Tarquin Hall - The Case of the Missing Servant

"We might be here for hours," moaned Majnu, who was always whining. They had been outside the station for an hour already and he was annoyed at having to work late.

"We have no other choice," Mummy told him. "Everyone else is being negligent in this matter. Some action is required."

At around 10:40, a man in plain clothes emerged from the station. Kishan recognized him as the person he'd seen leaving the scene of the shooting.

"Madam, please don't tell anyone it was me who told you! The cops will kill me!" he said when he realized that the shooter was a police-wallah.

"Your secret is safe," Mummy reassured Kishan, giving him a couple of hundred rupees for his trouble. "Now go home and we'll take it from here."

The servant boy did not have to be told twice. He hurriedly exited the car and rushed off into the darkness.

On the other side of the road, Red Boots got into an unmarked car, started the ignition and pulled into the road, heading west.

Mummy and Majnu followed behind. But the driver kept getting too close and she had to scold him more than once.

"There's a brain in that skull or just thin air or what?"

Twenty minutes later, they found themselves pulling up outside a fancy five-star Gurgaon hotel.

Red Boots left his car with the valet and went inside.

"I'm going to follow him. You stay out here in the car park," Mummy told Majnu.

"Yes, madam," sighed the driver, who was by now in a sulk.

Puri's mother passed through the hotel doors-they were opened by a tall Sikh doorman with the kind of thick beard and moustache that appealed to tourists-into the plush lobby. Red Boots had turned left, past the bellboy's desk and the lifts. Mummy saw him disappear inside a Chinese restaurant, Drums of Heaven.

Outside the entrance, she stopped for a moment and looked down at what she was wearing in alarm; her ordinary chikan kurta and churidaar pajamas were hardly appropriate for such a fancy place.

"But what to do?" she said to herself, continuing her pursuit.

Beyond a kitsch dragon and pagoda, Mummy was greeted by an elegant hostess, who looked Tibetan. Would Madam like a smoking or nonsmoking table?

"Actually I'm meeting one friend, only," replied Mummy. "Almost certainly she's arrived. Just I'll take a look. So kind of you."

The hostess escorted Mummy to the back of the restaurant, where Red Boots was sitting with a fat-throated man in a white linen suit. They were both smoking cigarettes and drinking whisky.

Behind them there was a vacant table for two; Mummy made a beeline for it, sitting directly behind her mark.

"Must be my friend has yet to arrive," she told the Tibetan lady. "Her driver's always getting confusion."

The hostess placed a menu on the table and went back to her podium.

Mummy pretended to peruse the dim sum section while trying to eavesdrop on Red Boots's conversation with Fat Throat, gradually inching her chair backward as close as she dared.

The Muzak and the general murmur from the other tables drowned out most of their words. So Mummy asked the waiter to turn off the music-"Such a headache is there"-and, after turning up her hearing aid to full volume, she was able to grasp a few clear sentences.

"You'd better not fail again. Get him out of the way or the deal won't go through," Fat Throat was saying in Hindi.

"Don't worry, I'll take care of him," replied Red Boots.

"That's what you said before and you missed."

"I told you I'll get it done and I'll get-"

Just then Mummy felt a searing pain in her head.

The waiter had returned and asked to take her order. The effect was like having a screaming megaphone put up to her ear.

"Madam, are you all right?" asked the waiter.

Again his words boomed through her head and Mummy flinched in pain, managing to turn her hearing aid down to normal before he could ask anything else.

"Yes, yes, quite all right," she said a little breathlessly. There was a loud ringing in her right ear and she felt dizzy. "I think I'd better step outside. Some air is required."

Gathering up her handbag, Mummy made her way out of the restaurant and the hotel.

She found Majnu lying back in his seat fast asleep.

"Wake up, you duffer!" screeched Mummy, banging on the window. "What is this, huh? Dozing off on the job. Think I'm paying you to lie around? You're supposed to be keeping an eye out and such."

"For what, madam?"

"Don't do talkback! Sit up!"

Mummy got into the back of the car and waited.

Forty minutes later, Red Boots and Fat Throat came out of the hotel, shook hands and parted ways. The latter got into a black BMW.

"You follow that car," instructed Mummy. "And pay attention, na!"

Soon they were heading through Sector 18. But Majnu had grown overly cautious and stayed too far back. When the BMW turned left at a light, he got stuck behind two trucks. By the time the light changed and the trucks had given way, Fat Throat's car was nowhere in sight.

"Such a simple thing I asked you to do, na! And look what happens! Ritu Auntie is doing better driving than you and she can't do reverse!" cried Mummy.

Having his driving compared to a woman's was the worst insult Majnu could imagine and he sulked in silence.

"Now, drive me back to my son's home," she instructed. "Tomorrow we'll pick up the trail. Challo!'"

"Mr. Puri, they've taken him!" shouted Mrs. Kasliwal without so much as a hello when the detective answered his phone the next morning. She sounded more irate than panicked. "Fifteen minutes back they came knocking without warning. There was such a scene. Media persons were running around hither and thither, invading our privacy and trampling my dahlias!"

"Please calm yourself, madam, and tell me who it is who is taking who!" said Puri, never at his most patient or sympathetic when dealing with a hysterical or melodramatic woman (and even less so at 7:45 when he was in the middle of shaving).

"My husband, of course! The police arrested him! Never could I have imagined it could happen here! Some upstart police-wallah arresting Chippy like a…a common criminal for the whole world to see."

"On what charge?" asked the detective. But she was still talking.

"Have these people no respect for privacy, Mr. Puri? I've seen animals at the zoo behaving with more dignity!"

Mrs. Kasliwal started berating someone in the room with her. One of the servants, evidently. Puri wondered if it could be Facecream. Then suddenly, she was back.

"How this can happen, Mr. Puri? Is it legal? Surely the police can't just go around arresting respectable people and casting clouds over family reputations whenever they fancy? There has to be some cause."

It was true that before the age of 24-hour television news, the police would never have made a show of arresting a man of Kasliwal's status. But nowadays, high-profile arrests were public spectacles. This was the cops' idea of PR-to give the impression that they were doing something other than extorting bribes from drivers.

"Madam, please tell me, with what is he charged?" asked Puri again. But Mrs. Kasliwal still wasn't listening.

"I want to know what you're going to do about this, Mr. Puri," she continued, barely pausing for breath. "Thus far, I must say the quality of your service is most unsatisfactory. I can't see you're getting anywhere. You came here for a few hours, asked some questions and then did a disappearing act. Have you made any progress at all?"

"Madam, will you please tell me with what your husband's charged?" said the detective.

Mrs. Kasliwal let out an irritated tut. "Pay attention, Mr. Puri. I told you already. Chippy has been charged with murder. Police are now saying he killed that silly servant girl Mary. But it is all lies. They're trying to cook the case."