The journey to Lincolnshire felt like a fresh start. In the end, not wanting to arrive early, I took a circuitous route and when I reached Lincoln I called in on Bert Fox to make arrangements. We agreed that he would deliver to the hotel at seven o’clock that evening, and then we fell to chatting, so that I didn’t make it to the hotel until six. By that time another cold evening had settled on the streets and the hotel fires were stoked up high. I arrived on foot in the darkness and stepped quietly into the light of the lobby, my big overcoat still hunched around me, its collar high around my face. I found Potts sitting there reading a Raymond Chandler novel and watching the door. His eyes ran quickly over me when I came in, but I carried nothing and had no one with me. He looked disappointed, but when he rose to his feet to greet me, he was all Old World charm in a New World accent.

“Mr. Fitzgerald! How very mysterious you’re getting to be. You know, if there’s one thing I didn’t expect from you, it was mystery.”

“Is that meant to be a compliment?”

“It’s whatever you’d like it to be.” He waved in the direction of the reception desk. “I guess you’ll want to freshen up after your journey. After that, I’d very much like to have a word with you alone.”

“I could meet you in the bar in half an hour.”

“Perhaps somewhere with a little more privacy?”

“No, I like the bar. That’s about as private as I want to be.”

He nodded, accepting my terms. “Sure. The bar, then, in half an hour.” He pottered back to his sofa, for all the world a kindly old gent with nothing on his mind but his book.

I told the woman at the reception desk that I was expecting someone to arrive with a parcel for me.

“When he comes,” I asked her, “could you ask him to drop it off in my room, please? His name’s Fox.”

When I got to my room I rang Katya and Anderson, in that order. Five minutes before I was due in the bar, Katya knocked at my door and let herself in.

“Phew!” she gasped when the door was shut, then flopped dramatically onto the bed in mock exhaustion. “I’m so tired. They’ve been on at me all day, trying to persuade me to put in a word for them. The bidding is ferocious. And one of them always seems to be watching me whenever I leave my room.” She pushed herself upright. “Did everything go all right?”

I sat down next to her. “It went well. Look at this.” I pulled a piece of paper out of my pocket. “It’s my receipt. I’ll only show it to them if they demand to see one. I don’t want them tracking down Bert Fox and giving him hassle about any of this.”

Katya looked down at it and laughed. “Five thousand pounds! That’s going to make them so mad.” We both laughed then, and with the laughter returned that warm thrill of complicity. “Where is it now?” she asked.

“With Fox. I didn’t want to bring it with me while they were all watching. He’s going to bring it around later.”

“And you’re sure he won’t change his mind?”

“Yes, I’m sure. Bert is an odd one. He’s his own man, with his own ideas. I always thought he might see things my way. I’m sure I can trust him.”

“What about the pictures?”

“The case is all sealed up. You can’t tell if there are any paintings in there until it’s opened.”

Katya looked at her watch. “We should go down. The others are all in the bar. Except Potts. He’s hanging around at the end of the corridor, seeing who comes in and who goes out.”

“Okay, then.” I stood up and gave her my hand to pull herself up. “Let’s collect him on our way.”

Potts showed no surprise when he found Anderson and Gabby waiting for us in the bar. He merely took off his little round glasses and rubbed them vigorously on his waistcoat.

“I see.” He smiled affably. “You’d have been much better to talk to me by myself, Mr. Fitzgerald. But, hey, let’s see what happens.”

The room was empty apart from Anderson and Gabby, but the fire was already blazing. Behind the bar, a slightly lugubrious barman was reading a book that he pushed hastily out of sight when we came in. As if to compensate for the lack of drinkers, the music had been turned up. Someone was singing “Fly Me to the Moon” with slightly too much feeling.

We gathered around the same table as before, but this time everyone was looking at me, not at Anderson. I looked back at them, one by one: Anderson expectant, Katya happy and excited, Potts restless, darting swift glances to the door of the bar. And Gabby. Gabby was watching me anxiously, and I wondered what she made of what she saw.

For once Anderson didn’t wait for the drinks to be ordered before getting down to business. He wanted to know about the Ulieta bird. Was it true? Did I have it?

“Yes,” I told him. “It’s true. I bought it this afternoon for five thousand pounds. The owner was quite happy with the deal.”

“Who was the owner?” That was Potts cutting in, but Anderson waved the question away impatiently.

“Did he have the pictures, too?”

“No, he’d never heard of the pictures. But the seal of the case hasn’t been broken for years. Probably not since the last century.”

“And you’re sure it’s the real thing?” he asked.

“You’ll have to make up your own mind on that,” I told him. Then I turned back to Potts. “As for the owner, it doesn’t matter. I own it now.”

“And what will you do with it?” Gabby’s voice was calmer than the men’s, and almost sultry in its softness. “You can see why I’m curious, Fitz.”

They all stopped at that and waited for me to answer. Anderson cast a swift glance at Katya, but she was looking at me, too, an easy, contented smile on her face.

“Well,” I began, “that’s one of the things I thought we’d talk about this evening. But first there’s a couple of things I wanted to ask.”

“Such as?” Anderson was finally signaling to the barman.

“Such as which one of you broke into my house.” I turned to Potts. “Was it you?”

He was leaning back in his chair, his hands joined over the generous curve of his stomach.

“Ah, Mr. Fitzgerald! Just a little research. I would have liked to leave things tidy, but you’ll understand that I didn’t want to linger. It was important for me to check your notes, to see what you really knew about the Ulieta bird.”

“Why didn’t you do that the first time? What was all that stuff about dusting the bookshelves?”

He looked back at me blankly.

“I don’t think he can answer that.” Anderson sounded his usual, calm self.

“It was you?”

“That’s right.” He seemed amused by my surprise. “Remember, Mr. Fitzgerald, we’re talking about something that could be worth a million dollars. That night, after you left the Mecklenburg, I tried to catch up with you. But when I reached your house, no one was in. And your front door was practically inviting me to look around.”

“But what were you looking for? What was all that stuff with my bookshelves?”

Anderson stared at me as if he was seeing me clearly for the first time. And then he leaned back from the table and began to laugh; big, genuine gusts of laughter that rose from his diaphragm and made his whole ribcage heave. When the laughter began to subside, he began to shake his head.

“You really don’t know, do you? The famous John Fitzgerald, world authority on extinct birds, and somehow you still don’t know, even though it’s in the most obvious textbook.”

“Know what?” At that particular moment I disliked him more than ever. And his laughter was having an effect. Although they had no idea what he was laughing at, Gabby and Potts, even Katya, were beginning to smile.

He gave a few more shakes of his head and then sat upright again, composing himself.

“Okay, I’ll start at the beginning. When we met at the hotel you said you knew nothing about the Ulieta bird—but I didn’t believe you. There was one basic thing that you had to know, and when you pretended not to, I just assumed you knew a lot more besides.”

I was completely confused now, and my expression made Anderson laugh some more.

“When I found you weren’t there that evening, I thought I’d go in and try to take a look at your famous notes. But when I got to your room, something on the bookcase caught my eye. You see, Mr. Fitzgerald, an academic has to keep his library up to date. Fosdyke’s Notes on Avian Species—you have the wrong edition.” He paused to let the comment sink in. “I was pretty sure from the cover that yours was the first edition, but I needed to take it down and look at it, just to check. Perhaps you stayed with that edition because it was signed by the author. I don’t know. But then it suddenly dawned on me that perhaps you hadn’t been pretending after all. Perhaps you really didn’t know anything.”

I shrugged, still not comprehending.

“You see,” he went on, “Fosdyke brought out a second edition a few years after the first. He’d added one or two new bits of information, including one about the Ulieta bird.” He turned now and looked at Katya. “Fosdyke had found that letter, the one you saw in the Fabricius archives. The letter mentions a drawing of the Ulieta bird made in Lincolnshire, and Fosdyke made a Latin joke about it. I can’t quote it exactly but it’s something like this: ‘The specimen of Turdus ulietensis once owned by Joseph Banks seems likely to be the Turdus lindensis mentioned later by Fabricius.’ Lindum is the Roman name for Lincoln,” he explained, looking around us, assuming ignorance. “So that’s why the letter sent to Martha Stamford was so exciting. Because it fitted with what we already knew—that the bird had somehow ended up in Lincolnshire.”

“So you put the book back, dusted the shelves so I didn’t know which book you’d looked at, and left me to wallow in my ignorance?”

“More or less. I didn’t think it would take you long to find out about the Lincolnshire reference, but I wasn’t going to point it out to you.” He turned to Katya. “Considering you hadn’t read Fosdyke, I was very impressed with the way you found it for yourself. Of course, your friend here could have saved you all that trouble if he’d bothered to visit a decent reference library. Now, tell me, Mr. Fitzgerald, what was the other question you wanted to ask?”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the crumpled picture of Miss B that Potts had removed from Anderson’s room.

“Do you know who this is?” I asked.

Anderson barely glanced at it. “Joseph Banks’s mistress. His first mistress. He went on to have others, of course.”

“Why did you have her picture in your room?”

“I have all sorts of stuff in my files. I brought it all with me. Does it matter?”

“You didn’t think she was important in some way?”

“In finding the bird?” He breathed out a little impatiently. “No, of course not. I had someone research Joseph Banks for me, so I knew all about the mistress. She was interesting because she knew Fabricius, and Fabricius knew something about the bird. But she’s a dead end. No one can even say who she was.”

I looked across at Katya. “No, I suppose no one will ever know who she really was.”

Before Anderson could reply, one of the women from the reception desk appeared at our table.

“The gentleman has been and gone, sir,” she explained. “He’s left it in your room as you said.”

“Thank you.” I smiled, and turned to the others. “What do you think? Is it time for us to go upstairs and inspect the merchandise?”

I’d left one small lamp on in my bedroom, so when we all filed in, the room was washed with a dim reddish light. It was a small room and the double bed where Katya had flopped earlier filled the center of it. Otherwise there was only a small desk and wardrobe, a couple of chairs, and just about enough space for the five of us to stand in.

Bert Fox had left his parcel in the center of the bed, and we instinctively spread out around it, Katya on my left, Anderson on my right, with Gabby next to him and Potts a little apart, watching us all.

The parcel on the bed was a couple of feet tall and about the same square. It was wrapped in brown paper under a layer of bubble wrap, and had been crisscrossed with belts of heavy-duty pink tape. No one spoke at first, but Anderson gave a little sigh on seeing it. It was a sigh that told me something. Before then I’d taken him for the ultimate professional, a man who looked for rare things purely for profit. But now I wondered if Gabby might have been right. Perhaps behind it all there really was a man who just loved the search. In a little way I found myself liking him more.

“You might need this.” Potts had taken a penknife out of his pocket. “Come on. We’re waiting.”

I started forward, suddenly full of doubt about the whole enterprise. But now I had no choice but to show them what was in the package. Slowly, with careful movements of the knife, I cut away the tape, then the plastic, until there was only the brown paper left. Suddenly impatient, I tore it away with two sweeps of my hands, leaving the object below uncovered.

The case was built of old, dark wood with a glass pane set into each side. One of the panes of glass was cracked and another was misted with a haze of tiny flaws so that it was almost opaque. Inside, crudely perched on a wooden branch, was a small brown bird, its head cocked slightly toward us as if in surprise. A very ordinary bird, very like a thrush or a blackbird or something in between. It could have landed in a suburban garden without exciting much notice.

“Jeez!” exclaimed Potts. “Is that it? All this fuss for that?”

But Anderson and Gabby were both crouching down, studying it intently through the two clear panes. I took a deep breath and turned on the overhead light so they could see it properly. And that made a difference.

It was easy to see the bird wasn’t in a good state. It was a little shapeless, as if its body had begun to sag with gravity, and the harsher light showed that the once-rufous feathers had faded to a stale gray in places. There was a patch on its neck where the feathers seemed to have been torn away from the skin and now stood up in an undignified tuft. But the better light also showed the shadings of color that distinguished it, the tiny markings that made it neither a blackbird nor an ordinary thrush, but something different and unknown.

Anderson turned to me, his eyes shining. “What do you think? Is it the one?”

I shrugged. I wasn’t enjoying this as much as I’d hoped. “It certainly could be.”

He turned back and began to point out the details to Gabby. She was nodding, scrutinizing it minutely. Neither of them was a specialist but they both knew about birds and about preserved specimens, and they knew what they were looking for. Potts watched them both, observing their reactions. Katya took my arm and leaned against me slightly. I shut my eyes and waited. I could hear Anderson murmuring under his breath, repeating the description made by Forster over two hundred years ago: “Head dusky marked with brown…Wing dusky, primaries edged with brown…Twelve tail feathers…” Eventually he stood up; I heard the click of his knees as he straightened. Something of his usual manner had returned.

“Of course, it’s nothing without provenance,” he said.

“I know that.”

He looked at me, surprised at my confidence. “There would need to be tests done.”

“Of course. The lab people will want to do their bit of poking around.”

He bent down and looked at it again. “It’s a miracle that it’s survived.”

“A miracle? Perhaps. It’s certainly an amazing piece of luck.”

“Jeez!” Potts snorted. “Are we doing business here or not? You two can compare birdwatching notes later, because the most you’re going to get for that is a few thousand dollars. What about the pictures? We need to open the case.”

“No.” I held out my hand to keep him away from the bed, and the authority in my voice seemed to surprise him. “You two are interested in the pictures, I’m interested in the bird. So nobody’s opening up the case until we have the right conditions, the right humidity, the full works. That’s part of the deal—whatever happens, the bird is dealt with properly. Now let’s go back downstairs and talk figures.”

I leaned forward and replaced the brown paper wrapper around the case to protect the bird from the light. When we left the room I took good care to lock the door behind me.

Back in the bar, I watched Anderson settle back into one of the hotel sofas. When I’d met him at the Mecklenburg, he had spoken in quite an offhand way about my grandfather. At the time I’d thought it was the contempt of the natural winner for the habitual loser. But perhaps I had it wrong. Like my grandfather, he’d begun this expedition feeling he had something within his grasp that only he believed in. Perhaps he was afraid that, like my grandfather, he would be forestalled by some unforeseeable freak of chance. And now the chance had happened, the lightning had struck. It was I who had ended up with the bird.

Even so, it left him considerably better off than it had left my grandfather. By the time Chapin made his successful foray into the Congo basin and emerged with those living specimens of the Congo peacock, my grandfather and his companion had probably already come to the end of their journey. The remains of their equipment were found two years later by a pair of French surveyors, many miles east of where Chapin found his peacocks. The few rather pathetic objects that the Frenchmen retrieved included my grandfather’s journal, the prose brittle with determination even while the logic and sense were draining from his words. The last entries were almost meaningless and nearly illegible. They contained no message for his wife or son, my father, a child he may not even have known existed.

The bodies were never found. When news of the expedition’s demise reached Britain, a small memorial service was held. The Times praised his courage and endurance. My grandmother never remarried.

Unlike the two men who lost their lives in the jungle, Anderson would prosper. I watched as Gabby settled beside him in the bar’s big velvet sofa. They sat close to each other, almost touching, as they had at the Mecklenburg. This time I didn’t resent it. I just sat quietly and waited for someone to speak.

“Well, Mr. Fitzgerald,” Potts began, “what’s the deal here? Are you selling the bird now and the paintings later, if they turn out to be there? I’m not prepared to bid blind.”

“I don’t care about the pictures. As I said, it’s the bird that counts. I’m prepared to sell the bird to either of you, but these are my terms: as soon as we agree on a price, we take the bird to the Natural History Museum, and the case is opened there, in proper conditions. The bird itself is donated to the Natural History Museum, but you get to keep the case and anything in it. And if the pictures are there, one percent of anything you get for them goes to the museum for the upkeep of the bird.”

Potts snorted. “You’re joking, Mr. Fitzgerald. No one can do business on those terms. There may not be any pictures! Or you might already have opened the case and taken them out, for all we know.”

I looked at him steadily. “I guess that’s the risk you have to take.”

“You’re living in dreamland if you think anyone will touch a deal like that. It stinks.”

But Anderson was watching Potts and smiling.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he mused. “I like what you’re saying, Mr. Fitzgerald. You’re right to want to safeguard the bird. So let’s see. Let’s say I promise to make a donation to the Natural History Museum to cover all the costs incurred in restoring the bird and in keeping it on display in proper conditions, plus fifty grand more for the upkeep of other rare specimens. No Canadian millionaires, no laboratories, no DNA experiments. In return, if the pictures are there, I get to keep them. The risk is all mine.”

I nodded and turned to Potts.

“Frankly, this is all bullshit,” he told me, taking off his glasses and rubbing them on his waistcoat. For all the innocence of the gesture, I could tell he was getting increasingly agitated. “Look, Mr. Fitzgerald, here’s my offer. You open up the case. If the pictures are there, I look after the business of getting them over to the States nice and quiet. I take a ten-percent cut, but I promise you’ll make a darn sight more this way than you will if you take them to Sotheby’s. I’m talking private sale here, Mr. Fitzgerald. Discreet, tax-free. No questions, no red tape, no markups to anyone else. Plus you get to keep the bird. If they’re not there, we go our separate ways and you can give the bird to whoever the hell you like. Think of it, Mr. Fitzgerald. Ninety percent of a million dollars is going to pay for some pretty good bird preservation. And what’s he offering you? Not a dime.”

“My offer’s on the table, Mr. Fitzgerald,” Anderson said evenly.

I turned back to Potts. “He’s guaranteeing the future of the bird, pictures or no pictures. I need you to do the same.”

“Oh, for chrissake!” He stood up, very clearly agitated now. “This is crazy. Give me ten minutes. I need to think.”

We watched him stalk out of the bar, a slightly absurd figure, too rotund and genial for his anger to be taken very seriously. When he was out of sight, Anderson chuckled.

“I guess I’ve just matched his highest bid,” he remarked with a smile.

I looked over at Katya, who raised her eyebrows at me questioningly. I answered her with a nod and then turned back to Anderson.

“Let’s have another drink.”

“Yes, of course.” He sat forward and reached into his jacket pocket for his wallet.

“Assuming Mr. Potts doesn’t change his mind, we’ll need something in writing about all this,” he said.

“Okay, start writing. Put down exactly what you’ve just said. Tomorrow I’ll get it checked over by a solicitor.”

He produced a sheet of paper from his briefcase and began writing.

“It’s amazing,” he mused as he wrote. “Seeing that bird. Who would have believed it? Even if we don’t find Roitelet’s paintings, it was worth coming over just for that. I really mean it.”

He wrote in silence for a while, then pushed the paper over to me and looked around contentedly.

“Where’s Potts?” he wondered idly. “He’s taking his time.”

For three or four seconds that statement hung in the air before anyone reacted. Then we all moved at once. Anderson was first to his feet and first to the door of the bar. I was a couple of yards behind him as he barged across the lobby and launched himself up the hotel stairs. And I was still behind him when he reached my room and found the lock forced, the bed empty, the bird gone.

IN THE YEARS after her departure, Banks pursued both his work and his pleasures with a grim vehemence. His scientific projects enveloped him, and he labored tirelessly at them, impressing all who met him with his fierce commitment to the advancement of knowledge. His standing grew and his career flourished. His reputation spread. His correspondence alone was enough to fill three days of the week, and a man so busy can allow himself little time for introspection. And he had little need for it. In his own mind he had already answered the question that so beset him in the days after her departure: the two of them, he knew, would never meet again.

But in that he was wrong. He was to see her one more time, some three years later, on a bright morning in spring. It was one of the last days he spent in the house on New Burlington Street, and his mind was fixed on the many matters squabbling for his attention. There were arrangements to be made, papers to be signed, and formalities to be overcome. As a result, his temper was short that day and he had no intention of receiving callers. It was only by chance that he appeared on the stairs at the moment the front door was opened to her. She did not see him for that first moment, intent as she was on asking for him, but he saw her, and the sight made him stop abruptly. With the shock came a tightness in his lungs and he felt the blood running to his cheeks. Then she looked up and their eyes met again.

He brought her into the house himself, all the anger he had manufactured in the years since she’d left suddenly dissipated by the touch of her gloved fingers on his hand. All the recriminations he had rehearsed were replaced by speechlessness; all the coldness he carried in him changed to raw feeling.

She had prepared herself for that day, so the shock of meeting was less for her. But when she looked into his face she saw lines there she did not recognize and furrows where no frown had been. The sight of them touched her in a way she had not anticipated.

To him she seemed unchanged. As graceful and neat as that time he had come upon her arranging flowers. As poised behind her defenses as that day a lifetime earlier when he had first spoken to her in the Revesby woods.

“I was in London,” she said. “I came to thank you.”

He looked beyond her, into the street where a carriage was waiting.

“To thank me?” he asked, still confused by her presence.

“For not following us.”

The plural noun caught his attention. “You mean…?”

“Sophia and me.”

“I see. I’d promised I would not.” Then he shook his head and found he could smile. “In truth I was too resentful. I wanted you to return unbidden.”

She looked up and he could no longer avoid her eyes.

“You knew I would not.”

“Yes. I think I knew that.”

She saw the smile, but also the tension in his body, and she reproached herself for the visit, the lack of warning she had given him.

“I would not have come, but I had need to be in London and I wanted to tell you that Sophia is well and happy. Only that.”

“As you promised.”

“Yes, as I promised.”

He nodded. “I think of her more often than you would believe.”

She shook her head. “No, I would believe it.”

They stood still and looked at each other then. From outside, the bright spring day cast a silver light in the space between them.

“Do you blame me for what I did?” she asked.

“I try to.”

“Do you succeed?”

“For three years I have succeeded. But I was not then looking at your face.”

“Then I am glad that I came.”

THEY PASSED an hour together that morning, surrounded by his collection, the great magazine of curiosities that had filled his house and become the wonder of Europe. In the wide, light-filled rooms, the size of the collection seemed to dwarf them and they drifted almost in silence from exhibit to exhibit, each more aware of the other than of the marvels before them. Sometimes she would pause to study an object, and as she did so he would step back and watch her—until he realized that her concentration was too intense, that in truth she was tangled in her own thoughts. Then he would speak blithely of the first object to catch his eye, and she would follow him to it, and for a little while they would discuss it brightly before again falling silent.

They moved from room to room, from the great display of human implements and the memorabilia of his days in the South Seas to the herbarium, where they flitted from plant to plant and back again. There were the pictures, too, wild landscapes and the faces of strange men and women, but most of all the botanical works, the incomparable collection of drawings made by Parkinson before his death on the Endeavour. She studied them most closely, not in admiration, but as one workman observes another to see what can be learned. From time to time she would nod as if acknowledging a particular touch of his brush.

Finally they came to the room of animal specimens, some mounted, many of them only skins stored flat. He showed her the greatest curiosities, the novelties that had become the talking point of his museum. As they browsed, he paused for a moment and looked at her directly again.

“One thing I should tell you…Do you remember Lysart, the geologist? He has a daughter who is…who is like Sophia. She grows up in Kensington and he visits her often. But I can see it is difficult for her. Society is hard on such a woman.” He turned back to the drawing in front of him. “It is only just that I should tell you as much.”

She nodded, scarcely looking at him, and their inspection moved on.

Toward the end of the final room she came upon a mounted bird of no great distinction. He studied the label. From the South Seas, he said, from an island near Otaheite.

“Such a plain bird to be so displayed,” she said.

“Indeed. I don’t know why Forster mounted it. I remember he talked of some new practice in preservation that he wished to try. Perhaps he chose something unexceptional lest the experiment failed.”

She was still looking at the bird.

“But I like it,” she said. “A plain brown bird amongst all this glory. It has its own beauty, I think.”

“Take it,” he said urgently, seized with the desire that she should have an object to remind her of that day. “Or I can have it sent to you.”

“But that would diminish your collection,” she replied.

“By a fraction. Who will notice?”

In the end he insisted, and she gave him an address in Soho where it could be sent.

“It is the house of Monsieur Martin,” she told him. “It is he who buys my work.”

And so, when she had gone, when their last words had been spoken and he had handed her into her carriage, the bird was taken down and prepared for dispatch.

For a few weeks its place in the rooms on New Burlington Street stood empty. But in the summer of that year his collection moved to Soho Square and the brown bird was forgotten.