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secretary. “He walked out to the car with me to get the material, and there was nothing wrong with the man.”
    The secretary then turned to the wife of Ajay Karapiet, who ran the town’s biggest hotel as well as two cinemas. “Your husband just called. He told me that your daughter went to the workplace with a piece of brocade and that just as she was about to hand it to him, his eyes began to roll and he slowly collapsed, without making a sound.”
    â€œWith the brocade in his hand?” shrilled the wife of Ajay Karapiet.
    â€œI have no idea,” said the secretary. “Your husband didn’t say anything about that.”
    â€œI brought him a length of material, too,” said the woman who was married to a coconut oil manufacturer.
    They were all talking at once. In the previous weeks each of them had delivered a length of cloth to Sanat the darzi , one more costly than the other. Only Charlotte and the wife of Adeeb Tata, the local landowner and a distant relative of the immensely wealthy Ratan Tata, had not given the tailor their material — the wife of Adeeb Tata because she had already bought a dress in Paris, and Charlotte because she didn’t have any fabric yet.
    â€œHe said I could pick up my dress the day after tomorrow. It still has to be embroidered.”
    â€œDoes anyone know if he has a successor?”
    â€œWhat am I supposed to do now?”
    Many of these women wore a dress or a salwar kameez , in contrast to the ladies of the Wednesday-morning group, who wore saris. The garments, all made by Sanat, were indistinguishable from one another. This was not surprising, since they were all based on the same pattern. The only difference was that some had long sleeves, others short, and the neck was either square or round. That is why the embroidery, the buttons, and the lace were so important: together with the material itself, it was the details that made all the difference. The bicentennial of the club was coming up soon and it was going to be celebrated in style. Small wonder that the ladies had gone to such pains to find an exceptional piece of fabric. Charlotte had heard that some of them went all the way to New Delhi or Bombay to ensure exclusivity. It was obvious that this group of middle-aged women would like nothing better than to set off en masse to the workplace of the recently deceased tailor in order to check on the safety of their fabric. However, that would not be appropriate. They would have to wait until after the cremation and the subsequent farewell rituals. Their concern that the costly fabrics were in danger of mysteriously disappearing or shrinking in size was not entirely unfounded. The wife of Nikhil Nair suggested they post a guard at the door, but the other women felt that the family of the tailor might interpret that as a motion of non-confidence. The wife of the goldsmith knew the wife of the tailor’s cousin, and she could ask him to keep an eye on things, but the wife of the builder who had submitted the proposal to renovate the club reported that in his youth the tailor’s assistant had been involved with the police. The wife of the police commissioner knew nothing about that but promised she would ask her husband to look into it. The widow Singh had dropped off again, and was snoring softly.
    The nail specialist was still standing in front of the group holding a plastic hand on which each finger displayed a different nail problem. But he was already surreptitiously sliding the carrying case closer with his foot. The fan turning rapidly above his head no longer provided cool air, and he wanted to go home. He surveyed the flushed faces of the women. They couldn’t get enough of the discussion about the deceased tailor and the problem of what they would wear to the party. Although he had hundreds of tips for festive nails, he could not get his audience to listen. His gaze came to rest on the only European woman in the group,