House to Let

Best known for enduring classics such as Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens also wrote a number of short stories and novellas, often neglected today. A House to Let is one such story, originally published in Household Words and ingeniously written in alternating chapters by Dickens himself and his friends Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell and Adelaide Anne Procter. Advised by her doctor to have a change of scene, the elderly Sophonisba takes up lodgings in London. Immediately intrigued by the vacant 'house to let' opposite, she charges her two warring servants, Trottle and Jarber, to unearth the secret behind its seeming desertedness. Rivals to the end, they each seek to outdo the other to satisfy their mistress' curiosity, but it is only after repeated false starts – and by way of elaborate tales of lost men at sea, circus performers, and forged death certificates – that they happen upon the truth.