Santa lay dead on the floor...an ivory knife in his back

It's December 1950 and Persis Wadia, India's first female detective, faces a fiendish festive conundrum in the opening of our brilliant three-part Christmas whodunnit by VASEEM KHAN, illustrated by ROB MURRAY

- Vaseem Khan

BOMBAY, 1950. “What sort of cad would stab Father Christmas in the back?”

The question – more of a musing – had been posed by Archie Blackfinch.

Inspector Persis Wadia glanced at her colleague, standing in the victim’s bathroom beside her, and seemingly mesmerised by the body. Blackfinch, a Metropolitan Police criminalist, had been in Bombay just over a year, helping the Bombay force establish its first forensic science lab. They’d worked several cases together, ever since she had qualified as the country’s first female police detective.

For better or worse, she had found herself in the crosshairs of history, Archie uncomfortably sharing the limelight. It made for a rocky start to their working relationship.

It didn’t help that she’d shot part of his right ear off during their first investigation.

She turned back to the body, prone on the bathroom tiles, an ivory knife handle sticking out of the man’s back like the winding key on a clockwork soldier. Blood soaked the area around the blade, a shade darker than the red of Oliver Harcourt’s Santa outfit.

She had seen white men in such costumes before, of course. A rash of them appeared each year around this time, red-clothed and false-bearded, at the bigger hotels, at private parties, invariably sloshed to the gills, celebrating, by all accounts, the customs of the Old Country.

Admittedly, they were a far rarer sight since Independence.

But the Brits that had chosen to stay behind – either because they had lingering business interests in the country or couldn’t imagine returning to the cold, damp misery of the Home Counties – made a passion of the yuletide festivities each December.

“There’s something in his mouth,” she said.