The Fallen Architect

by Charles Belfoure

  The Queen’s Palace was immense even by West End standards, with a colossal dome that seemed as big as St. Paul’s. A huge cupola supported by slender stone columns and capped with a bronze statue of Mercury topped the vast edifice. Both sides of the building were magnificently done up in different marbles: one for the walls, one for the base, another for the trim and decorative work. Twinkling electric lights outlined the ribs of the great dome. It was a palace for the common man.

  After taking in the entirety of the theatre, Layton went down Frist to the alleyway behind the building. The stage doorman, a man of about a hundred, seemed to know he was coming and directed him to the stage, where a ladder act was rehearsing. Two men each balanced atop eight-foot-tall, unsupported ladders, juggling gold hoops. As they practiced, they discussed the coming year’s chances for the national cricket team.

  Flanigan of Flanigan & Cobb was stage right, smoking a cigar. He spotted Layton and beamed.

  “There’s me boy, come to save the day,” he shouted to a man in a brown tweed suit standing a few feet away. “This is me ten percenter. Dan Logan, Frankie.” A ten percenter was a theatrical agent, so called because he got ten percent of the artiste’s salary as a fee.

  Logan nodded at Layton.

  “Now, Frankie,” Flanigan continued. “We want a cloth with cartoons of us, but holding sledgehammers this time, as if we’re about to attack each other.”

  “Anything between you?” Layton asked. “A street—maybe a fence?”

  Flanigan perked up. “Maybe one of those horseless carriages.”

  “Why the hell would you want one of them on your cloth?” Logan exclaimed.

  From Cissie, Layton had learned that agents were typically the brains of the outfit. Artistes, no matter how skilled and talented, were often stupidly impractical, especially when it came to money.

  “Because I was thinkin’ of gettin’ one,” Flanigan said.

  Logan rolled his eyes.

  “I’ll do a street scene and put some in,” said Layton, attempting to make peace.

  “You’re a corker, Frankie. Go see Dash. He’ll set you up in the scene shop. My cloth has first priority.”

  The Queen’s Palace had an even bigger scene shop than the Grand, which could handle four cloths at once. Three artists were working away. Dash, a sourpuss Scot, had a brand-new blank cloth ready and waiting for Layton.

  “Laddie, the head office told me to tell ya to stick around after you finish. Need you to do a cloth for Olly Olsen & His Seals, and the Wolenzas, an Arab act. They’ll be here tomorrow morning to tell ye what they want.”

  The latter of these intrigued Layton. An Arab act was a loose form of tumbling, with pyramid building and side somersaults. Maybe sand dunes and a yellow-orange sunset or a night sky with twinkling stars? Layton took off his jacket, put on a smock, and got to work. He always sketched out the design with a stick of charcoal first; if he made a mistake, he could rub the line off easily with a rag.

  He began with the cartoons of Flanigan & Cobb, leaving the street scene for last. In the stagehand workroom were old copies of the Illustrated London News with Oldsmobile advertisements. Using them as a guide, Layton drew out the automobiles Flanigan wanted. The man was making £200 a week performing; he could easily afford the £150 price.

  After a while, Layton took a break and went to a pub. He drained a glass of Glenfiddich, then ordered another one and then another one. He wanted to keep drinking, but he had to get back to work. As Cissie said, this was a great opportunity, and he couldn’t succeed by stumbling back drunk as a fiddler’s bitch. It was best for him not to drink so much on an empty stomach, so he ate a shepherd’s pie and returned to the theatre and his cloth. He worked to the sounds of music and applause coming through scene shop walls from the second show. Right after ten, the place fell silent. It was long past midnight when he stepped back to give the cloth a final look. Satisfied, he wiped his hands with a turpentine rag and then washed with soap and water to rid himself of the smell.

  Before he returned to his hotel room, he wanted to do one more thing. That morning, when he’d seen the dome of the Queen’s Palace for the first time, he’d told himself that he had to climb up to that cupola. Now, with no one about, was the best time.

  The dome was actually a double shell. The outer part was copper roofing; the inner was the plasterwork and paintings seen from the auditorium below. Between these shells was the winding metal stair that led to the cupola. Unbolting the latch, Layton stepped up—and broke into an enormous smile.

  The usual night fog had subsided, and he had an exhilarating 360-degree view of the West End and beyond. To the west, he could see Piccadilly Circus, where Shaftesbury Avenue, Coventry and Regent Streets, and the Haymarket all collided at the great circle. There stood the Shaftesbury Monument, with its statue of Eros. At this hour, the streets were deserted. By day, they would be choked with people and vehicles.

  In all directions, some lights still burned, but most of London was asleep. The electric streetlights along Shaftesbury bounced off the great advertisement signs on the buildings: Dewar’s, Cadbury Cocoa, Schweppes. Off to the south was Matcham’s newly built London Coliseum, with its lighted sphere; beyond it loomed the Houses of Parliament and the Thames. Layton could even see the lights in Green and St. James’s Parks.

  Layton lit a cigarette and leaned over the marble railing. You could actually see the stars tonight. It occurred to him that Ronald probably lived not far from here in his grandfather’s house in Mayfair, and he could be looking up at the same night sky as he. Many times, Layton wondered what his son was doing at this exact moment—playing with his soldiers in his room, having breakfast, looking at his storybooks at bedtime. He tried to picture in his mind Ronnie doing all those things.

  The damp night air felt intoxicating; he closed his eyes to better enjoy the cool sensation. The cupola was at least eight feet in diameter and solidly built, with six marble columns supporting the dome above. Layton ran his hand over one of them, following its tapered shaft up to the architrave. Looking at the large, pie-shaped, blue-glazed ceramic tiles forming the cupola ceiling, Layton felt his heart plummet to his feet.

  The color and the tooling of the mortar joints on one wedge clearly didn’t match the others.

  • • •

  Finding the wobbly stepladder in the cellar took but a few minutes. Nervously, Layton looked about before ascending it. Only a bird would see him up here. He placed the palms of his hands on the tile and pushed up with all his strength. It dislodged easily. He reached into his pocket for an electric torch, another of the marvels invented while he was adrift in Mulcaster. Then he climbed up two more steps, until his upper body was above the ceiling.

  He knew full well what he was going to see. And he was right. About three feet away lay a skeleton.

  Layton pulled himself up until he was standing on top of the ceiling. It was constructed of small metal beams and would hold his weight. He knelt and examined the remains. Again, brown, leathery muscles still covered the bones. He flashed the light around the space; yes, this was the only occupant. Whoever had killed and hidden these people had stripped off their clothes, leaving no chance of identification.

  This skeleton’s left arm stuck out at a forty-five-degree angle from the body; Layton followed it to the fingertips, and something caught his eye. He carefully lifted up the hand. A tiny ring—a very thin gold band inlaid with a red jewel—gleamed on the third finger. The murderer must have overlooked it when stripping the body.

  Layton brought the bony hand closer. The jewel, he saw, was a tiny ruby. Something stirred in his memory, and slowly, he saw the hand of a newly married architect in his old office, showing off his ring. His bride had set the ruby, which she claimed used to be owned by some Indian maharajah, into a gold ring. Layton’s brow furrowed; he pulled the ring off the bone and shone the light on it. On one side of the r
ing was inscribed Peter, and on the other, Alice.

  Layton’s mind screamed out, This is Peter Browne, my chief assistant architect! His whole body felt chilled, as if he’d been dipped in ice water. How had Browne ended up here, dead and interred? And why? Frantic now, Layton combed his memory, trying to remember every detail about the man. Peter had been an excellent architect; Layton had quickly come to trust his talent. An architect cannot do a building alone; dependable assistants carried the workload, executing the design under their superior’s supervision.

  In the old office, Peter had assumed more and more responsibility, working out the drawings for many big projects, including the Duke of York Hospital, the Foreign Office extension in Whitehall, Lord Delvin’s country estate, and the Britannia Empire.

  Something inside Layton’s brain clicked, like the flywheels of a watch set in motion. His eyes widened in astonishment; his mind flew back to the body in the gallery wall at the Grand. Had that been an architect from his office too?

  That skeleton’s only distinguishing trait was a curved spine like that of a hunchback’s. Layton racked his brain, trying to make a connection between the two bodies. No one in his office had been a hunchback. The only hunchback he knew of was King Richard III in English history and Shakespeare’s play.

  Ten minutes passed; he hunched over the body in the cupola, grinding through his memories. Then, as if emerging out of a dense fog in his mind, a memory appeared. Layton had known a Richard III, but it was a derisive nickname that people called an actual hunchback behind his back. Where had he met him? It had to be work. In London society, no hunchback would ever appear in public; the family would keep them locked away like an insane relative. If it wasn’t his office, then where? Layton sat down on the floor next to the skeleton and rubbed his hand over his face. Two minutes later, it came to him—John Reville.

  Reville wasn’t a real hunchback like Richard, but he had a deformed spine. A consulting structural engineer, he was an expert in designing beams, columns…and trusses. Like the ones in the Britannia balcony. Layton’s mind was reeling.

  With the new advances in steel and structural engineering, theatre balconies no longer had to be supported by tiers of metal columns, which had obstructed views in the past. Now, balconies could soar out fifty feet from the walls, using riveted steel trusses bearing on cantilevered deep plate girders. Reville was one of England’s leading engineers in the intricate new steel technology that buildings were now using instead of wood and cast iron. Despite his handicap and the ridicule heaped upon him for it, the engineer was quite highly regarded in the architecture and engineering worlds. Reville was brilliant, the man to call to design a complicated structure. An architect would show Reville his design, and he would figure out its structure. It was very much like a general physician consulting a specialist on a case.

  Layton now connected the dots—both Reville and Peter had worked on the complicated structural detailing of the Britannia balconies.

  Layton crouched down, pulled out a cigarette from his gold case, and lit it. He wasn’t panic-stricken as he had been with the first body in Nottingham. He didn’t have the urge to run away this time. Exhaling a billow of smoke, he tilted his head up to see the steel ribs of the underside of the cupola dimly lit by his torch. This ghostly setting reminded him of the catacombs with its piles of bones he had toured in Rome. Deep in thought, he puffed away. After fifteen minutes, the pieces of a puzzle began slowly to fit together, forming a horrific image in Layton’s mind. He dropped his chin to his chest and groaned at the awful realization: somehow, Reville and Peter had engineered the balcony failure.

  But could it be? It was too monstrous to believe that they would have intentionally murdered fourteen people. Layton racked his brain again, thinking why they would do such a thing. Why would an architect and engineer do that? What would they gain by it? Then it dawned on Layton that the only reason could be that someone paid them for their structural expertise to bring down the balcony. And now Peter and Reville were both dead. It was clear that somebody had murdered the men to silence them forever. But who?

  Amid his shock, a feeling of wonderful elation swept over Layton. The joy he felt seemed to lift him several inches in the air.

  “I didn’t kill all those people… It wasn’t me.”

  Tears welling up in his eyes, Layton pointed the electric torch at the thin, gold wedding band in the palm of his hand.

  He smiled and placed the ring in his pocket, then shone the light again on the skeleton from whose finger he had taken the ring.

  “I don’t know why you did this to me, Peter. But thank you for giving me back my life.”

  By the time Layton had put away the ladder, his joy had diminished, replaced by grim determination. No matter the cost, he was going to find out who had framed him for the Britannia disaster.

  16

  “Mr. Owen, I’m sure you can see the difference between Felicity and Molly.”

  Layton couldn’t. Both of the seals looked exactly the same.

  “Yes, they’re quite different,” he lied, doing a quick sketch of Molly, who lay placidly before a blank cloth in the scene shop of the Queen’s Palace. He petted her back, and she barked appreciatively. Seals had such soft fur; he could see why people wanted sealskin coats. But he’d never say that to their master, Olly Olsen. It’d be insulting.

  “Molly will be on the left,” Olsen instructed. “And Felicity on the right. Each must be bouncing a ball off her nose, and the ball has to be red, orange, and purple, to match the real one. For the background, the wild, rocky Cornish coast. Each girl on her own rock. And they have to be smiling.”

  “Righty-o,” Layton said easily.

  “We feel heaps better that you’re doing our cloth, Mr. Owen,” said Olsen, putting his arm around Felicity, who gave out a low grunt. “You’re a real artist.”

  “That’s very kind of you, Mr. Olsen. I’ll get right to it.”

  The words came easily, but Layton’s mind was a billion miles away. He’d spent the previous night thrashing about in bed, trying to determine who could have done this to him. The five years in prison, the loss of his family and his livelihood—none of that was the worst of it. No, it was the constant torment and shame, the daily agony of guilt at having killed and maimed all those people.

  The irony hit Layton as he sketched out the two seals in charcoal; he felt the corner of his lip twist in a wry smile. He’d been so distraught over the discovery that he hadn’t had a single drink today. The revelation had taken that monkey off his back—for now. Again and again, the question pounded through his mind: What kind of monster could do this?

  Peter and Reville had definitely supplied the technical expertise; of that, Layton was sure. They’d had the knowledge to carry off the collapse.

  He sketched a typical balcony truss on the canvas cloth, stared at it for a long moment. Only the front, cantilevered section of the Britannia balcony had failed. There, the trusses sat on a curving, four-foot-deep girder that spanned between the auditorium walls. He drew it in. The tampering must have occurred between the girder and the end of the balcony truss.

  Structural failures were the architect’s and engineer’s worst nightmare, and over the years, there had been plenty in Britain. But by pure luck, many had happened at night, when the buildings were empty, like the Ripton train shed failure, which had occurred at two o’clock in the morning.

  Ralph Sims, one of the theatre’s scenic artists, was approaching. With the sleeve of his smock, Layton wiped out the truss sketch. He had another cloth to do for the tumbling act, and he threw himself into the work, hoping it would take his mind off the problem. But he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

  A few hours later, as he was putting the finishing touches on the seals’ rocks, he felt a sharp tap on his shoulder.

  “Blimey, I called your name three times, and you took no notice. You must lo
ve painting seals.” Cissie stood behind him, hands on her hips, one eyebrow raised.

  “I’m sorry,” Layton said weakly. “I didn’t hear you.”

  “I sure as hell know that. Looks like you’re all finished. It’s nine o’clock. Let’s knock off for the night.”

  Instead of going to a restaurant, they went back to Layton’s hotel, near Oxford Circus. Layton went up to his room alone; Cissie slipped in ten minutes later. Even though she was naughty, she said with a wink, she was still a lady. Layton ordered room service, and they had their evening meal of bangers and mash in front of a roaring fire. A good Englishman eats breakfast three times a day, Cissie told him. Layton tried to be of good cheer, but he knew he seemed preoccupied. Cissie also seemed distracted; maybe, Layton thought, the new contract hadn’t worked out as she had hoped.

  By eleven, they were in bed, but Cissie said she couldn’t make love because her monthly visitor had arrived early. He didn’t mind, for he just loved the warmth of her body next to his, and he took in her scent as he drifted off into sleep.

  • • •

  At first, Layton thought the sobbing and sniffling was part of a dream. Then he felt a drop of moisture on his face. As he struggled back to wakefulness, he felt something heavy pressing on his chest—and something sharp against the side of his neck.

  He was more bewildered than frightened. He opened his eyes, took in the bluish-black darkness of the hotel room. A dark shape sat atop his chest. Again, there was the sound of sobbing. His eyes widened in horror: it was Cissie, sitting astride him, fully clothed—and holding a straightedge razor to the soft skin of his neck.

  “Damn you,” she whimpered. “I don’t want to do this. But I have to.”

  “Cissie!”

  “My husband was in the Britannia that night, Douglas Layton.” The words seemed to flow out of Cissie like a river, long dammed, that had burst its banks. “Johnnie was a comedian, and a bit of a bastard, really, and he always had a bit on the side. Still, I loved him. We had many a laugh and a cuddle. After he died, there was nothing but sadness and loneliness inside me. Until you came into my life. I was so happy. You made me want to live again—and then you turned out to be the man who murdered my husband.”