Barbara Cleverly - The Palace Tiger

The throat had been torn out, raked by the claws of a tiger, and the boy had doubtless died from loss of blood and perhaps the shock of the attack. Further claw marks were visible on his chest where his tunic had been torn away.

‘His rifle?’ asked Joe.

‘He left it on the machan,’ said Shubhada.

Joe remembered his own horror on being attacked and he’d had the comfort of a Holland and Holland rifle ready to hand. He could not imagine the terror that must have filled Bahadur’s last moments. Looking down on him with pity, Joe noticed something odd about the posture of the child’s body. The right arm was bent at the elbow and the lower arm and hand were concealed underneath his hips. Carefully Joe raised the slight form an inch or two and pulled the arm free. A small black revolver clutched in Bahadur’s hand was dislodged and fell at Joe’s feet.

With a gasp, Joe turned his face away until he could regain a measure of control. Finally, he looked back at Colin and Edgar. ‘My revolver,’ he said. ‘He admired it so much I gave it to him. For protection. Poor little sod! He was trying to defend himself with my little pop-gun!’

‘Wouldn’t have been much use against a tiger even if he’d managed to draw it in time,’ Edgar commented, picking it up.

‘You’d use a toothpick if it was all you had to hand,’ said Colin bitterly. He was looking about him at the trampled grass, at the ground around the body.

‘Keep everybody back!’ Joe snapped out a command, hearing a crowd of beaters and hunt servants congregating at the fringes of the thicket, and Edgar went to pass on instructions and post a guard.

No guard was strong enough to keep back Ajit Singh who arrived a moment later, his confidence momentarily shattered by what he saw. He stalked straight up to the body, distraught and angry.

‘Sandilands, what has happened here?’ he demanded. ‘Vyvyan, I can’t believe that this could have happened under your very nose!’

He listened carefully as Joe filled in the details, his eyes moving constantly around the scene taking in, Joe could have sworn, the position of every blade of grass.

‘Probably not the right time to ask, Ajit,’ said Claude boldly, ‘but I should really like to establish — while it’s fresh in all our minds — the sequence of events. Tell me, why didn’t you take a shot at the tigress when you had her in your sights?’ He turned to the others and added, ‘Saw her clearly from my machan. She drew level with Ajit Singh — perfect target — but we heard nothing from him. I remember being rather puzzled. Nodded off, had you, Ajit? I waited until she moved along into my sector and I fired. She cantered off, tail up. Missed, I’m afraid. Not a good shot. Well, Ajit?’

What had been Madeleine’s phrase? ‘A baby poking a grizzly in the eye’? Perhaps the stress had unhinged Claude? Joe could think of no other reason for this suicidally bold and unnecessary challenge. His hand went automatically to hover over the grip of his revolver as, slowly, Ajit turned on Claude.

Ajit did not draw a dagger and cut Claude’s throat as Joe half expected he would. Instead he unleashed a smile with the fine edge of a surgical scalpel and spoke in a tone of purring menace.

‘Why did I not fire when she presented herself as you accurately describe? My prince. .’ He gestured reverently at the body at his feet. ‘. . was to have every opportunity to claim her head. The tiger is a royal beast and should be shot by princes not the common herd. I held back, waiting for the shot from his machan, but it never came and the tigress passed into the sights of others.’

The smile intensified in its devastating politeness. ‘But do tell us, Vyvyan, why we see you here, covered in the royal blood? Your machan was yards from this scene of slaughter. Did you see nothing that could have alerted you to the danger?’ His voice began to grate with an emotion increasingly difficult to hold back. ‘How gladly would I have leapt between my prince and the tiger’s jaws!’

Joe believed him.

Vyvyan drew himself up and seemed about to unleash another ill-timed volley at Ajit when Shubhada intervened. ‘Vyvyan!’ Her voice was sharp, calling him to heel. ‘There is no reason to hold Ajit Singh accountable!’

Colin, who had been inspecting the scene, straightened and came to stand between Ajit and Claude. ‘Her Highness is right. Nothing either one of you could have done,’ he said. ‘It was the young tiger that got him. It must have been lying up here when we put everybody on to their machans. When Bahadur climbed down and strolled all unawares into the shrubbery he surprised it and it turned on him. A normal tiger would have crept away and he wouldn’t even have known it was there but this one was a man-eater and they’ve lost all respect for humans. Then the bugle blew, the beating began and it sneaked out by the back door.

‘Here, look. . and here. There are one or two paw prints if you look carefully but the ground is so trampled I can’t work out exactly where it broke out.’

‘So — while we were all watching the nullah,’ said Edgar, ‘it made its way towards the exit by Joe’s tree and, frightened and angry, did what man-eaters do and went for Joe whose back was presenting a perfect target.’

‘ Young tiger, did you say?’ Claude’s voice was bemused.

‘There were two. Mother and full-grown cub. The cub killed Bahadur and then almost got Joe,’ said Edgar, indicating the bloodstained handkerchief round Joe’s arm.

Claude put his head in his hands and groaned.

‘How useful it would have been,’ Ajit turned his glare on Colin, his anger still seeking a target, ‘to have been made aware of the presence of two tigers. Had we known there was a second lying up, no one would have risked his life alone, without a rifle on the forest floor.’

‘Time! If I’d been allowed the time I asked for. .’ Colin began to protest.

Through his shock and grief, Joe was conscious of the struggle for power or at least the struggle for the avoidance of culpability that was raging over his head as he knelt and continued his examination of the body. He listened and watched, knowing that he ought to call a halt to the recriminations before he had a further killing on his hands, but a professional interest kept him silently observing and it was Edgar who put an end to the ugly scene.

‘Stop this!’ he said firmly. ‘I’ve heard jackals make sweeter noises on a kill!’

His blunt remark calmed tempers sufficiently for Joe to rise to his feet and extend an arm, unconsciously his own claw-raked left, and seize Ajit’s bunched fist. ‘Ajit, Edgar’s right. This is no place for arguments. We must have Bahadur taken back to camp. You and I will need to take statements from all who were here. A most regrettable accident and we must look into the circumstances of it and try to understand it.’

Ajit nodded solemnly and, acting on the cue Joe had offered, began to stride about assigning duties to the servants and telling everyone to follow Colin back to camp and to remain in their tents. They were instructed not to emerge until asked to do so by either Ajit or Commander Sandilands.

A slow and mournful procession trailed after a bier hurriedly assembled from saplings, bearing the body of Bahadur. More saplings were cut to transport the bodies of the tigers and these brought up the rear.

Sir Hector, Madeleine and Stuart came out to meet them, eager for news. They had heard the shots and were expecting a triumphant appearance of successful hunters and their quarry. They were devastated by the grim cort`ege which wound its way into camp. Joe outlined as briefly as he could the events leading to the tragedy and silently they absorbed the horror of their situation.