The Game - Laurie R. King [69]
“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 and 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