Death at the Durbar

by Arjun Gaind

  Death at the Durbar

  A Maharaja Mystery

  Arjun Raj Gaind

  Poisoned Pen Press

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2018 by Arjun Raj Gaind

  First Edition 2018

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017938960

  ISBN: 9781464209208 Trade Paperback

  ISBN: 9781464209215 Ebook

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  Poisoned Pen Press

  4014 N. Goldwater Blvd., #201

  Scottsdale, AZ 85251

  www.poisonedpenpress.com

  info@poisonedpenpress.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  Contents

  Death at the Durbar

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Contact Us

  Dedication

  For my father, who left us far too soon.

  Acknowledgments

  First and foremost, I must thank my mother. Not only has she stalwartly supported me through my often difficult journey as a writer, but it was she who first kindled my interest in history. In many ways, I think she represents all that is best about the people of Punjab—manners, elegance and character, all of which she possesses in vast excess. I can only hope that she is as proud of being my mother as I am of being her son.

  I am deeply indebted to Shobha De for her generosity. I am also very grateful to my agent and friend Kanishka Gupta. Not only did he help me find a home for the Maharaja Mysteries, but he was always more than willing to lend a sympathetic ear to my frequent tirades during the editing process for both A Very Pukka Murder and this book.

  I am very fortunate that Harper Collins India and Ananth Padmanabhan have placed enough faith in my work to acquire three Sikander books. It takes a great deal of pressure off an author’s shoulders to know that a quality publisher is backing him to the hilt. Of course, none of this would have been possible if not for Manasi Subramaniam, without whose perspicacity the Maharaja Mysteries would never have seen the light of day.

  This time around, I have had the pleasure of working with not one, but three exceptional editors—Diya Kar Hazra, Swati Daftuar, and Bidisha Srivastava. I cannot thank you enough. Not only was it a pleasure to interact with you, but a privilege I hope to enjoy many times in the future.

  I am also very lucky to have had another opportunity to collaborate with Barbara Peters and Robert Rosenwald from Poisoned Pen Press for the American edition of this book. I am very grateful to Barbara for her guidance and to Beth Deveny for her valiant efforts to make sure the book was free of errors. I am also very thankful to Diane Di Biase and Holli Roach for all their help.

  I would like to thank Vivek Shinde for his amazing artwork, and Jamal Sheikh and Hindustan Times Brunch for being kind enough to allow us to re-purpose Vivek’s imagery and use it for the cover of our American edition.

  I am also extremely grateful to Rohit Agarwal, who very generously shared much of his extensive Durbar research with me, and to Jeffery Bates from Bates and Hindmarch, who was kind enough to provide me with a copy of the layout of the various Durbar encampments.

  I am truly blessed to have a friend like Amitabh Nanda. It is his handsome face you see on the cover, and I will always owe him an insurmountable debt for his unflinching support of every one of my idiosyncrasies.

  Last but not least, thank you, Pooja Vir, for all the hours you spent listening to me prattle on while I was writing this book. Thank you for letting me read you random passages on the phone and for allowing me to vent my myriad frustrations with such gentle and enduring grace. Thank you for your clever suggestions and for being such a grammar Nazi, and for taking the time to proof read my first draft for me. I was blessed to have you in my life, however briefly, and I want you to know that this is as much your book as it is mine.

  Chapter One

  On most days, Maharaja Sikander Singh held a lackluster opinion of the English.

  Shakespeare bored him, Dickens was too depressing, and Miss Austen had always managed to give him a resounding migraine. Elgar was…well, too loud, and the raucous lures of music-hall held no appeal for a man of his education and elegance. Cricket he found bewildering, since he had always failed to see the attraction of standing beneath the noonday sun and flailing about with a piece of polished willow. As for tea, it was not his drink. He much preferred coffee, preferably of the Yemeni variety. And, frankly, as far as he was concerned, the British couldn’t bottle a good wine if Dionysus himself came down from Olympus and taught them how.

  For Sikander, the one great contribution the Angrezi Sahibs had managed to make to world culture was the music of Henry Purcell.

  When it came to Baroque music, people were quick to praise Handel and Bach, but it was Purcell, a relatively ignored composer, that Sikander had come to admire the most. True, Bach was magnificent more often than not, and some of Handel’s work could elevate a man’s soul toward that rare state of transcendence that al-Ghazali had described as tanzih, but with Purcell, the anguish in his music, the palpable longing, appealed to Sikander’s intrinsically romantic nature.

  Each evening, he followed a well-established ritual. Before retiring for the night, he would spend at least an hour at his piano, inevitably polishing off the better part of a bottle of champagne while caressing its ivory keys. It was a habit that dated back to his childhood, when he had first learned to play seated upon his mother’s lap, and one he continued even as he approached the ripe old age of forty. In many ways, it was his favorite part of each day. For these few moments, he was not the Maharaja of Rajpore. He was free, identified only by whatever music his slender fingers wrought, liberated from the web of duty and obligation and responsibility within which his birth had trapped him.

  On this particular evening, swaddled in a bronze silk banyan jacket, his feet comfortably ensconced in a pair of woolen socks to fend off the chill, Sikander had spent two and a half hours trying to transcribe one of Purcell’s finest compositions, the aria “The Cold Song.” He had heard it performed by a fine soprano in London, and it had haunted him since—a bewildering piece of music, tragic to the point of heartbreaking.

  Sadly, in spite of his prodigious technical abilities, he found himself unable to master its intricacy. Every note was perfect, for Sikander was very nearly as skilled as a virtuoso. Still, something remained missing, that ephemeral rapture that Byron had described so well as the “echo of the spheres.” It was unsettling, to say the least. Perhaps
it was the fact that he was in Delhi, a city he had always loathed, that was throwing off his rhythm so thoroughly, or that he was playing a strange instrument, a brand new Vertegrand upright that felt very different from the concert grand he normally preferred. To his dismay, the music was proving incapable of calming his restlessness.

  Finally, Sikander could bear it no longer. Unable to restrain his mounting frustration, he thwacked shut the piano’s lid. Rising to his feet, he crossed to a side table where a bottle of Abele was chilling in a Baccarat crystal ice bucket. As he began to pour himself a fresh tulip, it dawned on him that he was being watched by a pair of cold eyes, stony with disapproval.

  The bust was exquisite, a Rodin carved from brown-veined porphyry, but despite its elegance, it failed to capture even a glimmer of his mother’s essence. Maharani Amrita Devi had been diminutive in stature, barely five feet tall, but she had possessed such exuberance, such vitality, that her presence had filled every room she entered. It was from her that Sikander had inherited his pale eyes, which were as gray as a thunderstorm, and his love of everything French. Most of all, it was from his mother that he had received that insatiable sense of curiosity which so defined him as a person.

  It isn’t my fault, Mother, he thought apologetically. It’s just that I am so dreadfully bored.

  How could he deny it? It was not in Sikander’s nature to be inactive. Like a shark, he needed to keep moving. If forced to stop, even for a moment, it felt to him he was drowning. That was what had made this past week even more difficult to endure. The inertia of sitting around and twiddling his thumbs, waiting for the King to arrive and for the Coronation celebrations to commence, had managed to leave him on the very brink of despair.

  Once again, as he was prone to do at least eight or nine times each day, Sikander felt a familiar stirring of wanderlust in his gut. It was so tempting to call for his faithful manservant, Charan Singh, and command him to pack their bags immediately and make arrangements to hop aboard the first mail train going south, no matter what the destination, just as long as it took them far away from Delhi and the miasma of the blasted Durbar encampment.

  Sadly, Sikander was far too pragmatic to give in to such a cavalier impulse. Stifling his impatience, he raised his glass in mock salutation to his mother’s effigy.

  It should have been you here, not me, Ma. You would have made a far better king than I can ever hope to be.

  Before he could take a sip, though, he was interrupted most rudely.

  The door slammed open, and a pair of Englishmen came barging into the room.

  “Are you Sikander Singh of Rajpore?” the first of them asked rather too forcefully, strutting to a stop directly to his right.

  The brusqueness of his manner nettled the Maharaja, causing him to scowl. Who did the silly bugger think he was talking to? Not so much as an “excuse me” or a “pardon the interruption.” How dare he just barge in and address Sikander in such a high-handed fashion, as if he were a common khidmutgar?

  Sikander swiveled his neck to glare up at the man. He did not have too far to turn, for the gentleman was immense, as wide as a wall, with hulking shoulders. A soldier, Sikander deduced. That much was obvious, for not only was his posture as stiff as a marionette’s, but he was dressed in one of the new khaki serge uniforms that the English regiments had recently adopted to replace their traditional red coats. A quick glance at his epaulets revealed a single cluster, which meant the man was a lowly second lieutenant. From a Highland regiment, Sikander surmised, judging by the tartan cockade pinned to his lapel. Yes, definitely a Scotsman, he concluded, for though his head was razored clean to his skull, he sported a very ginger beard, in obvious imitation of the new King.

  Stifling his irritation, Sikander decided to ignore the obtrusive lieutenant. Turning his attention back to the glass in his hand, he brought it to his mouth, but to his dismay, the champagne had gone rather flat.

  “Didn’t you hear what I said?” The lieutenant barked even more belligerently. “Or are you deaf?’

  The Maharaja pursed his lips, trying to restrain his annoyance. How had the fool even managed to get past the door? Casting an irate glance towards the entrance, he waited for his manservant to show his face. Where in God’s name was he, the damnable oaf? This was precisely his job, to bar such unwarranted intrusions. A slow minute elapsed, then another, but still Charan Singh did not appear. Sikander’s irritation turned to concern. Ordinarily, the old Sikh was as immovable as a sphinx, and it was highly unlikely that he was drunk or asleep on duty. That left only one possibility: something or someone was forcibly preventing him from doing his job. Sikander’s temper stirred at that thought. He loved the old man like a member of his own family, and if either of these two upstarts had dared to hurt even one hair on his head, there would be hell to pay, he promised himself.

  “Oh, do go away, you silly lout,” he snarled, “before I lose my temper and do something I regret!”

  Naturally, a dismissal this contemptuous was not at all well received. Bristling visibly, the large lieutenant’s face darkened. Very deliberately, he let one hand move to his belt, coming to rest atop the holster. To his surprise, Sikander noticed that he was armed, in absolute contravention of the Viceregal order that there were to be no weapons worn publicly at the Durbar, except on the parade ground.

  Thankfully, before the situation could escalate any further, the lieutenant’s companion surged forward, placing one warning hand on his compatriot’s bulging shoulder to restrain him.

  “Do pardon Lieutenant Munro’s coarse behaviour,” he apologized. “He comes from Irish stock, and Hibernian blood, as I am sure you understand, is easily inflamed.”

  Ignoring the poisonous glare the lieutenant shot in his direction, the man bowed slightly at the waist and offered Sikander a dazzling smile. The Maharaja studied him, not quite sure what to make of him. Unlike his companion, he was tall and very slim, with an aristocratic jaw and a fine pair of whiskers in the fashion known as the Imperial, as made popular by the Kaiser some years previously. On a heavier man, such a style might have seemed pugnacious, but in this case, it gave him a rather piratical air.

  While the lieutenant was rather pale, this man, a Captain, Sikander surmised as he spied the triple pips decorating his shoulders, was almost as brown as an Indian, a fact which suggested he wasn’t just a campground soldier. In India, you could tell the veterans from the griffins by the color of their skin, which was soon tanned to old leather by the hours spent under the glare of the sun while on campaign. This inference was strengthened by the way he moved, with that languid nonchalance that came from countless hours spent practicing with a sword. Sikander’s eyes widened as they flickered across the regimental insignia embossed on the brass buckle of the man’s Sam Browne belt. It was an emblem he recognized immediately, an eight-pointed starburst with a Latin motto emblazoned atop it, which read: Honi soit qui mal y pense—Evil be to him who evil thinks.

  A Lilywhite! Sikander thought, letting out a surprised gasp. This fine fellow wasn’t just any run-of-the-mill trooper. He was a guardsman, a member of the legendary Coldstream Guards. Perhaps the oldest and most prestigious regiment in the British Army, the Coldstream was ranked second in precedence, surmounted only by the Grenadier Guards. They were about as elite as elite soldiers could be, tasked with protecting the King and Queen themselves, and permanently posted as the household garrison at Windsor.

  What on earth was a Lilywhite Captain doing in Delhi, turning up at the Majestic Hotel at six in the bloody evening? And what dire emergency could have induced such a severe breach of protocol that he had chosen to come barging into a Maharaja’s private boudoir without so much as an invitation?

  Whatever it was, Sikander thought, his curiosity aroused, it had to be something well and truly interesting.

  “Who exactly are you?” he said imperiously, “and what the blooming hell do you want?”

 
; The Captain’s smile flickered with a hint of annoyance at being spoken down to with such disdain, but he managed to recover admirably.

  “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Arthur Campbell, at your service. Unlike the lieutenant, I hail from Argyll, and we are careful never to forget our manners.”

  Sikander rolled his eyes, refusing to be beguiled by this excess of civility. A more naïve man might have bought into Campbell’s carefully orchestrated bonhomie, but Sikander could see it for what it was—a tactic intended to put him off his guard. Why, he had used it often enough himself during difficult interrogations, acting the gentleman while his manservant played the brute.

  “Forgive our intrusion, but could you confirm that are you, indeed, the Maharaja of Rajpore?”

  “I should hope so,” Sikander growled. “If I wasn’t, what would I bloody well be doing in his bedroom, eh?”

  While Lieutenant Munro remained unmoved by this jest, Campbell let out a low chuckle.

  “In that case, Your Majesty, I would be very grateful if you would be so kind as to accompany us. It is a matter of the utmost imperative, I assure you.”

  Sikander looked at him, unsure of how to respond. On a whim, he decided the Captain was not to be trusted. He was too handsome, for one, and decidedly overly familiar, a trait which Sikander had always found distasteful. And then, of course, there was the way his smile never quite reached his eyes, which remained watchful, calculating, almost reptilian.

  “I think not. Not only have you quite ruined my evening, but your manners are nothing short of deplorable. I have a pressing appointment with the Viceroy himself tomorrow morning, and you can be certain I shall inform him about your unforgivable behavior. Good evening! You may see yourself out.”