But the main difference between the two women was that Cissie came up the hard way and knew the value of a quid. He really admired Cissie’s practical nature when it came to money. Edwina, who had unlimited access to her father’s fortune, never had to pay for anything out of her own pocket and thus knew nothing about money. When a person never has to worry about what something costs, money has no value. Growing up in Dorset, Layton had been taught that money doesn’t grow on trees and should be spent wisely or, better yet, saved. He had wanted to instill that important value in Ronald when he was older but never got the chance. Taking him to a confectioner’s shop and teaching him how to pay for sweets and count his change was something he had looked forward to. It saddened him to think that his son would inherit his mother’s ignorance of money matters.
Whenever they talked, Layton was careful not to reveal anything about his history to Cissie. He knew he seemed evasive and eventually fabricated a story about working for an engraver in Dorset, where he’d developed his artistic talent. Whenever she started to ask too many questions, he’d veer the conversation toward her.
“You’re what they call a ‘liberated woman,’” he said gingerly. “She does what she wants and doesn’t need a man.”
“Bollocks!” Cissie gave a howl of laughter. “You’re bloody right I’m a businesswoman, and a tough one at that. But I’m no unfeminine, unsexed man-hater. Do I dress like a man, wear my hair short, and sport a mustache? No! Do you think I’m feminine, Frank?”
The swiftness of her reply caught Layton off guard. “Why, yes! The moment I first saw you in Black’s office, I thought how beautiful you were,” he blurted.
Cissie smiled at him. “Well, well. Coming from a good-lookin’ bloke like you, that’s a bloody big compliment.”
Layton smiled shyly into his pint of lager. Then he looked her straight in her large, blue eyes, and added, “It’s not just your beauty. It’s your independence and confidence. You’re a woman of substance.”
“You’re dead-on there, m’boy.” She sat back in her seat, taking in the crowd around them. “Most women aren’t, especially these society ladies. All fur coat and no knickers.”
“You definitely have knickers,” Layton said. A second later, his blundered reply dawned on him, and he blushed.
Across the table, Cissie howled with laughter. Layton joined in, his head bobbing to and fro. He hadn’t laughed so hard in more than five years.
“Indeed I do, Frank, and many a man has wanted me to drop ’em.” She waved her glass in the air. “Jackie, another round for me and my gentleman friend.”
She turned back to him. A sudden intensity galvanized her face; it was as if electricity were running through her bones, giving her energy.
“My Pygmies are going to make a packet, Frank. They’ve played to full houses, and now I’ve got them under a long-term contract. I’m going to do the same thing with some of the other real popular acts.”
“But what do they do?”
“Stand up there and sing and dance while Evans gives a lecture. People love it. They’ve never seen anything like them before. You see, Frank, there’s no shame in an act being nonsensical as long as it has appeal.”
“They seem very scrawny,” Layton ventured.
“That’s how all of them are.” Cissie wrinkled her nose. “The problem is keeping ’em warm. They’re not used to the English weather. I may have to buy them coats and shoes.”
“I’ll do some realistic backgrounds for them. They’ll feel like they’re back home in the jungle. Might make them feel warmer.”
“I know you will. I’m glad you’ve taken to our little world of make-believe, Frank,” Cissie said, patting his hand. “What’s your favorite act so far?”
“Oh, it’s so difficult to say. So many of them are great.” He wasn’t saying this to curry favor, Layton realized as the words left his lips. He meant it. “The animal acts are very funny, especially Handley’s Monkeys. I was really impressed by Agnes, the Equestrian Juggler.”
“She’s bloody amazing,” Cissie said, rapping her knuckles on the table for emphasis. “The sole purpose of variety theatre, Frank, is popular entertainment for the common people. We give ’em a magical place to go, and just for a night, they can forget about their dull jobs, their awful lives.”
“You know,” Layton said slowly, feeling like an excited child, “I still can’t get over the flickers—the moving pictures. Like the one showing the palace of Versailles last week. You felt as if you were really there. What an incredible invention.”
“Cost us five quid for just that one film.” Cissie paused, assessing him. “You’ve never been up in the projection booth, have you? What about meeting me up there in the gallery after the second show, luv?”
• • •
“Run him out. Run him out,” screamed a man in a derby.
It was sheer bedlam. The crowd in the gallery had gone berserk, standing atop the wooden benches, cheering their heads off.
“Keep running!” yelled another man.
The object of the gallery’s attention was a cricket match on the stage. The batsman had just struck the ball and was running between the wickets. Normally, this wouldn’t have caused much excitement; cricket was everyday recreation in Britain. But this was no ordinary match. It was being played by four baby elephants—De Gracia’s Pachyderm Performers.
Layton had climbed up to the gallery to see how the backcloth he’d painted looked from “the gods.” Now he found himself caught up in the excitement and cheering on the elephant batsman, who was slowly lumbering along. The two elephant fielders were having trouble retrieving the ball. The batsman crossed the batting crease; the fielder rolled the ball back to the bowler, who snatched it off the ground with its trunk.
His cloth, Layton thought, looked very convincing. He’d based it on the Royal Cricket Grounds, adding spectators and a scoring board. But it was the oversize cricket caps and white jackets the elephants wore that made the act so funny. For elephants, they played damn well.
The audience in the gallery was made up of the poorest of the poor: common laborers, sweatshop workers, clerks, barmaids, and the unemployed. All of them were going crazy with laughter. Each day, Layton thought, this sorry lot fought to survive. Tonight, for eighty minutes, they forgot their troubles, just as Cissie had said. He felt sorry for the acts that had to follow the elephants, which included the top of the bill, Bonnie Bill McGregor, the Flying Scotsman of Laughter.
The show ended with a final turn by Monsieur Slippere, who did a magnificent trick playing on the piano with his toes. The gallery audience filed out quickly; they had to catch the last trams at ten thirty. Layton stayed on his bench, looking around the auditorium. He’d never spent any time up in the gallery. Unlike the rest of the theatre, this section had almost no decoration. The walls and ceiling were plain painted plaster, divided by panels with simple wood moldings. The stage seemed to be miles below.
In the solitude, Layton could admire the entirety of Matcham’s exquisite design. He started from the left sidewall of the gallery, taking a 180-degree view to the right. His eyes lingered on the great proscenium arch, then darted back to the right sidewall. He looked to the left again.
Something was amiss. A wood molding toward the bottom of the wall looked crooked. Instead of being laid completely flat, it had a slight but noticeable bulge. Layton saw why—the plaster on the wall itself had a bulge, which meant the brick wall behind it wasn’t laid plumb. He was surprised that Matcham would allow such sloppy work. He was well known for his attention to workmanship. Layton started to walk toward it to take a closer look. In his own buildings, he had hated anything out of kilter, even a light shade that wasn’t straight.
“There you are,” trilled a warm voice. Cissie, standing at the very top of the gallery.
Layton bounded up the steep stairs and stood by her side, facing the
auditorium. “There’s a loneliness in an empty theatre,” he said.
“Or you can hear the echoes of the cheering and laughter. Depends on how you look at life, ducks.” Cissie motioned for him to follow. In the back wall along the gallery’s rear aisle was a door, which she opened with a key. “This is where the flickers come from,” she said, turning on the light.
A wooden box with a crank on its side sat before Layton. A kind of telescope stuck out of its end and was positioned in a small circular opening in the wall.
“It’s called a Pathé cinematograph,” Cissie said. “It projects light through spools of film onto the screen onstage.”
Layton ran his hands over the wooden box, smiling. “This is bloody amazing.”
“Next month, we’re getting a film of a big fire in a warehouse in Lambeth. You see the whole building collapse,” Cissie said with great pride.
Layton could see how glad she was to have impressed him.
“They have films showing whole stories now. The Yanks did one called The Great Train Robbery. I’m trying to get the circuit to rent it.”
The projection booth was tiny, like a telephone call box. Layton and Cissie were crammed together, not quite touching. He had never been so close to her before, and he could smell the scent of her face powder, which was almost intoxicating. He hadn’t been this close to a woman since before prison. Being much taller, he looked down into Cissie’s face. Her eyes seemed just inches away, but he maintained his decorum, as if they were sitting apart from one another, having tea in a parlor.
Cissie was avidly discussing the different films the circuit would show. One theatre owner, she told him, had abandoned live acts to show only flickers. This, she thought, was nonsense.
“People like the personal contact with a variety act. There’s an intimate connection between a performer and the audience. You can’t get that anywhere else.”
Layton wholeheartedly agreed. Shifting his weight, he bumped Cissie’s shoulder.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” he blurted out, getting red in the face.
“My, aren’t we the proper gentleman?” Cissie said with a great smile. “Don’t you get yourself into a lather. You didn’t rip my dress off, you know. And you look very nice when you blush.”
Layton laughed nervously. Cissie didn’t seem at all uncomfortable. His ex-wife Edwina, he thought, would have fainted dead away. Not from the actual contact, but from the thought of the scandal such a situation could cause.
“Yes, I’m being silly.” He had averted his eyes, but now they locked onto hers and stayed there. It was a pleasant sensation. They seemed to draw together like two opposite poles of a magnet, but at the last minute, he pulled back. He didn’t want to, but he also didn’t want to seem improper, especially with someone who was essentially his boss. An important part of his training as a pretend English gentleman was being a paragon of honorable behavior.
“Well, thank you for showing me the projection booth. I always wanted to see where that beam of light came from. Isn’t it odd that a ray of light can transform itself into those wonderful images on the cloth?”
“You have the deepest blue eyes,” Cissie said, still gazing up at Layton. “I never noticed that before.”
“We’ve never been so close to each other, I guess.” Layton fought to keep his breathing steady. “I inherited them from my mother. She had wonderful eyes. Could put you at ease just by looking at you.”
“Mrs. Owen did a jolly good job raising her little boy. He turned out a right nice bloke.”
Layton smiled at Cissie, then inched around her to get to the door. Together, they walked down the gallery exit stair to the first floor.
“The elephant cricket turn was smashing,” said Layton rather awkwardly.
“Oh my, yes.” Cissie seemed unperturbed. “I thought DeGracia was balmy when he told me he’d trained elephants to play cricket, but damn if he didn’t. Next, they’ll be playing for the national team against New Zealand.”
“Will the circuit be keeping them on?”
“Oh, you can be sure of that, luv. Remember, the owners only respect performers who can put people in seats. Those pachyderms pack them in,” she exclaimed, pleased with her play on words.
Out in the street, which was now deserted, they turned and faced each other. A few seconds passed in silence.
“Well, I have to get home to bed for a good night’s rest. I have a show to put on tomorrow—and so do you, Frank.”
“Good night to you, Cissie. Sweet dreams.”
11
No one but an architect would give a damn about a crooked wood molding. Even most architects wouldn’t care. But Layton couldn’t let it go. It was in his nature to be a real fussbudget when it came to architectural details. Anything the slightest bit out of harmony or balance would irritate the hell out of him. When a project of his had almost finished construction, Layton would walk through and make a long list of the tiniest things to be corrected, like a hairline crack in a plaster wall or a sloppy paint drip. He wanted everything to be absolutely perfect. Layton stared at the section of wall for almost a minute. It was indeed odd. Why was there a bulge at the bottom of the wall when the rest of it was so perfectly flat? Why was the one piece of molding so cockeyed?
Layton peered out into the darkened theatre. Strange how a place that was usually so bright and full of enjoyment could look so sinister and evil. He’d waited until the charwomen had finished cleaning the auditorium to return after 3:00 a.m.. Turning on one of the overhead gallery lights, he started prodding around the plaster on the sidewall with his jackknife. He only wanted to probe a little bit, but consumed with curiosity, he kept chipping away. The plaster dropped off, exposing a one-foot-square area of brick. Compared to the wall around it, the mortar joints were sloppily done, and the brick bulged out. Layton easily dislodged one brick, then another and another, revealing a ledge next to a cavity behind the wall. This wasn’t unusual; theatres, like other buildings, needed space to run plumbing, gas, and electrical lines.
But when the hole in the brick wall came fully open, Layton noticed an odd smell. It wasn’t gas. He struck a match, peered in, and reared up in panic. The match singed his finger; he backed into the edge of the bench across the aisle, sending a jolt of pain through his body. His breath came in hard pants, and his heart was racing. He looked around. Was he alone? With trembling fingers, he lit another match and stuck his head back in the opening.
About six inches away was the foot of a skeleton. He knew it belonged to a human because of a prior experience with skeletons. Seeing the bones unleashed a flood of memories. It brought back his days as a young architect, working for John Hicks. He’d been given the unpleasant task of supervising railway spur construction in the resort town of Bournemouth, on the Dorset coast. The spur passed through a church graveyard, which meant digging up coffins to be reinterred at another location. Some had rotted through, exposing the grisly looking skeletons. As they were lifted from their graves, browned and disconnected bones tumbled free. The skulls looked as though they were grinning at him. It made the hair stand up on the back of young Layton’s neck—the same sensation he was experiencing now.
But while Layton was terrified by the sight, an irresistible urge to look inside the opening suddenly took control of him. It was as if the hole in the wall was beckoning him, drawing him forward. Its pull was overpowering. As he gazed at the void, he reached into his jacket pocket and took out another match, then slowly walked toward the wall. He half expected something to leap out at him from the square black hole. Layton was scared but at the same time very elated. Stooping over, he struck the match and stuck it into the opening. The dim, yellowish light shone on a full skeleton lying faceup on the ledge. It looked like it was taking a nap. With his free hand, Layton took hold of the foot and carefully inched the bones toward him.
The skeleton dragged along the ledge of the c
avity with a grating, scratching sound. The match burned out, but he didn’t need another one with the gallery lights above. The legs emerged, then the pelvis. The rib cage, with the arms by its sides, then the skull squeezed through. When he had dragged the skeleton to the gallery aisle, Layton knelt to examine it. The bones weren’t completely bare; the muscle and sinew, still attached to them, looked like varnished leather. The next thing that struck him was the odd shape of the backbone, which curved sharply to the side.
Layton was now sweating and breathing hard, amazed at the sight before him. He suddenly jerked his body around to check again to make sure he was alone. The vast space of the theatre felt menacing and haunted. He sat on the bench behind him and gazed wide-eyed at the bones. He closed his eyes and gripped the edge of bench to calm himself down. Then, taking a big, deep breath, Layton gingerly picked up the bones and eased them back ever so slowly into the hole. But when he stacked the bricks back in the opening, he paused. How stupid of him. It would be plain as day that the body had been discovered. Whoever had put this poor devil here hadn’t wanted anyone to know about it.
Layton stared at the hole for almost a minute. He couldn’t leave it like this.
He walked down to the backstage and took the spiral stair that led to a vast subterranean space twenty feet high and directly beneath the stage. A complex set of hydraulic-powered machinery lurked before him in the darkness. These devices raised or lowered sections of the stage and operated the traps performers used to ascend or descend during their turns, for, say, a magician disappearing in a puff of smoke. The upper level where the machinery was housed was called the mezzanine. The lower, where crew workshops and storage rooms were located, was the cellar. Here was the building maintenance shop, which held everything that might be needed to make repairs. Two thousand people twice a night, six days a week, put constant wear and tear on a structure, especially the walls.
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