What keeps me going with this book when it slips into pointless speculation is the humour, sewn like sequins into the fabric of the story.
Here*s one:
‘Old Mrs. Bradworthy was an institution in theatrical London. She had sat, a genial fat figure in black silk, at the back of her little shop, just round the corner from Drury Lane, longer than the most elderly ingénue actress could remember.*
The little barb at the actresses flashes in the light and is gone. These remarks are like a did-you-spot-that? game between author and reader. Nothing serious but all the more fun for that.
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