Mike Ashley - The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Mysteries And Impossible Crimes

Baxter reached into his uniform pocket and extracted a creased rectangle of cheap newsprint. “Here it is, sir.”

Chase accepted the paper, studied it while the others stood silently, then returned it to the uniformed captain with an admonition to preserve it as potentially important evidence.

Next, he removed the police seal from the entrance to the dressing room and stepped inside, followed by Claire Delacroix, Captain Baxter, and the theatre manager, Walter Quince.

Chase stood over the still form of Imre Hunyadi, for the moment touching nothing. The victim sat on a low stool, his back to the room. The head was slumped forward and to one side, the forehead pressed against a rectangular mirror surrounded by small electrical bulbs. His hands rested against the mirror as well, one to either side of his head, his elbows propped on the table.

“We observe,” Chase stated, “that the victim is fully dressed in formal theatrical costume, complete with collar and gloves.”

“And ye’ll note that he’s deathly pale, Major,” the police Captain put in. “Deathly pale. Drained by the bite of a vampire, I say.”

Chase pursed his lips and stroked his dark moustache. “I would not be so quick to infer as much, Captain,” he warned. “The victim’s face is indeed deathly pale. That may be stage makeup, however.”

Chase lifted an emery board from the dressing table and carefully removed a speck of makeup from Hunyadi’s cheek. “Remarkable,” he commented. “You see-” He turned and exhibited the emery board to the room. “It is indeed pale makeup, appropriate, of course, to the Count’s stage persona. But now, we observe the flesh beneath.”

He bent to peer at the skin he had exposed. “Remarkable,” he said again. “As white as death.”

“Just so!” exclaimed the Captain of homicide.

“But now I let us examine the victim’s hands.”

With great care he peeled back one of Hunyadi’s gloves. “Yet again remarkable,” the Abel Chase commented. “The hands are also white and bloodless. Well indeed, there remains yet one more cursory examination to be made.”

Carefully tugging his trousers to avoid bagging the knees of his woollen suit, he knelt beside Count Hunyadi. He lifted Hunyadi’s trouser cuff and peeled down a silken lisle stocking. Then he sprang back to his full height.

“Behold!”

The Count’s ankle was purple and swollen.

“Perhaps Miss Delacroix – Doctor Delacroix, I should say – will have an explanation.”

Claire Delacroix knelt, examined the dead man’s ankles, then rose to her own feet and stated, “Simple. And natural. This man died where he sits. His body was upright, even his hands were raised. His blood drained to the lower parts of his body, causing the swelling and discoloration of the ankles and feet. There is nothing supernatural about post-mortem lividity.”

Chase nodded. “Thank you.”

He turned from the body and pointed a carefully manicured finger at Quince. “Is there any other means of access to Hunyadi’s dressing room?”

“Just the window, sir.”

“Just the window, sir?” Abel Chase’s eyes grew wide. “Just the window? Baxter-” He turned to the Captain of police. “Have you ordered that checked?”

Flustered, Baxter admitted that he had not.

“Quickly, then. Quince, lead the way!”

The manager led them farther along the dingy corridor. It was dimly illumined by yellow electrical bulbs. They exited through the stage door and found themselves gazing upon a narrow alley flanked by dark walls of ageing, grime-encrusted brick. To their right, the alley opened onto the normally busy sidewalk, now free of pedestrians as San Franciscans sought cover from the chill and moisture of the night. To the left, the alley abutted a brick wall, featureless save for the accumulated grime of decades.

“There it is, sir.”

Chase raised his hand warningly. “Before we proceed, let us first examine the alley itself,” Chase instructed. Using electric torches for illumination, they scanned the thin coating of snow that covered the litter-strewn surface of the alley. “You will notice,” Chase announced, “that the snow is undisturbed. Nature herself has become our ally in this work.”

Chase then stepped carefully forward and turned, surveying the window. “Fetch me a ladder,” he ordered. When the implement arrived he climbed it carefully, having donned his gloves once again. He stood peering through a narrow opening, perhaps fourteen inches wide by six inches in height. A pane of pebbled glass, mounted on a horizontal hinge in such a manner as to divide the opening in half, was tilted at a slight angle. Through it, Chase peered into the room in which he and the others had stood moments earlier.

From his elevated position he scanned the room meticulously, dividing it into a geometrical grid and studying each segment in turn. When satisfied, he returned to the ground.

Walter Quince, incongruous in his evening costume, folded the ladder. “But you see, sir, the window is much too small for a man to pass through.”

“Or even a child,” Chase added.

There was a moment of silence, during which a wisp of San Francisco’s legendary fog descended icily from the winter sky. The rare snowfall, the city’s first in decades, had ended. Then a modulated feminine voice broke the stillness of the tableau. “Not too small for a bat.”

They returned to the theatre. Once again inside the building, Chase doffed his warm outer coat and gloves, then made his way to the late Count Hunyadi’s dressing room, where the cadaver of the emigré actor remained, slowly stiffening, before the glaring lights and reflective face of his makeup mirror. Irony tingeing his voice, Chase purred, “You will note that the late Count casts a distinct reflection in his looking glass. Hardly proper conduct for one of the undead.” He bent to examine the cadaver once more, peering first at one side of Hunyadi’s neck, then at the other.

Chase whirled. “Was he left-handed?”

Walter Quince, standing uneasily in the doorway, swallowed audibly. “I – I think so. He, ah, remarked something about it, I recall.”

Abel Chase placed the heels of his hands on the sides of Hunyadi’s head and moved it carefully to an upright position. He made a self-satisfied sound. “There is some stiffness here, but as yet very little. He is recently dead. Delacroix, look at this. Clel, you also.”

As they obeyed he lowered Hunyadi’s head carefully to his right shoulder, exposing the left side of his neck to view above the high, stiff collar of his costume shirt.

“What do you see?” Chase demanded.

“Two red marks.” Captain Cleland Baxter, having moved forward in his rolling, uneven gait, now leaned over to study the unmoving Hunyadi’s neck. “He played a vampire,” the police captain muttered, “and he carries the marks of the vampire. Good God! In this Year of Our Lord 1931 – it’s impossible.”

“No, my friend. Not impossible,” Chase responded. “Supernatural? That I doubt. But impossible? No.” He shook his head.

Claire Delacroix scanned the dressing room, her dark, intelligent eyes flashing from object to object. Sensing that the attention of the theatre manager was concentrated on her, she turned her gaze on him. “Mr Quince, the programme for tonight’s performance includes a biography of each actor, is that not correct?” When Quince nodded in the affirmative, she requested a copy and received it.

She scanned the pages, touching Abel Chase lightly on the elbow and bringing to his attention several items in the glossy booklet. Chase’s dark head and Claire Delacroix’s platinum tresses nearly touched as they conferred.

Chase frowned at Walter Quince. “This biography of Mr Hunyadi makes no mention of a wife.”