Tarquin Hall - The Case of the Missing Servant

"She's not been sleeping well, sir. She's getting migraines."

Puri shook his head gravely.

"It is only right and correct that you have come home," he said in a sympathetic, avuncular tone. "Your mummy and papa need every last drop of support they can get."

He took Bobby gently by the arm and, pulling him toward him, added, "I can only imagine what anxiety you and your near-or-dear are experiencing. Must be something akin to hell. But rest assured everything is being done to clear your papa's good name. By hook or crook we'll get these fraudulent charges reverted. I give you my word on that. Most Private Investigators never fails."

He released Bobby's arm.

"Thank you, sir. I'm very grateful to you. There's no way my father could have done this thing. How they can even suggest it, I don't know. He never broke one law in his entire life."

"I understand you're planning to work with him after your studies are complete?"

"Certainly, sir. It's always been my dream to work with Papa. There's so much I can learn from him. I want to make a difference the way he has."

Puri fished out a copy of his business card and handed it to him.

"Call me if any assistance is required. I can be reached night or day. If there's anything you wish to discuss-anything at all-dial my number. Confidentiality is my watchword."

"Right, sir," said Bobby.

Puri turned to leave, but twisted around on his left foot and exclaimed, "By God, so forgetful I'm getting these days! One question mark is there, actually."

"Sir?" Bobby frowned.

"Your whereabouts on the night of August twenty-first of this year? You were where exactly?"

"In London, sir."

"Acha! You already reached, is it?"

"I flew two weeks earlier."

"That is fine. Just I'm ticking all the boxes."

"No problem, sir."

Puri lingered for a moment, looking down at the ground, apparently lost in thought. Bobby put his hands in his pockets, took them out again and then folded them in front of his chest.

"Did you get to know her-Mary, that is?" asked the detective after a long pause.

"Know her, sir?"

"Must be you talked with her?"

"Not really, sir, she was, well, a servant. I mean, she made me tea and cleaned my clothes. That's about it. I was studying mostly."

"Can you tell me her last name or where she came from?"

"No, sir, I wouldn't be able to tell you that. My mother should know."

Puri reached inside his safari suit and took out a folded piece of paper, a photocopy of the coroner's photograph of the murder victim.

He handed it to Bobby without telling him what it was.

The young man unfolded it and grimaced at the gruesome image.

"Is that Mary?" asked the detective.

"I think so. It looks like her, sir," said Bobby, still staring down at the image. And then he suddenly pushed the photocopy back into Puri's hands, ran to the side of the steps and threw up.

Brigadier Kapoor called while Puri was on the way to see Munnalal. It was his third attempt in as many hours, but the detective had been too busy to pick up earlier.

"Puri! I've been trying to reach you all day! What is your present location?" he demanded as soon as the detective answered.

"Sir, I'm out-of-station, working on a most crucial and important case-"

"More important than mine, is it?" scoffed Brigadier Kapoor indignantly.

"Sir, honestly speaking, my commitment and dedication to your case is one hundred and ten percent. Just an emergency-type situation was there and it became necessary for me to leave Delhi right away for a day or two."

Puri sounded unreservedly conciliatory. He was, after all, in Brigadier Kapoor's employ, albeit temporarily, and it was expected that an employer would periodically berate his or her employees to keep them in line. If the detective had been in his client's shoes, he would have probably done the same. How had the Marathi poet Govindraj put it? "Hindu society is made up of men who bow their heads to the kicks from above and who simultaneously give a kick below."

"I don't want to hear excuses!" barked Brigadier Kapoor, sounding as if he were back on the parade ground. "An entire week has passed without a word. I've not received one piece of intelligence! Now report!"

In fact, it had only been five days since Puri had agreed to take on the case, and in that time, the Most Private Investigators team had been anything but idle. As he explained, his top two researcher-cum-analysts had been doing the initial footwork: getting hold of Mahinder Gupta's financial statements and phone records and analyzing all the data for anything suggestive or suspicious. At the same time, Puri's operative Flush had been ingratiating himself with the target's servants and neighbors.

He had also been going through the subject's garbage.

"Trash Analysis" was standard procedure in any matrimonial case, "Waste not, know not!" being one of the detective's catchphrases. The stub of an airline boarding pass or a cigarette butt smeared with lipstick had, in the past, been enough to wreck the marriage plans of more than a few aspirants.

Fortunately, getting hold of people's garbage was a cinch. Indian detectives were much luckier than their counterparts in, say, America, who were forever rooting around in people's dustbins down dark, seedy alleyways. In India, one could simply purchase an individual's trash on the open market.

All you had to do was befriend the right rag picker. Tens of thousands of untouchables of all ages still worked as unofficial dustmen and women across the country. Every morning, they came pushing their barrows, calling, "Kooray Wallah!" and took away all the household rubbish. In the colony's open rubbish dump, surrounded by cows, goats, dogs and crows, they would sift through piles of stinking muck by hand, separating biodegradable waste from the plastic wrappers, aluminium foil, tin cans and glass bottles.

Flush had had no difficulty whatsoever scoring Gupta's garbage, even though he lived on his own in a posh complex called Celestial Tower, which, according to a hoarding outside the front gate, provided a "corporate environment" in which residents could "Celebrate the New India!" But so far, Puri's promising young operative had discovered nothing incriminating.

"No condom, no booze, no taapshelf magazine," he'd told his boss the day before on the phone.

Gupta subscribed to publications such as The Economist and The Wall Street Journal Asia . He was strictly veg and ate a lot of curd and papayas. His only tipple apart from Diet Coke was Muscle Milk, a sports drink. He also used a number of different hair-and skin-care products.

Socially, he mixed in corporate circles and attended conferences with titles like BPO in the Financial Sector-Challenges & Opportunities. He visited the temple once a week and kept a small puja shrine in his bedroom, complete with photographs of his parents, who lived in Allahabad, and a number of effigies, including Ganesh, Hanuman and the goddess Bahuchar Mata.

Gupta employed a cook, who came for two hours in the afternoon; a sweeper, who, along with the floors, was charged with washing the three bathroom-cum-toilets every day; and a cleaner who was responsible for wiping everything the sweeper wasn't assigned to do.

The latter had told Flush that her employer was a private man who was meticulously tidy. Her only gripe was that he had recently purchased a "dhobi machine," which she resented because it had robbed her of the income she had been earning from washing his clothes.

The sweeper had grumbled about the low pay and the fact that Gupta shed a lot of hair, which blocked the shower drain in the master-bathroom-cum-toilet. She'd also had plenty to say about the memsahib down the hallway, who was apparently carrying on with another housewife in flat 4/67.