The Fallen Architect

by Charles Belfoure

  “Keep quiet, ma’am. We’ll be through in just a few minutes,” Gleason said in a soothing tone, tapping the top of her hat with the barrel of his Colt. She shut up immediately.

  He was getting anxious himself. “Come on, Red. How much longer?”

  “Goddamn you, I told you never to rush me,” Bannon said angrily, the words muffled by his muslin mask. He continued to pour the nitroglycerin drop by drop from the small glass vial into the joints of the bank vault’s hinges. Beads of sweat slipped down his forehead, sliding over his eyebrows and into his eyes, making him blink uncontrollably. He kept wiping them away with his left hand.

  It was dead quiet in the bank. Then Gleason heard a faint noise building quickly toward a screech, like a boiling teakettle about to blow.

  “Listen, woman, I told you…”

  An ear-piercing scream exploded out of the society lady’s mouth. Bannon flinched—and Stick watched in horror as the glass vial slipped from his fingers and fell to the marble.

  The blast was like a white-hot fireball of a meteorite, streaking from the vault room to the front windows of the bank, incinerating everything in its path. Bannon was vaporized in a millisecond, along with Gleason, the society lady, four bank tellers, two customers, and the entire wood-and-marble interior of the banking hall. Potter was propelled like a rocket into West Thirty-Third Street and through a storefront window directly south across the road.

  A delivery driver and his bay horse lay dead and bloody amid the wreckage of a dray wagon. A cast-iron electric light pole was bent parallel to the street. Windows and storefronts on the south side of West Thirty-Third were blown in too, leaving black holes that seemed to gape out at the newly silent street in astonishment.

  • • •

  James T. Kent, standing under an umbrella on the flat roof of the eight-story Duckworth Building directly across from Manhattan Merchants & Trust, watched as a great plume of black smoke billowed up from West Thirty-Third Street, drifting past him and blending into the gray sky. The street below was a mass of confusion, with people running toward the building from all directions. The clanging of fire wagons could be heard in the distance. There won’t be any need for them, Kent thought. The blast had sucked the oxygen out of the space, which meant no fire.

  From his vantage point, the men on the street looked like ants scurrying in and out of the blasted opening of the bank. They’ll find no bodies, he thought. Only tiny pieces of human flesh and bone.

  “Poor bastards,” said Ben Culver, a short, stout, broad-shouldered man.

  “It was the nitro,” Kent said, not a shred of emotion in his voice. “Handling it is like trying to hold quicksilver—almost impossible. But still better than using dynamite. Remember Maritime National? The cash, negotiable bonds, and stock certificates, all burned to ashes by the blast. It took Red hours to sweat out that nitro from a dozen sticks of dynamite. He said blowing the vault would be the easy part.”

  “We’ll never replace Bannon, Mr. Kent.”

  “No, we won’t. Red was the best cracksman in New York.” Kent took a cigar out of his gold case with his black-gloved hand and tapped it idly against his palm.

  “These vaults are too damn hard to blow in the daytime, Mr. Kent. Bank jobs are just too risky anyhow. The Company has to…”

  “Diversify?”

  “Yeah, that’s it.”

  “I agree,” said Kent with a smile. “What do you suggest?”

  Kent was a tall, thin man in his early forties, with graying hair and a commanding presence. He always wore a black frock coat with matching waistcoat and pearl-gray trousers, all ordered from Henry Poole & Co., the best tailor in London. He had schooled Culver, whose previous wardrobe could charitably be described as loud, in dress. A gentleman, he’d said, must always be so well dressed that his clothes are never observed at all.

  Culver valued this advice almost as much as his cut from their jobs. These days, he was as elegantly clothed as his employer, though the juxtaposition of his battered and meaty red face with his fine, tailored outfits frequently struck one as very odd.

  “The army’s stopped guarding President Grant’s grave in Riverside Park,” he said, brimming over with his excitement at offering a new business proposition. “They just have a night watchman. They haven’t started building the real tomb over it either, so we could snatch the body and hold it for ransom. Like they did with A. T. Stewart back in ’78. His widow forked over twenty thousand dollars for the body. For a department store king! Think how much we’d get for a United States president.”

  “I can find only two things wrong with your plan,” Kent said amiably. “First, I served proudly under Grant in the war. And second…it’s incredibly stupid.”

  He smiled and patted Culver on the shoulder, as if to lessen the sting of his words. A disappointed expression twisted Culver’s face, and he looked down at his expensive, black patent leather shoes—the ones Kent had advised him to purchase. Culver wasn’t the brightest, but he was absolutely the most loyal employee of the Company, and Kent genuinely liked him.

  “I know those men had families,” he said, pulling out his tan pigskin wallet and removing ten one-hundred-dollar bills. “Please divide this among them.”

  “That’s very kind of you, Mr. Kent.”

  Kent extracted his Gorham solid-gold pocket watch from his waistcoat and frowned. “The annual board of directors meeting for the Metropolitan Museum is at eleven. I’d best get going.”

  Reading Group Guide

  1. Imagine you are Douglas Layton watching the theatre you designed fall to the ground. How would you feel in that moment? What part in the tragedy does Layton play? Do you think he deserved to go to prison for it?

  2. Why was it so easy for Layton to shed his skin after he was released from prison? Describe what it must have been like to grow up within England’s strict social classes. How did that influence Layton’s decisions both before and after prison? If you were to shed your identity, what job or lifestyle would you take on?

  3. How does social class come into play later in the story? Does social hierarchy have as much influence today as it did then? Explain.

  4. Layton has an emotional connection to music halls, and they bring him back to happy memories from his childhood. Do you have a place that instantly brings your childhood to mind? What is it like to be there again as an adult? How do you think Layton feels returning to a theatre for the first time after the accident?

  5. Describe the characters at the theatre house. Which were your favorites? Did you find any shocking or offensive in today’s society? Do you think theatres still serve the same purpose today, to help people forget about their lives?

  6. Why do you think Layton decides not to tell anyone after he discovers the first skeleton? What about the second? When he discovers that the dead men both worked on the Britannia Empire Theatre, how does Layton react?

  7. Describe Cissie and Layton’s relationship. How does it change after she discovers the mystery behind the Britannia collapse? Do you think they make a good team?

  8. How does Layton’s past come back to haunt him throughout the story? Why do you think he cannot escape his reputation? Do you think anyone is ever able to rise above public perception?

  9. Layton finds multiple suspects for the Britannia collapse. How does he discover the guilty party? What ultimately drove them to commit this horrible act?

  10. How does Layton’s life change after news of the real story behind the Britannia breaks? How has he changed as a person throughout this whole ordeal? Is his life better off after all the misfortune?

  A Conversation with the Author

  What inspired you to write The Fallen Architect?

  The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder. As several people are crossing a rope bridge, it fails and they plunge to their deaths. They are strangers to each other and just happened to be at
the wrong place at the wrong time. A balcony in a building could collapse killing strangers, but I thought what if the failure wasn’t accidental and these victims have something in common.

  When writing historical fiction, what kind of research do you do beforehand? Are there details you pay extra attention to while writing to set a realistic scene?

  I spend a few months looking through books and newspapers before writing. It was important to describe the theatre setting and the different types of acts accurately.

  What quality do you admire most in Layton?

  His resilience and determination to start a new life when most men would have given up hope and killed themselves.

  What drew you to a music hall setting?

  I had seen a TV program on the BBC that re-created the music hall experience and saw how much people enjoyed themselves, especially singing along with the performers. Also, the wonderful architecture of the old British music halls.

  Which character did you find the most difficult to write?

  Layton’s father.

  How has your writing evolved from your first book to now?

  I think I’m better at character development.

  If you had one piece of advice for prospective writers, what would it be?

  Write what you know. It’ll be easier.

  When you’re not writing, how do you like to spend your free time?

  I still practice as a historic preservation consultant, so my free time is taken up by the writing.

  What’s currently on your to-read list?

  The short stories of John O’Hara.

  What do you want readers to take away from The Fallen Architect?

  That no matter how bad life crushes you down, you can still pick yourself up and start again.

  Acknowledgments

  Again, I’d like to thank Susan Ginsburg, my literary agent, and Shana Drehs, my editor at Sourcebooks, for their guidance. They’re making me a better writer.

  About the Author

  An architect by profession, Charles Belfoure has published several architectural histories, including co-authoring The Baltimore Rowhouse. He is a James Marston Fitch Foundation Fellow and has received a grant from the Graham Foundation for research on the architecture of American banks. A graduate of the Pratt Institute and Columbia University, he taught at Pratt as well as Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland. His area of specialty is historic preservation. He has been a freelance writer for the Baltimore Sun and the New York Times and is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Paris Architect as well as House of Thieves. Connect with him on Facebook at facebook.com/CharlesBelfoureAuthor.

  The Paris Architect

  The New York Times bestseller about a gifted architect who reluctantly begins a secret life devising ingenious hiding places for Jews in World War II Paris

  In 1942 Paris, Lucien Bernard accepts a commission that will bring him a great deal of money—and maybe get him killed. But if he’s clever enough, he’ll avoid any trouble. All he has to do is design a secret hiding place for a wealthy Jewish man, a space so invisible that even the most determined Nazi officer won’t find it. He sorely needs the money, and outwitting the Nazis who have occupied his beloved city is a challenge he can’t resist.

  But when one of his hiding places fails horribly, and the problem of where to hide a Jew becomes terribly personal, Lucien can no longer ignore what’s at stake.

  The Paris Architect asks us to consider what we owe each other, and just how far we’ll go to make things right.

  “A beautiful and elegant account of an ordinary man’s unexpected and reluctant descent into heroism during the Second World War.”

  —Malcolm Gladwell

  For more Charles Belfoure, visit:

  sourcebooks.com

  House of Thieves

  Could you do the wrong things if you had the right reasons?

  When architect John Cross’s son racks up a dangerous gambling debt to the wrong gang, Cross finds himself far away from gilded upper-crust parlors. Deep in the world of desperation and deception, Cross must use his inside knowledge of high-society mansions and museums to craft a robbery even the smartest detectives can’t solve.

  With a newfound talent for sniffing out vulnerable—and lucrative—targets, Cross becomes invaluable to the gang. But Cross’s entire life has become a balancing act, and it will take only one mistake for it all to come crashing down.

  House of Thieves is the perfect novel with which to “mix yourself an old-fashioned and settle back for a trip in time” (New York Post).

  “Belfoure designs a rollicking story…[and] a blueprint for great fun.”

  —USA Today

  For more Charles Belfoure, visit

  sourcebooks.com

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