A Trace of Deceit

by Karen Odden

  Reading Group Guide

  One of the questions at the heart of the story is whether or not Edwin truly reformed before he died. Why does Annabel want so badly to believe he did? To what extent do you think he did or did not?

  At one point Annabel acknowledges that she finds it easier to recall the painful events in her past than the happier ones. Celia comments that she thinks it’s human nature. Do you agree, or do you think there is some element of choice in what we remember? Why or why not?

  The group of French painters eventually known as the “Impressionists” included Degas, Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Morisot, Cézanne, and others. With their works rejected by the established Salon de Paris, they staged their own “Salon of the Refused” in April 1874. Public response was mixed. In a critical article, Louis Leroy mocked the work as “impressionist.” The artists appropriated the term, claiming it for their own, and now their works are among the most popular in museums. What other cultural trends do you know that were mocked initially but later became mainstream or popular?

  At several points, Annabel shows Matthew how to “read” a painting. Do you see any ways that Matthew appropriates her ideas to his investigation? When do various characters reflect on their own ways of gathering information? Do you see any parallels in the way you perceive the events or people in your life?

  Annabel and Matthew have two different ways of defining truth. Annabel defines it as capturing the moment when people’s expressions and gestures betray their truest feelings and motives. Matthew believes truth is gathered mostly by putting events in order. To what extent do the two of them borrow from each other, or resist each other?

  Matthew tells Annabel he believes our memories naturally have “a trace of deceit” in them. What other books have you read in which memories are shown to be inaccurate, deceptive, motivated, or simply fragile?

  In Victorian England, the roles of the police and the press were intertwined. Both constructed stories about events, although to different ends. John Fishel of the Beacon claims he provides a service by alerting the public to potential frauds and the actions of police. What differences or similarities do you see with respect to the relationship of the press and law enforcement today?

  In 1854, Coventry Patmore wrote a poem called The Angel in the House that was widely read. In it, he presented his version of the ideal Victorian woman—meek, self-sacrificing, graceful, sympathetic, powerless, passive, and above all pure. The poem also promoted the notion of “separate spheres,” in which men went out to work in the world and women tended the home and the children. To what extent does this book adhere to these ideas and/or overturn them?

  Mr. Pagett deplores the way that art is treated as a commodity, “like a plank of wood or a pig,” and claims to perceive it as a transcendent object of beauty. But in this book, art is not just an object of beauty. For Bettridge and others it is a commodity, for Sam Boulter it is a tool for revenge, and for Mr. Pagett it is a plausible way to sustain a connection to his stepfather. What other roles does artwork play? What qualities of art enable it to serve all of these different roles?

  Read On

  An Excerpt from A Dangerous Duet

  Chapter 1

  London, 1875

  The back door of the Octavian Music Hall stood ajar, and a wedge of yellow light streamed out into the dark, crooked quadrangle of the yard. I picked my way toward it across the uneven ground, glad that I was in stout boots and trousers instead of my usual skirts. It had rained all day, and I tried not to think about what might be in the muck under my feet.

  A tall, broad-shouldered figure stood silhouetted in the doorway: Jack Drummond, the owner’s son, a stolid and taciturn young man who helped build scenery and props and fixed things when they broke. As he’d never said much more than “Good evening” to me, I knew very little else about him except that he let us performers in at the back and then went round to the front door to keep the pickpockets from sneaking in. I felt a secret sympathy for those ragged boys, desperately in need of a few pence for supper. Once the curtain rose, the men in the audience, most of them well into their cups, would be staring agog at a Romany magician or a half-naked songstress or some flame-throwing jugglers. It would’ve been child’s play to find their pockets, and chances are most of the men wouldn’t have missed a coin or two.

  Jack touched his cap briefly as I approached. “Mr. Nell.”

  “Evening,” I muttered. My voice was naturally low, but to bolster my disguise I pitched it even lower and hoarser.

  “Mr. Williams needs to see you before the show.”

  My heart leaped into my throat. I’d done my best to dodge the foul-tempered stage manager since he’d hired me weeks ago.

  “Did he say why?”

  “No. But don’t worry. He didn’t look mad.” His dark eyes met mine, and he gave a faint, wry smile. “Leastwise, no madder than usual.”

  I snorted. “Good.”

  From the bell tower of St. Anne’s in Dean Street came the chimes for three-quarters past seven. Fifteen minutes until curtain.

  “He’ll meet you at the piano,” Jack said.

  I hurried down the ramp that led to the corridor below the stage, feeling inside the brim of my hat to make sure that no stray hairs had escaped my phalanx of pins. Then I turned toward the flight of stairs that led up to stage right. The hall above, where the audience sat, had been elegantly renovated a few years ago when the Octavian opened, with crystal chandeliers and paint in tasteful hues of blue and gold. But the rabbit warren of passages and rooms underground was original to the hodgepodge of buildings that had stood here a hundred years ago, when the entertainment on a given night was likely to be bearbaiting and cockfighting, and the animals were brought up from below. The air stank of mold and rust; the plaster was crumbling off the brickwork; and the wooden steps had been worn down so far that the nailheads could catch a misplaced toe or boot heel and send one sprawling—as I knew from experience.

  Slow footsteps thudded above me. Jack’s father—whom everyone called by only his surname, Drummond—was coming down. He was a burly man, a full head taller than I, with the same unruly black hair that Jack had, thick black eyebrows, and a cruel mouth. I smelled the whiskey on him as he drew close, and I put my back against the wall to let him pass.

  “Evening,” I croaked, same as I’d said to Jack.

  He didn’t even glance at me. Motionless, I watched as he descended and vanished into the lower corridor; then I allowed myself a deep breath and continued on my way.

  At the top of the stairs, I ducked through a set of curtains to enter the piano alcove where I’d spend the next two hours. My spot was in the corner of the hall near stage right, with a second pair of curtains to separate me from the audience until the show began. The stage, which I could see from my piano bench, was elevated off the hall’s plank floor—wooden boards that had no doubt once been glossy, back before they’d absorbed hundreds of nights’ worth of spilled gin and ale.

  From the sound of it, members of the audience had already spilled a good deal of gin and ale down their throats, for they were more boisterous than usual for a Wednesday night. Curious to see why, I parted the curtains slightly and peered out, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Some of the men had found seats at the round tables; the rest were still gathered at the bar, where beer and wine and spirits were being distributed from hand to hand.

  The room was large, with walls that curved at the back so it resembled a narrow U. According to Mrs. Wregge, the hall’s cheerful purveyor of costumes and gossip, the builder believed that keeping everything in eights would protect against fire—hence the “Octavian.” He was so persistent in this belief that he moved the walls inward by a yard, so that the seating area measured sixty-four feet at its longest point. Eight gas-lit chandeliers sent their glow flickering across the room; eight spiraling cast-iron pillars supported the balcony; and each pillar had twenty-four turns from bottom to top. Perhaps the spell of eights worked because
during every performance, glowing ashes from the ends of cigars and French cigarettes dropped onto the floor, and still the building remained intact.

  As I did every night, I said a quick prayer that the magic would hold. This job not only paid three pounds a week; it let me finish by just past ten, which meant I could arrive home before my brother, Matthew, returned from the Yard. The coins I earned were forming a satisfying, clinking pile in the drawer of my armoire, and combined with other money I’d saved, I now possessed over half of the Royal Academy tuition that would be due in the fall. Provided, of course, that I succeeded at the audition in a fortnight.

  A flutter of apprehension stirred beneath my ribs at the thought, and I suppressed it, turning deliberately to the piano, lifting the wing, and fitting the prop stick into the notch.

  It was a good instrument—surprisingly good for a second-rate hall—a thirty-year-old Pleyel, with a soft touch and an easier action than my English Broadwood at home. The problem was that the French piano didn’t care for our climate; it fell out of tune easily, especially when it rained.

  I untied the portfolio ribbons and laid out the music in the order of the acts. First came a man who called himself Gallius Kovác, the Romany Magician, and his assistant, the lovely Lady Van de Vere. He was no more a magician who’d learned his trade from his Romany grandfather than I was, and his accomplice’s real name was Maggie Long. She was exactly my age—nineteen—and the natural daughter of a wealthy tea merchant and his mistress.

  After their last trick, I would play a selection of interlude music while stagehands rolled the magician’s paraphernalia off the stage. Then I’d accompany a singer who called herself Amalie Bordelieu. Her songs were French, but her accent offstage was pure Cockney, and her curses came straight off the London Docks. I’d heard them one night when she and Mr. Williams had a heated row in her dressing room. From the tone of it—caustic on her side, surly on his—it seemed to me that her anger derived from a long-standing resentment. Amalie was the only one of us who dared confront Mr. Williams; she had that luxury because she was too popular with the audiences to be turned out.

  Gallius and Amalie were our only permanent performers; the next few acts of the program varied. To remain novel and exciting, most entertainers traveled among the hundreds of music halls in London, remaining in each for anywhere from a week to a few months before moving on. This week, Amalie had been followed by a group of jugglers, who rode strange little one-wheeled contraptions and threw flaming candlesticks; next came my friend Marceline Tourneau and her brother Sebastian, with their trapeze act; and then, a one-act parody of marriage, complete with a deaf mother-in-law and six unruly children. Over the past two months, I’d also seen a ventriloquist, a group of six German knife throwers, trained dogs, men on stilts, an absurd dialogue between two actors playing Gladstone and Disraeli, three women singing a rollicking verse about the chaos they’d unleash if only they had voting rights, and an adagio in which an enormous man juggled two girls. The final act was always one of London’s lions comiques—groups of men who dressed as swells, in imposing fur coats and rakish hats, twirling their walking sticks and singing about gambling and whoring and drinking champagne. They brought the crowd to their feet every time.

  From backstage came the clang of bells, signaling that the show would begin in ten minutes. Where was Mr. Williams, if he needed to see me so badly? And what could he possibly want? I searched my memory for anything I might have done wrong the night before. The show had gone mostly as usual. He’d shouted himself apoplectic because Mrs. Wregge’s cat Felix had streaked across his path backstage, twice. But he was always ranting about something.

  I sat down on the bench and lifted the fallboard. The ebony keys had scrapes along their surfaces and the ivories had yellowed. Still, they were keys to happiness, all eighty-eight of them.

  I ran a quiet scale to warm my fingers. I hadn’t played more than a dozen notes when I realized that the E just below middle C was newly flat. And what had happened to the B? I pushed the key down again: nothing, and the silence made me groan aloud. Not wanting to risk Mr. Williams’s wrath, I’d bitten my tongue as, with each passing week, I’d had to shift octaves and rework chords to avoid the flat notes. But this was absurd. I would have to convince Mr. Williams to hire someone to fix it, despite his being a relentless pinchpenny.

  I put my foot on the damper pedal, heard a clink, and felt a scrape on the top of my boot.

  What was that?

  Ducking my head underneath, I saw that a long screw had come loose from the brass plate, which now rested on top of the pedal, rendering it useless. With a sigh, I reached in my pocket and took out a farthing coin that had thinned around the edge; it had served as a makeshift tool before. I crawled underneath, pushed the plate into place, and used the coin to turn the screw until it bit into the wood. I ran my thumb over the head; it wasn’t quite flush, but it would have to do for now.

  “Ed! Ed Nell!” Mr. Williams barked. “Damn it all! Where the devil is he?”

  I scrambled out from under the piano. “I’m right here.”

  “Oh!” Mr. Williams scowled down at me, his bald pink pate shining in the light from the two sconces. “There’s a new act tonight. A fiddler. Found him yesterday, busking at Covent Garden.”

  Was that all?

  “He’s not expecting me to accompany him, is he?” I asked, as I stood and brushed myself off. It was no business of mine who Mr. Williams brought in, but most of the musicians who played near Covent Garden weren’t much to speak of.

  “Nah. He’ll be after Amalie. Just give him a few chords.”

  I kept my surprise in check. Mr. Williams must think pretty highly of the man to insert him when people were still sober enough to be listening.

  “What’s he playing?” I asked.

  “How would I know?” He waved a hand toward the audience. “Hope he can make himself heard over that.”

  “They’re louder than usual tonight.”

  “It’s because of Jem Ace.”

  “Who’s—” I started to ask, but fell silent as the curtain parted and Jack appeared, a troubled expression on his face. His gaze brushed over me and fixed on the manager.

  “The Tourneaus aren’t here,” he said.

  “What do you mean, they’re not here?” Mr. Williams demanded.

  I felt surprised myself. Marceline would’ve told me if she and Sebastian were leaving for another hall. They had never missed a show before.

  Jack shook his head. “That’s all I know. And Amalie needs to see you. Her new costume is falling off, and Mrs. Wregge says there’s no time to fix it.”

  The stage manager turned away, muttering under his breath.

  “Mr. Williams—wait—please!” I said hastily. “Is there any way you could have the piano tuned? The keys are horribly flat. Listen.” I played a rapid scale. “And the B isn’t even working.”

  He waved a hand. “Jack’ll look at it later.”

  Jack sketched a nod.

  I bit my lip, not wanting to be rude, but also not wanting to damage the piano further. “Well, you see . . . it needs someone who’s specially trained and—”

  But he was already pushing aside the curtain. “Put up with it,” he said over his shoulder. “Nobody but you’s going to notice.” He turned back, his expression sour. “And be ready to switch Amalie out of order—maybe after the fiddler—or she can take the Tourneaus’ spot, if they don’t arrive. Blasted tart and her costumes. More bloody trouble than she’s worth.” Then he and Jack were gone.

  Somewhat exasperated, I tugged at the cords that drew back the curtains separating me from the audience. It was mostly working-class men, still jostling into their seats and shouting good-naturedly to the boys who hawked cigars and cheap roses from trays that hung around their necks. As I surveyed the crowd, I realized Mr. Williams was right: no one would notice a piano out of tune, much less a missing note. And why should I care if it sounded horrid, so long as the audience was satis
fied?

  You’re not playing Beethoven at St. James’s Hall, I reminded myself as I took my seat. And what’s more, you never will if Mr. Williams decides that you’re more bloody trouble than you’re worth. You’re not irreplaceable the way Amalie is.

  At eight o’clock precisely, two men on the catwalk pulled the ropes to swoop the curtains in graceful waves toward the ceiling. The sapphire-colored velvet with its gold trim had been mended a dozen times by Mrs. Wregge—I’d seen her perched on a stool, her needle flying across the fabric gathered in her broad lap—but in the flickering light, the patched bits were invisible and the velvet looked rich and elegant.

  I struck up the dramatic prelude as Gallius Kovác strode onto the stage, his black cape flapping, his tall black hat—rumor had it he’d stolen it from a police constable—shining under the lights, his mustache waxed to fine curled ends. He extended his hand to stage right, and Maggie pranced out in a costume that never failed to elicit whistles from the crowd—a green-and-gold dress cut low to reveal the curve of her breasts. Her black hair was curled into ringlets and pinned up with sparkly combs. Her lips were painted red and her lashes darkened, like the ladies on the postcards from Egypt that hung in the window of Selinger’s Stationers.

  Gallius’s first feat was to pull two birds out of his hat. But nine men out of ten were looking at Maggie, not the birds. The feathered creatures flapped up to the rafters unnoticed, while Maggie preened and strutted and winked at the audience. At her feet landed a small storm of roses, sent flying toward her by men who probably thought she treasured the blooms. After her performance, she returned them to the rose boys to sell again, and they split the two-penny profits.

  I knew Gallius’s routine well enough to match the music with the tempo of his tricks. So when he pulled a rainbow of handkerchiefs out of his hat, I rolled the chord. When he made Maggie disappear, I made the piano notes deep and trembly. And the crescendo came when she reappeared out of a box that vanished in a cloud of smoke.