Two young women fall from a Bombay clocktower, twenty feet and minutes apart. It’s 1892 and the women are sisters-in-law in a prominent Bombay Parsee family. No reliable witnesses are found, but some bystanders saw a skirmish between three men just around the time the women fell to their deaths. This is how Nev March’s debut novel, Murder in Old Bombay, begins.
The Framjis, the family in question, hire private detective Jim Agnihotri, an Anglo-Indian former army captain, to find the people responsible for the deaths of their daughter Pilloo and daughter-in-law Bacha. Agnihotri is about to start a job as a newspaperman after leaving twelve years of army service when he’s poached by Adi Framji, the widower of Bacha. Agnihotri, as it turns out, is a fan of Sherlock Holmes, whose stories were only just appearing, and signs on with the understanding that he’ll return to the newspaper after he figures out how the two women died.
Soon after the Framji women’s deaths, Adi’s sister Diana sails to Bombay from England to mourn with her family. Sharp and quick on her feet, Diana proposes herself as his Dr Watson. He refuses—it’s too dangerous with one or more murderers on the loose—but she’s not to be put off. One thing leads to another, and Diana and Agnihotri start to fall for one another, not that her family would entertain such a union. As the mystery and Jim and Diana’s friendship deepen, the Framji family continues to forbid the couple from becoming engaged. They risk losing their business and social standing if Diana marries someone who isn’t Parsee, not to mention a biracial man who doesn’t know the identity of his father.
Throughout the story, March weaves in information about Parsees and how they came to India centuries earlier as Zoroastrian refugees from Pars in Persia. Zoroastrians do not believe in converting people to their religions, but are protective of their small community—March sets it at 100,000 in the book—and don’t allow intermarriage. Agnihotri notes his interactions with Parsees early in the story.
One could not venture to Bombay without meeting a Parsee, I supposed. Widely respected, they were everywhere. Enterprising businessmen, affably pro-British, they owned hotels, newspapers and plantations, ran shipyards and banks.
As he tries to forget his dilemma with Diana, Agnihotri tries to focus on the crimes. One of the ways he looks for clues is by disguising himself as other ethnicities and professions. He can accomplish this through his mixed heritage—his mother was a fair-skinned Brahmin and his father an unknown Englishman—and can change his looks with a long beard or long hair or by covering his head. Disguises can also lead to complications. In one instance he dresses as a Pathan and travels to Lahore. After leaving Lahore, he heads to Simla to meet the Framjis at their home there. He’s still dressed as a Pathan and is ambushed on the road by a band of young street urchins, the youngest just a baby. Staying in disguise, he convinces the kids he’s on their side and can help them.
I considered our situation. The oldest boy came from Pathankot. Could I send him to his village? Deep in Afghan-held countryside, that was impossible. I’d have to take them to Simla.
But when the group arrives in Simla, the Framjis are shocked to see five children with Agnihotri. They help him locate the parents of the children apart from the baby, who is adopted locally, and the oldest, a girl of fourteen Agnihotri takes on as his younger sister.
March’s descriptions of old Bombay are a mix of merchants, dock workers, police, barristers, and other professions that make up a lively city. The British may run the police department and the military but they only play a peripheral role in this story predominantly populated by Indians. Lush gardens and trees are frequently present in the background of the story.
Adi and I hurried down the back lane and cut across Hanging Gardens. Ancient jambul trees roped with muscular creepers hung over neatly trimmed hedges. Well-dressed residents of Bombay skirted beds of wide-leaved elephant ear and orange spikes of canna.
As in most mysteries, death is central to the story. This is the case in Murder in Old Bombay, but by giving Agnihotri disguises and an impossible love story, March keeps the story humorous and mysterious in other ways than just solving a crime. She also incorporates historical events like the 1857 mutiny and the Second Anglo-Afghan War. But it’s the Parsee storyline that’s the most interesting part of the book. March is from a Parsee family herself and won a Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Award for this book.
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