We went around the back and entered Viceregal Lodge through a scullery, empty but warm, and followed our guide up a narrow and uncarpeted stairway to an upper room, warm and well lit, with armchairs, sofas, and low tables gathered in front of a great stone fireplace. Our guide closed the door behind us, and we all three peeled, unwrapped, and tugged ourselves free from the multiplicity of coats and shawls we wore.
Once free of his wrappings, our guide proved to be, not the chowkidar, but Geoffrey Nesbit. He heaped logs onto the coals in the grate, then pulled open a capacious and well-stocked cupboard. “Brandy? G and T?”
It was peculiarly exotic, to be seated on a high-backed sofa with the taste of brandy on the tongue, speaking English. There was a sort of echo in the first minutes of speech, almost as if my mind was translating the words into themselves.
“Have you had a successful week?” he asked.
“A valuable one,” Holmes replied.
Nesbit nodded as if he understood the value in a week on the road, but I thought he had not really heard the reply. My suspicion was confirmed when he said abruptly, “I don’t know how much you have heard of the world’s news while you were travelling here.”
“Not a great deal. There was a rumour that Lenin is dead—although it came to us as ‘the king of Russia.’ ”
“No rumour. He died the day you left Delhi, or the day before, it is far from certain. It appears the country will be governed by a triumvirate, never a good omen for stability.”
“But our own Parliament, that transfer of power has gone ahead?”
“The Americans are voluminously unhappy and the Russians grimly inclined to gloat, but yes, Mr Baldwin stepped down in the end, and Ramsay MacDonald has been confirmed. The new Secretary of State for India is Lord Olivier.”
“The governor of Jamaica? But he’s not Labour.”
“A number of the new cabinet aren’t. Critics are saying it’s because there aren’t enough competent Socialists to fill the ranks, although I’d say it’s more an attempt at mollifying the opposition. Still, there might have been considerably less alarm about a minority government had the Socialists not celebrated their victory by publicly singing both ‘The Marseillaise’ and ‘The Red Flag.’ The Bolsheviks will be invited to discuss the treaties and claims they tore up when they came into power. I can only pray Olivier has the sense to hold firm on India.” He put his glass to his mouth, discovered that he’d already drained it, and leant forward to replenish it with brandy and a very small dash of soda. “And Gandhi’s health is deteriorating. The man goes on a hunger-strike, then we get blamed when he becomes ill. Bombay may be forced to suspend his sentence so he doesn’t die in custody—the last thing we need is to create a martyr for the swaraj cause.” He tipped the glass down his throat, although I wouldn’t have thought him a heavy drinker.
As if he’d heard my thought, he slapped the glass down on the table and sat back. “Now, you wanted to know about the maharaja of Khanpur. I’m probably not the man to ask for an objective view.”
“You like the man,” Holmes noted.
“I’d even call him a friend, although our paths don’t cross that often, and then usually at events. But I’ve been a guest in his home any number of times over the years, and have found him not only a staunch supporter of Britain, but a fine sportsman as well, which to my mind counts for a lot.”
“Pig sticking,” I said, not intending to say the words aloud. But I did, and Nesbit heard the amusement, even distaste in my voice. Before he could do more than bristle, Holmes drew out his clay pipe, sure indication of a lecture.
“Russell, I don’t know that you are clearly picturing just what this particular sport entails,” he said sternly. I permitted Nesbit to refill my glass, as this was clearly going to take a while—although given the topic, I couldn’t see why. “The British pig is an indolent creature of unsanitary and occasionally comic habits, who most of the time is no more dangerous than a milch cow or draught horse. A wild Asian boar, on the other hand, is as much as three hundred pounds of furious muscle directed by a sly and malevolent brain and armed with four curved razors as much as eight inches long, any of which is capable of slicing through a horse’s leg, or a man’s—few other blood sports give the quarry such an equal opportunity for victory. The whimsical name of the sport aside, pig sticking demands strength, endurance, and a degree of horsemanship far beyond what one sees on, for example, a fox hunt. Pig sticking, or to use the slightly more dignified term employed in Bengal, hog hunting, embodies the warrior virtues of both cultures, East and West. It reduces a soldier’s training to its essence: iron nerves, an acute sensitivity to the enemy, the ability to commit to an instantaneous response, and an overpowering determination to win—precisely those qualities one requires in battle or to quell a riot. Saying that a man is a pig-sticker does not mean merely that he is proficient at relieving the countryside of a pest; it says that the man is possessed of singular ability and self-control, even wisdom. In the context of India, pig sticking is the game of games.”
Nesbit, twice possessor of the Kadir Cup, looked abashed at this implied tribute, but it was as well Holmes said it. If nothing else, it clarified Nesbit’s attitude towards his sporting friend “Jimmy,” although to my mind, the male’s passion for games often led him to become frivolous towards those things requiring serious thought, and to be serious about the essentially frivolous. But this was hardly the place for philosophical debate.
“I understand,” I said. “You will pardon me, Captain Nesbit, if as a Jew and a woman who lives on a farm, I don’t take pigs seriously. But I shall endeavour to keep in mind the sharp edge of the tusks rather than the comical twist of the tail.”
Nesbit studied his glass, trying to retrieve the conversation’s thread before Holmes had diverted us into sport. “Yes, well, the maharaja of Khanpur. He is as near to what the Americans might call a ‘self-made man’ as an hereditary ruler can get. You no doubt realise that the hundreds of native states within India have huge differences. One state has a population of less than two hundred in under an acre; on the other hand, Kashmir occupies an area larger than France, while Hyderabad possesses an income greater than most of the European countries. Some are one step from feudal barbarism, in their society and their economy, others well on their way to becoming industrial powers; it’s entirely up to each state’s prince. The British Resident may suggest and recommend, but he rarely asserts any authority. It’s the price we pay for their loyalty—the princes saved us in the Mutiny. Indeed, one might even say that they made the Empire possible. They are still essential to British rule, a guarantee that if the tide turns against us again, we have a bulwark against the waves. If you will pardon the flight of fancy,” he added.
“The princes are, to put it bluntly, above the law of British India. Short of declaring war or entering into independent diplomatic relations, they are free to do as they like, to spend their time and their fortunes gambling in Monte Carlo or hunting tigers or filling their days with dancing girls. Only if they become too wildly erratic, or too political, do we step in. But their sins have to be pretty extreme.”
I kept my face expressionless, but all in all, it sounded as if British India had managed to preserve and encourage all that was bad about an hereditary aristocracy, buying the princes off by averting eyes from their misdemeanors while heaping them with ritual displays of power—the big shooting parties, the nine-or seventeen-or twenty-one-gun salutes—in hopes that they might not notice their essential impotence.
“A generation ago,” Nesbit was saying, “a man in my position might argue that the British would remain a part of India always; now, only the most self-deluding burra-sahib would claim that. This country is set on the road to independence, a journey we have the responsibility of assisting and guiding. And as we prepare to step aside, two competitors are jostling to move into the vacuum of power: the Congress Party, which is largely Hindu, and the Moslem League. I’m sure you are fully aware of the deep a
nd abiding mistrust and simmering violence that exists between Hindu and Moslem here. The two religions are essentially incompatible: Moslem views Hindu as a worshipper of idols, Hindu condemns Moslem as unclean cow-killer. And that isn’t even beginning to touch the other parties, the Communists on the one side and the swarajists on the other, who hate and mistrust each other. In order to reach a common ground between the Congress Party and the League, there are many who believe that the princes will come into their own, as a sort of House of Lords with real power, providing continuity between a colonial past and a more democratic future.
“And that is where your maharaja comes in, Mr Holmes. His father died when the boy was small, four or five—poison was suspected, but never proved, although half a dozen servants and two of his wives were put to death over it. Having had a look at the file, I should say it was more likely to have been some treatment for the syphilis he picked up in southern France—the man had an unfortunate fondness for the rougher side of life.
“The old man, Jimmy’s grandfather, was one of the feudal types, interested only in harem and toys—quite literally: He had one of the most extraordinary collections of mechanical oddities in the world, and seems to have had some fairly rum practices behind the walls of his palace. In fact, at the time he died, despite his service during the Mutiny, an investigation had begun into some of his less savoury practises. I mean to say, we’re happy to allow a proved friend of the Crown a certain amount of leeway when it comes to governing the country his family have ruled for centuries, but one can only turn a blind eye on depravity and despoilment for so long, and buying small children for …” Nesbit stopped to study his hands pinkly for a moment. “For purposes best suited to the harem, goes too far. In any event, his age caught him up before the government could step in, and he died in his bed at the age of eighty-four, his only son long dead and his eldest grandson Jimmy just eleven.
“Remarkably enough, Jimmy seems to have avoided inheriting his father and grandfather’s worst excesses. He likes his toys, true, although with him it’s motorcars and aeroplanes—he’s got one of the sub-continent’s highest air fields. But the worst of the debauchery passed him by, and by some miracle he seems to have found some brains and backbone as well. He went away to university—America, funnily enough, rather than Oxford or Cambridge—then played in Europe, Africa, and South America for eight or nine years, developing his taste for big game. And then he turned his eyes on his home, and brought some ideas with him. In the fourteen years he’s been back, the kingdom has gone through enormous changes. Khanpur’s already got one of the best programmes of sanitation in the country, and Jimmy regularly sends boys out to school in England and America.
“He has two wives and a dozen or so concubines, eight or nine children, which are fairly conservative numbers for a man in his position. He’s sending his heir to school in England, and spends a certain amount of the state monies on improvements for the people—schools, water, sanitation. His heaviest personal expenditures, if the word ‘personal’ has any meaning in a princely state, have been on his zoo, used also for the breeding of exotic game animals, and on the restoration of what they call ‘The Forts,’ five miles outside of the city—actually two halves of the old Moghul palace, called Old Fort and New Fort, since there’s two or three centuries between them. Jimmy maintains the Palace proper in the city, where his womenfolk live, but he seems to prefer The Forts. Certainly whenever I’ve visited Khanpur, that’s where he’s been. It’s closer to the hunting.
“He’s made friends of most of the high-ranking political officers, and always invites visiting dignitaries for a shoot—generally the kind that ends up with a football-field covered with birds, although from time to time he’ll take the truly honoured on a tiger-hunt, with elephants and the lot. He has friends in high places, and a genius for combining European sensibilities with traditional Indian warrior virtues. He’s a Kshatriya, if that means anything to you.”
We nodded; the warrior caste was theoretically a step under the priestly Brahminical elite, but in practice they wielded the greater political and economic power, and were twice-born as the Brahmins were.
“So you are saying that the maharaja of Khanpur is beyond reproach?” Holmes asked.
“Well, no. I am telling you that to all appearances, he is a high-ranking aristocrat, loyal to the Crown, stable, and forward-looking. What, indeed, I have always regarded him.”
“ ‘To all appearances,’ ” Holmes repeated. “And beneath the appearances?”
“Understand, I have not seen the man since last year’s Kadir Cup in March. And I will say that at the time, he struck me as being uncharacteristically short-tempered. Nothing extreme, you understand, just general impatience. He clubbed a beater with the weighted butt of a short spear, knocked him out briefly.”
Beating a servant unconscious was evidently not considered “extreme” behaviour on the part of a pig-sticker, I noted.
“Further enquiries this past ten days have come up with some disturbing facts. Our Resident in Khanpur took ill four months ago and hasn’t yet returned from England, which makes communication from within the state considerably less efficient than usual. Khanpur has recently instigated a relatively aggressive border patrol, which is frankly unusual in a native state—although border guards are by no means forbidden under the treaty, it would have been brought to our attention had the Resident been there. One of the neighbouring states has issued a complaint that its nawab’s daughter is missing, stolen into Khanpur, although from the girl’s reputation, they’ll probably find her in Bombay with a lover. And there have been a number of unsubstantiated complaints concerning the ill-treatment of his people—a young man who made speeches in Khanpur city has vanished, and bazaar rumour has it he’s been fed to the maharaja’s pet lions, which is slightly absurd. Another whisper concerns a concubine killed in a fit of pique, which is a rumour I hear at least twice a year from all over the country, that when investigated has proved true once, to my memory. And a rumour of a train from Moscow carrying three dismantled German aeroplanes, which went missing at the end of the train line. These are, of course, all things which the Resident would have investigated, if he’d been there. But added to the maharaja’s visit to Moscow, when we had only known of his being in Europe, and compounded by his invitation to a young man with known Bolshevik contacts and sympathies, then, yes, it is time we had a closer look inside the state.”
I had been involved with this life long enough to hear unspoken messages behind a monologue; I waited for the man to work around to what he wanted of us.
Holmes, too, was clearly impatient to hear the man’s proposal, and urged him onward with the dry observation, “To say nothing of the matter of three dead agents, tortured and robbed of their charms, all found dead within twenty miles of the Khanpur border.”
Nesbit grunted unhappily. “You came to this country to look for Kimball O’Hara,” he said, then stopped again to reach for the brandy decanter and pour himself a couple of undiluted inches. I was starting to feel positively apprehensive about this. Whatever his point was, he clearly did not expect us to like it much. “On the voyage out, this other matter came to your attention, and you brought it to me.”
Holmes had had enough. “Come, man, get it off your chest. Are you saying you wish us to go to Khanpur for you?”
“Yes,” Nesbit said, sounding relieved. “But it’s not just—here, let me show you what I’m getting at.” He abandoned his drink and went to a low, deep cabinet on the wall, opening one of its shallow drawers and pulling out two maps. He cleared the glasses from the table and smoothed the first page out before us, a map of all India, its long triangle heavily marked with irregular blue shapes that covered nearly all of the north and a great deal of the centre: the princely states.
I blinked in surprise. “I hadn’t quite realised how much of the country is in private hands.”
“A third of the land, a quarter of the people. Native states hold some of the richest
agricultural land, diamond mines, key passes into Afghanistan and Tibet.” His finger tapped a place heavily marked by topographical lines, orientating us to the whole. “Here’s Simla. There’s Delhi,” he added, touching his finger to the city three inches south, then dragging it up in the opposite direction. “The Afghan border here; Tibet; Kashmir up here, and just below it, looking deceptively small and out-of-the-way, lies Khanpur.” When we had absorbed its setting, he plucked the other map from the floor and allowed it to settle over the first.
Where the first map had been a product of some government printing agency, a cooperative effort with more detail than personality, this page was a work of art, a depiction of the northernmost knob of the Indian nation, lettered by a hand both neat and familiar. I bent over it to be sure.
“Yes,” Nesbit said, “this is O’Hara’s work. It took him five years walking every hill and track, counting those steps on his Tibetan prayer-beads, recording what he had seen and done each night on the back of a sheet inside his prayer wheel. I had the privilege of accompanying him once, and I’ve never seen a man more single-minded at the task. One year, O’Hara spent an entire hot season as a punkah-wallah, pulling the fan in a wealthy merchant’s house, his ear to the wall listening to everything said inside. When we worked together, I’d see him interrupted time and again by locals wishing a blessing or a piece of news, or wanting to give him food or shelter, and each time he would turn aside and talk yet somehow keep track of his count, never losing track once. Brilliant man. And beyond being simply a surveyor, he seemed to know just where to ask the questions, precisely how to find the key people, however unlikely they might be. He was … It is difficult to explain, other than saying he took joy in his work. The hill folk saw that joy and interpreted it as holiness. He went everywhere as a monk, and was apparently never doubted, even when he was young. He wasn’t like any monk I ever met, but somehow when he put on that red hat, you believed him completely. It was something in the eyes.”