The Luminaries

striking. When the first guests knocked upon the door, ‘Sixpenny Money’ was sounding at an aching drawl—putting one in mind not of dancing and celebration, but of funerals, sickness, and very bad news.
    By eight o’clock the former hotel had reached capacity, and the air was thick with smoke.
    ‘Have you ever watched a magician at a market? Have you ever seen a cup-and-ball man at work? Well, it’s all in the art of diversion , Mr. Frost. They have ways of making you look away, bymeans of a joke or a noise or something unexpected, and while your head is turned, that’s when the cups get swapped, or filled, or emptied, or what have you. I don’t need to tell you that no diversion’s as good as a woman, and tonight, you’ll be contending with two.’
    Frost glanced at Pritchard, uncomfortably, and then away: he was a little afraid of the chemist, and he did not like the way that Pritchard was looming over him—standing so close that when he spoke Frost could feel the heat of his breath. ‘How do you propose I am not diverted?’ he said.
    ‘You keep both eyes open,’ Pritchard said. ‘Nilssen watches Anna. You watch the widow. Between the two of you, you’ve got them covered, you see? You watch Lydia Wells no matter what. If she invites you to close your eyes or look elsewhere—they often do that, you know—well, don’t.’
    Frost felt a twinge of irritation at this. He wondered what right Joseph Pritchard had, to allocate duties of surveillance at a séance to which he did not hold an invitation. And why was he assigned to the widow, when Nilssen got Anna? He did not voice these complaints aloud, however, for a barmaid was approaching with a decanter on a tray. Both men filled their glasses, thanked her, and watched her move away through the crowd.
    As soon as she had left Pritchard resumed, with the same intensity . ‘Staines has got to be
somewhere
,’ he insisted. ‘A man doesn’t just vanish without a trace. What do we know for sure? Let us catalogue it. We know that Anna was the very last to see him alive. We know that she was lying about that opium—saying she’d eaten that ounce herself, when I saw for myself that that was a plain-faced lie. And we know that now she’s fixing to call him up from the dead.’
    It occurred to Frost suddenly that Pritchard’s jacket fit him very ill, and that his necktie had not been pressed, and that his shirt was all but threadbare. Why, and his razor must be very blunt, Frost thought, to produce so uneven and patchy a shave. This criticism, internally voiced, gave him a sudden confidence. He said,
    ‘You don’t trust Anna very much, do you, Mr. Pritchard?’
    Pritchard seemed taken aback by the assumption. ‘There isample reason not to trust her,’ he said coldly. ‘As I have just chronicled for you.’
    ‘But personally,’ Frost said. ‘As a woman. I gather that your impression of her integrity is very low.’
    ‘You talk of a whore’s integrity!’ Pritchard burst out, but he did not go on.
    After a moment Frost added, ‘I wonder what you think of her. That’s all.’
    Pritchard stared at Frost with a vacant expression. ‘No,’ he said, at last. ‘I don’t trust Anna. I don’t trust her a straw. I don’t even love her. But I wish I did. Isn’t that a curious thing? I wish I did.’
    Frost was uncomfortable. ‘Hardly worth three shillings, is it?’ he said, referring to the party. ‘I must say I expected more.’
    Pritchard seemed embarrassed also. ‘Just remember,’ he said, ‘during the
séance
, keep both eyes on Mrs. Wells.’
    They turned away from one another, pretending to scan the faces of the crowd, and for a moment the two men shared the very same expression: the distant, slightly disappointed aspect of one who is comparing the scene around him, unfavourably, to other scenes, both real and imagined, that have happened, and are happening, elsewhere.

    ‘Mr. Balfour. May I speak with you a moment alone?’
    Balfour glanced up: it was Harald Nilssen, looking characteristically dapper in a vest of imperial blue. He saw on Nilssen’s face the hardened expression of a man who is resolved to ask a difficult question, and his heart became heavy in his chest. ‘Of course—naturally, naturally,’ he said. ‘You can speak to me—of course you can speak to me! Naturally!’
    What fools men became, he thought, when they knew they were about to be shamed. He followed Nilssen through the crowd.
    When they were out of