“How can you tell?” the keeper asked, wide-eyed.
“Several letters are crooked, and the signature, while true, is more rigid than usual. Professor Gladstone strained his wrist just before the end of term, and it temporarily affected his penmanship.”
The keeper gasped in delighted amazement at such deduction.
“Also, the date written here is June the thirteenth.” She returned the form to the stack, five levels down, from whence the keeper had taken it. “Professor Gladstone obviously prepared it in advance of his departure and left it with someone to use whenever they needed,” she said as she aligned the stack’s edges neatly.
“Who were the men that came for the bird?” Devon asked.
The keeper shrugged. “They never gave their names. Two fine-looking chaps, dressed in expensive suits.”
“Schreib and Cholmbaumgh,” Devon muttered darkly.
“Maybe,” Beth said. “But there were two men standing at the edge of the park, watching us catch the swan, and I could have sworn I saw them on the train from London too.”
Devon raised an eyebrow. “Mustaches, bowler hats, carrying briefcases?”
“That’s them,” Beth and the aviary keeper said in unison.
Devon nodded. “I saw them on the train too. And I’m fairly sure one of them was in the Hôtel Chauvesouris lobby when we were leaving for the ferry.”
“I was obviously wrong about someone trying to help us,” Beth said.
“I need something stronger than coffee before I answer that,” Devon said. “Then again, I think I might skip a drink altogether and just get straight on a train for the Peak District. Obviously the person with the real answers is Gladstone.”
Beth’s heart sagged, but she reminded it sternly about her desire to win tenure. “That’s a good idea,” she said. “I might do the same.”
“We should go together,” Devon suggested, and Beth’s heart perked up. “We’re still rivals, of course, but it’s only sensible that we keep company until we know who is setting birds on us, and why.” His posture seemed uncharacteristically tense, but his tone was casual, so casual, he made it sound like they were discussing merely crossing the street.
“Sensible indeed,” Beth answered with the same nonchalance, even while her heart lifted so high she thought it might take flight.
Devon smiled. “Besides,” he added, leaning close with a glint in his eye, “it will be more fun.”
Thwomp. Her heart collapsed back in a dreamy, glimmery swoon. She smiled before she even knew what she was doing, and Devon’s pupils dilated in response. Realizing she’d done that to him, Beth curved the smile like a western grebe curving its neck to attract a mate. Devon rocked slightly on his heels, and Beth could only conclude from this evidence that she’d stumbled by pure accident onto her feminine wiles. She inhaled with surprise at the same moment Devon quietly sighed. It was like the soft promise of a kiss, reaching between them to—
“Ahem,” said the aviary keeper.
Dazed, Beth pulled herself out of the absorbingly sensual moment and turned to give the woman a polite nod—and Devon, turning alongside her, nudged her elbow with his in a friendly manner that forced her to nod a second time while trying desperately to recall the mechanism of speech.
“Good day, Mrs. Daughty,” she managed at last. “Thank you for your help.”
The keeper did not immediately reply, instead scrutinizing her as if she were a bird just brought in from the wild. “You look different from when I saw you last term, Professor.”
“Oh?”
“Almost…happy. I haven’t seen you look happy in, well, ever.”
“Ha ha,” Beth said. Turning away, she pulled off her spectacles, despite wishing she could keep them on so that the world—and Devon’s suddenly solemn expression—would remain a blur. “I have to go home for my suitcase,” she told him. “I’ll meet you at the station.”
A shadow of worry slipped through his eyes. “You will meet me?”
Biting her lip, Beth nodded. Then she swept out of the aviary faster than a cat escaping an Alaskan warbler, before her feminine wiles did something terrifying.
—
“Well, that couldn’t have gone better,” Mr. Fettick said to Mr. Flogg. They were nibbling on buttered scones at a table in Jabbercoffee, a small, slightly crooked coffeehouse opposite the Lamb and Flag Passage in Oxford, to which they’d retired after witnessing the whopper swan’s capture. “Our two professors did exactly as we hoped. ‘Birders in Blissful Moment After Saving the Day!’ ”
“I myself would have removed some of the prurient behavior from the scene,” Mr. Flogg said with a disapproving little sniff.
“But we want this to be a romance,” Mr. Fettick reminded him.
“Yes, but if they could close a door on the more explicit details—”
“He only kissed her hand, man.”
“Twice. And he took off her glove to do so. And, well, there was a good deal of gazing…”
Both men flushed intensely. Mr. Flogg gulped tea; Mr. Fettick dolloped marmalade onto his scone bottom. Finally, after a long, rather titillated moment of silence, Mr. Flogg cleared his throat briskly.
“In any case, we must congratulate ourselves. The whopper swan provided excellent drama on what was shaping up to be a slow news day.”
“That young Lazarus Brady did a marvelous job,” Mr. Fettick said. “One couldn’t even tell he was acting! We shall have to hire him for more scenes.”
They smiled with the particular satisfaction of men who have paid someone below minimum wage for excellent results.
“Furthermore,” Mr. Flogg said, “we’ve managed to slow our professors down. Almost certainly they will be resting together after such a rousing experience—”
“ ‘Resting,’ ” Mr. Fettick sniggered, inducing Mr. Flogg to scowl.
