The Case of the Missing Servant

by Tarquin Hall

  “But I want to marry a prince, Papa!” Radhika, the youngest, who’d been twelve at the time, had told him.

  “Perhaps one day, chowti baby,” the detective had told her, “But only the God knows. Trust to your fate and don’t do second-guessing.”

  Of course, it is always easier to preach such credos than to live by them. Indeed, whenever Puri laid eyes on an airplane, he heard that voice in his head asking, “What if?”

  This was why, despite the three hundred deaths every day on India’s roads, he still felt safer traveling by car. It was also why, given the option of a three-hour flight or a 36-hour journey on a Rajdhani train, he opted for Indian railways whenever he could.

  But today Puri had no choice. The only way he was going to make it to Mahinder Gupta’s party was by flying to Delhi.

  And so it was an uncharacteristically nervous and skittish Vish Puri who made his way through security, having bought himself a business-class ticket (if he was going to meet his doom he might as well do it with extra legroom).

  What his fellow passengers and the pretty young air hostess made of him can only be imagined.

  Upon entering the cabin, Puri, who was by now feeling strangely disoriented, sat down in someone else’s empty seat. When its rightful occupant arrived, the detective refused to budge and only did so when the air hostess intervened.

  Next, Puri had to be asked to move his suitcase out of the aisle and place it in the overhead locker. When he complied, the case sprang open and his Sexy Men aftershave and a pair of VIP Frenchie chuddies fell into the aisle.

  By now, Puri’s hands were trembling so much, his seatbelt had to be buckled for him. During takeoff, he sat as rigid as a condemned man in an electric chair. His hands gripped the armrests, his fingernails sank deep into the soft plastic and he found himself muttering a mantra over and over.

  “Om bhur bhawa swaha tat savitur varay neeyam…”

  Once the plane was in the air, he began sweating profusely and built up a considerable amount of gas in his stomach. This he vented periodically—to the intense displeasure of the Australian lady tourist sitting on his right: “Jesus! Do you mind?”

  When Puri tried to calm his nerves with the remains of a quarter-bottle of Royal Challenge he’d brought on board, the air hostess informed him that it was illegal to consume alcohol on domestic flights and he had to put it away.

  During the landing, Puri held his breath and closed his eyes.

  The moment the aircraft left the runway, he unclipped his seat belt and staggered to his feet. Once again, he found the air hostess by his side, this time ordering him to sit down until the plane had come to a complete halt and the overhead seat-belt light was switched off.

  Puri complied. But the moment he saw the gangway through the window, he was again up out of his seat and, suitcase in hand, pushing his way to the exit.

  “We look forward to seeing you again soon,” said the air hostess cheerily as he left the plane ahead of all the other passengers.

  “Not if I can help it,” mumbled the detective.

  Puri had hired a brand-new S Class Mercedes to pick him up at the airport. The driver, who wore a white uniform buttoned up to his neck and a yacht captain’s cap embellished with gold-leaf emblems, was standing outside the arrivals gate holding up a whiteboard with the alias the detective had adopted for the evening written upon it: “Monty Ahluwalia.”

  Mr. Somnath Chatterjee was also waiting for him in the car park.

  Mr. Chatterjee, of indeterminable age, had a severe hunch born of a lifetime bent over a sewing machine. His clothes were always too large for him—the sleeves of his shirts came down to his knuckles; his trouser legs were always rolled up around his skinny ankles, giving the impression that he had somehow shrunk inside them.

  But anyone who had known him long enough, like Puri, could testify to the fact that Mr. Chatterjee had always been extremely skinny. His inattention to the proportions of his own apparel was in no way a reflection upon his skills as a tailor. Indeed, he ran Delhi’s most successful costume house.

  Mr. Chatterjee was, in fact, the scion of a noble line of Bengali tailors who had once fitted the Nawabs of West Bengal. Under the rule of the British East India Company, the family had set up shop in Calcutta and adapted to its European tastes, providing uniforms for the (not-so) Honorable Company’s troops, and supplying the British theaters with costumes. It was a source of much interest to Puri that Mr. Chatterjee’s great-grandfather had even provided disguises for Colonel Montgomery of the Survey of India—the real-life inspiration for Colonel Creighton in Kim, Rudyard Kipling’s tale of intrigue and espionage during the Great Game with Russia.

  Chatterjee & Sons had moved to Delhi in 1931, following in the footsteps of their British patrons. For the past twenty years, Mr. Chatterjee had been providing Puri with his disguises.

  Normally, he went for his fittings at Mr. Chatterjee’s premises, which were hidden down a long alleyway off Chandni Chowk in Shahjahanabad, or Old Delhi, as it was now called.

  The premises were filled to the rafters with hundreds of costumes and paraphernalia. Hindu deities were stored on the ground floor; Hanuman monkey suits, strap-on Durga arms and Ganapati elephant trunks hung in rows. Uniforms from numerous epochs were to be found one flight up: the military regalia of Macedonian foot soldiers, Maratha warriors, Tamil Tigers, Vedic Kshatriyas and Grenadier Guards. The third floor was home to traditional garb of hundreds of different Indian communities: from Assamese to Zoroastrian. There was a special room set aside for headgear of all sorts, including the woven bamboo ceremonial hats worn by Naga tribesmen, the white mande thunis of the Coorg and British pith helmets. And the fourth floor was the place to go to find all the props, including mendicant and beggar accoutrement: swallowable swords, snake charmers’ baskets (complete with windup mechanical cobras), and attachable deformed limbs.

  Crucially for Puri, Mr. Chatterjee also provided a variety of Indian noses, wigs—his Indira Gandhi one was especially realistic—beards and moustaches. These he kept in the cool of the basement, where dozens of wooden boxes were itemized: “Sikh Whisker,” Rajasthani Handlebar,” “Bengali Babu.”

  What Mr. Chatterjee didn’t have in stock he could have made. Twenty-seven tailors worked in a room on the top floor, sitting cross-legged in front of their sewing machines surrounded by swathes of silk, cotton and chiffon.

  On a few occasions in the past, when Puri had come to Mr. Chatterjee and requested something out of the ordinary at short notice, these men had worked late into the night to accommodate him—like the time he had needed an Iraqi dishdasha to attend a polo match.

  Tonight, however, Puri required nothing as exotic. He had asked Mr. Chatterjee to supply him with a standard Sikh disguise.

  Puri clambered into the back of the tailor’s worn-out van, where assistants with stage glue and a makeup kit gave him a quick makeover. Ten minutes later, he emerged wearing a large red turban, fake moustache and beard, a pair of slip-on black shoes and unflattering brown glasses with thick lenses. Puri slipped on several gold rings and put a ceremonial kirpan around his neck.

  Mr. Chatterjee inspected him from head to toe, craning his neck upward like a tortoise peeping out of his shell, and made an approving gesture with his head.

  “Most realistic, sir!” said the old man in Hindi, his voice wheezy and high-pitched. “No one will ever recognize you! You would have made a great actor!”

  Puri puffed his chest with pride.

  “Thank you, Mr. Chatterjee,” he replied. “Actually, as a young man, I did a good deal of amateur theater. In the ninth grade I won the Actor of the Year award for my portrayal of Hamlet. Often, I considered joining the stage. But duty called.”

  “What is the case this time?” whispered Mr. Chatterjee, who always got a thrill from aiding the detective. “Has someone been murdered?” he asked conspiratorially, his eyes lighting up with enthusiasm. “Are you after that bank robber—the one in the paper who stole fifty cr
ore?”

  The detective did not have the heart to tell him that he was involved in a straightforward matrimonial investigation.

  “I’m afraid it’s top secret,” Puri whispered in English.

  “Aaah, taap secret! Taap secret!” repeated the old man, giving a delighted giggle as he accompanied the detective to his car.

  “I trust my secret is safe with you, Chatterjee-sahib?” asked Puri, laying a fond hand on one of the old man’s hunched shoulders.

  “I would rather die than tell them anything, sir!” he cried with watering eyes. “Let them pull out my fingernails! Let them blind me! Let them cut off my—”

  Puri gave him a reassuring pat.

  “I’m sure it won’t come to that,” he interrupted. “Now, you’d better go. It’s best if we’re not seen together. I’ll come to your office in a few days once the case is resolved and settle my account.”

  “Yes, thank you sir, be careful sir,” said Mr. Chatterjee, returning to his van.

  Puri watched him climb inside and pull away, certain that, on his way back to Chandni Chowk, the old tailor would check in his rearview mirror to make sure he wasn’t being followed and, no doubt, call him later in the evening to assure him that the coast had been clear.

  Puri made a quick stop en route to Mahinder Gupta’s apartment to pick up Mrs. Duggal, his escort for the evening.

  She was waiting for him in the reception of a five-star hotel. When she saw the Mercedes pull up, she came out to meet it. A moment later she was arranging herself on the comfortable leather seat next to the detective and admiring the swish interior.

  “So I take it we’ll be sticking to our usual routine,” she said to Puri after they had exchanged pleasantries.

  “You know the old saying: ‘Why fix what isn’t broken?’” answered Puri.

  Mrs. Duggal, a petite auntie who wore her sporty silver hair pulled back, smiled her innocent smile.

  “I must say, I do so enjoy our little forays, Mr. Puri,” she said in her quiet, lilting voice. “Retirement is quite all right. It’s wonderful seeing the grandkids growing up. Did I tell you Praveen won a silver medal in breaststroke on Friday? I can’t tell you how proud we all are. I wouldn’t have missed being there for the world. But sometimes I do find myself pining for the old days. I miss that sense of adventure.”

  No one meeting Mrs. Duggal or passing her in Panchsheel Park where she took her morning walk with her neighbor, Mrs. Kanak, would have imagined that she had worked for RAW, India’s secret service. During the 1980s and ’90s, Mrs. Duggal and her husband, a career diplomat, had been stationed in some of India’s most high-profile foreign high commissions and embassies. Ostensibly, she had worked as a secretary, taking dictation, typing and answering the telephone. But secretly her mission had been to keep tabs on her compatriots—diplomats, bureaucrats, administrative staff and, most important, her fellow spies.

  To this day, not even her husband or children knew of Mrs. Duggal’s so-called double role and the fact that she was a decorated national heroine.

  While based in Dubai, she had identified the traitor Ashwini Patel and prevented him from betraying the identity of the highly placed Indian mole working inside Pakistan’s secret service, ISI. During her four-year stint in Washington, Mrs. Duggal had discovered that the Military attaché was having an affair with a Chinese spy and had seen to it that the hussy sent phony naval plans to her superiors in Beijing. And in Moscow she had collected evidence of the High Commissioner’s involvement in the Iraq Oil for Food scandal.

  For the past four years, though, Mrs. Duggal had been enjoying her well-earned retirement back in Delhi. She passed her days playing bridge, spoiling her grandchildren with home-made ladoos and spending long weekends with her husband, now also retired, by the Ganges in Haridwar.

  Occasionally she also did freelance jobs for Puri, whom she had worked with some fifteen years back when she had needed discreet investigation into the Moscow embassy’s chef.

  Her usual part was that of the detective’s wife, for which Mrs. Duggal needed no disguise. She was dressed in the understated style that had worked so well for her during her undercover days: a simple but fetching beige silk sari with gold zari design, a black blouse, a pair of sensible heels and a modest selection of kundan jewelery.

  “You’re very sober, Mrs. Duggal,” commented the detective as the car pulled onto the main road to NOIDA.

  “I’m glad you approve,” she replied. “You know I’m not one for gaudy colors.”

  Puri gave her a couple of Flush’s ingenious sticky bugs, one of which looked like a wasp, the other a fly, and explained where he wanted them placed.

  Mrs. Duggal popped them into her handbag, where she also kept her lock-picking tools: a couple of hair grips and a metal nail file.

  “Should be child’s play for two old professionals such as ourselves,” said Puri.

  “Just as long as I’m home by eleven-thirty, Mr. Puri. My husband will be expecting me. Any later, and he’ll start thinking I’ve got a boyfriend.”

  The two chuckled as the Mercedes sped along the new three-lane toll road.

  Half an hour later, they were standing in the elevator heading up to the twenty-second floor of Celestial Tower.

  A long, carpeted corridor with wood-paneled walls and air-conditioning vents purring overhead led to the executive penthouse.

  Puri rang the bell and the door was promptly opened by a servant, who ushered them into a spacious, dazzling white apartment. He was relieved to find it crowded with members of the Gupta and Kapoor families and their closest friends. Among such a large gathering (the party was at least seventy strong), no one would notice a couple of old gate-crashers, let alone challenge them. Indeed, as the detective and his escort stepped through the door, looking for all the world like a respectable auntie and uncle, they were greeted warmly by Mahinder Gupta’s parents. It did no harm that Mrs. Duggal wobbled from side to side with “arthritic” hips and grimaced each time she put her right foot forward.

  “Monty Ahluwalia and my good wife,” Puri said in halting English with a deep, provincial drawl as he shook Mr. Gupta by the hand.

  “Such a beautiful apartment,” commented Mrs. Duggal to Mrs. Gupta. “You must be very proud.”

  The four of them engaged in small talk for a few minutes. It wasn’t long before the Guptas revealed the apartment’s whopping price tag: five crore.

  “Of course, it’s absolutely rocketed up since then,” Mr. Gupta told Mr. and Mrs. Monty Ahluwalia. “Our son spent fifteen lakhs on the bathroom alone.”

  “Seventeen lakhs actually, darling,” cooed Mrs. Gupta, going on to describe the Italian Jacuzzi bathtub. “The toilet’s also amazing. You know, it flushes automatically, has a heated seat, a sprinkler system and a bottom blow-dryer! You really must try it.”

  As Mr. and Mrs. Monty Ahluwalia began circulating among the other guests (and trying the Japanese hors d’oeuvres, which the detective did not rate, grumbling to a fellow Punjabi that he was a “butter chicken man through and through”), Puri began to understand why Brigadier Kapoor was so against his granddaughter’s marriage.

  The Kapoors belonged to the refined, elite classes of south Delhi: military officers, engineers, the odd surgeon and one Supreme Court judge. Puri could picture them at cultural evenings at Stein Auditorium or the IIC, wine tastings at the Gymkhana Club and art exhibitions at the Habitat Center.

  Indeed, as the detective and Mrs. Duggal mingled, they overheard some of them discussing a retrospective of the Indo-Hungarian artist Amrita Sher-Gil, which had been showing at the National Gallery of Modern Art. Elsewhere, an uncle in a blazer, striped cotton shirt with French cuffs and loafers was telling another uncle, who was dressed almost identically and had a matching greying moustache, about the cruise he and his wife had recently taken around the Great Lakes. And at the far end of the room, Brigadier Kapoor himself, dressed in a three-piece suit and standing with his silver-haired wife at his side, was telling anoth
er elderly auntie in a mauve sari about a charity dinner that he and Mrs. Kapoor had attended at Rashtrapati Bhavan.

  The Gupta clan, by contrast, was drawn from the Punjabi merchant castes. All the younger men seemed to have salaried positions with IT multinationals and worked twelve-hour, six-day weeks. They wore off-the-rack suits and gold watches, had gelled hair and talked mostly about the markets, Bollywood and cricket. They smoked, drank and laughed raucously, occasionally giving one another matey slaps on the back. Their wives showed a fondness for chunky sequined heels, garish eye shadow and either sequined cocktail dresses or Day-Glo saris worn with strapless, halter-style blouses. Four of them were clustered in the kitchen admiring the stainless steel extractor fan.

  “Wow!” one exclaimed. “So shiny, yaar.”

  Puri and Mrs. Duggal chatted for a while with Gupta’s fiancée, Tisca Kapoor, who seemed like a sensible, articulate woman, if hugely overweight and clearly nervous about how the two families were getting along. As they talked, the detective dropped his napkin on the ground and attached a bug to the underside of one of the faux alligator-skin side tables.

  He and his partner in crime then split up. The detective crossed the room to the gas fireplace, where he attached another device to the back of one of the photo frames, and then went in search of a Scotch on the balcony.

  Meanwhile Mrs. Duggal hobbled over to the kitchen (where a few of the older Gupta aunties were discussing the attributes of the front-loading washing machine, which, they all agreed, was worth the money) and attached the magnetic fly under the lip of the extractor fan.

  She then made her way to Mahinder Gupta’s bedroom. Having attached the wasp to the bottom of the metal bed frame, she stepped into the bathroom and locked the door behind her.

  In one corner stood the Jacuzzi bathtub and in another the toilet.

  Mrs. Duggal washed her hands in the sink and, as she did so, noticed a metal medicine cabinet on the wall.