The Case of the Missing Servant

Ten

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.

Puri did not expect to hear from Facecream for at least 24 hours. She had not carried a mobile phone with her so she would have to go to a pay phone out in the street to call him.

Getting away from the house could prove difficult, but after working with the Nepali beauty on several dozen operations, the detective was in little doubt that she would find a way.

At Puri's request, Tubelight had sent two of his boys to Jaipur as well. Shashi and Zia had arrived in the Pink City yesterday and been tasked with trying to locate Kasliwal's former driver, Munnalal, and locating the spot on the Ajmer Road where the unidentified woman had been dumped on August 22.

Meanwhile, there was one other lead to follow: the stones Puri had found in Mary's room. He had arranged to have them sent to Professor Rajesh Kumar at the geology department of Delhi University.

"Perhaps Doctor-sahib can provide me with a clue to where they came from," Puri told Elizabeth Rani, who was waiting in front of Boss's desk as he placed the little stones, one by one, inside an envelope.

"We must leave no stone unturned, isn't it, Madam Rani?" said Puri, chuckling at his own pun. "It's a long shot, no doubt, but then no clue is ever insignificant, no?"

"Yes, sir," she answered efficiently before returning to her desk to make the arrangements for the envelope to be dispatched to Professor Kumar's office-Professor Kumar for whom, secretly, Elizabeth Rani had a soft spot.

Puri, who likened himself to a spider at the center of a web with silky tendrils branching out all around him, eased back into his chair, confident that all the little secrets of the Kasliwal household would soon be his. There wasn't another detective in India, private or otherwise, who could have handled it better. And (as Puri acknowledged, begrudgingly) there was only one to equal him.

The young hotshots straight out of detective school (like that bloody Charlie, Harun what's-his-name, who always wore a silk suit and gelled his hair so every goonda could spot him coming a mile off) certainly offered little in the way of competition. The problem with such Johnny-come-lately types was that they watched too much American television and imagined every case could be solved by turning up at a crime scene and using an ultraviolet light.

Not that forensics didn't have its place. As Puri had told a class of cadets at the Delhi headquarters of the Central Bureau of Investigation (the Indian equivalent of the FBI) during one of his recent lectures, Indians had been pioneers in the field.

"In the fifteenth century, one Delhi court investigator, Bayram Khan, solved the most brutal murder of the Great Mughal's courtesan by matching a hair he located floating in the baths where she was drowned by the eunuch Mahbub Alee Khan," the detective had read from a speech that had been typed-and of which the English grammar had been greatly improved-by Elizabeth Rani. "Also let us not forget the Tamil alchemist, Bhogar, who led the way in substance testing. For example, he made extensive comparisons of tobacco ashes. This achievement came a full one and a half centuries before British detective Sherlock Holmes wrote a monograph on the same subject without so much as acknowledging the earlier work."

Puri had gone on to talk about the great Azizul Haque and Hem Chandra Bose, who developed the fingerprint classification system and opened the first Fingerprint Bureau in Calcutta in 1897-although Sir Edward Richard Henry took the credit for their pioneering industry.

"So, as we can see, forensics certainly has its uses," he'd added. "But there is no substitute for good, old-fashioned intelligence gathering. The microscope cannot match the power of the human eye, we can say."

Naturally, in this field, India had also led the world.

"Some two thousand and three hundred years ago, Mr. James Bond's ancestors were living in caves," he'd said. "In those dark, distant days, there was no Miss Moneypenny, no Mr. Q, and the only gadgets were flints to strike together to make fire."

This point had got a gratifying laugh from his audience.

"But in India at this time, we were having the great Maurya Empire," the detective had continued. "The founder of our greatest dynasty was, of course, the political genius Chanakya. It was he who established what we can call the art of espionage. He was, in fact, the world's first spymaster, establishing a network of male and female secret agents. These satris, as they were thus known, operated throughout the empire and its neighboring kingdoms."

Puri had not needed to remind the cadets that it was Chanakya who had written the world's first great treatise on statecraft, the Arthashastra , an extraordinarily practical guide to running and nurturing a fair and progressive society-one that India's modern rulers, and indeed the world's, would have done well to study. But he had drawn their attention to the section on running a secret service and read an excerpt:

"'Secret agents shall be recruited from orphans. They shall be trained in the following techniques: interpretation of signs and marks, palmistry and similar techniques of interpreting body marks, magic and illusions, the duties of the ashramas, the stages of life, and the science of omens and augury. Alternatively, they can be trained in physiology and sociology, the art of men and society.'"

Chanakya, Puri explained, had recommended numerous disguises to be adopted while conducting clandestine operations.

"Brothel keepers, storytellers, acrobats, cooks, shampooers, reciters of puranas, cowherds, monks, elephant handlers, thieves, snake catchers and even gods, to name just a few," he said. "For agents planning to infiltrate a city, Chanakya suggested adopting the cover of a trader; those working on the frontiers should pose as herdsmen. When a secret agent needed to infiltrate a private household, he urged the use of-and I quote-"hunchbacks, dwarfs, eunuchs, women skilled in various arts and dumb persons.'"

Nowadays of course, dwarfs were no longer easy to recruit since many of them had found work in Bollywood. The wealthy classes were no longer inclined to hire hunchbacks as servants. Disguising yourself as a nun was no longer a guaranteed way of gaining access to the home of a high official. And, ever since one-rupee shampoo sachets had become available at paan stalls, shampooing had ceased to be a viable profession.

But the Arthashastra remained the basis of Puri's modus operandi. The section on the recruitment, training and use of assassins aside, the treatise remained as instructive today as it had proven to the rulers of the great Maurya Empire.

In all that time, human character had changed little.

"Nowadays," he'd concluded, "a man can fly from one end of the planet to another in a few hours only. Achievements in science are at a maximum. But still, there is more mischief going on than ever before, especially in overpopulated cities like Delhi."

Puri believed this was because the world was still passing through Kali Yuga, the Age of Kali, a time of debauchery and moral breakdown.

"More and more, people's moral compass is turning 180 degrees. So you must be vigilant. Remember what Krishna told Arjuna at the battle of Kurukshetra. 'The discharge of one's moral duty supersedes all other pursuits, whether spiritual or material.'"