“It’s the first of the month, Dougie. Happy November.”
Guest had arranged a meeting at the corner of Fleet Street and Whitefriars, which was fine with Layton. He didn’t want to be seen with him around the Queen’s Palace, or anywhere else in Theatreland, as the West End theatre district was called.
Sighing, he handed Guest a plain white envelope, which the blackmailer stuffed in his pocket. He took out a cigarette and lit up, not bothering to offer Layton one. His next words were casual but pointed.
“You know, Dougie, London is a bloody expensive place to live. Even a pint costs a helluva lot more.”
“Yes, I know. I just moved here from Nottingham.”
“Then you know how tough it can be for a bloke to get by.”
“Especially a bloke that doesn’t wish to get a job.”
Guest’s thin lips quirked. “Honest work doesn’t suit me, Dougie. Maybe it’s in me blood. Me dad and his dad and me mum’s dad was all in the criminal line.”
“You inherited that inclination, Guest. I suppose you can’t fight nature. Just like you can’t fight your craving for small boys.”
Guest glared at Layton but kept his temper in check.
“Exactly. I knew me ol’ mate would understand.”
“But there’s plenty of big pickings here in London. A talented thief like you would do well. Like shooting fish in a barrel.”
“Oh, I’m reviewing my prospects, as they say. But I need some more working capital to set up.” Guest patted his pocket and took another long drag on the cigarette.
“I see. And you need some additional funding each month, eh?”
“That’s the ticket.”
“But a deal’s a deal. We agreed on twenty quid.”
“Forty.”
“Impossible.”
“You know why I asked you here?” Guest gestured expansively around. “Because Fleet Street is where all them London papers have their offices. See. The Daily Mail. The Daily Telegraph. All them would love to know that you’re in town, working right under their noses, at a bloody music hall, of all places.”
It was true; the Butcher of the West End’s whereabouts would sell a lot of papers. At least until people lost interest, Layton thought, as they always did.
“They’ll pay a pretty penny for that information, lad,” Guest said, pressing his case. “Or you could pay forty quid a month from now on.”
Layton smiled and pulled out a cigarette.
“Again, that’s quite unreasonable, Archie.”
“Sorry, Dougie. Forty, or your face will be on the front page of the Sunday Daily Mail. Think about it, mate. I’ll send a message as to where we’ll meet next.”
Layton threw down his cigarette, stamped it out, and watched as Guest walk down Fleet Street. There was a bounce to his step, like a man who was on top of the world.
The time had come. Layton knew what had to be done.
• • •
“Good to see ya, Doug. I was hopin’ we’d meet up again.”
Reggie Ash was a career criminal released from Mulcaster a year before Layton. A giant bear of a man with a shiny, bald head and light-blue eyes that almost seemed to twinkle, he didn’t look like he’d hurt a fly. But in thirty years as a robber, gang enforcer, and extortionist, Ash had left a trail of damaged bodies—and, rumor claimed, a few corpses—along the way. He’d served five years in Mulcaster for robbing a mail train outside of Bristol, a bold crime that won the admiration of the British criminal world. The nontraceable cash was thought to be hidden in the Scottish Highlands and destined to someday serve as the gang’s pension fund.
The rub was that Ash would have gotten off scot-free if a drunken accomplice hadn’t bragged about the caper in a pub. This accomplice, who was sent off to prison with Ash and the rest of the gang, had met with an untimely accident, “falling” into a scalding vat of water while working in the laundry. Big mouths paid a hefty price in Mulcaster.
“I’m in real trouble, Reggie,” Layton said.
“Well, didn’t I say to look me up when you finished His Majesty’s pleasure? I swore if you ever needed help, I’d be there for me ol’ mate.”
When he’d entered prison, Layton had learned quickly that it was an animal world, akin to life in Africa or the Amazon. The brutality of the place was horrifying. Layton had been totally unprepared for this barbaric existence. The strong terrorized the weak, like a python gobbling up a mouse. Layton had thought the guards, in their smart, black uniforms, would keep order. But they were often more brutal than the inmates and could be bribed to turn their backs on the constant violence.
For Layton’s own lot, no one had cared that he was a murderer. They did care that he was a gentleman and therefore presumably weak. As in the outside world, prisons had class prejudices too, but instead of snubbing those they didn’t approve of, they thrashed the hell out of them on a regular basis. Or much, much worse: buggered them. Sodomy was what Layton feared most; he’d rather be killed outright.
At first, he was met with evil looks. Then came roughing up when the guards weren’t about—punches to the stomach, hard slaps to the face. This was a shock to Layton. Violence was something one read about in the newspapers; it happened in the East End or the city’s other pits of degradation, not among the middle and upper classes. His own father never laid a hand on him. Though he knew he had to stand up to his assailants, acting tough wasn’t in his nature. It was just a matter of time, he’d thought in terror, before he’d be getting it up the bum like clockwork.
Shortly after his arrival at Mulcaster, he was given a job in the prison library, to be completed in the evenings, after the day’s hard labor. Layton was chosen because he looked educated; most of the inmates hadn’t attended so much as grammar school. This position gave him a way to be around the prison’s highest-ranking inmate—based on the brutality and severity of his crimes—one Basher Grimes.
Grimes was serving a life sentence for killing and dismembering two people, one of whom was his brother, who had cheated him out of his share in a robbery. Layton had heard through the prison grapevine that Grimes was a true hater of the British upper classes, and he believed that they should have their own prisons. Out of pure principle, Grimes had given the denizens of Mulcaster his approval to go after Layton.
One day, Layton saw one of Grimes’s henchmen reading the sports page in the Daily Mail aloud to him. It was evident that Basher didn’t know how to read. With time running out, Layton made a desperate move.
Boldly, he approached Basher in the dark and cavernous prison dining room, smiled, and held up a book from the library. Hundreds of prisoners and guards watched, in awe of his nerve.
“Mr. Grimes, I believe that you may find this new book quite entertaining. May I have the honor of reading it to you?” Layton held a copy of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum.
Grimes scowled and grabbed the book away. But instead of tossing it aside, he fanned the pages, stopping at each illustration. Like a chimpanzee fascinated by a piece of sparkling jewelry, he kept perusing the volume.
Finally, he snarled, “Tonight at seven.”
Thus began five years of reading to Basher Grimes. The Oz book hooked him like a trout. “That witch better not harm one goddamn hair on Dorothy’s head,” he’d shout. Grimes had a peculiar habit of transporting himself mentally into whatever book he was reading; he’d scream for a character to look out or warn a villain to leave the hero alone. In Conrad’s Lord Jim, he became especially agitated at Jim’s decision to sacrifice his life in the end. “No, Jim, you don’t have to do that,” Grimes begged at the top of his lungs.
His closest confidants were allowed to listen, which led to impassioned discussions—and sometimes fisticuffs—over characters and plot twists in books like Jack London’s The Call of the Wild, which saw Buck the dog taking off to mate with a wolf. Basher’s best mate, Reggie Ash, argued it was the natural dog thing to do; Basher felt Buck should have remained loyal to his master. The difference of opinion got so out of hand that the guards had to break it up.
After that first reading, no prisoner dared touch Layton. His friendships with Basher and Ash didn’t erase the shame of being in prison, but they made life at Mulcaster bearable. He didn’t wind up murdered or buggered, and he taught a score of men how to read. Not Basher, though. He preferred the oral tradition.
Pushing back against the flood of memories, Layton looked around the smoke-filled pub in Whitechapel in the East End, where he and Ash sat at a dirty, scored table.
“Remember Archie Guest?”
“Who can forget a shit like that?”
“He’s putting the bite on me, Reggie, threatening to tell the newspapers who I am. I’ve just got my life in order, and along comes this rotter trying to destroy it.”
“How much?”
“Forty quid a month.”
“The cheeky bastard,” said Ash disdainfully.
“By sheer coincidence, I’ve got a job in a music hall in the West End. You know what a stink it’ll make if I’m found out.”
On his way to the pub, Layton had considered telling Ash about the bodies he’d found and his belief that Clifton or Glenn had caused the Britannia accident. In the end, he decided not to. His true dream, though he hardly dared admit it to himself, was to clear his name and become an architect again. And see Ronald again. That meant gathering incontrovertible evidence and bringing it to Scotland Yard. His desire to win his revenge by killing Clifton and Glenn had diminished; in death, the two men would escape their guilt forever.
“The Basher and me wanted ya to put this all behind ya, Doug. You’re a proper gentleman, and you didn’t belong behind bars. It was terrible about those people, but it was an accident, plain and simple.” Ash shook his head. “You know, when I got out, I found out that Hughie Rice died that night. Couldn’t bloody believe it.”
“Who’s Hughie Rice?” Layton knew the name from the list of the dead. But the papers had said only that he was a businessman.
“He ran the Brick Lane gang here in Whitechapel. Good bloke, he was. Top moneylender in all of London. A bleedin’ powerful man and rich as Croesus. God help ya if ya owed him money and didn’t pay up.”
Layton blinked, perplexed.
Ash mistook his confusion for something else. “Don’t have kittens, Dougie. I’ll have a talk with ol’ Archie. We’ll come to an understandin’, I promise ya.”
“I wasn’t thinking of anything too rough, Reggie,” Layton cautioned.
“Nah, just a talkin’ to, that’s all. I promise on me dead mum’s soul that he won’t bother ya again, me boy. Now, I’m going to take ya out for a nice meal, what do ya think of that? We’ll have a spiffin’ night out. How ’bout roast beef and Yorkshire pudding?”
• • •
November 5 was Guy Fawkes Night, a commemoration of the failed Gunpowder Plot to assassinate King James I in 1605. Great bonfires were lit all about London, and fireworks were set off throughout England. People competed to build the biggest bonfire; some were as high as a three-story building and resembled an inferno straight from hell.
Layton and Cissie watched the festivities around Belgrave Road. Thousands filled the streets, laughing and rejoicing, shrieking as sparks leapt from the massive fires.
“Was the MacMillan Empire ever in financial trouble?” Layton asked.
“Yes, about six or seven years ago,” Cissie said. “They almost went under.”
“Ever hear of a fellow named Hugh Rice?”
“From the list.” Cissie searched her memory, shook her head. “No. Who is he?”
“Our first possible connection since Hardy, Finney, and the vicar,” Layton replied. Working off the list, he and Cissie had come up blank on eight of the victims in addition to the children. None seemed to have any connection to Clifton or Glenn in any way. But maybe Rice knew the owners.
Layton took Cissie’s arm and led her off into the night’s revelries.
Almost directly across the Thames, in Lambeth, one particularly large bonfire burned near the intersection of Black Prince and Kennington Roads. It roared through the night, hungry for fodder. And in the morning, among its glowing orange embers, some brass buttons and shards of bones caught the morning light.
The only surviving pieces of Archie Guest.