Julius and the Soulcatcher (32 page)

‘Thank you,' he said.

Darwin stared at Julius for a moment and then dismissed all the fanciful ideas that were forming in his mind. The similarity between the boys' faces was purely a coincidence. What other possible explanation could there be for a rational person?

He nodded a goodbye to Julius, tipped his hat to Emily and Mr Flynn, then guided Skinner down the steps.

Julius watched until they reached the bottom and were lost in the Sunday crowd. Then he held the page out to Emily. She looked at the drawing of the pretty, smiling girl and the anxious but handsome boy. The edges were crinkled and a little stained from the black water that had drenched Tock.

‘Keep it,' said Julius. ‘So even when you're old and grey you won't forget that once upon a time, you and I went time-travelling together.'

‘Don't you worry, 'iggins,' said Emily. ‘I won't never forget.'

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

There really was a policeman named Fredrick Abberline. He lived some years after this story takes place. He investigated the infamous Whitechapel murders in 1888.

Lord Bloomingbury is based on a Victorian eccentric named William Buckland, who kept an extensive menagerie in his house and regularly fed specimens from it to his dinner guests.

The phenomenon
orchidmania
was rampant in Victorian England. Fortunes were won and lost and unspeakable crimes committed, all in pursuit of the rarest and most exquisite orchids.

New Bethlem Hospital was a lunatic asylum, known as Bedlam for short. Consequently, the word ‘bedlam' became synonymous with chaos and confusion.

Luckily, Charles Darwin's diary was not really stolen. He wrote a book based on it called
The Voyage of the Beagle
. It was published in 1839 and is still in print today.

There was an orchid hunter called George Skinner, although he collected his orchids in Guatemala, not Brazil.

Surrey Zoological Gardens was as it is described
in this book and would have been a wonder to see. There really were thylacines in captivity in London at this time.

Rapple and Baines are loosely based on the Resurrectionists Bourke and Hare. In Edinburgh, in 1828, they murdered people to sell to their bodies to medical schools for dissection—it was easier than digging up corpses.

And finally, Tock. There was an expectation among philosophers, at the time, that as machines grew more and more complex, consciousness would arise within them. The most famous example of a supposedly
conscious
automaton was the Turk, who travelled Europe and the Americas playing chess against baffled opponents including Napoleon Bonaparte. They could not understand how a machine made of cogs and wires could win every game. What they did not know was that there was a chess master hiding inside, who operated the automaton's arms.