The Tiger Shoot
In a country full of tigers, a bullet looks like a story.
The scene
The Sariska hunting lodge of the Maharaj-Kumar of Achrol, eastern Rajasthan, November 1962. A weekend shoot, three thousand miles from a war with China that everyone at the lodge is trying not to think about.
The victim
Mr. James Whitmore, 56, the last European tea planter in the Doon valley, found at the foot of the family hill-shrine just before dawn, a clean shot through the heart. His own rifle is unfired and still on his shoulder. No tiger had been sighted that day.
The suspects
- Ramnarayan Goenka (Construction Contractor)
- Maharaj-Kumar Arjun Singh (Host)
- Mrs. Eleanor Hughes (English Guest)
- Hari Singh (Gun-keeper)
- Banwari Lal (Sub-postmaster)
Every one of them is hiding something, and their alibis form a single shared timeline. Somewhere in it, one statement cannot possibly be true. Find the contradiction and you have found the killer. This is as far as any file goes without spoiling it, the rest is yours to work out.