House to Let

A House to Let is a short story originally published in 1858 in the Christmas edition of Dickens' Household Words magazine. Each of the contributors wrote a chapter (stories within a story, or, in the case of Adelaide Anne Procter, poetry) and the story was edited by Dickens, who also wrote the first and last chapters with Wilkie Collins. The plot concerns an elderly woman, Sophonisba, who notices signs of life in a supposedly empty dilapidated house (the eponymous "House to Let") opposite her own, and employs the efforts of an elderly admirer, Jabez Jarber, and her servant, Trottle, to discover what is happening within. (Summary by Ruth Golding and Wikipedia)