

  It saddened him to think that in today’s India, sixty years after the nation had won its independence, a man’s future and that of his family hung in the balance over an amount equivalent to a restaurant bill. He felt inclined to take out his wallet and give the farmer the amount he required. But he knew cash handouts were not the answer; the money would just get swallowed up. What was needed was reform. Perhaps by defending Ajay Kasliwal, he could help achieve it.

  “Case adjourned,” said Kasliwal, squeezing through the swell of people clambering to get inside Court 19. “That’s the third time this week.”

  “On what grounds?” asked Puri.

  “The key witness was supposed to be deposed before the judge, but it seems His Lordship has been bought by the opposition.”

  The two men left the building and drove over to the Rajasthan High Court, where Kasliwal had his office.

  “The problem with the system is such that it is almost impossible to remain honest,” said the lawyer. “So much temptation is there, I tell you. Everyone is involved. All these bastards are looking after one another’s interests. If you get one good apple, then they’re worried it will spoil the batch. They don’t want honest fellows like me around who aren’t ready to do match fixing.

  “It is a great conspiracy of interests,” he continued. “I’m fighting the entire system, Puri-ji. My enemies are surrounding me on all fronts. But we must root out this evil. How can India expect to reach superpower status with all this corruption around? It is like a great hand around our throats. I, for one, am prepared to fight it with every bone in my body.”

  Kasliwal’s office was plainly furnished with just a desk, a few chairs and picture of Gandhi on the wall. In the bottom drawer of his desk, he kept a bottle of Royal Challenge.

  “It’s good for bad purposes.” He chuckled, pouring Puri a small glassful, then adding some soda.

  The two men clinked glasses and sat down on either side of Kasliwal’s desk, facing each other.

  “Puri-ji, you are a good man,” said the lawyer. “That is as clear as day. Come what may, we will be friends! That is for sure.”

  The detective drank to his client’s health but looked troubled.

  “Too much soda?”

  “No, no, badiya!”

  “Something is wrong?”

  “Yes, there is something,” answered Puri. “Before I proceed further, one thing should be understood. A detective must be thorough. He must leave no stone unturned. To reach the truth, he must go about where he’s not wanted, asking questions people don’t want to answer. He must pry into the darkest shadows. Sometimes he will discover skeletons hiding away in closets. Sometimes in trunks, also.”

  “You’ve found something already, Puri-ji?”

  “Nothing yet. But this is an old friend.” He touched the side of his bulbous Punjabi nose. “It is as good as radar. Better, in fact! And it is telling me something terrible has happened. The circumstances surrounding Mary’s disappearance are most peculiar. No way a maidservant leaves without taking her salary. However small an amount, such a female will want it.”

  The detective stared into his whisky, deep in thought.

  “If you want me to find out what happened, I must examine your affairs and those of your family. From top to bottom, inside and out.”

  “We have nothing to hide,” said Kasliwal.

  Puri drained his glass and placed it on his client’s desk. His countenance was grave. “Let us suppose for a moment you were making mischief with this Mary,” he said.

  Kasliwal sat up straight. “What kind of question is that?”

  “Sir, I need to know everything or no good will come,” answered Puri, staring at him across the desk.

  “Nothing happened between us, I
swear it.”

  “But you tried to make friendship with her?”

  “Listen, I admit she was good for window shopping, but I never touched her. My father taught me never to do hanky-panky with servants.”

  “And with others?” probed Puri.

  The lawyer stood up, looking agitated. He started to pace up and down.

  “Sit. It is no good hiding the truth from Vish Puri,” prompted the detective.

  “My private life is not open for discussion,” said Kasliwal firmly.

  “Sir, I’m working on your behalf. What is said will remain between us.”

  Kasliwal stopped by the window of his office looking out on the inner courtyard of the High Court. There was a long silence and then he turned his back on the window and said, “I admit I’m not a man to always eat home-cooked food. Sometimes, I like something extra spicy.”

  His words were met with a blank look.

  “Come on, Puri-ji, you know how it is. I’m only human. Married to the same woman for twenty-nine years. Arranged marriage and all. After so many innings, a man needs some extracurricular activity.”

  “But not with servants?”

  “Life is complicated enough, Puri-ji.”

  The detective took out his notebook, referring to his notes from his conversation with Mrs. Kasliwal.

  “How about Kamat, cook’s assistant? He and Mary got involved?”

  Kasliwal shrugged. By now, he was standing with his hands on the back of his chair, leaning over it. “I wouldn’t know. With so much workload, I’m not around the house much.”

  Puri flicked back to the notes taken during his first conversation with his client in the Gymkhana Club.

  “The night Mary vanished, you were working, is it?” he asked.

  The lawyer looked down and exhaled deeply. “Not exactly,” he confessed. “I was…”

  “Making friendship?”

  There was a pause. “Something like that.”