In William Keeling’s series, The Gay Street Chronicles, Belle Nash is a gay hero in Regency Bath who gets involved in adventures that exposes bigotry and prejudice, which he fights but is always left wounded by. At the end of his last adventure (the first book, Belle Nash and the Bath Soufflé), Belle Nash was banished for four years to the island of Grenada. It is now 1835, and Belle has returned to Bath, glad to be back but pained by the absence of his most recent Caribbean love…
Belle Nash and the Bath Circus, CHAPTER 1 | Courtesy of publisher EnvelopeBooks and author William Keeling | 11 min read
CHAPTER I
The Amazing Mrs Nonsuch
LONDON—NOVEMBER 1835
IT WAS NOT the first time that a Bow Street officer had made enquiries at Jaunay’s Hotel in Leicester Square, an establishment renowned for its distinctly theatrical, often foreign-sounding patrons. Stretching across three grand terraced houses, the hotel had a small portico designed to impress the cultivated Londoner. Less so, however, London’s new rough-neck force of bobbies on the beat.
Detective Inspector Decimus Dimm, an unprepossessing middle-aged man with red cheeks and rustic sideburns, stepped up to the portico with accustomed determination, only to have the hotel doorman block his way.
The doorman in question was short and stout, although it was not his physique or the elegant cut of his uniform that made him stand out. Rather it was his face: lips embellished by red lipstick, eyelashes extended with the liberal use of coal dust and grease.
‘Afternoon, Sir. How may I help?’ the doorman enquired.
‘I require entry, of course.’
‘Ah, how many of our visitors say that!’ the doorman replied, with the suggestion of a smirk. ‘In your case, however, I fear you ask too much.’
‘I’m a detective inspector,’ Dimm responded, dimly. ‘From Bow Street. That means I embody the Law and I’ll thank you to make way.’
To his surprise, the doorman remained unmoved.
‘I see that you wear a Peeler’s blue swallow-tail coat, Sir, with a high collar to protect you from garrotting, but sadly you do not meet the dress code of the establishment.’
Before Dimm had a chance to object, the doorman stepped forward and inspected the material of his jacket, then stepped back with the expression of disdain adopted by all stout men who wear mascara.
‘As I thought. Your jacket is made of serge. A nice-enough weave but we require something fancier: a silk chiffon cravat, perhaps, or a Calais lace kerchief. You display neither of these, I regret. Other men may enter; you may not.’
The two men appeared to have reached an impasse, but Dimm was not used to being stymied by coal dust and grease. He pulled a small notebook out of a pocket and flipped it open.
‘I insist you tell me your name at once.’
The doorman was happy enough to oblige.
‘I call myself Beauty, by daylight. Beauty of the McBeautys of Bellarena. In Ireland.’
Dimm winced and, pocketing his pencil and pad again, reached down into the tails of his coat. ‘Now here’s the thing, whatever your name is. Either you stand aside or I’ll hit your head hard with this newly issued wooden cosh that I’m entrusted to carry. What’s it to be, then?’
Faced by Dimm’s truncheon, the doorman quickly relegated the importance of sartorial elegance and stepped to one side.
‘Of course, Sir. Who at Jaunay’s do you wish to see?’
‘The manager,’ replied Dimm. ‘Where can I find him?’
The doorman pointed through the glass panes of the double doors towards the far side of the lobby.
‘Straight through. You can see the door to … ’
Dimm pushed his way past.
‘ … her office. For the manager, Sir,’ said Beauty, as the front door slammed closed, ‘is a woman.’
ON ENTERING THE LOBBY of Jaunay’s, a guest would typically stop to admire the lobby’s elegant Chinoiserie wallpaper, its gilded furniture and the air perfumed with rose water. Dimm, however, was not such a person, and he made straight for the manager’s office to catch its occupant unawares.
Any hope he had in this regard, however, was misfounded, for the manager, Mrs Nonsuch, had a nose for trouble. She could smell a policeman, especially one of Dimm’s rank and intelligence, from afar.
As he entered the office, Mrs Nonsuch rose and Dimm found himself confronted by a redoubtable lady whose nature was reflected in her surroundings. He was not the first to gawp at the sight of an iron hoop, hung on a wall, flecked with dried blood and dried divots of human flesh—relics of those whom the fair lady had bowled her hoop at in the past.
Hoop-bowling had been a competitive sport at the dame school to which the teenage Mrs Nonsuch had been sent. No one who had attended the summer sports day would forget the anguish of the once fleet-footed, sixteen-year-old Lady Amanda Cavendish as the Nonsuch hoop had splintered her kneecaps whilst she was demonstrating the quadrille; or the pain felt by Miss R. Grainger, whose left ear was unexpectedly torn off by the hoop whilst rehearsing ‘Cupid’s Kindness’, one of Ludwig van Beethoven’s 26 Welsh Songs, outside the parish almshouses, for a fundraising gala the following day.
‘And who do you have the sadness to be?’ Mrs Nonsuch demanded, her dark eyes staring with furious intent at Dimm. ‘Not a guest of Jaunay’s; that fact is as plain as a codpiece. Not with that jacket.’
As is often the case with men when faced with women of character, Dimm felt a wave of inadequacy wash over his pre-existing inadequacy. Mrs Nonsuch’s assertive tone, broad shoulders and bloodied iron hoop were surely reason enough, but there was something else about her that troubled him.
‘This is the second time this afternoon that my apparel has been bequestioned,’ said Dimm, defensively. ‘I am a Peeler, Madam. A detective inspector from Bow Street and I wish to enquire about a certain criminal whom your establishment is currently entertaining as a guest.’
Dimm’s request was met with a glower; it was not Mrs Nonsuch’s habit to betray the privacy of Jaunay’s residents.
‘I hardly think you’ll find anyone here who’s a criminal. This is Jaunay’s, founded in 1800 by Louis Brunet, an associé of the Prince de Condé and other aristocrats exiled from their beloved France by the Revolution. We have a reputation, Mr Dimm, for social distinction as well as la cuisine française.’
Dimm, however, was a simple man who preferred jellied eels over French cooking. ‘It’s for me to say who’s a criminal, Madam. We have reason to believe that the man I’m after is staying here. Now be good enough to let me see the register of guests, Ma’am.’
As Mrs Nonsuch trudged grumpily into the back office, Dimm’s eyes followed her. Though now at Bow Street, he had started his career in the West Country, where he had been taught by the magistrate to regard all women with suspicion. And, to his eye, there was something strange about Mrs Nonsuch.
A moment later, the hotel manager returned with the register and laid it open on the desk for Dimm to inspect. Dimm passed a calloused finger down the names of guests, flicking back through the pages one by one over the previous two months.
‘I’m confident that you’ll find nothing amiss,’ said Mrs Nonsuch, forcefully. ‘We are a highly respectable establishment.’
Dimm raised a hesitant eye.
‘I see nothing yet, but that doesn’t surprise me. The man we’re looking for is devious in the extreme and is likely to be using a pseudonym, although by the looks of it … ’
He twisted the ledger around so that Mrs Nonsuch could read the entries.
‘ … your register is filled with many suspicious names. Look at them, Madam. Many are hard to pronounce. That usually means they’re foreign and foreigners are always suspect, what with their strange accents and fancy manners.’
Mrs Nonsuch snorted. ‘Our foreign guests are all men of impeccable reputation. We currently have the eminent French philosopher Monsieur Blaise Pascal staying with us, although he is without his friend and colleague, the dramatist Jean-Baptiste Racine. Among the other residents are British actors who have adopted stage names, making them not foreign but professional.’
‘They sound foreign,’ said Dimm, ‘and that’s enough for me, Madam.’
‘Then let me relieve you of your scepticism,’ said Mrs Nonsuch and she pointed to a name in the book. ‘The popular Russian dancer Svetlana Krasko is none other than Maeve Cooley from Shoreditch; and Miss Kitty Pineapple, who sadly died in Room 106 a fortnight ago, was proved by the coroner to be the Earl of Dumfries.’
Dimm’s eyes widened.
‘A peer of the realm? Pretending to be Miss Pineapple, you say?’
‘Indeed—or was it the other way round? I cannot recall.’
Mrs Nonsuch sat back in her chair.
‘Too often, Sir, how we are perceived is superficial or irrelevant. At Jaunay’s, we welcome all our guests without prejudice. As, no doubt, should the Law … ’
Dimm grimaced.
‘ … and the Church,’ added Mrs Nonsuch, judging that she needed to raise the ante, ‘for are we not all God’s creatures?’
Realising that the manager was getting the better of him, Dimm decided to reassert himself and slammed the register closed, hoping to impress by a show of masculine force.
‘Four years ago, the criminal in question was exiled to the West Indies by a justice in Bath and barred from returning to British shores until a week hence. Should he already have returned to London, as we have grounds to believe, he will be exiled a second time, and this time more harshly, as the Law rightly demands.’
‘The West Indies!’ Mrs Nonsuch laughed. ‘How very dramatic. Or do you mean the East Indies? Or perhaps the North or South Indies? To which Indian islands was he exiled?’
Dimm’s voice turned to a growl. ‘Do not seek to distract me, Madam. The Law is not to be trifled with and nor am I.’
But Mrs Nonsuch was not so easily threatened.
‘To assist you, Officer Dimm, you must divulge the name of him whom you pursue.’
‘Him whom?’ said Dimm, for whom grammar was a weakness.
‘Yes, him whom. I cannot say if the miscreant is staying under Jaunay’s roof if I do not know the man’s identity.’
Dimm opted for another display of male eloquence and pounded the desk with a fist. This woman was intolerable!
‘You know, I’m sure, to him to whom to I’m referring!’
‘To him to whom to?’ queried Mrs Nonsuch.
‘Yes, to him. Who.’
‘Detective Inspector Dimm, I cannot read your mind nor imagine the many names of those who might appear on your Most Wanted list.’
‘I refer to Bellerophon Nash, of course! Otherwise known as Belle Nash, the well-known Bathonian finger-twirler.’
Having said which, Dimm immediately cursed and slapped his forehead with a hand. It had not been his intention to reveal the name but this devil of a woman had outwitted him. As for Mrs Nonsuch, she did not hide her pleasure.
‘Ah, dear Mr Nash of Bath!’ she exclaimed, clapping her hands. ‘The grandson of the great Beau. Why, of course, we know Mr Nash! He has been a guest at Jaunay’s many a time and oft.’
Dimm struck the desk again, but this time in triumph, and looked around the office as if Mr Nash might at that moment be hiding behind a cabinet or a side table.
‘I thought as much. My greatest foe! It’s thanks to him and his lady magistrate friend that I lost my job in Somerset. Where is he?’
Dimm’s jubilation, however, was short-lived.
‘Mr Nash has been a guest, but not for many years,’ said the lady manager. ‘I believe the last time we saw him was in 1829. Exile would explain his absence, though if he’s due to return to England soon, that is good news indeed.’
Dimm slumped back with his head hung low.
‘Not here? That is a blow … if what you say is true.’
‘Do not question my integrity,’ said Mrs Nonsuch, leaning forcefully across the desk. ‘Look me in the face and tell me that I’m not a fine, upstanding, honest woman.’
Dimm looked up. He wrinkled his nose in displeasure. He pursed his lips. Damn all women of authority. If Mrs Nonsuch were a man, he told himself, he would have cuffed her!
He hissed, ‘Very well, Madam, but I’ll be watching Jaunay’s. And, if you change your mind, it were best you sought me out.’
‘Indeed, Detective,’ she replied, ‘I’d be happy to sort you out. But for today, I bid you farewell.’
Moving from behind her desk, she showed the officer out and then turned sharply to a bellboy.
‘What a vile and stupid man. Tell Beauty never to allow him into Jaunay’s again. But first get out the rose water to clear the stench of ignorance from the air.’
‘Yes, Ma’am.’
‘And kindly inform Monsieur Blaise Pascal when he collects his key that I need to see him on a matter of urgency.’
AS DIMM STEPPED out again onto the busy sidewalk, he took a moment to peer back at the edifice of Jaunay’s.
‘There’s something going on in there,’ he whispered to himself. ‘Something mucky that I can’t put my finger on.’
Looking back at him with a grin of satisfaction was Beauty the doorman, who appreciated what Dimm failed to understand: that Jaunay’s provided an insight into the future. The door that he guarded was the gateway to a remarkable establishment where anything was possible—a pointer to a world without boundaries, a world in which doormen might wear lipstick, East End maidens might be Russian dancers and lords of the realm feel free to dress as stocking-clad coquettes.
A world in which, dear reader, if you had not guessed it already, a talented woman, born to an English plantation owner and an enslaved African mother, could manage a London hotel.
Well, almost: for let us not forget that the year is 1835 and that those who had been cruelly enslaved, though now ‘freed’, remained indentured—required to earn their freedom from ‘owners’ whom Parliament had deemed worthy of compensation.
Mrs Nonsuch’s success, therefore, was not easily achieved. Despite her resourcefulness and intelligence, or because of them, she had been ostracised by polite—and sometimes impolite—society. As the once fleet-footed Lady Amanda Cavendish had explained to her whilst recuperating on a chaise longue, ‘My legs may be in splints but I’m still a lady and you’re still a mulatta.’
Meanwhile, in her office, the hotel manager poured herself a glass of rum and studied her reflection in a mirror, seeing back a handsome woman of determined mind. She looked about the room, at an oil painting of her father on a wall and at a charcoal drawing of her mother on her desk. Jaunay’s was more than a refuge to her. Jaunay’s was her world.
The rum was sweet and she smiled, remembering the words that she had whispered back into her opponent’s ear: ‘You deceive yourself, poor Amanda. This country is as much mine as yours; and there is no one at the dame school who wishes to learn the quadrille, whereas my bowling skills are now admired by all. As for whether you’re a lady, that empty honour bestowed on you by birth is but a mirage, for you’re no lady. You’re a … .’
And here discretion draws a veil over the epithet launched by Mrs Nonsuch at young Amanda Cavendish, except to say that it had much the same impact as her hoop had done earlier.
The Gay Street Chronicles is based on the never-before-published archives of William Keeling’s uncle, the late Dr. W.B. Keeling of Gay Street.
AUTHOR NOTES
My uncle’s willingness to mix fact and fiction can be seen at its height in the opening chapter and presents a minefield for the dedicated historian:
- Jaunay’s Hotel was located in Leicester Square and was favoured by moneyed ‘bachelors’, including the public outcast William Beckford, one of the wealthiest men of his age.
- The bowling of iron hoops was the most popular pastime of children in this era and iron hoops had customarily to be confiscated by the police in London streets because of the injuries caused to pedestrians.
I have found no evidence of the life of Svetlana Krasko (formerly Maeve Cooley) nor of the double life of the Earl of Dumfries as Kitty Pineapple. Nor, regrettably, of Mrs Nonsuch, who appears to be entirely the product of my uncle’s prodigious imagination.
Welcome to The Gay Street Chronicles! 👑💐🇬🇧
William Keeling is a former foreign correspondent of the Financial Times who exposed a multi-billion-dollar corruption scandal in Nigeria. Accused of being a CIA spy, he was summarily deported. Suitably traumatised, he left journalism for chocolate, becoming co-owner of the historic chocolate company Prestat. Like his uncle, he, too, has a creative mind. Belle Nash and the Bath Circus is the second in The Gay Street Chronicles, a series of satirical historical novels set in the Royal City of Bath.
Follow