The Mystery of a Turkish Bath

In the cooling room of a fashionable London Turkish bath the talk turns to a newcomer — a woman so beautiful that she holds even her own sex silent. The Princess Zairoff has rank, wealth and a past she will not unveil, and the man who loved her as a boy finds that her secret belongs less to the police court than to the occult: a soul that leaves its body, dreams that must be interpreted. Eliza Humphreys wrote nearly a hundred novels as "Rita", and this short one turns the gossip of the vapour rooms into something stranger; the last mystery in it is death itself. Fifty-nine plates of Victorian and Edwardian painting, from Tissot to Grimshaw, follow the story's London parks, railways and moonlit harbours.