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
“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.
