Barbara Cleverly (31 page)

And the boy was standing at the time, as you see from the blood trails on his clothing.’

‘But the claw wounds, Hector? What are you saying about them? Were they inflicted before, at the same time as or after the insertion of the blade? Did the tiger come across him as he lay dead? Can you tell?’

Sir Hector sighed. ‘Speaking generally, post-mortem wounds are diagnosed by the absence of signs of vital reaction. If a wound is made while the victim is still alive, tiny blood vessels are ruptured and the heart - if it’s still beating - forces blood into the tissues around the damaged area. The blood clots and it’s difficult to remove by washing. Pass me the water and that sponge over there. I’ll see what I can do.’

He worked on, muttering about microscopes, white cells and leucocytes, only half expecting Joe to follow. Finally, he put down his instruments and washed his hands, saying thoughtfully, ‘Difficult to believe but the claw wounds seem to have been inflicted at the same time as, or as near as makes no difference, immediately after, the stab to the neck.’

Hector shook his head. ‘The poor chap appears to have been mangled as he was dying by an elderly tiger with a loose claw but that’s as far as I can go with the medical evidence. Beyond this point I’m out of my territory. Sorry, but it has to be over to you and Colin now. I’ve done all I can and probably said more than is warranted - or safe.’

‘Hector, thank you! You’ve been most meticulous. No one else would have noticed there was anything wrong and what fools we would have been. Look, can I ask you both to say nothing of what we’ve seen for the moment?’

Colin and Hector nodded their agreement and Joe went on, ‘And I’m sure you’d understand the reason if I were to suggest that the next step might be a second autopsy?’

Hector began to look affronted but Colin nodded. ‘I see where you’re going with this, Joe. You wouldn’t have been about to call for an autopsy on a tiger, would you?’

‘Exactly that!’

‘Oh, er, I’m afraid you’ll have to count me out, old boy. Not my area of expertise at all,’ Hector demurred.

‘It’s all right, Hector,’ said Colin. ‘You’re looking at a world-class dissector of tigers! I always remove the paws, the head and the pelt, sometimes with nothing more than a penknife. It’s expected. No one will think anything of it if I go and do that right away. In this heat, the sooner the better. Will you come with me, Joe?’

They found the tigers where the bearers had left them in a small clearing next to the supply tent. Many men had gathered round to marvel at the size of the beasts, to gossip and to commit to memory every detail of their deaths at the hands of the scarred sahib. And here was more excitement. The eagerly anticipated moment when O’Connor Sahib would skin them. Murmurs of encouragement greeted Colin and the freshly bandaged Joe as they approached to examine the bodies.

‘Start with the young one, shall we?’ said Colin briskly. Joe found he could in all honour not look away when all the eyes of the admiring crowd were trained on the swift silver knife as it worked over and through the body. He found it helped to concentrate on Colin’s matter-of-fact commentary delivered in Hindi and English. Off came the paws with a cursory examination. ‘Trace of blood on the right front. Healthy young beast. About three years old, I’d say. Not much wear on the claws. All five on each front paw intact and four claws on each of the hind paws.’ Catching Joe’s flash of interest, he added, ‘Tigers only have four claws on the back paws, Joe.’ He turned his attention to the head. ‘Do you want this prepared to hang over your desk at Scotland Yard, Joe? It’s yours by rights!’

The head was set on one side to be collected by the palace skin-curer and the pelt followed, Colin rolling it up carefully. ‘They say a diet of human flesh is bad for tigers but I must say I’ve never found any evidence of that. Always seem to be in perfectly good condition. This one certainly was. The other one now?’

He moved over to the tigress and the crowd murmured savagely under its breath. They knew who was the real villain. They knew it was the tigress who had become a man-eater and terrorized their villages for months, killing their children, their parents, their cousins. Teaching her cub to become a killer. Colin began methodically to carry out the same procedure, talking to Joe as he worked. ‘Always a good idea to do this when a man-eater’s involved,’ he commented. ‘Physical flaws can often explain why the creature’s taken to the unnatural habit of preying on men. I note that this one has been blinded in the left eye but I understand that is a recent wound and not the reason behind her change in diet.’

Three paws were removed then, detaching the fourth, he held it up to the gaze of the audience. ‘And here you have it. Porcupine quills. Must have come off worst in a fight with a porcupine.’ He counted. ‘Eight, nine, ten quills have penetrated the paw to quite a depth. In fact some have worked their way in, hit the shin bone and done a U turn. Must have been painful and incapacitating. I think this tells us why she took to catching slower, feebler prey. All claws in all four paws in place and I would judge that she wasn’t all that old. More than ten, less than thirteen years perhaps? Weight? A good size for a tigress

I’d say 350 pounds or thereabouts. And the pelt

Fine coat rather ruined by two bullet holes. Looks as though Edgar got her in the side before you finished her off, Joe. Look, old man, would you mind very much if I offered this to the headman of the local village?’

‘I think that would be very fitting,’ said Joe and the pelt was carried off with whoops of triumph.

They made their way back to Hector’s tent. All signs of the autopsy had been cleared away, the body covered in a white sheet, and Hector was sitting quietly on watch. He listened with raised eyebrows to Joe’s account and then said simply, ‘Well, your experts have given their forensic opinions and evidence, Joe. We can go no further. Nothing more we can do here. Does anyone have plans for the body? There’s no way we can get it back to the palace before dark today and you know they cremate their dead within twenty-four hours.’

‘It’s all right, Hector,’ said Colin. ‘Ajit’s dealing with that. A pandit has been summoned and the cremation ceremony will be carried out by the villagers at first light. We’ll take his ashes back to Ranipur to be scattered in the river.’

He approached the body and looked sadly down at the torn features. ‘Poor, poor little scrap,’ he murmured. ‘And when someone dies, aren’t there always things you regret? Things you didn’t say

things you did say

’

There was something underlying Colin’s sadness that invited Joe to ask, ‘Something you said, Colin?’

He seemed relieved to be prompted to say, ‘Yes, you all heard me. Ticked him off in front of everyone. Last thing I ever said to him. Told him not to fool about with his whistle.’

‘Sounded entirely reasonable to me,’ said Joe. ‘The lad was a bit overexcited

could have caused havoc. But was there something behind the warning?’

‘Yes, there was. He’d been larking about in the night. Surprised you didn’t hear anything, Joe?’

‘I did hear

things,’ said Joe. ‘Go on.’

‘Well, I’d taken the precaution of leaving a night watch on duty. Oh, they didn’t enter the camp - their brief was to discreetly patrol the perimeter. So I was surprised when one of the chaps woke me up at three in the morning. He said there was a problem in front of the tents. Couldn’t work out what it was but a large patch of something white, shining in the moonlight, had caught his attention. He thought I ought to investigate. We went along and found that the ground between Claude’s tent and the one opposite - Captain Mercer’s, I think - an area of four by four yards - had been strewn with flour.’

‘Flour?’ The doctor was astonished, Joe less so.

‘Did you alert anyone?’ he asked.

‘Yes, we did. Got poor old Claude out of bed. Couldn’t understand what was going on but when he twigged, he was prepared to put the blame on Bahadur for a particularly pointless practical joke.’

‘What steps did you take?’

‘Sent for a broom and brushed it away as best we could and then, egged on by Claude, we did something I’ll always regret. Turned into schoolboys ourselves. Must have been the full moon, the spirit of camaraderie

I don’t know what. It was Claude’s suggestion. He was spitting angry and determined to teach the boy a lesson but all the same I should have put the lid on it.’

‘Colin, what did you do?’

Colin swallowed, his head drooped and he said softly, ‘Claude took the flour we’d swept up and spread it in front of Bahadur’s tent. Then we faked up a trail of enormous tiger paw prints marching straight up to the door - the old pebble in hanky trick.’ He looked at Joe, stricken, tears in his eyes. ‘It wouldn’t have fooled him for half a minute! He’d been out in the jungle with me many times and I’d taught him all I know about tracking - even the tricks! He would have recognized it as such in no time at all and, I would have thought, erupted with laughter. That would have been normal. He liked a joke.’

Joe’s mind was absorbing these details, unpleasant with hindsight, and linking them with facts he remembered himself from the night before. ‘Colin, was anyone else aware of what you and Claude had done? What Bahadur had done?’

‘Hard to say because I was rushing about liaising with the lead mahout by then and not really thinking about practical jokes. The lad got up late and by the time he came to breakfast I think everyone must have seen it. Assumed it was one of his own pranks, I suppose, rolled their eyes and passed on - I’m describing the actual reaction of - Madeleine, I think it was

yes

Madeleine. She laughed and said, oh, something like: “I see the man-eater dropped in for a midnight feast.” Surprised to hear the detective hadn’t noticed though?’

‘I was more wakeful at the other end of the night,’ said Joe. ‘And I too made a late appearance. He’d had time to get rid of it by then.’ He was reconstructing Bahadur’s puzzling remark. Something about springing a trap set by Bahadur the great hunter, he remembered.

‘You shouldn’t put on a hair shirt for all this, Colin,’ he said. ‘Not your fault. But it is someone’s fault. Someone who very nearly got away with murder and who, if it hadn’t been for Hector’s thoroughness, undoubtedly would have done. Because you were fooled, Colin, Edgar was fooled and I was fooled.’

‘Fooled you may claim to have been, Joe,’ said Hector, ‘but it’s going to be up to you to make some sense of all this. I must say I can’t make head or tail of it. All I know is that the third heir is dead in our care and there’ll be hell to pay when we get back!’

Ť ^ ť

Riders had been dispatched ahead of the rest of the group to break the news at the palace. Shubhada had insisted on going with them, claiming it was her duty to speak to the maharaja first. No one was eager to contest this dubious privilege though, dutifully, Claude offered to escort her himself. His services were finally accepted with rather bad grace, Joe thought, and the advance party set off in the grey dawn.

The return journey was uncomfortable, spent tęte-ŕ-tęte with Edgar who went over the previous day’s events again and again, trying to work out why it should all have gone so hideously wrong. Was it possible to mistrust a man who had saved your life twice in as many months? Joe wondered, his instincts to confide the minimum to Edgar very strong. In the end, Edgar’s repeated expressions of concern for his old friend Colin and the damage the death of Bahadur might do both to the man and to his reputation, persuaded him to tell Edgar about the doctor’s findings.

‘So you see, there was very little Colin could have done to prevent it

if, indeed, it was a case of murder as Sir Hector has made out. Can a hunt manager be expected to take as a factor in his arrangements the possibility that one of the shikari will murder another one? I don’t think so. The shoot went according to plan - well, almost.’

‘And, apart from the inquisitive doctor, the murder too. Admit it, Joe, that was a piece of ice-cold planning combined with a recklessness that makes your hair stand on end. Who the hell would have been able to do that? Who is so ruthless that they’d stab a child in the throat? Who would have had the opportunity? You and I had each other in our sights for the whole time from the bugle to the whistle, you might say, so we can rule each other out, I think.’

‘It’s not quite that clear,’ said Joe grimly. ‘I heard what I thought was a langur bark a warning about half an hour before the bugle blew. But, thinking about it later, I realize that the monkeys in my tree didn’t respond. They knew it wasn’t one of their own tribe. I think it may have been Bahadur’s attempted call for help

or his death cry. If someone killed the boy well before the hunt started, he would have had plenty of time to get back to his tree

or his position

not everyone was on a machan

before the tigress started her run down the nullah. Let’s imagine the scene, Edgar. Now, let’s assume you’re the villain for a moment.’

Joe brushed aside his spluttered protests. ‘You get up into your tree, having had the forethought to take up there with you a pair of gloves and a blanket - standard issue on each of the hunt elephants - and immediately everyone is settled you climb down again armed with these bits of equipment and a knife of some sort - not the skinning knife from the howdah, I think - too broad. Then you weave your way, easy for a tracker like yourself to do (I believe even I could have managed), between the clumps of tall grasses back across the nullah. With everyone’s eyes glued to their own sector, you could have done it. Half an hour is plenty of time to get to Bahadur’s tree. You call up to him to come down on some pretext. He trusts you and comes down while Shubhada’s back is turned. Perhaps it’s your lucky day and you don’t even need to trick him into coming down; perhaps, nervously, like the rest of us, he becomes obsessed with the idea of having a pee and comes down for that purpose —’

‘Joe, I won’t interrupt again but I have to say - there was a patch of damp soil near the body as though someone had done exactly that. I thought at the time it corroborated Shubhada’s story.’