The Sheriff of Bombay. H. R. f. Keating
the Svashbuckler.
‘Now, sir,’ Dr Framrose said, scuttling back into the room and addressing the film star, “you are a foreigner in a strange land. So let me tell you what we in India do for our filles de joie, of which shortly you will be seeing some prime specimens.’
He pushed his slipped spectacles back up his long nose with a thin sliding finger and turned to Ghote.
‘You are acquainted with that excellent work The Ten Princes, Inspector?’ he asked.
‘It is a film only?’ Ghote inquired. ‘I am not seeing many films nowadays, I regret.’
His answer seemed to please Dr Framrose, at least to judge by the vigour of his cackling laugh.
‘Work of prose, Inspector,’ he said at last. ‘Work of prose from the seventh century, one of the glories of our Indian heritage. Now, sir …’
Out in the street, amid the raucous blare of two or three different filmi tunes emanating from the open-fronted restaurants on either side, with the sound of quarrels and the whistlings and croonings of feminine enticement, with the tea vendors’ cries of ‘Chai … Biscoot’ loud in their ears, the doctor seized the Svashbuckler by the elbow and, hurrying him along, retailed the ancient wisdom in a voice that swooped and soared as high and low as the massed violins and cascading silvery jal-tarangs of the music all around.
‘The duties of the mother of a courtesan, sir. As told by the sage of old. One, to provide nourishment from the earliest age to develop stateliness, vigour, complexion and intelligence while at the same time harmonizing the gastric calefactions and the secretions. Then, instruction from the fifth year in the arts of flirtation, major and minor. A conversational acquaintance with grammar — most important, that — and profound skill in moneymaking, in sport, in betting on fighting cocks and games of chess. Next, obtaining wide advertisement for her charms and beauty through astrologers and others, and finally, raising her price to the highest when she has become an object of general desire.’
They came to a halt in front of a house no more dilapidated than the others, its doorway no darker, the girls behind the bars of the ground-floor room as brazen.
‘Now, sir,’ said the doctor loudly. ‘Take note, all this at street level is of no concern to our good gharwali Heera. She operates on the floor above. A much more select establishment. There you will be able to observe the gastric calefactions and the secretions at their most charming, and I myself shall take the place of the astrologer in praising their particular beauties and skills.’
Ghote began rapidly to alter his opinion of Dr Framrose. Was he not positively encouraging his distinguished visitor to debauchery now? To dangerous debauchery?
As they were about to enter the narrow doorway, where on a bench under the light of a paper-garlanded, flyblown electric bulb, sat three girls from the establishment above, one of the whores from behind the bars reached out and caught at Ghote’s arm.
‘Ten rupees only,’ she cooed.
He shook her off and began to follow the doctor and the big shambling Britisher inside.
‘Eight rupees,’ the whore called out after him more loudly. ‘Six. Four. Two. Four rupees on the cot, two only on the mat.’
Ahead there was a narrow flight of ill-lit stairs, deep almost as a ladder. In the wake of the others he set foot on them. It was when he was nearly at the top that there occurred the incident that was almost completely to overwhelm him with the perplexities it brought in its train.
There was a passageway straight in front with three flimsy partition doors off it. Only the weak light coming through a window behind them illuminated it, and his view was partially blocked by the tall figure of Dr Framrose and the bulkier one of the Svashbuckler. But, as his head had come level with the bare boards of the floor, his attention had been attracted by a sharp scuffling at the far end.
Stepping up higher, he had seen, or half-seen, in the gloom two people. One of them, the nearer one to him, was a woman, a huge fat creature dressed in a gaudy red sari with a wide gold border. And the other, beyond her and all but hidden by her, was a man.
There was something furtive about the pair of them, hurried and furtive, that kept his attention fixed, the unconscious reaction of a trained police officer. The fat woman was pushing the man energetically in front of her and he was in part, it seemed, yielding to her and in part playfully resisting.
It was only at the last second, before the two of them disappeared round the far corner, that, in a stray beam of light coming from a gap at the top of the furthest closed door, he saw for one instant, clearly as if caught in a torch ray, the man’s face.
And it was a face he knew, knew well though he had seen it only in photographs. But that face had been photographed many, many times. It was the face of one of the city’s most prominent people, the man who was currently the Sheriff of Bombay.
THREE
The Sheriff of Bombay. Ghote felt a hot prickling spread right up into the roots of his hair. To have caught such a distinguished citizen in such a place as the gharwali Heera’s brothel. Why, it was not even as if this was one of the most respectable houses in the area. Of course, it was not any of the really cheap places, the ones in 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th and 13th Kamatipura Lanes. They were the very bottom. But neither was it one of the houses in Sukhlaji Street, or Safed Galli, Whites Lane, as it had been called when the European and half-caste prostitutes had congregated there in the days of the British Raj. If someone like the Sheriff was going to come for such purposes to this area at all, and not to one of the few discreet posh brothels in respectable parts of the city like the place on top of Tardeo Air-conditioned Market that the Vigilance boys had raided not so long ago, then it should have been to Sukhlaji Street or perhaps to one of the numbered houses in Foras Road.
And yet he himself had distinctly seen him — Was it the Sheriff? Yes. Yes, he could not mistake that well-known face — sneaking off towards some doubtless vile-smelling back way out of the house. The gharwali, who surely was the fat creature in the red sari, must have heard Dr Framrose’s loud, high-pitched voice talking to the Svashbuckler as they were about to enter, and have hurriedly escorted away her distinguished client.
Her distinguished client. And he was distinguished indeed. Doubly so. First, he was the Sheriff of Bombay.
Ghote had read once in one of the papers when a film star had been given this high municipal office that it ranked third in order of social precedence in the city. It was an annually held office dating from the British days, like such posts as the Protonotary and Senior Master of the Admiralty and Ecclesiastical Registrar, and its duties were largely honorary. At the Quarterly Court of Sessions it was the Sheriff’s task to call on the various accused to rise and to read out the charges. It was also his official duty to execute the decrees of the High Court, although in practice these were attended to by his staff. But unofficial duties the Sheriff had by the hundred. He was expected to meet and greet visiting dignitaries to Bombay. He was begged to open important new buildings, to inaugurate large-scale commercial functions, to be the chief participant at the ceremony releasing the occasional important book, to preside over the city’s most prestigious annual prizegivings.
If the present holder of the office had been no more than that, some huff and puff fellow who had given useful political service to the party in power and had been granted his reward, the situation would have been embarrassing enough.
But the present Sheriff was much more than this. He was almost as much a figure of renown as a top film star. He was the Rajah of Dhar, until not so long ago captain of the Indian cricket team. A hero to the Bombay crowds who, come each Test series, are fired with wild enthusiasm for the strange game the British introduced to India’s shores, fired with enthusiasm from the richest businessmen abandoning their luxury offices and paying extortionate sums for a seat in the Wankhede Stadium down to the meanest barefoot coolie padding the streets under his head-load and striving to overhear the interminable commentary from one of the myriad transistor