A few months after they opened, Nellie heard that the artist who had painted her murals had shot himself. He wasn’t the first soldier unable to cope with the peace. Nellie and Edith raised a glass to his memory after hours.
After a couple of years, Nellie had an offer that was too good to refuse and she sold the club. She marked the occasion by buying each of the girls a single strand of the new Ciro pearls with little diamanté clasps.
With the money from the Moulin Vert, Nellie bought the premises for her new club. Looking for a name, she thought of the hoard of glittering jewels that she had taken from Great Percy Street. She considered “the Diamond.” “The Sapphire”？ Or perhaps “the Ruby”？ And then she thought of the necklace that had given her a start in London. And, like Goldilocks, she found the name that was just right. The Amethyst.
Currently, Nellie’s empire comprised five nightclubs—the Pixie, the Foxhole, the Sphinx, and the Crystal Cup were the others. But the jewel in the crown had always been and always would be the Amethyst.
Before Holloway, Nellie could be found most nights in the little draught-proof cashier’s box at the entrance to the club. She ruled her kingdom from there—settling bills and accounts at the end of the evening, handing change to the waiters, taking entrance fees. One-pound entry. Members only. Paying the pound made you a member. The club took in a thousand pounds a week. It was better than a gold mine.
No one got in for free, not even the Prince of Wales. Last week, Rudolph Valentino had been here, the week before it was the young Prince George. He had no money on him, of course—these people never had cash and his companions had to scrabble in their own pockets for the fee. Nellie had a way of making people feel she was doing them a favour by giving them entry to the Amethyst. That was just the beginning of the fleecing. You couldn’t even leave without handing over a shilling to the cloakroom girl if you wanted to retrieve your coat at the end of the night. Plus a tip, of course. The Amethyst ran on tips. The dance hostesses were paid three pounds a week, but on a good Saturday—the Boat Race or the Derby—they could go home with as much as eighty pounds in their purses. No one ever asked for a raise. No one dared.
The Amethyst did not have pretensions to the haut monde like the Embassy club, nor was it scraping the gutter for custom like some of the flea-ridden dives of Curzon Street.
The London gangs who all streamed into the club from time to time treated it like a battlefield. The Elephant and Castle mob, Derby Sabini’s roughs, Monty Abrahams and his followers, the Hoxton gang, the Hackney Huns, the Frazzinis. Luca Frazzini, the Frazzinis’ chieftain, was a neat, dapper man who was often to be found sitting quietly at a table in the corner of the Amethyst, a glass of （free） champagne sitting on the table in front of him, barely touched. He could have passed for a stockbroker. There was an entente cordiale between himself and Nellie. They went back a long way, to the days of Jaeger’s Dance Hall. They trusted each other. Almost.
“Ordinary” members of the public and gang roughs rubbed shoulders with royalty, both those in exile and those still in possession of their thrones, Americans rich beyond measure, Indian and African princes, officers of the Guards, writers, artists, opera singers, orchestra conductors, stars of the West End stage, as well as the chorus boys and girls—there was nowhere else in England, possibly in the world, where so many different estates could be found together at one time, not even in Epsom on Derby Day. Unlike many—indeed, most—Nellie harboured few prejudices. She did not discriminate by colour or rank or race. If you had the money for the entrance fee, you were allowed ingress to her kingdom. In Nellie’s view, money was the measure of a man—or woman.
Once you had negotiated the Cerberus-like presence of Nellie at the entrance, you passed through a bamboo curtain and progressed down a dimly lit, narrow flight of stairs as unprepossessing as coal-cellar steps. It added to the “drama” of it all, Nellie said. Everyone wanted drama. At the bottom of the stairs, you were greeted by another doorman, this one liveried with frogging, epaulettes and so on, a costume that would not have looked out of place on a rear admiral in an operetta. This individual, Linwood, who was much given to bowing and scraping （he made an astonishing amount in tips）， was a disgraced butler from one of the royal households. Nellie believed in second chances, she herself had benefited from several. It was amusing to see the startled expressions on the faces of some of the club’s more regal patrons if they recognized Linwood （as was the way with butlers, he had no other name）， for he was the keeper of many of their more outré secrets. Of course, although most servants will recognize their masters, few masters will remember the faces of their servants. Then Linwood would draw back the heavy black bombazine curtain that shrouded the entrance and you were finally granted entry. A coup de théatre.