A strange trade under the banyan tree, in the pavilion's music room, beneath the painted leaves and organ pipes and where the copper dragon spreads webbed wings and spits his fire through murderous teeth over the lotus chandelier to marvel diners at the royal banquets.
There comes George Henry Bull of County Cork, renowned in Poona for his way with horses, bringing his charges from the Peshawar Valley and sun-baked Afridi Hills to Doctor Brighton, via the Somme.
One hundred and twenty thousand postcards record them standing to attention or sitting tidily on their iron beds in serried ranks, some seven hundred dazzling turbans on display.
The town that thought it knew it all since the prince Regent built his folly has never seen the like; they leave the beach to gawp.
The stupendous kitchen, where double rows of copper vessels once turned out thirty course meals, is now the stage for other knife skills: here Monta Singh had both his legs removed.
He saved the life of Colonel Henderson, wheeling him in a barrow from the front line but caught the fire himself.
His grandson Jamal Singh would shake the hand of Ian Henderson, the colonel's grandson where the funeral pyre had been out on the downs.
Meanwhile, by the pavilion, the grateful Maharaja unlocked the gate of India's Gift, a Gujarat dome on pillars, so strange an edifice that amid the exotic confusion, it blended wonderfully: the golden key a perfect fit.
Reprinted from Kathryn Southworth's collection Someone was here (Indigo Dreams, Beaworthy 2018) by kind permission of the author and publisher.