22

Bird on the Veranda

Bombay, February 1921

Jamshedji’s temper improved once the two of them arrived home. He answered Rustom’s call to come into the parlor for a sherry. Soon the two men were laughing.

Perveen went to the kitchen and saw Gulnaz at the stove. She was tempering cumin seeds and onion, making the tadka that would top a pot of yellow dal Perveen’s mother was stirring. “It smells good, but where’s John?” Perveen asked.

“Since it’s so late, we said to him, go, and we’ll make the finishing touches,” Camellia told her.

“I like cooking anyway,” Gulnaz said with a shrug. “Why are you so late?”

“I was out at the Farid bungalow and then my friend Alice’s house,” Perveen said, pouring herself a glass of water. “Pappa came for me at nine, but we had a mix-up getting home. Sorry.”

“You are spending all of your time with the English now!” Gulnaz spoke in a teasing tone, but it raised Perveen’s hackles. Her relationship with Gulnaz had changed after the surprise of finding out Perveen’s old schoolmate had been matched up with Rustom. Perveen was resentful that Gulnaz had such an easy, happy arranged marriage. Perveen imagined that Gulnaz might sometimes envy her three years in England followed by a career that took her out of the house daily. In any case, they chatted but never confided in each other the way they had during their time in the Elphinstone College ladies’ lounge.

She knew it wasn’t right—so she pushed herself to say something. “Alice and I want to go to the cinema tomorrow evening. Will you come?”

Gulnaz was silent for a spell. “I’m not sure. How can we sit with an English person? They’ve got their own section of the theater.”

“Alice isn’t that type. She will insist on sitting with us.” Perveen paused. “Besides, weren’t you the one who thought she’d be useful to know?”

“Yes, but . . .” Gulnaz didn’t finish. Perveen knew her sister-in-law wasn’t happy with the plan, but so be it.

Hanging up her apron, Camellia said, “No matter what you might do tomorrow, now is the time for washing hands. Supper is ready.”

The meal was a good one: lamb curry with fenugreek and potatoes, coconut dal, a chicken and tomato curry, and a savory rice pulao. Perveen ate, keeping an eye on her father. She had a slight worry that he hadn’t spoken to her in the car because he’d decided to take her off the case. He might have been counting up all the errors she’d made. The fact that she’d gone off walking Malabar Hill in the night could have tipped him over the edge.

But then, after supper was cleared, and Perveen was in the kitchen assembling a bowl of fruit and vegetable scraps for Lillian, he said he would join her on her balcony.

“God save the Queen!” Lillian squawked when they came out together. “Mataram!”

“You’re hitting both sides of politics, aren’t you?” Perveen said, smiling as she opened the cage.

“A clever bird indeed.” Jamshedji settled down in one of the rattan lounge chairs and balanced a snifter of port on the wide armrest. “Tell me everything.”

“All right. It’s a long story.”

Perveen explained how, after learning the facts, all three women had become hesitant to sign away their mahr, and then she recounted the terrible interruption of her talk with Mumtaz by Mukri. Hoping her father didn’t think she’d been too naïve, she confided, “It was such a shock. I hadn’t thought anyone could listen to us, and Mr. Mukri had told me he’d be away at work.”

“Households with two sections might appear to have privacy, but it could be that they have the fewest secrets.” Jamshedji sipped his port. “Precisely because of their walls and screens, people are curious to know everything.”

Lillian flew the short distance from her cage to the back of Jamshedji’s chair and pecked at his hair. He winced and batted at her until she flew off into the garden.

“Razia-begum managed to keep her role as the wakf’s mutawalli secret from Sakina-begum,” Perveen said. “That must have taken some doing. She said that she and her husband had agreed it was best.”

Her father sighed. “Farid-sahib was a considerate man. It seems he was seeking balance, so each wife had something with which to occupy herself.”

“I mentioned to you earlier that I talked with Razia-begum in the Daimler.” Perveen detailed how the murder confession broke down after the direct questions about her clothing.

“You could be wrong. Might you be advocating for Razia-begum a bit too strongly?” Jamshedji asked, studying her.

“I think it’s a classic case of a mother taking blame because she fears for her child. I must keep her away from the police until we know more. Right now, she’s panicked.”

Jamshedji nodded. “The need to defend Razia-begum may turn out to be moot, given the police have seized the durwan. Perhaps there will be evidence pointing to him.”

“Actually, Commissioner Griffith would like to investigate the women.”

At her father’s raised eyebrows, Perveen said, “I learned from Alice that the police commissioner called on her father to discuss Mr. Mukri’s death. The commissioner was interested in fingerprinting the women and searching the zenana.”

Jamshedji looked at her intently. “What did the men decide?”

“Sir David told the commissioner not to do it. Instead he advised the police to round up men recently released from prison.” Seeing her father’s dubious expression, Perveen added, “I don’t want to make life any harder on the widows, but I feel it would be dreadful if the police pinned the crime on an innocent. Certainly, if there is a homicidal person living at twenty-two Sea View Road, everyone is at risk. I’d want that individual to be caught.”

“To be apprehended and have a fair treatment according to the law,” Jamshedji corrected.

“Yes,” Perveen said, taking in her father’s serious expression.

“All right, then, I’ll tell you what I learned tonight,” Jamshedji said, taking another sip of his drink. “I went to Farid Fabrics’ mills and was fortunate to find the acting director, Mr. Farid’s cousin Muhammed, was still there. I told him about the demise of Faisal Mukri.”

“What was his reaction?”

“He said all the right things, but it didn’t seem as if he was heartbroken.” Jamshedji gave her a sardonic look.

Just as there wasn’t grief at 22 Sea View Road—just shock and fear that a savage act had taken place in the bungalow. Perveen asked, “Does he know where Mukri lived before the Farid home?”

“Apparently he had a rented room near the mill district, which he gave up when he had the chance to become household agent. But the office files had a record of his mother’s address in Poona. Muhammed Farid was relieved I planned to go in person to tell them the bad news.”

“I’m also glad you’re going,” Perveen said. “Did you ask him if there were any problems for Mukri within the company?”

“Muhammed said there was tremendous jealousy within the company about Farid-sahib giving such a perk to a minor accountant. Of course, I asked him why Farid-sahib hadn’t asked him, a relative living in town, to do it. He answered that Farid-sahib was worried about the company’s future and believed that for his cousin to do both jobs would be too much.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if Mukri poisoned the relationship,” Perveen cut in.

Jamshedji pointed a finger at her. “That is an ungrounded supposition. However, when I asked more questions about Mukri, Muhammed brought in the accounting supervisor, Mr. Sharma. Sharma was surprised to hear of the death and offered condolences. When I pressed him, he said he regretted to speak ill of the dead, but in truth, Mukri was only a fair worker. Much of his work was done by underlings.”

“Yet he managed to keep his job?”

“Mr. Sharma had heard a rumor that Mukri was a distant relative of Mr. Farid’s. That’s what Mukri told people all the time—that he was so close to Farid-sahib he’d surely become the mill director one day. It turned out he did get selected to be the household agent. Then he played this card to the greatest extent. When Mr. Farid fell ill, Mukri began going to work only two or three days a week, living in the bungalow and using the telephone and the occasional visit to connect with the company. Recently he ’d been coming to work just once a week.”

“Were you able to obtain information on the mill’s financial state? I hear most of Bombay’s mills aren’t doing so well these days.”

“True. In this case, Muhammed Farid blames the company’s decline on a string of poor decisions pushed by Mukri during Omar Farid’s illness. Apparently Mr. Mukri told management that Mr. Farid wished to produce new kinds of cloth now that khaki was in decline. The company began experimenting and invested in creating fabrics that haven’t sold well.”

“If Mr. Mukri was such a drain on the company and wasn’t being fired, isn’t there a chance one of his coworkers might have done him in?” She paused. “Perhaps Cousin Muhammed wished him ill.”

Jamshedji shook his head. “Muhammed Farid confirmed he was at work all day. I did not cross-examine him because his behavior isn’t for us to investigate. I went to him to get an address, and now I’m able to visit Mrs. Mukri to communicate my regrets, and to let her begin preparations for the funeral. I shall travel to Poona tomorrow.”

“One of Mr. Farid’s wives is from Poona,” Perveen said. “Sakina Chivne. Do you have time to call on them? Sakina-begum might have concerned relatives who would hurry in to help her, despite what she thinks.”

“Who would have thought, when I brought on my daughter, she’d be the one to direct my daily program?” Jamshedji said with a chuckle.

“If you can take care of two issues in one trip, isn’t it better?” she answered with a smile. “Tomorrow I’ll return to the Farids and see what other help they need.”

Now that she and her father had talked and a plan was in place, it should have been easy to sleep. But Perveen was haunted by the thought that she had overstepped with Razia. And it was unjust that the family’s durwan was in prison and could very likely be convicted through no fault of his own.

When she finally drifted off, she saw the Farids’ house in her mind—not the cream-colored miniature palace of daylight, but at night, with a light burning in just one window. Whose room was it? As Perveen hastened toward the bungalow, the light went out, and she had an overpowering fear that someone else was in mortal danger.