Chapter Openings of Opening Chapters: The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey

I’m always curious to see how writers handle the opening lines of early chapters. My own first chapters often fall off between the first draft and the last, or else they get heavily revised as the story settles into place. It’s always encouraging when opening sentences manage to remain intact, telling me that my story instincts were sound to begin with.

Since I often try to squeeze in a murder mystery or two into my summer reading (thank you for getting me started on this practice, Vicki Holmsten) I thought I’d look at the opening sentences of Sujata Massey’s 1920’s Bombay yarn, The Widows of Malabar Hill.

It’s February 1921, and Perveen Mistry is the first woman solicitor in Bombay. The story begins when a stranger arrives at her door. He’s middle-aged and unshaven, clad in a shirt and grimy cotton dhoti, smelling of sweat and betel nut. He’s also wearing black stockings and scuffed black shoes, a Calcutta convention in menswear that marks him as an outsider in this place.

All of this is a heads-up—pay attention to this stranger. Here’s the first chapter’s opening sentence:

On the morning Perveen saw the stranger, they’d almost collided.

We’re looking back at a moment that has already happened. It makes me wonder if the entire story is going be told that way, but it also implies that other near collisions may be in the works. Then the narrative voice really gets going:

A visitor to Mistry Law this early was rare. The firm was located in Fort, Bombay’s first settlement. Although the old wall has been taken down, the district was still a fortress of law and banking, with most openings between nine and ten.

Chapter 2 is a bridge from the opening to the rest of the story. It begins in a fittingly practical mode, laying out where we are, what has just happened, beginning to process it with along with the PI character.

Back at mystery house, Perveen handed off the sweets to Mustafa for safekeeping and gave a brief summary of the words she’d exchanged with the stranger, not mentioning Cyrus.

It’s brisk and no-nonsense, handing off the earlier chapter to this one.

What about chapter 3? Where does the opening of that one land us? To understand, you need to know that Chapter 2 has been dense with speculation about the death of a wealthy businessman. Was there anything suspicious about the letters written by his widows, all three of them, donating their inheritances to charity? No one can speak to these women, who all observe strict purdah—except for Perveen, sole woman lawyer in Bombay.

Chapter 3 heralds the arrival of a steamship in town, bringing Perveen’s former St. Hilda’s College friend Alice:

Around 3 o'clock, Mustafa burst into the upstairs office. "The SS London has arrived! I saw through the spectacles from our roof over to Ballard pier.

The spectacles are opera glasses, which we’ve already seen and marveled at. In short order we will encounter secrets that Alice and Perveen have shared with one another, at least one of which has already been hinted at. The chapter opening lifts Perveen’s mood, promises both support and complications, and leaps the story forward.

I’ll read the rest for fun but these chapter openings gave me an entertaining way to think about the creation of momentum in fiction. Thanks, Sujata Massey!