by Karen Odden
“He’s just home, miss. I’ll tell him you’re here,” she said and gestured toward the parlor. “The fire’s laid.”
A few moments later, I heard his footsteps on the treads, and he crossed the room to where I stood. The touch of his hand on my wrist was enough to set my pulse thrumming, and I was acutely aware of his every breath, the warmth coming off his skin. His voice was husky when he spoke my name.
“How was Bracknell?” I asked.
“Difficult but worthwhile.” He nodded to the parcel. “What’s this?”
I handed it to him. “It’s for you.”
He smiled and set it on a table, untied the strings, removed the paper, and turned the canvas over.
His hands went still, and I heard his quick inhale.
It showed the two of us in a railway car. I’d sought to depict us in a private space while keeping us firmly in the world. The landscape outside the window held fields, a barn, and some distant hills in muted greens and golds; the sky was a pale blue. The interior of the carriage was as true to what I remembered from our trip north as I could make it, down to the faded sepia cushions. A valise rested on the floor in the foreground, and Matthew sat forward, with his elbows on his knees and his eyes on me. I held a sketchbook on my lap, my fingers curled around the edge, and I was meeting his gaze. I’d worked attentively over the expressions and postures, seeking to portray the complexity of our feelings—the vulnerability, the growing trust, and the genuine pleasure in each other’s company.
He looked up from the canvas. “It’s us,” he said, surprise lighting his voice, “though it doesn’t look like the countryside around Milton Keynes—or the Isle of Wight, for that matter.” His eyes, very blue today, held mine, and a slow smile curved his mouth. “But we look happy.”
“Well, no, it isn’t either place,” I admitted. “But it is the two of us, happy.” A laugh bubbled up from inside me as he set the painting aside and pulled me into an embrace. And for a moment, before he was kissing me, my mouth was close to his ear, close enough that I only had to whisper:
“And we’re on our way somewhere.”
Acknowledgments
I do believe there is a trace of deceit in most of our memories, but deep feelings such as pain and love and gratitude often anchor the truth. I want to express my gratitude here to all those who have supported me in the making of this book.
First, my sincere thanks to my readers: Wendy Claus, who has been an unfailing supporter and was a falcon when I needed her; Kate Fink Cheeseman, Lisa Daliere, Tina Miles, Anne Morgan, Carrie Regan, Deborah Spitz, and Filiz Turhan, who provided invaluable feedback on early chapters and drafts; and my daughter Julia, who has read this manuscript at least four times and has been an insightful and thoughtful guide.
I’m a fan of using a lifeline to phone a friend when I have questions on topics outside my purview. Special thanks to Melissa Orlov for talking me through the psychology of vengeance, Dr. Evan Leibner for sharing information about poison (he’s always good for the morbid topics), and Hallie Mueller for letting me get inside her artist head. All factual errors are my own. A special thanks also to Amanda Stefansson for creating a lovely website and being patient while I learned how to navigate it.
My sincere thanks to the keen editorial eye of Masie Cochran, who has been a help from the beginning, before “the Elizabeth book” turned into A Lady in the Smoke; and to my agent, Josh Getzler, for his constant support and for pointing out early that I really had two separate books in the first draft of this one. A special thanks to Priyanka Krishnan, my first editor, who brought me to HarperCollins, and to the entire HarperCollins team, including my wonderful editor, Elle Keck; the marketing and publicity team of Amelia Wood and Kayleigh Webb; my copyeditor, Karen Richardson; and Elsie Lyons and Diahann Sturge for the lovely cover and page design.
My gratitude overflows toward all those who responded warmly to the publication of A Lady in the Smoke and A Dangerous Duet and offered their encouragement and support to a new author. Thanks to Barbara Peters of The Poisoned Pen Bookstore in Scottsdale for her kindness and for drawing me into a community of mystery writers and readers. I think of her marvelous shop as my literary home. Gratitude to all the bookclub leaders who have graciously welcomed me to their meetings, including Patty Bruno, Donna Cleinman, Amanda Goosen, Ruth Lebed, Phyllis Payne, and Rebel Rice. Thanks also to Ann Marie Ackerman, Rhys Bowen, Denise Ganley, Hank Garner, and Marshal Zeringue for hosting me on their blogs and podcasts; and to Bill Finley for inviting me to participate in the extraordinary Tucson Festival of Books. Thanks to those mystery writers who have read and supported my work including Donis Casey, Susan Elia MacNeal, G.M. Malliet, Anne Perry, and Rosemary Simpson.
Lastly, I am grateful to all those who have supported me in my writing career over the years, in the myriad of ways dear friends and family do: picking up the slack, reading drafts, talking through scenes and characters, road-tripping to attend my talks, spreading the word, and cheering me on. My heartfelt thanks especially to Jules Catania, Mame Cudd, Alice Cunningham, Tami Dairiki, Heidi Dauphin, Cara Denby, Kristin Griffin, Nancy Guggedahl, Claudia Gutwirth, Jody Hallam, Allison Hodgdon, Abbe Hugon, Denise Kantner, Dottie Lootens, Jennifer Lootens, Christie Maroulis, Nancy Odden, Libby Patterson, Stefanie Pintoff, Kathy Samuels, Cindy Schneider, Laura Schwartz, Lori Stipp, and Anita Weiss—and always, always, always to George, Julia, and Kyle. I feel you like the wind at my back.
P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*
About the Author
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Meet Karen Odden
About the Book
* * *
Behind A Trace of Deceit
Further Reading
Reading Group Guide
Read On
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An Excerpt from A Dangerous Duet
About the Author
Meet Karen Odden
KAREN ODDEN received her Ph.D. in English literature from New York University and has taught at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor. She formerly served as an assistant editor for the academic journal Victorian Literature and Culture. Her debut novel, A Lady in the Smoke, was a USA Today bestseller. Her second novel, A Dangerous Duet, was published by HarperCollins in November 2018.
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About the Book
Behind A Trace of Deceit
When I lived in New York City in the mid-1990s, I worked at Christie’s auction house. Their current offices are in Rockefeller Center, but at the time, they occupied the building at the corner of Fifty-Ninth Street and Park Avenue. I lived on the Upper West Side, and as long as the weather was fair, I’d cut diagonally across Central Park, pass the Russian antique store A La Vieille Russie, and head east on Fifty-Ninth. The public entrance was on Park Avenue, where Gil Perez, the doorman, was a fixture. Everyone knew Gil, with his silver mustache, broad smile, white gloves and tails, and a cap that made me think of a railway conductor.
I went in at the employees’ entrance—the back door, both literally and metaphorically. I never took a single art history class in college. In fact, one of my nightmares is that I signed up for one, forgot to drop the class, and found out the night before the final exam that I had five hundred paintings and artists to memorize. (Is that a universal dream? The college class you forgot to drop?) But after college, I had worked in marketing and with that experience, I found a position buying ad space for Christie’s print ads in publications such as the New York Times, Architectural Digest, Art & Auction, The New Yorker, Magazine Antiques, Antiquities, Beaux Arts, The Newtown Bee, and some little-known publications for rare books, stamps, and coins. Because I worked with all forty-some departments, from American Furniture to European Silver to Impressionist and Modern Paintings (Imps & Mods, as we called it), I rapidly became familiar with a wide variety of art. When I arrived, I didn’t know the difference between a Manet and Modigliani. I’d never seen a
Fabergé egg up close, or a Russian crown. I didn’t know that so long as you are discussing handmade items, a carpet and a rug are the same thing. I had no idea what a “verso” is, or why a maker’s mark on the bottom of a candlestick is important. Four months later, with the help of numerous visits to NYC museums, I did. It was a bit of a crash course—almost as daunting as my nightmare.
Because I was buying ad space, I was reading many art magazines, and I found myself deeply intrigued by the stories I found—some of which involved ridiculous wealth, scandal, deceit, thieving, smuggling, or forgery. I still remember an article I read in the New Yorker about several pieces of art smuggled back to the US by a WWII soldier, only to be discovered by his children after his death. Another compelling account concerned a sting operation that exposed the practice of smuggling Old Master paintings out of Italy, told by the investigative journalist Peter Watson in Sotheby’s: The Inside Story. But little did I know there was a story of corruption unfolding under my nose. During my tenure at Christie’s, Dede Brooks (head of Sotheby’s) and Christopher Davidge (of Christie’s) were caught illegally colluding in order to manipulate the various economics around the sales—the percentages given to sellers, the reserve amounts, budgets for ads, and so on. This story would later be told in The Art of the Steal by Christopher Mason, which doesn’t paint either auction house in a particularly attractive light.
However, along with the dark side of auctions, there was magic and glamour, including sightings of famous people. (I nearly bumped into Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger one day on the sidewalk.) The art was astonishing in its diversity and value. In 1994, branches of Christie’s around the world sold works as varied as Degas’s Danseuses se baissant (Les Ballerines); an Assyrian relief from the Northwest Palace of Ashurnasirpal II at Kalhu (883–859 B.C.); and Charlie Chaplin’s bowler hat. And on November 11, I was in the room when Stephen Massey auctioned off the Leonardo da Vinci Codex Hammer to Bill Gates (by phone) for $28 million. As the bid rose and rose and rose, Massey’s eyes darted back and forth between the showroom and the phone bank, where a proxy bidder repeatedly raised her hand to signal yes. The room was thick with murmuring, and I held my breath until the gavel fell.
In art, we find the world writ large—more beautiful, more tragic, more passionate, more inspiring, more curious, and more intense than our daily life. Artists create works out of their pain and longing and love and desire to communicate something of their truth or imaginings to others—and the consumers of that art often find themselves with correspondingly deep feelings of profound sympathy or perhaps a fierce desire to possess, particularly if a collector is passionate about certain artists or periods or styles.
In the nineteenth century, many London families had collections that had been built up over generations—and the destruction of those legacies could be devastating. While my interests nudged me generally toward writing a novel that involved art, one of my specific starting points was the 1874 Pantechnicon fire in London, one of the greatest tragedies in the art world during the Victorian era. Beginning in the 1830s, the Pantechnicon, whose Greek façade with Doric columns stretched along a full block in Belgrave Square, provided a place for the wealthy to store their expensive paintings, furniture, and objets d’art when they were traveling or had retired to their country estates. Some people also used it as an annex for their art collections, for example, if they had more paintings than available wall space. The building was advertised as impervious to water, theft, fire, and any other disaster, but—alas!—it was not. Despite its metal framework and doors that could close off sections of each floor, the entire building went up in flames in three days. Nearly every fire truck in London came to try to put out the fire and save some of the treasures—to no avail. Millions of pounds’ worth of art and furnishings were destroyed, including a significant portion of Sir Richard Wallace’s fine art collection valued at £60,000 (roughly £6.7 million today). But I began to wonder: what would happen if a painting that was believed to be inside the ruined Pantechnicon suddenly reappeared? How and why would that happen?
This question drove the backstory of A Trace of Deceit. Mr. Pagett, stepson of the MP Lord Sibley, considered a François Boucher portrait that his family owned as the centerpiece of the collection; he despaired when it burned in the fire. When the painting suddenly appears on the front of an auction catalog in 1875, he nearly becomes unhinged.
My second starting point was the Slade School of Art, which eventually became part of the University College London. It was founded in 1871 by Felix Slade, a farsighted man who perceived the value of men and women studying art together. (This was scandalous at the time, given the question: What should we do about the anatomy classes with male nudes? The answer, for many years: Drape the loins.) The first Slade professor was Sir Edward Poynter, who trained in Paris. In chapter 1 of A Trace of Deceit, we meet both Mr. Poynter and our protagonist, Annabel Rowe, a student at the Slade and an accomplished painter. I am always drawn to strong women protagonists, and Evelyn De Morgan (1855–1919), who entered the Slade in 1873 and won the prestigious Slade scholarship, became my partial inspiration for Annabel. As the novel opens, Annabel has finished her work for the day and is going to visit her older brother, Edwin, at his flat. A wildly talented painter, Edwin was recently let out of prison after serving a year for forgery, and he insists that he has reformed. But when Annabel reaches his flat, she finds two Scotland Yard inspectors who tell her that Edwin is dead. When she discovers that a valuable Boucher painting that Edwin was cleaning for an upcoming auction at Bettridge’s is gone, she goes to the Yard and offers to assist with the investigation—and because of her expertise in art and knowledge of the art world, Matthew Hallam accepts her help. (Historical note: While François Boucher did paint Madame de Pompadour several times, the painting stolen from Edwin’s room is my invention.)
So really, my work on this novel began nearly twenty-five years ago at Christie’s. This seems fitting for a novel in which the murdered man is twenty-five, and the seeds of his tragic death are sown in his childhood. As in A Lady in the Smoke and A Dangerous Duet, the foundations of the personal tragedies are laid years before the book begins—in the pain and difficulties inherent in families. When I think about it, my whole narrative drive is toward the past. Indeed, mysteries are my chosen genre because they are really all about the backstory: if there is a dead body on page five, the next three hundred pages are about how it got there. And my interest in art—an interest that persisted long after I left Christie’s—may derive in part from my fascination with the ways that old objects—traces of the past, like our shifting, shadowy memories—still have meaning and value in our present.
Further Reading
ON ART AND AUCTIONS
The Vanishing Velázquez: A 19th-Century Bookseller’s Obsession with a Lost Masterpiece by Laura Cumming
“From Inventory to Virtual Catalog: Notes on the ‘Catalogue Raisonné’” by Jonathan Franklin in Art Documentation (Spring 2004: 41–45)
“A Night at the Museum” by Jake Halpern in The New Yorker (January 14, 2019: 30–39)
“The Bouvier Affair” by Sam Knight in The New Yorker (February 8, 2016: 62–71)
The Art of the Steal: Inside the Sotheby’s-Christie’s Auction House Scandal by Christopher Mason
“The Perfect Paint” by Rebecca Mead in The New Yorker (March 18, 2019: 34–39)
The Private Lives of the Impressionists by Sue Roe
“Blue as Can Be” by Simon Schama in The New Yorker (September 3, 2018: 28–32)
“Rembrandt in the Blood: An Obsessive Aristocrat, Rediscovered Paintings and an Art-World Feud” by Russell Shorto in The New York Times Magazine (March 3, 2019: 34–51)
The Expert Versus the Object: Judging Fakes and False Attributions in the Visual Arts edited by Ronald D. Spencer
Sotheby’s: The Inside Story by Peter Watson
“Swimming with Sharks” by Rebecca Mead in The New Yorker (July 4, 2016: 42–51)
ON VICTORIAN HISTORY
The Lion and the Unicorn: Gladstone vs. Disraeli by Richard Aldous
British Gunmakers Volume Two: Birmingham, Scotland and the Regions by Nigel Brown
“The ‘Fire-Proof’ Pantechnicon” in The Spectator (February 21, 1874)
“The ‘Fire-Proof’ Pantechnicon Burnt” in Nelson Evening Mail (April 24, 1874: 2)
The Gangs of Birmingham: From the Sloggers to the Peaky Blinders by Philip Gooderson
The Railway Detective by Edward Marston
The Good Old Days: Crime, Murder and Mayhem in Victorian London by Gilda O’Neill
The Profligate Son: Or, a True Story of Family Conflict, Fashionable Vice, and Financial Ruin in Regency Britain by Nicola Phillips
“The Controversial Rule of Market Overt” by Anna O’Connell in Art Loss Review (archived from the original on October 8, 2007; retrieved August 31, 2007)
Historic Arms Resource Centre, rifleman.org.uk
The Ascent of the Detective: Police Sleuths in Victorian and Edwardian England by Haia Shpayer-Makov
Disraeli, Gladstone, and the Eastern Question by R. W. Seton-Watson
A Victorian Hospital by Katrina Siliprandi
A History of Birmingham by Chris Upton
“The Post-Office Scandal” in The Spectator (August 2, 1873, archive.spectator.co.uk/article/2nd-august-1873/7/the-post-office-scandal)
For further historical context, please visit Karen Odden’s website, www.karenodden.com, where you will find blog entries on a variety of subjects pertaining to Victorian England.
