‘I have answered quite enough questions for the moment,’ Dickens retorted, springing to his feet. ‘Come, it is time for us to be away.’
Outside it was bitterly cold and fog was rolling in from the Thames, smothering the dim light from the sparse lamps. As Dickens led the way down the cobbled street at his customary brisk trot, Collins heard the restless scurrying of unseen rats. He knew this to be a part of the city where life was as cheap as the women, but he found the temptation of the unknown irresistible. Like Dickens, he always felt intensely alive during their late-night wanderings in dark and disreputable streets and alleyways. One never knew what might happen. For a writer – for any man with red blood in his veins – that shiver of uncertainty was delicious.
Just before they reached the river, they paused in front of the last house. A red candle burned in the ground-floor window, its flickering light the only colour in a world of grey. The curtains at all the other windows were drawn.
Dickens tugged at the bellpull beside the front door, but at first there was no response. Collins shivered and rubbed his hands together.
‘I shall be glad when I am warmed up!’
‘Patience, Wilkie, patience. I promise you one thing. You will not readily forget tonight.’
Collins was still chuckling when the door creaked open. A small and very fat woman peered out at them. Her hair was a deep and unnatural shade of red – Collins surmised that she wore a wig – and perched on her nose were spectacles with lenses so thick that they distorted the shape of her porcine eyes.
‘What d’ you want?’ Her voice was as sharp as a hatchet.
‘Mrs Jugg? Splendid!’ Dickens greeted her with gusto. ‘My friend and I have been given to understand that you have a young lady lodging with you by the name of Bella?’
‘What if I do?’ The woman had several chins, and each of them wobbled truculently as she spoke.
‘Well, the two of us are eager to make her acquaintance.’
‘Bella’s a lady,’ the harridan hissed. ‘A proper lady. She has very expensive tastes.’
‘Expensive and exotic, I understand,’ Dickens murmured.
‘There’s no one like her. If you’ve been recommended…’
‘We have.’
‘Then you’ll know what I mean.’
Dickens glanced over his shoulder, making sure that he was not observed by prying eyes. They could hear the rowdy harpies, presumably tired of baiting the sad woman with the scar, spilling out of the tavern in search of better entertainment. In the distance hooves clattered, but the fog was a shroud, and anything farther than five yards away was invisible. Satisfied, he put his hand inside his coat and extracted a wallet, from which he made a fan of banknotes.
‘My friend and I are not without means.’
The woman took a step toward them, as though keen to check that the money was not counterfeit. Collins caught the whiff of gin on her breath as she grinned, showing damaged and discoloured teeth.
‘Well, you look like respectable sorts. Proper gentlemen. I have to be careful, y’know. Come with me.’
She shuffled back inside, the two men following over the threshold and into a long and narrow passageway. The air reeked of damp and rotting timber. She led them into a cramped front room where a slim scarlet candle in a dish burned on the window-sill.
‘So you both want to visit Bella at the same time?’ she asked with a leer.
‘You read our minds, Mrs Jugg.’ Dickens contrived to step backward onto Collins’s toes, stifling his companion’s gasp of surprise as he passed a handful of banknotes to the brothel keeper.
The woman’s myopic gaze feasted on the notes for a few seconds before she secreted them among the folds of her grubby but capacious dress. ‘That’s very generous, sir. Very generous indeed. You’ll both be wanting to stay the night here, I take it?’
‘Not exactly,’ Dickens said. ‘I am on good terms with a man who keeps an inn not far away from here, and it would please us if Bella accompanied us there.’
The fat woman frowned and indicated their surroundings with a wave of a flabby hand. ‘This is her home, sir. She doesn’t care to go out much.’
Dickens said with animation, ‘But this is our one and only night in the locality! Who knows when we will return? My friend and I wish to enjoy a memorable finale to our sojourn south of the river!’
He passed her another sheaf of notes, and the woman caught her breath. So did Collins. Clutching the money tightly in her fist, as if fearing that he might change his mind, the brothel keeper whispered, ‘Well, sir, the circumstances are obviously exceptional. Very exceptional indeed.’
‘I’m glad we understand each other. Now, if we can be shown to Bella’s room?’
The woman glanced at a battered old clock on the sideboard and let out a snort of temper. ‘I’m sure she won’t be long. Perhaps you’d like to make yourselves comfortable in the parlour while I see what’s what?’
She shuffled back into the malodorous passageway, and they followed her into a rear hall, from which a narrow flight of stairs ran up to the floors above. Opposite the bottom of the staircase was an open door leading to another room. A bald, unshaven man in shirtsleeves, heedless of the chill of evening, was standing there, a tankard in his hand. He glanced at the two visitors, but seemed more interested in savouring his ale. Collins surmised that he was a ‘watcher’, retained to keep an eye on the girls and customers of the House of the Red Candle.
Someone was coming down the stairs, taking them two at a time, stumbling over her skirts so that it seemed that she might at any moment trip and fall head over heels. The fat woman demanded, ‘Where d’you think you’re hurrying off to, Nellie Brown?’
Nellie came to rest at the foot of the stairs. She was a stooping, round-shouldered woman in a lace cap and a maid’s uniform. Pulling a handkerchief from a pocket, she blew her nose long and loudly.
‘Nowhere, m’m,’ she croaked.
‘I have two gentlemen here with an appointment to see Bella. You took His Lordship up a good three-quarters of an hour ago. You left the key with him, didn’t you?’
With eyes downcast, Nellie said, ‘Yes, m’m.’
‘Well, he never needs longer than thirty minutes. What are they doing up there?’
Nellie, evidently reluctant to meet Mrs Jugg’s gaze, bowed her head and declined to speculate.
‘Lost your tongue, girl? Why, he was supposed to be out of there a good fifteen minutes ago!’
‘Yes, m’m.’
‘I can’t abide cheats, whatever their airs and graces! He paid for half an hour, no more. If he wanted longer, that could have been arranged.’
Nellie’s shoulders moved in a hapless shrug as she considered the threadbare carpet.
Dickens shifted impatiently from foot to foot, and the woman snapped ‘Well, I can’t keep these two gentlemen waiting. You’ll have to rouse her.’
Nellie darted a glance at Bella’s visitors before shrinking away from them, as if fearing a slap, or worse. Collins thought she was afraid of Dickens; he had a fleeting impression of dark, secretive eyes and a disfiguring mark on her left cheek that she was striving to shield from his gaze.
For a moment Dickens seemed taken aback, but then he said, ‘Yes, my friend and I have made a special journey. We prefer not to waste our time.’
Collins was disconcerted by the sudden urgency in his friend’s tone. His mood of excitement had given way to fascinated apprehension. The whole evening had taken on an Arabian Nights quality. Dickens had a hedonistic streak, but his taste did not usually extend to houses of ill fame quite as unsalubrious as this.
‘Take them up with you, Nellie,’ the fat woman commanded. ‘Bang on the door until he leaves her be. I don’t care if he hasn’t got time to button up his trousers, d’you hear? He’s long overdue!’
‘But…’ Nellie sniffled. Her distress was unmistakable.