The Forgotten Room

“The architect.” Logan had spent a few hours the night before going over Strachey’s memos, charts, and blueprints for the redesign, and the name Flood Associates had appeared again and again. “And were your men going to take on the actual reconstruction?”

“Oh, no. They’d handle the finishing work, the plumbing and painting and HVAC. But this was to be a big job, a first-class job. You need professional builders for that — and specialists, as well.”

“Specialists?”

“For stonework and the like. Dr. Strachey had some pretty grand designs for the place.”

“But you were involved yourself, I assume?”

“Primarily in terms of arranging the construction schedule with the general contractor.”

“Did Strachey seem to enjoy the work?”

“Fu

“Was construction ready to get under way?”

“Under way?” Albright laughed. “The demolition’s been going on for over a month.”

“Did he hire the workmen himself?”

“That he did.”

“I see.” Logan thought for a moment. “It all seems pretty quiet at the moment. I suppose they’ve stopped temporarily because of the tragedy. And of course they’ll need to find someone to take Strachey’s place.”

“Oh, they’ve stopped, right enough. But it’s not because of Dr. Strachey’s death.”

Logan looked at the site manager. “Excuse me?”

“A few days before he died, Dr. Strachey put a stop to the work himself.”

“He did?”

“He did and all. Sent the workers packing.”

“Did he give a reason?”

“Something about problems with structural integrity.”

Logan frowned. “But I thought the West Wing was sound.”

“I’m no engineer. But I’d lay odds that it is.”

A pause. “Could I talk to some of these workers?”

“Doubt you could find them. They were paid off, all scattered to the four winds now.”

“Really? You mean, after all the work of assembling them, they were just dismissed?”

“Yes.”

Odd. “Was Strachey pla

“Can’t say. I’d imagine so.”

Logan thought back to the paperwork he’d gone through the night before. He’d seen nothing referring to this sudden development.

“This general contractor you mentioned. How can I contact him?”

Albright thought a moment. “He worked out of Westerly. Let’s see…Rideout. Bill Rideout. He probably has most of the working files.”

“I’ll get in touch with him.” Logan paused thoughtfully. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Albright,” he said after a moment. “You’ve been most helpful.”

“I’ll see you out.” And — hoisting himself off the edge of his desk — Albright opened the door and led the way down the metal staircase.

11

It was eleven o’clock on his third evening at the think tank when Logan — duffel slung over one shoulder, rolled blueprints and plans and printed schedules under his other arm — walked down the main first-floor corridor of Lux. It was a weeknight, the dining room had closed its doors well over an hour before, and there were no scheduled lectures in the plush-chaired, velvet-bedecked Delaveaux Auditorium that evening. As a result, the associates and Fellows had — true to form — all retired to their various rooms for the night. Save the occasional passing maid or member of the cleaning staff, Logan had Lux’s public areas to himself.

Late that afternoon, he’d made a detailed tour of the East Wing, noting the extensive changes that had resulted from the midseventies renovation. While it retained much of the grandeur of the main massing of Dark Gables, it had clearly been designed to be a more utilitarian space: recessed fluorescent lighting had replaced wall sconces, and — in the offices and labs, at any rate — the gothic moldings and other ornamentation had been largely removed, creating a cleaner, more functional — if less visually interesting — look. Externally similar in shape and size to the West Wing, it had three stories and a single basement, as compared to the main building’s four stories and multiple basement levels.

Based on the plans Logan had looked over, Willard Strachey and his architectural partner had a completely different idea for the remodeling of the West Wing. In its initial realization, the wing had been the most eccentric of Edward Delaveaux’s conceptions. Logan had peered at old black-and-white photographs of the West Wing, taken in the months directly before and after Lux bought the mansion, and he could picture it now in his mind. On stepping in from its grand entrance, the visitor had been confronted with a large, oval, and comparatively stark gallery stretching up unimpeded three stories to the roofline. This was devoted to a series of standing stones — two huge menhirs at one end, surrounded by a henge of liths. Delaveaux had purchased the relics, whole, from a mysterious and very old site on Ambion Hill near Market Bosworth, Leicestershire. The original purpose of the standing stones was unknown — it was thought to have been a site for prehistoric burial ceremonies — and Delaveaux’s purchase and subsequent wholesale removal of the megaliths in 1888 caused a furor in England that, legend went, precipitated the founding of the National Trust. Early on, Delaveaux had enjoyed giving costume parties in this space, whose perimeter he’d furnished with divans, ottomans, and chaise longues. In later years, after the deaths of his wife and son, he had apparently held séances in it. Galleries ran along all four sides of the second and third levels of the open space.

The ring of standing stones took up perhaps the first quarter of the West Wing. Beyond it had lain a confusing welter of spaces: three stories’ worth of galleries, workrooms, art studios, music salons, specialized libraries — literally dozens of interco

When Lux had taken over Dark Gables, one of the first things they did was to fill in as best they could the second and third floors, retrofitting the — to them — wasted space with offices and laboratories. Their options were limited, however, since the massive liths had been incorporated into the mansion’s foundation. When it came to the labyrinthine series of chambers that lay beyond, Lux had opted for the simplest solution: removing all of Delaveaux’s detritus and simply assigning the empty rooms as work spaces for various Fellows. But this was a stopgap solution: in order to reach one’s office, people would often have to walk through the offices of various other members of the staff and faculty: an inconvenience for all concerned. “Very confusing to get around,” Albright had observed. No wonder people had been eager to find new digs once the East Wing reconstruction was completed.

Willard Strachey’s plan to address the vast welter of rooms was to tear down walls and gut nonstructural elements in order to create two parallel corridors ru