Tarquin Hall - The Case of the Missing Servant

Seema found little opportunity to speak with any of the casual staff, either. The dishwasher girl who came for an hour to scrub all the pots and pans before continuing on to a number of other neighboring households was evidently intimidated by Bablu and kept her head down at the sink. The beautician who came to give Madam threading and maalish had airs and didn't deign to say so much as a please or thank-you for a cup of tea. And as for the dalit toilet cleaner, who came from a rag pickers' colony on the edge of Jaipur, she was a mute.

The only person Seema managed to talk to properly was Jaya, the other young maidservant, who had been working in the house since early August.

In the late afternoon, when Madam went out visiting friends, the two of them worked together sweeping and mopping the veranda. Given that Jaya was intensely shy and evidently unhappy, Seema broke the ice by telling her about some of her adventures. She talked about her days with a travelling theater troupe in Assam; the year she spent working as an ayah to a couple of Delhi socialites' children; and her experiences as a Mumbai bar girl and how a crorepati businessman had fallen in love with her and proposed.

These stories were all true, even though many of the mitigating circumstances surrounding them were adapted for the audience.

Jaya liked listening to them and quickly took to her new friend. On a couple of occasions, she even had cause to smile.

That evening, when all the day's chores were done, Jaya led Seema to the servant quarters at the back of the compound.

There were five rooms in all. The mali occupied the first (starting from the left); the next belonged to Kamat; the third was empty; the fourth, which had posters of the Virgin Mary and Hrithik Roshan on the wall, was vacant as well; and the last room belonged to Jaya.

Jaya warned against staying in the fourth room because the door was warped and did not close properly. But Seema said she liked the idea of the two of them being neighbors. Besides, the door could be fixed.

Together they cleaned the room, taking down the posters. And afterward, Seema took her idols from her bag. Having arranged them on the narrow windowsill of the front window, she lit an incense stick and said a prayer.

The two maidservants spent the rest of the evening chatting some more and sharing a few dates. Seema related more stories about her adventurous past and, now and again, asked Jaya about the other servants.

Soon, she had learned that the mali was stoned all the time and always passed out in the evening. Bablu was gay, but pretended to be straight even though there wasn't a Salman Khan movie he hadn't seen. Kamat often drank and turned extremely aggressive and there was a rumor going around that he had raped a girl working in another house.

At ten o'clock the two decided to turn in and Seema went back to her room.

She heard Jaya close her door and turn the key in the lock and it was with some effort that she managed to do the same.

An hour later, Seema was woken by the sound of a whistle. And then someone tried opening her door.

She called out, "Who's there?" But there was no reply and she heard footsteps running away.

Cautiously, Seema got out of bed, went to the door, opened it and looked outside. It was pitch dark and there was no one in sight.

In her right hand, she held the four-inch Nepali Khukuri knife that she always kept under her pillow at night.

There were fifteen phone lines running into the Khan Market offices of Most Private Investigators Ltd., only six of which were used, officially, by the company. The rest were for undercover operations.

Each of these nine lines had its own dedicated handset, answering machine and a voice-activated tape recorder arranged on a long table in the "communications room" across the hallway from Puri's office. In front of each phone lay a clipboard with notes detailing how the line was being used and precisely how it should be answered.

These notes were for the benefit of Mrs. Chadha, whose job it was to answer the nine phones in a variety of voices.

It was vital, but mostly uncomplicated work. Much of the time, all she had to do was pretend to be a receptionist or a phone operator and then connect the call to either Puri or one of his operatives.

Recently, for example, lines one to four had been assigned to "Hindustan Pharmaceuticals" (as part of the investigation on behalf of the state of Bihar into the illicit sale of legally grown opium). Mrs. Chadha had been required to pick up all calls to those numbers with the words, "Hindustan Pharmaceuticals, your health is our business, how may I be of assistance?" before connecting them to Puri, a.k.a. Ranjan Roy, CEO.

But at other times, Mrs. Chadha, who was a member of the South Extension Amateur Theatrical Society and a gifted impressionist and liked her job because she could spend most of the day knitting, had to play more complicated roles.

During one of the latest matrimonial investigations, line seven had been dedicated to the "Hot and Lusty" escort service, and for that Mrs. Chadha had had to adopt a husky voice and arrange bookings for a certain Miss Nina.

For the foreseeable future, line nine was allocated to a Chinese takeout called "Hasty Tasty" and for this Mrs. Chadha sounded harried and impatient and asked questions like, "How hot you want chili chicken?"

To help make things sound authentic, the communications room was equipped with a multideck sound system. This had been set up by Flush and worked automatically. Whenever a call came though, the machine would start playing appropriate background noise.

For Hindustan Pharmaceuticals the ambience was nothing special, just general office sounds: typing, murmuring, the distant ringing of other phones. Calls to the Hot and Lusty line triggered a Muzak version of the theme to Love Story . And when anyone rang Hasty Tasty, Mrs. Chadha found herself speaking over the clatter of pots and pans, gushes of steam and the cries of irate chefs.

Usually Puri was able to give Mrs. Chadha a rough timing for when a call was expected.

The same morning that Seema applied for work at Raj Kasliwal Bhavan in Jaipur, the detective told Mrs. Chadha to expect line six to ring at around nine o'clock.

When the call came, it was closer to 9:30.

Putting aside the sweater she was knitting for her youngest grandson, Mrs. Chadha answered the phone with a polite "Ji?"

The woman on the other line asked for a certain Mrs. Kohli.

"Yes, it is she," she said in English, sticking to her own voice for once.

The conversation that ensued panned out just as Puri had predicted. The caller, a well-spoken lady called Mrs. Kasliwal, divulged during a two-minute preamble that she had a large house in Jaipur, that her husband was a well-respected lawyer, and that her handsome son was studying in London.

Eventually she came to the point. Had a servant girl called Seema worked for the Kohlis?

"For three years or thereabouts," answered Mrs. Chadha. "A most satisfactory worker she was."

"Might I ask why she was terminated?" asked Mrs. Kasliwal.

"Actually, my eldest son and his family returned from posting in Kathmandu and he brought back one ayah, so there is no need for the girl."

"But you had no complaints?" asked Mrs. Kasliwal, sounding as if she would need convincing.

"Not at all," said Mrs. Chadha. "One can say she's a cut above the riffraff."

The conversation drifted on to other matters, with Mrs. Kasliwal dropping a few names and extending an invitation to tea the next time the Kohlis were in Jaipur.

After she hung up, Mrs. Chadha logged the call on the appropriate clipboard and called Puri to tell him that the conversation had gone well. Then she got back to her knitting while she waited for the next scheduled call. A young, prospective groom was expected to call on line seven and ask for the services of Miss Nina.