Marguerite goes to Edinburgh after her husband's murder to join Marie Tussaud's touring wax exhibition, but she becomes involved in a dangerous situation after she agrees to create a wax figure of Admiral Nelson.

In 1761 a tiny, odd-looking girl named Marie is born in a village in Switzerland. After the death of her parents, she is apprenticed to an eccentric wax sculptor and whisked off to the seamy streets of Paris, where they meet a domineering widow and her quiet, pale son. Together, they convert an abandoned monkey house into an exhibition hall for wax heads, and the spectacle becomes a sensation. As word of her artistic talent spreads, Marie is called...