One brown tweed suit with waistcoat, white shirt, collar, tie, one pair of brown Dunham shoes with black socks—all of which you’re wearing now. One gold watch and fob, one house key, one man’s comb, one silk handkerchief, one photo in a silver frame, one gold cigarette case, fifty-eight pounds in notes, and five bob in coins. Sign here that these items have been returned to your person.”
Douglas Layton stared at the pen the prison officer had just dipped in the inkwell. Slowly, he reached across the battered wooden counter, took it in hand, and scratched his name across the form.
“That’ll do ya, mate. Proceed out that door to the right. The alley’ll lead you to the public thoroughfare—and mind you don’t leave England.”
Layton turned and shuffled toward the plate iron door. A blast of cold drizzle hit him in the face. Pausing, he gathered his jacket collar up around his neck. Staring down at the gray granite paving blocks, he began walking.
After twenty yards, the alley intersected a deserted road. He stopped and looked to his right, then his left. In both directions, brown gravel stretched through wet, green countryside to the horizon. It didn’t matter which turn he took, he thought. Either way led to a frightening and terrible future.
Before he made up his mind, Douglas Layton turned to face the place that had been his home for the last five years. Mulcaster Prison. He had never looked closely at its exterior. The day he had arrived in the fall of 1900, his head had hung low in shame. Now he saw—with an architect’s eye—that the place was well designed, all imposing stone walls topped with crenellations and punctuated with towers. A Crusader castle adapted for penal servitude. It gave the public reassurance that the felons inside could never get out and kill them in their sleep. Its design did its job beautifully, making the inmates feel less than human, as if they deserved to be there.
Prisons, Layton thought grimly, were designed by people who had never been in one. He must drop a line to the architect, Sir Laurence Chance, a former colleague in the Royal Institute of British Architects, to tell him how magnificent his design was. He could imagine Chance’s expression: he’d drop the note in disgust, as if a dead rat had been placed in his hand.
Layton had known when he’d opened the door of the prison that there would be no one waiting for him. His wife, Edwina, had filed for divorce and left with their four-year-old son, Ronald, just six months after he entered Mulcaster. He knew everyone else would shun him too, even his closest friends and colleagues. Neither they nor his wife had ever come to visit him. But he couldn’t blame them; British society had ironclad rules, and one was this: don’t associate with an outcast. Layton had become a social leper. To avoid him infecting all he knew, years of friendship and family were thrown to the winds, as if he’d never existed.
Without thinking about it, Layton jammed his hands in his pockets and turned left. England’s high-security prisons were always built in the countryside. Mulcaster stood in the middle of Lincolnshire in the East Midlands, which meant a long hike to a village or any other semblance of civilization. It was just ten in the morning; there was plenty of daylight left. With no future ahead, Layton saw no reason to hurry. He slowed his pace—and felt a hard blow on the top of his head.
Another missile flew past his ear. He ducked instinctively, touched his hair to see if there was blood.
“I’ve been waitin’ for this day, you murderin’ bastard. I swore to Christ I’d be here!”
Layton whirled and saw the woman, standing just five yards away. She was in her forties, had hair tied in a bun and a dark frock under a black coat. His first thought was that she was drunk or mad, but as he took in her stern expression, Layton realized he was mistaken. He watched, bewildered, as she picked up another rock and cocked her arm to throw.
“You bloody bastard!” she cried. “You killed me daughter. Twelve was all she was. Me only child. Crushed to death by you, you goddamn monster!”
The woman hurled the stone, which sailed over Layton’s head.
“I was supposed to go that night!” she screamed. “Did you know that? But I got the woman cramps, so I gave the ticket to me sister to take Isabelle. She’d bin lookin’ forward to it for so long. I dinna want to disappoint her. And now she’s dead.”
The woman fell to her knees in the road and doubled over, shrieking as though she’d been stabbed in the stomach.
“I ain’t got nobody now… Nobody!”
Layton cringed and ran like a beaten dog with his tail between his legs, the woman’s screams ringing in his ears.
“Murderer! They shoulda hanged ya. You don’t deserve to live, you miserable bag of shite!”