by H. Y. Hanna
The old lawyer’s home looked very attractive in the gathering dusk, especially the conservatory, which was lit from within. Mrs Graham, Mannering’s housekeeper, answered the door. She looked surprised to see Poppy but readily invited her in.
“Mr Mannering isn’t home from work yet, but he should be back soon,” the housekeeper said, glancing at the clock. “Would you like to wait for him? I can bring you a cup of tea or coffee in the sitting room.”
“Thanks, I’d love to wait for him—but if you don’t mind, I’d rather wait in the conservatory?” Poppy gave a slightly embarrassed chuckle. “I’ve just learned lots of new plant names and I’m keen to test myself.”
“Oh, of course. Mr Mannering normally only allows guests into the conservatory when he accompanies them—he’s very particular about his plants, you know, and is always fussing over them.” She rolled her eyes and gave an indulgent laugh. “I think he’s worried people might step on them or break off a stem and damage his precious darlings. But since he’s already shown you around, I’m sure he won’t mind.”
The housekeeper led the way to the conservatory, then left her to wander through the warm, steamy interior. Poppy walked slowly around, admiring the lush green leaves and bright, tropical colours, and smiling in delight as she found that she was able to name several specimens. Of course, some she remembered from the other day when Mannering had showed her around and told her their names, so that was cheating a bit. Yes… there was the bergenia, with those big leaves like elephant ears… and the beautiful red hibiscus, with its opulent blooms… and here, the “ravishing” pandorea vine from Australia…
She went closer to the vine for a better look at the pale pink flowers and discovered that the trellis it was climbing on was actually attached to a screen, behind which was a beautiful little sheltered area tucked in the corner of the conservatory. You would never have known it was there if you hadn’t walked around the vine and looked behind the screen. Poppy stepped into the alcove and smiled in surprised delight as she looked around her.
A bank of ferns grew in long planter boxes, set against the glass wall of the conservatory. They screened out the outside world and ensured that all light which filtered through their heavy fronds was a soft green, giving the area the feel of an enchanted garden or hidden grotto. In the centre was an artfully arranged mountain of rocks and tucked between them were all manner of orchids. Clumps of thick, dark-green leaves nestled in the cracks and crevices, and from each clump rose long stalks on which hung rows of delicate orchid blooms.
Pink, magenta, cream, white… spotted, striped, ruffled, tipped… the petals came in an amazing array of intricate shapes and colours. Poppy had only ever seen the occasional orchid for sale in the supermarket (and she had never even dared look at the prices on their labels). They’d seemed like the ultimate extravagance: an exotic beauty to be pampered in a luxurious home. But those orchids she had seen paled into comparison to these…
There were little plant labels inserted at the base of each clump, bearing the name of the specimen. She smiled as she wondered if there were labels next to every plant in the conservatory—she hadn’t noticed them earlier—but it was exactly the sort of thing a pedantic gardener like Charles Mannering might do.
She reached out to touch the velvety petals of one large pink orchid, but her sleeve brushed against a smaller clump growing in a crevice beneath it, and something came loose, fluttering to the ground. Poppy gasped in dismay and quickly crouched down to retrieve it. She picked it up and realised that it was a tiny, dainty bloom. It must have broken off a stalk from the small clump—which, on closer inspection, was not one plant but several plants grouped together. Each had a single hairy leaf at the base and a thin stalk bearing a flower on the end.
As she looked closer, Poppy realised that these were orchids too. She’d thought that orchids only came in shades of pink, orange, and white—but no, this one was blue! Yes, the dainty bloom she’d picked up was the palest cornflower-blue, and unlike the big, rounded petals of most other orchids, the petals on this flower were small and narrow, five of them arranged around the centre, almost like a daisy…
Wait.
Poppy stared at the tiny orchid, her smile slowly changing to a frown. This flower looked familiar. She glanced back at the clump it had come from and saw the label inserted at the back. Tilting her head, she read the neat writing:
Blue Fairy Orchid (Pheladenia deformis)
Western Australia
So it was from overseas; she couldn’t have come across it randomly in a garden here in England. And yet… she was sure she had seen it recently… Had it been in one of her grandmother’s plant books?
No.
She knew where she had seen it.
A chill of realisation went through her body. It had been in the photo Nick had taken of the crime scene—the picture of Pete Sykes’s body lying in the flowerbed, with broken blooms scattered around him. Poppy could see them in her mind’s eye now, as vividly as if she was staring at the photograph in front of her: the big, white, daisy-like cosmos, the long purple spikes of salvia, the poppies and snapdragons, and a dainty blue Michaelmas daisy…
Except that it hadn’t been a blue Michaelmas daisy.
She had got it wrong. At a glance—and to the inexperienced eye—they certainly looked similar, and in her eagerness to identify the bloom, she had pounced on the image of the Michaelmas daisy in the encyclopaedia. But she was beginning to realise that the flower in the photo had in fact been a blue fairy orchid. Just like the one she now held in her hand.
Oh my God… and Bertie had known!
That was why the old inventor had uttered that strange line while looking at the photo! The title from Gulliver’s Travels with one place—Japan—that was the odd one out from the rest of the list. He must have known or recognised, somehow, that the tiny blue flower was a foreign invader. Bertie’s mind was brilliant but it didn’t work like most normal people’s, so he hadn’t been able or willing to tell her directly. Or perhaps he hadn’t even been sure himself and had simply repeated that title as a way of puzzling things out…
Poppy took a step back, forgetting Bertie and swallowing hard as the real implications began to dawn on her. The blue fairy orchid was from Australia—an exotic import from a foreign land—and it couldn’t have been growing in her grandmother’s cutting flowerbed, or even in the rest of the cottage garden. Which meant that one way it could have ended up in that photo, as part of the crime scene, was if the murderer had inadvertently dropped it there.
And she had just seen herself how easy it was to do. The tiny orchid blooms snagged on your clothing when you brushed against them. If you were wearing long sleeves—such as a man in a suit—they could get caught in your cuffs and unwittingly carried out of the conservatory. In fact, she remembered something like that happening on the night she had come for dinner and Mannering had been showing her around the conservatory. That time, it had been a big red hibiscus bloom which had snagged against his cufflinks. That had been easily noticeable, but if it had happened with a tiny, pale-blue flower…
The old lawyer obviously hadn’t noticed it lodged against his cufflinks, and then, later, the little flower had become dislodged and fallen to the ground during the struggle to bury Pete Sykes’s body…
Poppy didn’t want to voice it, even in her head, but she couldn’t ignore the knowledge bearing down on her. The man that she had trusted—the kindly, fatherly figure she had looked up to—had been lying to her all along.
Charles Mannering was the murderer.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
No… it can’t be true.
Poppy stood frozen, her heart sick with denial. She couldn’t believe that the lawyer could be the killer. He had been so nice, so kind, so full of fatherly concern… how could he be the murderer?
Perhaps she had got it wrong again. After all, she didn’t have Nick’s photo in front of her—she couldn’t be totally sure that the orchid here in Mannering
’s conservatory was the same as the blue flower she’d seen in the picture of the crime scene. But even as she ran through the arguments, Poppy knew she was only deluding herself, ignoring the evidence that was staring her in the face.
She thought of the way Mannering had grabbed her arm and led her away from the pandorea vine when she had tried to approach the screen for a closer look the other day. He had made it seem like he was taking her across to show her another plant, but she knew now that he had actually been preventing her from discovering the secret area behind the screen which held his illicit collection of smuggled orchids.
Because she was sure that’s what they were. Hadn’t Nick talked about “orchidelirium” and said that orchid smuggling was still a big business, especially since collecting wild specimens was now banned? And what could be more desirable to an avid plant collector than something unique, gathered from the wild? She remembered Mannering’s glowing face as he talked about his plants, the bizarre way he fussed over them and spoke about them as if they were spoilt children to be indulged. And then she heard Nick’s voice again:
“…people became so gripped with a particular flower that they would do anything to get it: pay crazy sums of money, give up their livelihoods, engage in theft… maybe even commit murder.”
Nick had laughed at his own words then and said that the last probably only happened in the pages of his novels—but he had been wrong. Pete Sykes had been murdered because of his involvement in the illegal plant trade; she was sure of it. Her original crazy theory had been correct; only Pete Sykes hadn’t been dealing with Hubert Leach, as she’d thought—he’d been dealing with Charles Mannering.
And there’s one way to confirm that, she thought grimly. Stepping forwards again, she pulled her phone out of her pocket and snapped a couple of photos of the little clump of blue orchids. She checked the screen, making sure that she had a good close-up of one of the blooms—something she could use to compare to Nick’s photo.
Then her ears picked up the sound of wheels crunching on the gravel outside. A car pulling in and stopping. Charles Mannering had come home. Panic seized her. He couldn’t find her here, in his hidden grotto. She saw now why guests were not allowed to come into the conservatory unaccompanied and why the screen with the lush vine had been erected in this corner—so that no one would discover Mannering’s secret. A secret that he was obviously willing to kill for.
Poppy whirled to run out of the grotto, grabbing the side of the screen to swing herself around the corner faster. But her haste was her undoing and she didn’t notice the long tendril of the pandorea vine trailing along the ground. It was around her ankle, jerking her feet out from underneath her, before she knew it. She went crashing down, her hands clawing frantically at anything to break her fall and ripping more tendrils from the screen. Broken leaves and stems rained down on her. She lay winded for a moment, then scrambled to her feet. The pandorea vine looked in a sorry state, missing chunks of leaves and half hanging off the screen.
Voices sounded in the house. Poppy felt panic surge through her anew as she heard Charle’s Mannering’s cultured tones, followed by a female voice. It sounded like he had just come in and his housekeeper was greeting him at the front door. Any minute now, Mrs Graham would tell him about his visitor and he would come hurrying to the conservatory…
Poppy looked desperately around. The conservatory was attached to the house via a double doorway which led into the main hall and the foyer. If she tried to get out that way, she was bound to run straight into Mannering. The only other exit she could see was through the French doors on the other side, fitted into the glass outer walls of the conservatory. There were large ceramic pots filled with tall palms standing in front of the doors and she didn’t know if they would open, but she had to try.
She darted across and squeezed her upper body between the pots, shoving the palm fronds out of her face. She yanked at the door handles. Nothing. She tried pushing instead. Nothing again. She gripped the handles harder and shoved frantically, pushing and pulling against the door frame. The hinges protested, emitting a high-pitched squeal that made Poppy wince, then suddenly they gave way and the doors swung outwards.
She clambered over the pots, practically falling out of the conservatory. Quickly, she shut the French doors behind her and scurried away, ducking low and keeping behind the hedge running around the house. A few minutes later, she had skirted the building and was on the gravel drive. She panted with elation. She’d done it! She’d got away!
Giving the house a last nervous look, she hurried down the driveway and started making her way across the village at a run. She had to tell the police—but first, she had to make sure. She had to compare the photos she’d taken of the blue fairy orchid with the picture that Nick had taken of the crime scene. She was accusing an elderly solicitor, a respectable figure in the community who nobody would expect to be mixed up in crime and murder. Without some kind of proof to back up her accusations, she didn’t think even Suzanne Whittaker would believe her.
She arrived back at Nick’s house to find it in darkness and cursed herself for not thinking of leaving the porch light on as she fumbled with the lock on the front door. At last, she got it open and flew down the hallway to Nick’s study at the back of the house. But when she’d stepped in and flicked on the light, she stopped short.
The photograph wasn’t on the wall by his desk. Where was it?
Then she remembered. That morning, after she had taken the photograph from Bertie, she had taken it back to the kitchen with them and absent-mindedly tucked it into the pages of her grandmother’s plant encyclopaedia, which had been sitting on the kitchen counter. It must still be sandwiched somewhere in the pages of that huge tome, which she had taken back to Hollyhock Cottage earlier that evening.
Exhaling in frustration, Poppy whirled and dashed out of the room. A minute later, she was running up the path in the cottage garden and letting herself into the house. She rushed into the kitchen—where the plant books were neatly stacked on the kitchen counter—and frantically began flipping through the encyclopaedia. It took her only a few seconds to locate the photograph, wedged in between the chapter on “Herbaceous Perennials” and “Ornamental Grasses”.
Poppy leaned panting against the counter as she stared at the photo—and then at the image on her phone screen. Nick’s picture had been hastily printed out on normal paper, so the image was grainy, but still, there was no doubt when the pictures were held side by side: that little bloom in the soil, just beside Pete Sykes’s left elbow, was a blue fairy orchid.
Poppy took a shuddering breath and dialled Suzanne Whittaker’s number. The detective inspector answered on the second ring.
“Poppy? Slow down… what is it? I can’t understand you—”
“I know… I know… who… the murderer is…” gasped Poppy, struggling to catch her breath. “I’ve got proof… I—” She broke off, wheezing. Her mad run through the village and the panic flooding through her veins was catching up with her; she felt as if her lungs were burning, unable to suck in enough oxygen.
“My goodness, Poppy—what have you been doing? Calm down, take a deep breath. There’s no rush.”
“No, you don’t understand…” Poppy gulped. “I must… tell you—”
“Listen, I’m actually in the car, on my way to you. I was coming to tell you that the cottage has been released and also to ask you a few more questions. Are you at Nick’s place?”
“No… the cottage—”
“Oh, good. Well, I’m almost there. See you in a minute!”
The line went dead. Poppy sagged into a chair, clutching a hand to her chest. Now that she knew professional help was coming, she felt like something that had been wound tight in her was finally beginning to relax. She leaned back, taking deep, gulping breaths, trying to calm her racing heart. Her legs felt rubbery and her head was spinning slightly.
My God, I’m so unfit, she thought ruefully. A life spent working at an office desk�
��with a hasty dash for the commuter train as her only exercise—had left her with embarrassingly little cardiac stamina. She vowed to start doing more exercise; perhaps she’d take up jogging or cycling… or even join a gym—
There was a knock on the front door and Poppy sprang up eagerly to let Suzanne in. As she hurried to the door, she heard a familiar plaintive cry from outside:
“No-ow… Noo-ow!”
It sounded like Oren had joined Suzanne at the front door and was demanding to be let in as well.
“All right, all right, I’m coming!” called Poppy, shaking her head and laughing.
She swung the door open and stepped back in surprise as the ginger tom sprang into the room, his eyes dilated and his fur all on end.
“Oren! What’s the matt—” She broke off as she saw who was standing on the threshold.
It was Charles Mannering.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“Hello, my dear.” The lawyer gave her a pleasant smile. “I believe you wanted to see me?”
Poppy licked dry lips. Maybe Mannering didn’t suspect that she’d found out his little secret. Maybe he just thought that she’d got tired of waiting and left.
“It… it was nothing… I made a mistake… um, I’m sorry to have bothered you—I should have told your housekeeper before I left… There… there was really no need for you to come—”
“Oh, on the contrary, I think there was every need. May I come in?” He stepped over the threshold before she could answer and slammed the front door behind him.
Poppy backed away. “Er… well, it’s actually not a good time… um… The… the police are coming!” she said, rather wildly. “Inspector Whittaker is on her way here right now… She’s going to arrive any moment—”