The Game - Laurie R. King [70]
“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