Art Life Dossier

The promised file on Art Life, delivered by Special Agent Marcus by phone at 6:15 PM as the team stood at the stairwell to the roof door — the exact spot where Henry Lundine was later found dead in a mask (see below).

Ownership

The McAllistor Building is owned by the non-profit ARTLIFE, which buys property and rents it to professional artists at low cost, supported by grants from famous artists and artist organizations.
ARTLIFE bought the building from the Star Corporation — a holding company — in 1967.
ARTLIFE office: 23rd Street and 3rd Avenue.
Run by Cynthia Lechance, a well-to-do art collector.

The Address Contradiction Resolves

Gus's Session 4 research put "23rd & 3rd Ave East" against the file's "East 32nd St." The dossier reconciles it: **23rd & 3rd is the Art Life *office*; 32nd is the building.** Not an error — two addresses.

Building History

Began as a private residence for Henry M. Lundine (28 MAY 1886 – 30 APR 1952).
Permit addendum, 2 MAR 1953: the Lundine house refitted as an apartment building.
Architect of record: A. Darabondi.

Criminal Records

The architect, A. Darabondi (b. 28 MAY 1886; disappeared 1950; declared dead 2 SEP 1960) is suspected of having drowned at least five — possibly up to twenty — children between 1947 and 1950.
Charles Lundine, son of the owner and a talented musician, hanged himself in the second-floor ballroom on 30 AUG 1950.
Henry M. Lundine, the owner, was found dead in the staircase to the roof on 30 APR 1952, dressed in strange "plastic" silver robes and a papier-mâché mask. NYPD ruled massive stroke. Photographs show a heavy man in black-and-white sprawled on the third-floor landing in an expressionless white mask.

The Owner Died in the King's Costume, on This Stairwell

Silver robes + a **papier-mâché white expressionless mask** is the wardrobe of **the King in Yellow / the Pallid Mask.** Henry Lundine died wearing it **in the stairwell to the roof** — where the investigators are standing as they receive this file, planning to open that same door. The building's original owner reached the night floors' threshold first, in costume, and did not come back down alive.

The Architect Is a Seam

Two impossibilities stack: - **A. Darabondi and Henry Lundine share an exact birthday — 28 MAY 1886.** Owner and architect, born the same day. A doubling, of the kind this case keeps producing (Mr. M/Alan, actor/character). - Darabondi **disappeared in 1950**, yet is the **architect of record on a 1953 permit.** A vanished man performing work three years after he vanished — the same logic as the 50-year-old-yet-recent paperwork and tenants whose minds work upstairs while their bodies sleep.

A Child-Drowner Designed the Conversion

The man who cut the Lundine mansion into apartments — who laid out its halls, its stairwells, its **night floors** — is a suspected serial drowner of children (1947–1950). The building's very architecture is a killer's work. Note the water motif recurring through the case (water under Amy's car, the drownings adjacent to Kessler).

Date-Rhymes

Both Lundine deaths fall on a **30th** (Charles 30 AUG 1950, Henry 30 APR 1952). Both Darabondi dates fall on a **2nd** (permit 2 MAR 1953, declared dead 2 SEP 1960). The paperwork rhymes.

Points Forward

Star Corporation — the pre-1967 owner. "Star" is not a neutral word in a Carcosa case ("strange is the night where black stars rise"). Unknown; worth pulling.
The building has a documented history of the exact phenomenon the team is investigating: a resident who dressed as the King and died on the roof stairs, a musician son who died in the ballroom, an architect who is two people's worth of impossible.
Advances The Actor-Character Seam and the Abigail Wright Case.