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blankets aside. There was only a creased bed sheet and pie crumbs beneath.
    ‘Mr Darwin was rather a distracted and driven young gentleman. Nobody knew anything about him except that he’d been abroad for some years. I’ll bespeaking to him in a day or two, when he’s calmed down,’ said Abberline.
    Mr Flynn shuffled through the detritus on the writing desk.
    ‘Yes, apparently he was one of those orchid-maniacs you hear about,’ said Abberline. He pointed to a row of orchids in pots on a narrow table set against one of the windows.
    Julius studied them. The orchids were different colours and forms but all had the same four-petal structure. ‘Did you notice this?’ he said to Abberline.
    ‘What?’ said the constable.
    ‘There’s an orchid missing.’
    ‘Well I’ll be…?’
    Mr Flynn closed the desk drawer he was shuffling through and came to the table.
    ‘There.’ Julius pointed to an empty pot.
    ‘Blow me down,’ said Abberline. ‘I never thought to check, not with all the commotion. I feel a complete fool.’
    ‘Look at this,’ continued Julius. ‘There’s an indentation in the soil, as if the plant was pulled out, and there’s soil scattered around the pot.’
    ‘Our Mr Darwin might have been telling the truth,’ said Mr Flynn.
    ‘Not necessarily. He might have pulled it out of the pot himself in his mania,’ said Julius.
    ‘So, where is it now?’ said Mr Flynn.
    They searched the room until Abberline found a squashed orchid hidden under some papers.
    ‘Looks like he stamped it to death,’ he said.
    Julius poked it with the tip of a pencil. ‘It’s the same as the one Tock gave us,’ he said.
    ‘Are you sure?’ said Mr Flynn.
    Julius looked at the other orchids then back at the petal hanging from the end of his pencil. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s the same, I’m sure.’ He looked up at Mr Flynn. ‘Tock said it might surprise us one day. That’s why Emily wanted it.’
    ‘Is it, now?’ said Mr Flynn. He took the pencil and examined the battered petal. ‘Moving or not, it’s only a flower,’ he said. ‘What harm could it do?’ He tossed it onto the desk. ‘All the same, I think we’ll pay her a visit.’
    Mrs Clitherow was waiting at the bottom of the stairs polishing the already shiny banister when Julius, Mr Flynn and Constable Abberline came down.
    ‘Find any clues, Constable?’ she said.
    ‘One or two,’ said Abberline.
    ‘Mrs Clitherow,’ said Julius. ‘Did anything out of the ordinary happen before Mr Darwin had his unfortunate turn? Anything in the previous few days? Anything at all?’
    ‘No, nothing that I can think of.’
    Mr Flynn tipped his top hat and turned to leave.
    ‘Except the orchid that was left on the doorstep,’said Mrs Clitherow.
    Julius, Mr Flynn and the constable stopped. They turned back to the landlady.
    ‘Orchid?’ said Abberline. Mrs Clitherow started polishing again. ‘Yes, it was sitting on the doorstep on Wednesday evening. I found it when I put Napoleon out.’
    ‘Napoleon?’ said Abberline.
    ‘The cat. I know it’s unpatriotic, but the cat’s a wrong ’un so I thought it would be all right.’
    ‘You found an orchid?’ said Mr Flynn.
    ‘Yes, in a pot.’
    ‘Was it red?’ said Julius.
    ‘Let me think. Yes, it was. And there was a little note tied to it with a piece of cotton thread.’
    ‘What did it say?’ said Julius.
    ‘It said, Mr C. D., a gift from a secret admirer .’
    ‘And do you still have it?’ asked Julius.
    ‘The note?’
    ‘No, the orchid,’ said Mr Flynn.
    ‘No, sir. I imagined “Mr C. D.” was my Mr Darwin so I knocked and left it outside his door.’
    ‘Why didn’t you tell me on the night of the disturbance, Mrs Clitherow?’ said Abberline.
    ‘Well, you didn’t ask me, did you?’
    ‘It must have been Tock,’ said Julius.
    ‘Emily,’ said Mr Flynn, to no one in particular.

CHAPTER 5

    Friday 19th January 1838
    3:16 PM
    Julius and Mr Flynn hurried toward Mrs Trevelyan’s Academy