‘It’s dead,’ says the efficient man.

The villain, recovering himself, says apologetically, but clearly determined to have no nonsense: ‘I’m sorry, but it was an accident. I’ve never seen a pigeon before that didn’t move out of the way.’

We all look with disapproval at this hardened kicker of pigeons.

‘An accident!’ says the woman. ‘An accident!’

But now the crowd is dissolving. The efficient man picks up the dead bird, but that’s a mistake, for now he doesn’t know what to do with it. The kicker moves off, but the woman goes after him, saying: ‘What’s your name and address, I’m going to have you prosecuted.’ The man says, annoyed: ‘Oh, don’t make such a mountain out of a molehill.’ She says: ‘I suppose you call murdering a poor little bird a molehill.’ ‘Well, it isn’t a mountain, murder isn’t a mountain,’ observes one of the fifteen-year-olds, who stands grinning with his hands in his jacket pockets. His friend takes it up, sagaciously: ‘You’re right. Molehills is murder, but mountains isn’t.’ ‘That’s right,’ says the first, ‘when’s a pigeon a mountain? When it’s a molehill.’ The woman turns on them, and the villain thankfully makes his escape, looking incredibly guilty, despite himself. The woman is trying to find the right words of abuse for the two boys, but now the efficient man stands holding the corpse, and looking helpless, and one of the boys asks derisively: ‘You going to make pigeon pie, mister?’ ‘You cheek me and I’ll call the police,’ the efficient one says promptly. The woman is delighted, and says: ‘That’s right, that’s right, they should have been called long ago.’ One of the boys lets out a long, incredulous, jeering, admiring whistle. ‘That’s the ticket,’ he says, ‘call the coppers. They’ll put you down for stealing a public pigeon, mister!’ The two go off, rolling with laughter, but fast as they can without losing face, because the police have been mentioned.

The angry woman, the efficient man, the corpse, and a few bystanders remain. The man looks around, sees a rubbish receptacle on the lamp-post, and moves forward to drop the dead bird into it. But the woman intercepts him, grasps the pigeon. ‘Give it to me,’ she says, her voice suffused with tenderness. ‘I’ll bury the poor little bird in my window-box.’ The efficient man thankfully hurries off. She is left, looking down with disgust at the thick blood dropping from the beak of the pigeon.