Page 61 of The Secret Keeper of Jaipur

MALIK

Jaipur

The clerk on the other end of the phone at Chandigarh Ironworks sounds like he’s about my age. When I introduce myself as the assistant to the accountant of the Jaipur Palace, I can almost hear him sit up straighter.

“Bhai,”I say, “I’m hoping you can help me.”

I clear my throat as if I am reluctant to begin. “This is my first important job, you see, and I’m embarrassed to admit that I have misplaced several documents.”

I follow this up with a nervous laugh.

He seems to be an agreeable sort of fellow. He chuckles. “I’ve done the same myself.” I imagine him as conscientious, understanding, popular among his friends.

I exaggerate my sigh to make sure he understands how grateful I am. “The palace has so many projects going on, and what I need I’ve probably filed in the wrong drawer.” I’m giving him my hail-fellow-well-met act—a holdover from Bishop Cotton. “Without your assistance, it could take me hours to find those documents. But,bhai, think we could keep this between ourselves?”

“No bother.” He lowers his voice. “Which documents exactly? I’ll mail a copy of them out to you.”

Mail from Chandigarh might take a week. Maharani Latika has given us three days. “So very kind of you,” I say. “Alas, my boss...he needs them right away, you see. He will have my head on a platter and serve it to the maharani unless I get them to him within the hour.”

“But you’re calling from Jaipur. How can I get them to you in an hour?”

“I only need the numbers. Maybe you could send them to me in a telegram?”

Now I hear him falter. “I would have to justify the expense,bhai. Telegrams are expensive.”

I chuckle. “Send it collect, and the palace will pay! I can always find a place to bury the expense. Accounting always has a way to work around these things,hahn-nah?” That gets an appreciative laugh out of him.

I tell him to send the telegram to the Jaipur post office and give him all the necessary details. Then I get up and grab some random invoices from my desk, so that when I pass Hakeem’s office, it looks as if I’m taking care of some official, necessary work.

“Abbas?”

I had not expected him to stop me. I turn my head, but not my body, as if I’m in a hurry. “Yes, Sahib?”

“The theater floor reconstruction? I still haven’t seen the estimate.”

I hold up the papers in my hand. “One last thing to verify. I’ve not yet received the cost of the seating. I think Singh-Sharma hasn’t figured out what needs to be replaced, and what can be repaired.”

He stares at me, trying to look stern, and glides his fingers under his mustache. “Make sure it’s done by end of day.”

I nod. Then I head out the front doors and make my way to the Jaipur post office. Now that I know he tattled about me to Samir Singh, I’m giving Hakeem a wide berth. Apparently, he’s not as dull as I thought, but neither is he the diligent accountant I’ve assumed him to be. Why would Hakeem do the Singhs’ bidding? Is Samir paying him to be his spy within the palace organization?

On my way to the post office, I’m thinking about Auntie-Boss telling me the bricks she saw in Shimla are similar to the ones I’ve seen here at the site of the balcony collapse. I knew, then, that I needed to find out if the two are related and how.

I’m also thinking of the argument I witnessed yesterday at the Agarwal house between Auntie-Boss and Manu.

Kanta and Niki had gone to the sweetshop to get dessert. Manu, Lakshmi and I were in the Agarwal drawing room. When Lakshmi told Manu what I’d found, and that she’d gone, on his behalf, to visit the Maharani Latika, he exploded. “You went behind my back? Her Highness will think I have no spine. That I have to send a—a—”

“A woman?” Auntie-Boss was speaking in her calm voice, the one she always used when placating her more difficult henna clients.

Manu said, “Don’t you see how it looks? It’s like you’ve cut my legs out from under me! All of Jaipur will know Manu Agarwal is a coward, not to mention an embezzler of the highest order!”

He turned to look at me in the armchair. “Andyou,Malik! I took you on in good faith, and you’re trying to dig up—dirty laundry? You’re talking about this project to all and sundry without my knowledge?”

I had never seen Uncle so angry. I didn’t think he was capable of it. I watched him pace round and round his drawing room, his arms flailing, his hair flying about as if it, too, was gesticulating. If I hadn’t known him since I was a child, I’d think he was about to have a nervous breakdown, just as my English master at Bishop Cotton did when he found out his wife was cheating on him with the math tutor.

Boss’s soothing tone never wavered. “I’d never want Niki to hear his father called either of those things,” she said. “That’s why I went to see Her Highness.”

The mention of his son’s name stopped him in his tracks. When he looked at her, Manu’s face was contorted in anguish.

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