Barbara Cleverly (30 page)

‘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 cortčge 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.

The doctor was the first to recover his aplomb. ‘Look - take the boy to my tent, will you?’ he said. ‘There’s a large table set out in there

well, you never know

I was prepared for incoming wounded.’ He looked at Joe’s arm. ‘And I see it was not in vain. You’d better come along, Joe.’

Joe followed Sir Hector to his tent and watched as Bahadur was laid by the bearers on the table. The doctor dismissed everyone and the two men were left alone with the body. Hector opened his black bag and took out a tray of gleaming silver instruments. ‘The living before the dead, I always say, however important the dead may have been. Show me your arm, Joe. Mmm

you’ve had a lucky escape but you don’t need me to tell you that. So far. Have to hope it doesn’t go septic in this heat. Always the danger.’

To Joe’s surprise, he uncorked a bottle of Swiss mineral water and poured it over the wound, flushing away the dried blood and dirt into a copper basin. Joe winced and gritted his teeth and waited for the next part of the process.

‘Now the gore’s gone I see that it’s not too formidable. I think we can get away without stitching it if I bandage it carefully but it will need to be disinfected. You’ll have another interesting scar to impress the girls with, Joe.’

He took a small phial of yellow liquid from his bag, broke off the top and trickled the viscous contents over the tears in the flesh.

‘What’s that?’ Joe asked.

‘Haven’t the faintest idea! I get it from Udai’s court physician. Works a treat - much more effective than potassium permanganate,’ he said confidently and proceeded skilfully to bandage up the arm. ‘Now, before the body gets snatched away from us and started on the undertaking process, why don’t we have a look at it?’

‘I’ve had a look,’ said Joe repressively. ‘Throat torn out by a tiger. Small throat. Large claws.’

‘All the same,’ Hector persisted, ‘indulge my professional curiosity for a moment and approach with me, if you will, Commander.’

With dire memories of Madeleine making just the same formal use of his title before the enquiries into Prithvi’s death, Joe accepted the change in his role. No longer the patient, he was now the police commander being invited to witness an autopsy. Reluctantly he went to stand on the other side of the pathetic little corpse and watched as, with a face devoid of emotion, the doctor selected a slim instrument and proceeded to examine the wound.

‘Yes. No doubt about that. Tiger killed him with one, possibly two blows right to left diagonally across the throat. Death from immediate gross loss of blood. There’s something here

sand

bits of vegetation

’

‘From the paw,’ said Joe, impatiently.

Hector glanced quickly at Joe. ‘Yes

paw. I say, didn’t Colin tell us last evening that tiger kill their prey with their teeth?’

Joe was impressed by Sir Hector’s perception. ‘Yes, he did. And so they do, I understand. Water buffalo, large deer and so on. But Bahadur was hardly prey - more in the nature of a small, fragile nuisance who’d blundered by mistake into the tiger’s thicket and disturbed his midday snooze. Swatted him away.’

Sir Hector looked more closely at the wound, adjusting his spectacles as he probed. With a grunt of satisfaction, he selected a pair of tweezers from his kit and took out a white object, dropping it with a plink into a small china dish.

Joe peered at it. ‘Tiger’s claw?’

‘Yes.’

The doctor looked up from his work, set down his scalpel and spoke thoughtfully. ‘Joe, I want you to go over the whole thing again. Everything. Sorry to be so tedious but I want to hear what happened from the moment you got into your tree until the moment you found Bahadur in the thicket. Miss nothing out.’

To Joe’s further puzzlement, he took out a sheet of squared paper and began to draw a plan of the nullah, marking on it everyone’s position. He took a red pencil and, as Joe’s story progressed, he marked the paths the tigers had taken, the tigress moving in a straight line from right to left across the page, the cub lying up between the trees occupied by Bahadur and Claude and, having dispatched Bahadur, circling round to the south to attack Joe from behind.

He asked one question: ‘Is there any chance that the old tigress could have made a detour and herself have killed Bahadur?’

Joe considered this. ‘No. I would say - no. Ajit spotted her in the centre of the draw on her way down from the den. He tracked her as far as the next sector - Claude’s stand. From there she was in view tree by tree until I put a bullet in her.’

‘Thank you, Joe. You’re very patient. And clear.’

‘Sir Hector, is there a point to all this?’ Joe asked uncertainly.

The old doctor came close to him and shot a swift anxious look at the door flap. He paused for a moment, listening, before he answered.

‘I think we’ve got another one of those, Joe,’ he said.

Ť ^ ť

This was the last thing in the world Joe wanted to hear and for a moment his mind refused to take in what Sir Hector was saying. He stifled the automatic objections that leapt to his lips and instead sat down, silently absorbing the doctor’s assertion, made carefully, unwillingly and fearfully. It was not an assertion he could dismiss out of hand.

‘You mean you’re not happy with the circumstances of the death as reported?’ he asked. ‘Surely nothing could be clearer?’ He pointed to the claw in the dish. ‘He even left his calling card.’

‘And there’s the problem,’ said Sir Hector. ‘Just follow a thought through with me, will you, Joe?’ He sighed and tugged at his moustache in his anxiety. ‘I’m sure you’ll say I’m being unnecessarily pedantic and after all, if you look at the line-up of witnesses closely involved - two top police officers, the best tiger hunter south of the Himalayas, the Resident, the maharanee, Sir George’s trusted hatchet-man

well, who am I to throw a spanner in the works and tell you you’re all deluded?’

‘And is that what you’re saying? Come on! Out with it! What have you seen?’

‘Unfortunately, I haven’t got my microscope to hand

’ He rummaged in his bag and produced a hand-held lens. ‘I use this for removing splinters and suchlike. It will have to do.’

He leant over the table and examined the claw again with the aid of the glass. ‘Ah! Yes! I was not mistaken. Here, take a look yourself, Joe.’

Joe looked and blinked and looked again.

‘Could you perhaps wash the rest of the blood off, Sir Hector? We need to be quite certain about this

Thank you. Yes, that’s even clearer.’ He spoke slowly. ‘To my inexperienced eye, this claw has a slight striation along the length of it which might be a split or crack; it has a chip at what you might call the business end and the whole claw has a yellowed appearance.’ He looked up at Hector. ‘In fact it reminds me of nothing so much as my great-aunt Hester’s teeth in her declining days. Hector! This is the claw of an old tiger!’

Hector nodded. ‘Colin! You must fetch Colin!’

It was pitiful to see the change that had come over the old hunter in the last two hours. Like a man just hanging on to the threads of consciousness after a stunning blow to the skull, Joe thought. Colin was going through the remembered motions of polite response but his spirit was somewhere beyond reach. Blaming himself for the whole fiasco, Joe realized, and he acknowledged that in his place he would have reacted in the same way. He guessed that Colin would have seen in Joe’s eyes a reflection of his own pain and guilt had he been able to focus on anything other than his inner turmoil.

He followed Joe without question back to the doctor’s tent. Joe handed him the magnifying glass. ‘Look at this object in the dish and tell us what you see.’

Colin studied the claw and then said with a note of puzzlement creeping in, ‘A claw. Tiger claw. Well worn

chipped

judging by its colour I’d say from a mature if not aged beast. What is all this?’

Joe and Hector looked at each other. ‘That’s what we thought. Would it surprise you to hear that I’ve just extracted it from the boy’s throat wound?’

‘Yes, it would. The old tigress went nowhere near the thicket where Bahadur was found. He was killed by the cub,’ said Colin patiently. ‘And, anyway, I’ve never come across a claw being left in a wound before. Just doesn’t happen.’

‘Colin,’ said Joe gently, ‘that’s a claw I’ve just witnessed being taken from Bahadur’s throat.’

Colin was beginning to rally and recover his old sharpness. ‘Something wrong here

I think we should have another look at the wound, don’t you? Sir Hector, would you

?’

They gathered around the body, taking care to leave elbow room for Sir Hector as he retrieved his instrument. Joe held up the magnifying lens in position for him as he worked. Suddenly he stopped and grunted. ‘Pass me that probe, will you? Third item from the right, top row

There it is. I’m sure I’m not mistaken. Oh, good God!’

‘There’s what?’ hissed Joe.

‘Deep wound to the jugular. Severs the vein. And not delivered by a tiger’s claw. Much, much deeper than a claw could penetrate. It’s straight

slim. Insignificant surface entry marks and these camouflaged by subsequent laceration administered by the claws. Two sharp edges, clean cut. The skin has retracted over the mouth of the exit making a very small wound indeed. Very easy to miss. Stiletto? Isn’t that what those Italian blades are called? Went in at an angle, so delivered by someone taller than the victim. But then, who isn’t?’

He put down his probe. ‘I’d say the lad was killed by a stab to the jugular. It could have been delivered from behind. There’s the faintest bruising on the jaw. Here, Joe, kneel down for a second, will you?’ He demonstrated, advancing on Joe from behind, grabbing his chin and holding his head firmly. ‘Not a good idea to pull the head up too far - you can lose the arteries behind the windpipe but that’s not generally known. We’ll assume our man pulled upwards. Such a small throat, he wouldn’t have had a problem.’ He raised his scalpel and Joe cringed as he brought it down sharply, the point hovering over his exposed throat. ‘Clear run at the neck, you see, and that way the jet of blood is directed away from you and you don’t emerge from the undergrowth covered in blood. There would have been a lot of blood