Constance reviewed her strange and wondrous week over breakfast on Saturday morning.  In some sense nothing much had really happened; she hadn’t meet the man of her dreams who would whisk her away to his countryside manor and pump her full of dear dear children nor had she secured an appointment that might fill her idle time. Instead, without ever leaving London, she had experienced the smell of the most vile and well, to be frank, the most odiferous flower in God’s universe and much more. Her adventures began decisively the moment she resolved to go it alone and see the plant known casually as the corpse flower. It rarely bloomed in cultivation, the papers said. And while the flower was pretty enough, it was the smell that sparked her curiosity, a cross between carrion and dead Aunt Millie who was found days later rotting in her flat. Conversation flowed easily enough among the curiosity seekers on line as they waited all night outside the Botanic Gardens in Kew and continued over an impromptu breakfast the next morning following the viewing. After sleeping all day, Constance attended a stereopticon lecture on Alaska that was equally transporting. Just as she was leaving, one of the gentlemen she had met the night before, tapped her gently on the shoulder and waved hello. She noted his scuffed wingtips, fraying collar and ill-fitting suit. He leaned in close to her ear and whispered amorphophallus titanium, which she instantly understood to mean the Latin name for that strange flower. But to her ear, it also sounded like the password to gain entrance to a secret society that would clearly steer her away from her life’s goal.