Mr Bates, somebody is trying to kill my pigeons!”

For the famous detective Alfred Bates and his friend Inspector Davis, these words were enough to turn their heads. Not because they were spoken by Mr Singer, who incidentally was a singer, but also because they involved a plot regarding missing pigeons.

“Are you sure?” Inspector Davis asks their host.

“Yes,” Mr Singer replies. “When I started a couple of months back, I had 12 pigeons and now I have 10.”

“Two of them could have died?” Inspector Davis puts down another question.

“But their number doesn’t increase as well. Don’t you find that odd?” the worried host answers.

“That’s odd and suspicious as well,” Alfred Bates breaks his silence.

“So who is killing my pigeons?”

“Your neighbours,” Inspector Davis puts down his theory. “I am sure one of them hates birds.”

“I think someone who doesn’t hate pigeons is behind it all,” Bates tells them.

“What does that mean?” Mr Singer asks Bates.

“A dead pigeon can’t fly! Someone would have noticed had one of his pigeon died,” Bates observes. “Do you feed the pigeons yourself?”

“Yes when I am home, I do,” Mr Singer replies. “Otherwise my manservant Bishop does it.”

“And he loves the birds, right?” Bates inquires about the manservant.

“Yes. Why do you ask?” Mr Singer asks the detective

“I suspect he has carried them home and is feeding them there,” Bates puts down his theory.

“But why didn’t he tell me that?” the host asks.

“He must have thought that you wouldn’t notice it,” Bates tells Mr Singer.

“Let me ask him… Bishop!” the host says, as he calls his manservant.

“Let me do the talking,” Bates tells Mr Singer. “Bishop, my friend here is a vet and he thinks that the pigeons here carry germs that can harm kids.”

“What?” Bishop says with a shocked look on his face.

“You don’t need to worry, there are no kids around,” Inspector Davis says as he plays along with Bates.

“But there are, at my home,” Bishop explains his reasons for the shocked look.

“Do you also have pigeons at home?” Inspector Davis asks.

“No. Yes. I think I have,” Bishop stutters while answering the question.

“I don’t get you. Come again,” the inspector inquires.

“I took two pigeons home as my children wanted to pet the birds,” Bishop replies.

“You could have told me,” Mr Singer asks his manservant.

“I wanted to, but you didn’t seem to miss them,” Bishop tells his master.

“He did, and that’s why he called me,” Bates tells the manservant.

“You are also a vet?” Bishop asks.

“No, I am a detective and it seems I detected what I came to found out,” Bates concludes.

“So what should I do with my kids?” Bishop asks the Inspector.

“Tell them to take care of the pigeons, if Mr Singer allows them to,” Inspector Davis tells the manservant. “And yes, they don’t carry germs, in case you were wondering!”