Mrs. Packletide's Tiger

by Saki

Mrs. Packletide wanted and planned to shoot a tiger. It wasn’t because a love of killing had suddenly filled her, or that she felt that she would leave India safer than she had found it, with one less tiger per million of population. Her motive was the fact that Loona Bimberton had recently flown in a plane and talked of nothing else. Only a tiger-skin from an animal she had shot herself and a heavy album of newspaper articles and photographs could beat Mrs. Bimberton’s adventure.

Mrs. Packletide had already arranged in her mind the lunch she would give at her house in London, supposedly in Loona Bimberton's honour, with a tiger-skin filling all of the conversation and most of the floor of the dining room. She had also already designed the tiger-tooth jewelry that she was going to give Loona Bimberton on her next birthday. In a world that – people say – is ruled by hunger and by love, Mrs. Packletide was an exception; her movements and motives were largely ruled by dislike of Loona Bimberton.

Mrs. Packletide had offered a thousand Indian rupees for the opportunity of shooting a tiger without too much risk or energy, and, luckily, a neighbouring village was the favourite resting place of a very old tiger which had been forced by increasing age to stop hunting in the wild and eat only small farm animals.

The idea of earning the thousand rupees had excited the sporting and business instinct of the villagers; children were posted night and day on the edge of the local jungle to stop the tiger leaving the area, and the cheaper kinds of goats were left to keep him happy with his present home. The one great worry was that he might die of old age before the date of the hunt. Mothers carrying their babies home through the jungle after the day's work in the fields stopped their singing unless they disturbed the sleep of the animal.

The great night arrived, moonlit and cloudless. A platform had been built in a comfortable and convenient tree, and Mrs. Packletide and her paid companion, Miss Mebbin, sat quietly on it. A goat which made an especially loud noise – so loud that even a deaf tiger might hear it, was waiting for the animal. With a modern rifle and some playing cards the sportswoman waited for it.

"I suppose we are in danger?" said Miss Mebbin.

She was not actually afraid of the wild animal, but she was afraid of doing any more for her employer, Mrs. Packletide, than she had been paid for.

"Nonsense," said Mrs. Packletide. "It's a very old tiger. It couldn't jump up here even if it wanted to."

"If it's an old tiger, I think you should get it cheaper. A thousand rupees is a lot of money."

Louisa Mebbin had an older sister’s attitude towards Mrs. Packletide’s money in general: it did not matter about the currency. She had saved many rubles from disappearing in tips in Moscow hotels, and dinars and dirhams seemed to stay with her. But her ideas about the market prices of dead tiger parts were cut short by the appearance of the animal itself. As soon as it saw the goat it lay on the earth – not because it wanted to take advantage of all the trees and grass to hide, but because it needed a short rest before the grand attack.

"I believe it's ill," said Louisa Mebbin, loudly in Hindi, to the village headman, who was in a neighbouring tree.

"Quiet!" said Mrs. Packletide, and at that moment the tiger started walking towards the goat.

"Now, now!" said Miss Mebbin with excitement; "if he doesn't touch the goat we needn't pay for it."

The rifle produced a loud noise, and the great animal jumped to one side and then lay dead. In a moment a crowd of excited villagers had run to the place, and their shouting speedily carried the happy news to the village. And the villagers’ happiness was repeated in the heart of Mrs. Packletide. Already that lunch party in London for Mrs. Bimberton seemed much nearer.

It was Louisa Mebbin who noticed that the goat was dying from a bullet wound, while no bullet hole could be found on the tiger. Clearly the wrong animal had been hit, and the tiger had died of a heart attack, caused by the sudden firing of the rifle. Mrs. Packletide was understandably annoyed; but, at any rate, she was the owner of a dead tiger, and the villagers, wanting their thousand rupees, gladly pretended that she had shot the tiger. And Miss Mebbin was a paid companion.

Therefore Mrs. Packletide faced the cameras with a light heart, and her picture reached from the pages of the Texas Weekly Snapshot to the Monday edition of Moscow’s Novoe Vremya. As for Loona Bimberton, she refused to look at a newspaper for weeks, and her letter of thanks for the gift of tiger-tooth jewelry was full of secret jealousy. She refused the lunch party; there are limits after which jealousy can become dangerous.

From her London home the tiger-skin rug travelled to Mrs. Packletide’s country house, where it was inspected and admired; and it seemed suitable when Mrs. Packletide went to a local party, dressed as a hunter.

"How funny everyone would think it, if they knew what really happened," said Louisa Mebbin a few days after the party.

"What do you mean?" asked Mrs. Packletide quickly.

"How you shot the goat and frightened the tiger to death," said Miss Mebbin, with her unpleasant laugh.

"No-one would believe it," said Mrs. Packletide, her face changing colour extremely fast.

"Loona Bimberton would," said Miss Mebbin. Mrs. Packletide's face turned an ugly greenish white.

"You surely wouldn't tell her?" she asked.

"I've seen a weekend house that I’d like to buy," said Miss Mebbin. "Six hundred and eighty pounds. Quite a bargain, but I don't have the money."

Louisa Mebbin's pretty week-end home, lovely in summer-time with its garden of flowers, is very popular with her friends.

"It is marvellous how Louisa manages to save so much on her small salary" her friends say.

Mrs. Packletide takes part in no more tiger shooting.

"The extra expenses are so heavy," she tells curious friends.