The Fallen Architect

by Charles Belfoure

  “The whole house was laughing their bleedin’ heads off at us. We’re pros, goddammit! We can’t be laughed off stage. I’ll see you in court, Owen.”

  Standing was too much. Layton knelt down on the wood plank floor, clutching his head in agony.

  33

  Tom Phipps sat in the armchair in Cissie’s sitting room, smoking his pipe and looking at the list of the Britannia victims. He reminded Layton of Sherlock Holmes in his study on Baker Street.

  “The bloke who tried to kill you must be a stagehand,” he said gravely. “I’d wager he knew someone on this list.”

  “Or he could have slipped into the theatre to come after you,” Cissie said tentatively.

  It had taken all Layton’s nerve to tell Cissie he’d revealed their secret to Phipps. To ease her fears, he exaggerated their relationship, claiming Phipps as a friend rather than a professional acquaintance. Still, he’d feared her anger. But to his surprise, Cissie welcomed the news. An architect, she told him, could aid them in understanding what had happened. He was one more person who might help get to the truth.

  “That’s unlikely. The attacker would have had to get backstage undetected last night, follow Douglas down to the understage, and wait for the opportunity to kill him,” Phipps said.

  “You’re right. Whereas someone working there already might have known that I had to operate the bridge for Caves, that I’d be by myself next to the drum,” Layton said.

  Phipps had turned back to the list of the dead, which he waved in the air between them. “We have four names checked off here that are linked to the ownership in some way—Finney, the pregnant servant; Hardy, the homosexual blackmailer; Reverend Blair, the molester; and Rice, the extortionist. Then there’s Mr. Mapes, the child of that woman who accosted you outside the prison, and another child. Six names left—Sir John Richardson, Sybil Treadwell, Trevor Stanton, Jocelyn Shipway, Ronnie Cass, and James Croyden.”

  “Which Cissie and I checked and found no connections to Clifton or Glenn.”

  “Except for James Croyden,” interrupted Cissie. “That was Sunny Samuels’s real name.”

  “You never told me that,” exclaimed Layton.

  “Sunny Samuels the comedian? Why, I loved his act! Yes, now I remember he died in the collapse. What a shame to lose such a funny bloke,” said Phipps. He furrowed his brow. “He’s certainly connected to the owners, but there was no reason for Clifton and Glenn to murder Sunny. He was a top-of-the-bill star for them, wasn’t he?” asked Phipps in a puzzled tone.

  “About six months before the accident, Sunny jumped from the Hall circuit to ours along with a few other big names,” said Cissie.

  “Like Liverpool stealing the best players from Manchester City,” replied Phipps with a smile.

  “You’re right on there, mate,” answered Cissie. “That’s how the theatre game works.”

  “He was probably there by chance—like Cissie’s husband,” interjected Layton.

  “And then there’s Shaw,” added Phipps. “He was once the top builder in London, then his business went under because of the Britannia job, and he never recovered.”

  Layton had been so troubled by meeting Shaw that he couldn’t help telling Cissie and Phipps what happened on the bus—and the tram.

  “I agree with Douglas. Shaw probably knew that he had seriously underpriced the work, and it destroyed his company. He blamed Douglas and may have wanted to destroy him and the circuit.”

  “A man’d be mad as a hatter to do something like that,” hissed Cissie.

  “Shaw lost everything—especially his pride,” replied Layton. “His success was the most important thing in the world to him.”

  “He was hoping Douglas would hang for murder or, like he said, die in prison,” added Phipps solemnly. “When that didn’t happen, he tried to push him under the tram.”

  “There’s one thing we’ve overlooked in all this,” Layton said suddenly.

  Cissie and Phipps exchanged glances. “What?” Cissie asked.

  “Why was Peter Browne a part of this?”

  “For money. It had to be a great deal of money,” said Phipps. “The same for Reville.”

  “Or he was being blackmailed,” said Cissie.

  Layton shook his head. “It’s a monstrous evil thing to do, even for money. I knew Browne; he was a first-rate architect, came from Sir Edwin Lutyens’s office. There has to be more to it.”

  “People’ll do anything for enough lolly, Frank,” added Cissie.

  The room went silent. Layton walked over to the window, placing both his hands on the thick wooden frame and looking down into the dark street. A chap in a bowler with his hands shoved in the pockets of his mac hurried by. He probably forgot to tell his wife he would be late from the office, and she had overcooked the roast, waiting for his arrival.

  Layton then did an about-face from the window.

  “You know, maybe if I talk to Browne’s wife, Alice,” he announced, “I may find out more information on Clifton and Glenn. She may know something about all this. Peter could have talked to his wife about them.”

  “Or Shaw,” added Cissie. She was coming to believe that Alec Shaw was the prime suspect.

  “That’s a topping idea,” exclaimed Phipps as he refilled his pipe. “She could have overheard something.”

  • • •

  Layton didn’t like the image of himself, standing on Alice Browne’s front stoop in Brompton, banging on the door and pleading with her to talk to him. So he gambled and used the telephone. It was risky; she could hang up on him all too easily.

  The telephone rang for a bit. At last, a soft, feminine voice answered.

  “Alice, this is Douglas Layton.”

  He heard a gasp on the other end of the line, then silence. At last, Mrs. Browne began to sob.

  “Mr. Layton, I haven’t seen my Peter in more than four years. One evening, he went out, and he…he never came back. Vanished into thin air. The police said he was a missing person, that he just ran off. Maybe with another woman.”

  Layton looked at the wedding band in his right hand and grimaced. He could almost see the poor woman standing there, tears in her eyes, holding the telephone receiver to her ear. It was one thing to know a loved one was dead. To have a person just disappear, without ever knowing what happened—it must be hell.

  “I’m sorry,” he said lamely. “I was very fond of him. Such a talented fellow. He was my right-hand man.”

  “He was quite fond of you as well, Mr. Layton. He liked you far better than Sir Edwin.”

  That made Layton smile. A popular saying in the architecture world held that the more famous an architect was, the worse he was as a boss. Sir Edwin Lutyens was Britain’s most renowned architect.

  “I’d like to come talk to you, Alice. Maybe tonight?”

  “Well…not tonight. I’m going out with my cousin, Cynthia. Tomorrow morning? What did you want to talk about?”

  “About Peter. After the accident, how did he act? Did he say anything?”

  “Oh, Mr. Layton, he was ever so upset about what happened at the Britannia. He was never himself after that. A different man entirely.”

  “What do you mean?” Layton asked.

  “Always angry and upset. He never could get a good night’s sleep but was always rolling about in bed, sweating as though he had a fever. Nothing I’d do would put him right. He felt terrible when you were sent away to prison. After your firm went under, he went to work for Mr. Stratton’s office, but he couldn’t keep his mind on his work. He decided to go out on his own and do small projects.”

  “Did he have any financial problems?” Layton hated to press a woman who was clearly still grieving, but he forced himself onward.

  “Oh no, Mr. Layton. You paid him a handsome salary, and Peter was very grateful. His practice was beginning to prosper at
the time he vanished.”

  “He was worth at least double what I paid him. He was a good chap. Did you have any children?”

  “No,” Mrs. Browne said faintly. “I lost the baby right after Peter disappeared.”

  Layton’s heart sank to his knees, and his will all but failed him. He couldn’t continue this over the telephone. It was too cruel.

  “I’ll never forget the day he disappeared, Mr. Layton,” Mrs. Browne was saying. “Peter was so excited—he was getting his first big commission. He said he had to meet the new client somewhere in the West End, and he’d be back late.”

  “And he never told you the name of the client?”

  “No, Mr. Layton.”

  “Alice, I’ll see you at nine tomorrow morning.”

  • • •

  Layton spent the twenty-minute walk to Brompton in agony. Should he tell Alice about Peter? Though he was desperate to ease her misery, he couldn’t risk revealing the location of his body or the circumstances of his murder. Again and again, his fingers brushed the ring in his suit pocket. He couldn’t give it to Alice without a thousand questions. But then, he had questions of his own. There must have been some evil involved in Peter’s decision to sabotage the Britannia. The terrible betrayal of it hurt Layton deeply; he realized his fingers had tightened into a fist around the ring.

  By the time he reached Ovington Street, the world was enveloped in a morning pea-soup fog, which restricted visibility to less than ten feet. The electric streetlamps were like dim candlelights, barely visible.

  In years past, Layton had been to Peter’s house several times for tea, a common ritual between important employee and employer. The brick-and-stone terrace houses were all identical, and Layton walked slowly by the stoops until he found Number 22.

  Except for a hansom cab slowly clip-clopping up the street, no one was about. Layton made his way up the stone steps. Above him, the lights in the house were on. He tapped the brass doorknocker, but there was no response. Alice was likely making her way down from the upper floor or up from the kitchen in the basement, Layton told himself. But after five more minutes of knocking, he realized she had gone out—or had second thoughts about talking to him. It was strange; on the telephone, Alice hadn’t been at all reticent about Peter or her situation.

  A creeping dread was twisting knots in Layton’s stomach. He tried the door, but it was locked. The basement stair went under the entry stoop, however; looking through the windows into the lighted kitchen downstairs, Layton saw no one. Usually a servant or housekeeper would be about, but then, perhaps Alice couldn’t afford one anymore.

  He tried the door. To his surprise, it was unlocked. He entered slowly, calling out, “Alice?” Still, there was no response. The knots in his stomach drew tighter; he took the stairs to the entry hall two at a time, calling out Alice’s name repeatedly. When he found no trace of her downstairs, he stood at the foot of the main stair and shouted her name up. Still no answer. Nor was there any sign of her on the second floor, in the bedrooms or study. It was only when he stuck his head into the small servant’s room in the attic that he noticed the shadow cast by the spread of light from the hall.

  With a groan, Layton snapped on the light switch. There, hanging from a rafter, was Alice Browne. A wooden chair lay toppled beneath her, a cord knotted around her neck. Layton approached slowly and reached up to touch her dark-green dress. She had worn her best for his visit. His eyes moved up to rest on Alice’s face, on her bright-blue eyes, staring vacantly out into space.

  Layton’s head dropped, and he let out a moan. Why had this happened? Alice had been a pretty, happy girl. Peter had been talented; their future had looked so bright.

  In a flush of panic, Layton wondered if his call had precipitated Alice’s death. Had she been teetering on the edge of hopelessness, and had he pushed her over the line? He looked up at her again, closed his eyes at the wash of fresh pain.

  What calamity had brought this on? What had forced Peter to do such a thing?

  Layton left, leaving the light on, and went to the study. Alice hadn’t changed a thing; it was still a masculine refuge, with a rolltop desk and chair and comfortable sitting room furniture facing the fireplace. Once, he had sat here with Peter, drinking brandy, smoking, and talking about architecture. It was all they’d ever talked about. He actually didn’t know much about Peter, Layton thought, surveying the man’s handsome possessions. Had he been conservative or liberal? Was he for women’s suffrage or home rule for Ireland? Layton had never asked. Their passion for architecture was their bond.

  He went to the desk and raised the lid. Again, Alice had left everything in place. The good wife, keeping things neat for her husband’s return. To the law, Layton thought, Peter was a missing person, one of thousands of husbands who had abandoned their wives and disappeared without a trace. To Alice, he’d been away on an extended business trip, yearning to come back to her.

  Forcing his mind to the task at hand, Layton began examining the papers stuffed into the desk’s many pigeonhole compartments. An assortment of old bills: the tailor, the coal delivery, his wife’s dresses. Taking his time, Layton worked his way from the left side of the desk to the right. Nothing caught his attention. The side drawers were also fruitless—all but the bottom right-hand drawer, which was locked. Layton took a letter opener and jammed it into the tiny keyhole, jiggling it until he heard a click.

  Inside were notebooks and loose leafs of papers pertaining to financial matters. A black leather appointment book was shoved toward the back; Layton fished it out. The last entry said only Shaw at 8 p.m. The entries for the weeks before were mostly short jottings: see Cantwell 6 p.m.; Shaw 2 p.m.; Rhys-Jones lunch; Shaw at 10 p.m. There were some appointments that just had the letter S with a time.

  Unsure what help it would be, Layton shoved the appointment book in his mackintosh pocket. Before he pulled the rolltop down, he took one more look at the desk. In the center, flanked by pigeonholes, was a small drawer that he’d missed on his first search. Dumping its contents on the desk, he examined the drawer, turning it over and over. Taped to its bottom was a wad of hundred-pound notes.

  Leaving the money in place, Layton slid the drawer back in place and left. As he walked hurriedly down the street, a depression as heavy as the sulfur-laden morning fog blanketed him. It felt like it would knock him to the pavement. Had his telephone call put Alice over the edge of despair, and she killed herself? In all this misfortune, the woman had lost a husband and a baby. Layton knew that nothing could be worse than losing a child. He immediately thought of Ronnie; the image of that void in his life sickened him. Alice had given up on life because she had no hope. He knew the feeling from his thwarted attempts at suicide in Mulcaster. Layton slowed his pace and came to a halt. But did she kill herself because she knew the truth about Peter and didn’t want to betray him?

  At a call box in Bayswater, he placed an anonymous call to the police, informing them that there was a dead woman on the third floor of 22 Ovington.

  34

  Layton felt as if the entire world were crashing down about him. He had to clear his mind. He had to forget his troubles and Alice Browne’s suicide—even for twenty minutes.

  One of his favorite acts, the Nine Hindustanis, were on soon. That might do the trick. The performers, all Englishmen made up with sepia to look Indian, balanced on huge red-and-yellow rubber balls and bounced from one another’s shoulders. Layton loved the group. And though it was his usual custom, watching a performance from the wings wasn’t as enjoyable as watching it from the front of the house. No, he thought, frowning. That wasn’t quite true. In the wings, one could witness all the intimacy and turmoil of the theatre: performers taking a last-minute sip of gin to fend off the collywobbles; playfully insulting an act that was coming off; pinching a girl on the bum as she was about to go on. It was familial, cozy. But being at a right angle to the performers on the stage
was awkward, and one missed a lot of the performance. Truly, the audience had the best view.

  And so, in the interests of distraction, Layton went up to one of the walls flanking the proscenium arch, where a peephole had been installed. Instead of sticking your head out from the side of the arch, into full view of the audience, all you had to do was peer through a lens, which gave a 180-degree view of the house. There was one on the opposite wall too. Performers liked to see the size of the night’s audience or whether their friend was sitting in the free seats they’d given them in the stalls.

  Luigi, the singing juggler, had gotten himself in a real muddle once, Layton remembered, smiling in spite of himself. He’d seen his wife, who automatically got free passes, sitting just two seats away from his current lover!

  Tonight, the house was packed as usual. At the very right, Layton noticed, one of the boxes at the dress circle—or first balcony level—was empty. These private compartments, with their cushioned, high-backed chairs, were where the wealthy or politically powerful sat to watch a show. They were the best seats in the theatre.

  Percy, the Incomparable Dancing Bear, was onstage, twirling and swaying to the patriotic march “The British Grenadiers,” played by a three-piece brass ensemble behind him. Soon, it would be the Nine Hindustanis’ turn.

  Layton walked down a short flight of steps to the pass door, between the auditorium and the backstage area. Normally, only the stage manager and the theatre manager were allowed to use this door, but Cissie had given him permission.

  The door let him out stage right of the orchestra pit, and Layton snuck unnoticed along the side aisle wall, past the stalls, to the dress circle. The boxes had private corridors, set off at the end of the horseshoe-shaped dress circle hallway. And guarding the door to that hallway was Deidre, an usherette.

  Just a few years ago, it would have been unthinkable to hire a girl to be an usher. Deidre was dressed in a man’s navy-blue military uniform, with scarlet piping and rows of gold braid across her ample chest. When she saw Layton, her expression of dead boredom shifted to one of delight. She opened the hall door with a white-gloved hand and followed Layton inside.