A Murder on Malabar Hill

by Sujata Massey

  She needed a sharp bit of metal. She thought of the whalebones inside her brassiere, but she didn’t have enough space to move her arms to unhook her blouse. Instead, she took the fountain pen and rubbed its nib against the sharp, broken hairpin. It took only a few minutes of industrious work to give the pen’s nib a knife-like sharpness. She felt elated when she pushed the pen into the bag’s fabric and it went through. Diligently, she stabbed the cloth until she’d made an opening of a few inches, and then, with her hands, she tore it open the rest of the way.

  Squeezing herself out, she slowly released her arms and legs from the tight ball they’d been in. Her right foot throbbed with pain, and so did some spots on her back and one elbow. But she was free—in a short, dark space that smelt of dust.

  Groping around, she identified many more sacks around her. The crowding gave the impression she was in a storeroom: perhaps one of the many godowns built in rows near the harbour or at Ballard Pier itself.

  Goods were held for months and sometimes years in such godowns. She remembered Rustom’s frustration about a shipment of nails that should have been delivered to Mistry Construction but had been accidentally stored after the unloading and forever lost. That could be her plight.

  She tried to think logically. If she’d been loaded into this place, there had to be a way to the outside. First, she searched the low ceiling, hoping to find the base of a chute. There was none—at least, not near her. She shifted her investigation to the cold cement walls around the sacks. But moving made her feel the impact of being in a windowless, doorless box. She was becoming frightened and realized that not knowing where she was in relation to the bag she’d broken out of made her feel lost.

  Perveen said a silent prayer, and afterwards, her mind was clear. If she’d been brought to a place already filled with goods, she’d probably been left close to the front of the space and whatever door existed. She crawled back to the spot where the destroyed bag lay. Then she sat down and felt everything around it. A raised edge on the wooden base below her caught her attention. When she touched it, she realized it was one edge of a large wooden square.

  She was able to prise up the square and pushed one of her hands through. Her initial confusion was followed by the realization that she’d been loaded up on to a shelf in some kind of storage space. This was the reason for the very low ceiling above her head. The way out was to drop down to the next level—though how steep the fall would be, and what she’d land on, was unknown.

  Sometimes people kept guard dogs in their storerooms. There even were rumours of certain merchants keeping snakes, which would dissuade both thieves and rats. She whistled to see if a dog might move below; but there was no sound in response.

  Perveen slowly fit herself through the opening, feeling her way down with her feet. But then her tired arms couldn’t hold her any more. She slipped straight down, landing in a sitting position on another group of sacks. She sat there for a while making sure no bones were broken—although when she gathered the strength to stand, she discovered a searing pain in her hip. Resolutely, she bumped her way around the room to the area where she saw some thin streaks of light.

  A ventilated wooden door, she decided, after exploring it with her fingers. Unfortunately, it was locked from the outside. Pressing her eyes to the narrow bits of light, she realized the door was near an area with people. She heard the rumble of men’s voices and, again, the blowing of a ship’s horn.

  She thought she must be at the harbour or very close by. And if she could hear voices, that also meant someone might hear her.

  ‘Help me!’ she called in English and then in Marathi.

  She shouted again and again, but nobody heard. Perhaps it was still too early or the storeroom was too distant.

  Starting around seven, the dock became lively; but then there might be too much noise for a tiny cry to be heard from a godown. She had to draw attention to the door in the hopes that the earliest workers—the tea makers, the sweepers and the dock loaders—might hear.

  Perveen put her hand in her purse. She could write a note and push it through one of the ventilation holes—but the labourers reporting to work were mostly illiterate. Then she felt the cool glass of the vial of rose attar. If she spilt it, she’d create an overpowering aroma. An expensive, feminine scent that was unusual for the dock might draw men to the storeroom’s door. And if she could push the anna and paisa coins through the ventilation holes, they might catch someone’s eye.

  Perveen opened the vial and emptied the contents along the open edges of the door. Then she pushed an anna coin through, hearing it clink as it hit cobblestones outside.

  ‘Take the money,’ she bellowed, feeling like a huckster at a circus. ‘Money! Money! Money!’

  The light was brighter through the shafts, and her voice nearly gone, when she heard someone yell, ‘Look! There are coins.’

  ‘What a smell! Where are the roses?’

  With her mouth close to the vents, she screamed, ‘Help me out, and you’ll get more! Please, I tell you, help me!’

  ‘Did you hear something?’ one man said out to another in Marathi.

  ‘No, but that smell is making me sick.’

  ‘Sounded like a woman called out. But where?’

  The last male voice sounded familiar.

  ‘Jayanth-bhaiya?’ Perveen shouted. ‘Jayanth-bhaiya, is that you?’

  There was a long pause, then his shout. ‘Perveen-memsahib! Where are you?’

  ‘Behind this door.’ She pounded it so hard her knuckles hurt. ‘The one that smells like roses.’

  ‘Get a lathi,’ Jayanth called out to someone. ‘And bring the harbour constable.’

  Ten minutes later, the men had forced open the door. Perveen emerged and, for the first time in hours, was able to straighten her back. She realized her sari had fallen away from her hair and the top of her body, so she wound it up rapidly. Jayanth moved forward protectively as she fixed the rest of her sari so it was presentable.

  Some men in the cluster eyed the coins lying on the brick walk that ran along the godowns. As they brought the coins to her, she shook her head. ‘Please share it. You saved my life.’

  ‘My friend was the one who saw the coins,’ Jayanth told her.

  ‘Where exactly are we?’ Perveen looked around, trying to orient herself.

  ‘Ballard Pier’s section for godowns. Our work today is loading up a P&O cargo ship with tea. Please sit down, memsahib. You look weak.’

  Perveen sat down on a jute sack that he’d dragged out. She felt elated. She had been meant to die, yet she’d cut her way out of that fate and back to the world she loved. Taking a deep breath of the salty port air, she asked Jayanth whether the storage places were privately owned.

  ‘They are property of the Bombay Port, but leased to various people,’ he said, bringing out another sack for her to rest her feet on.

  ‘And your boss, Ravi. Would he have a key to many of these places?’

  Jayanth cocked his head to the side, as if he was considering all aspects of the issue. ‘I don’t know for certain. I believe he can only obtain such a key the day that work is needed.’

  ‘But if work starts early in the morning, might the company needing assistance from stevedores deliver Ravi the key the night before?’

  ‘Are you really thinking Ravi has done this?’ Jayanth’s voice dropped.

  ‘It cannot be his doing,’ protested an anxious-looking stevedore standing nearby. ‘We did not come here yesterday, and it’s not on the work plan for today. The door’s number is wrong.’

  Perveen turned and looked at the door that was hanging askew. It had a number painted on it: 179. Nothing more.

  ‘Does anyone have a torch?’ she asked.

  Jayanth shook his head. ‘The police will. Look, they are coming just now.’

  Two Indian constables were hastening towards them, followed by an English Imperial Police officer.

  ‘What is the trouble here?’ The Englishman frowned at
Perveen’s dishevelment. ‘I could not understand half of what the boy has told me. And there are complaints from the dock about men missing from work.’

  ‘These observant stevedores have saved my life.’ Perveen looked at the ragtag group of workers with gratitude. ‘They are heroes.’

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked, taking on a commanding air. ‘No civilian visitors allowed away from the area of passenger ships.’

  ‘My name is Perveen Mistry; I’m a solicitor with Mistry Law in Bruce Street. I was thrown in a sack last night and brought here by an assailant who locked me up.’

  But the officer seemed stuck on her opening statement. ‘You work for a salary, then? As a female legal secretary?’

  ‘No,’ she said crisply. ‘I’ve been employed as a solicitor by Mistry Law for the last half year.’

  ‘Fetch the harbour master,’ the officer directed the smaller constable. ‘This will require a full investigation. Miss Mistry, are there others inside?’

  ‘I didn’t hear anyone.’

  ‘If it’s white-slaving, there could be loads of ladies trapped inside.’

  ‘I’m not white,’ she protested. ‘I’m a Parsi. It might be that this is related to one of my cases—’

  Ignoring her, the officer unclipped a battery torch from his belt and stepped into the storeroom, shining the torch around inside. Perveen stepped in close beside him, watching as the small beam of light ran over the room’s sacks. The officer pulled a knife from a sheath at his belt and ran it carefully along the edge of one sack. Inside was a bolt of khaki cloth. The next sack he opened looked the same.

  ‘On the outset, this looks all right. Just a lot of drill cloth,’ he said, turning to Perveen.

  ‘Drill cloth?’ she said.

  Now she saw that the corner of each sack was stamped with English writing:

  FARID FABRICS, GIRANGAON, BOMBAY

  29

  AN UNEXPECTED SPACE

  Bombay, February 1921

  ‘Thanks to God and those wonderful stevedores that you are home. But you must take what happened as a warning,’ Camellia Mistry said as she ushered Perveen on to the veranda and handed her a cup of her very best ginger and lemongrass milk tea.

  She’d bathed, slipped into a fresh dressing gown and now was dipping a khari biscuit in the delicious tea. The anxiety she’d felt in the sack was a distant memory. ‘I was taken because I fell for a ruse. I’ve learnt the hard way, just as before.’

  ‘There are ruses, and then there are traps. This was a bad one,’ Jamshedji said from his lounge chair across the veranda. Perveen could hear the clattering of John in the kitchen making a large breakfast. The voices and sounds of her familiar household were the most beautiful music she’d ever heard.

  ‘You can’t fathom what it’s been like since Mustafa realized you’d gone out at night on your own,’ Camellia continued. ‘We put our heads together and came up with so many different ideas of which way to turn.’

  Gulnaz slipped into a chair next to Perveen and patted her arm. ‘I remembered you planned to meet your English friend for the pictures. Mamma was anxious, so I rang up those Hobson-Joneses. What a chukoo, that mother! By the time she finished scolding me for calling her “Mrs” instead of “Lady”, I was nervous to even ask for Alice, but she came on the line. Your friend is loyal. She wanted to come straight down to join us in the search, and when her parents wouldn’t allow it, she said we should probably go to the Farid place.’

  ‘I must go there today. Did all of you go last night?’ Perveen asked.

  ‘No. Mamma stayed behind to be near the telephone. Pappa and Rustom and I went over there. The constable told us nothing was wrong, but I insisted on going to the ladies’ section. A servant girl let me in. I spoke to two widows who said you hadn’t come by. When I said you were missing, they became worried too.’

  ‘You probably saw Razia and Sakina,’ Perveen guessed. ‘What about the third wife?’

  ‘I didn’t ask to see her. I was only worried about you.’ Gulnaz looked anxiously at her. ‘We drove back along the Queen’s Necklace and then every street in Ballard Estate and Fort. Arman was driving like a madman. He feels so guilty about being at Victoria Terminus when you needed him.’

  ‘If Arman had driven you last night, he’d have had ruined tires,’ Rustom said, coming up behind Gulnaz to rub her shoulders. ‘Apparently after business was over yesterday, someone dropped nails and broken glass on both ends of Bruce Street. It took two hours this morning to clean up. The office workers and automobile drivers were quite put out.’

  ‘Did you see a face or have any inkling of your attacker?’ Gulnaz’s voice was urgent. ‘Was he a street type or a gentleman?’

  ‘I didn’t see his clothing, his face, not even the colour of his skin,’ Perveen said. ‘As I told the police, the bags in the storeroom point to the involvement of the Farids, but it’s not the only possibility.’

  ‘What else are you thinking?’ Camellia pressed.

  Perveen swallowed hard, then spoke the worry she’d been hesitant to divulge. ‘A few days ago I saw a man who looked just like Cyrus. I’ve been looking over my shoulder for him most of this week.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Gulnaz asked, her eyes widening.

  ‘The bastard!’ Rustom snapped. ‘He has no right to be near you.’

  Camellia’s face sagged, and she sat down heavily in her chair. ‘I thought all of that was over.’

  ‘When was this incident?’ Jamshedji asked quietly.

  ‘Last Tuesday I was in the Silver Ghost speeding along the Queen’s Necklace. The man I saw who looked like him was waiting to buy food at a dhaba on Chowpatty Beach.’ She broke off. ‘Pappa, why are you looking like you know this?’

  She’d expected Jamshedji to be shocked or angry. Instead, he had a knowing expression. ‘In all likelihood, you did see him.’

  ‘You knew he was here, and you kept it from me?’ Perveen’s calm was disintegrating like the biscuit she’d left dangling in her tea.

  ‘Let me begin with the so-called Bengali stranger you were worried about. He’s not strange to me. His name is Purshottam Ghosh.’

  ‘Is he your client?’ Perveen was confused.

  ‘He’s the private detective based in Calcutta I hired to gather the medical records we used in Sodawalla v. Sodawalla. Remember?’

  ‘I never met him. But of course I remember those files being used.’ Perveen’s curiosity was mixed with irritation. Why hadn’t her father come straight out with this?

  ‘I was pleased with Ghosh’s initiative and have employed him since the trial ended to keep tabs on Cyrus.’

  ‘Mamma, did you know?’ Perveen turned to Camellia, who shook her head.

  ‘I had no idea,’ she said. ‘But I’m sure your father had his reasons.’

  ‘Perveen’s safety comes first,’ Jamshedji said simply. ‘And if we could ever find proof of infidelity, it would mean a chance for the separation to become a divorce.’

  Perveen put down her cup. She was stunned by the lengths to which her father had gone. And if Cyrus discovered the surveillance, he’d have a valid grudge against her family. ‘Did Cyrus learn about this?’

  ‘We’re not sure,’ Jamshedji said after a disturbing pause. ‘But to recap the surveillance history, Ghosh wasn’t following him daily. It was part-time observation done in conjunction with his other jobs. He’s reported to me that Cyrus continued his activities, averaging twice a week with women of the professional variety, either in the Sonagachi prostitution district or in the slum near the bottling plant.’

  ‘Pappa, why didn’t you tell me Cyrus was here in Bombay?’ Perveen demanded.

  Jamshedji raised a cautionary finger. ‘I didn’t want to worry you unduly. At first, we thought it was a business trip. Or he might have been calling on his relatives, the Vachhas. And then we got a surprise.’

  ‘I don’t like surprises.’ Perveen felt sick with anxiety.

  ‘Ghosh followed him to Petit General Hospital
, where he walked in with a valise late on Tuesday and did not come out.’

  Rustom was angrily pacing the veranda. ‘What do you mean, “didn’t come out”? The velgard might have slipped out the back!’

  ‘Or he is visiting a sick person or checked in himself as a patient,’ Camellia pointed out.

  ‘The letter!’ Perveen said, putting her teacup down so hard the saucer rattled. ‘This week I received a letter asking me to go to the hospital to see someone I didn’t know. This man who wrote the letter wanted me to make his will. I can’t recall the name, but it certainly wasn’t Cyrus!’

  ‘Why would Cyrus come to Bombay for medical treatment? Calcutta’s full of doctors, isn’t it?’ Gulnaz asked.

  ‘But there’s no Parsi hospital in Calcutta,’ Camellia said. ‘I learnt that when I was visiting there. Petit is a top-drawer hospital offering free and subsidized care to any Parsi. Might he have come for that, rather than to harass Perveen?’

  Perveen took a deep breath. ‘I’d like to know. I’ll go to the hospital.’

  ‘Don’t let him speak to you,’ Jamshedji said sharply. ‘A pitiful situation could be a ploy. I’ve seen this time and again with separated couples.’

  ‘Gulnaz and I are on the ladies’ voluntary committee at the hospital. We’ll find out whether he is a patient there before Perveen decides anything,’ Camellia said, pouring more tea in Perveen’s cup. ‘Don’t act without forethought.’

  Perveen was exasperated. ‘Why won’t you let me go? It seems that I’ve escaped one prison to be kept in another.’

  ‘We are hardly imprisoning you,’ Camellia soothed. ‘We are only giving you a bit of time to settle and recover from a terrible attack. You haven’t even had breakfast, and you’re already raring to go to the hospital. Frankly, I don’t know which situation is more dangerous.’