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

Accompanied by Claire Delacroix, Chase next met with Jeanette Stallings, the Mina of the vampire play. Jeanette Stallings, born Mitzi Kadar, was the opposite of Claire Delacroix in colouration and in manner. Claire was tall, blonde, pale of complexion and cool of manner, and garbed in silver. Jeanette – or Mitzi – sported raven tresses surrounding a face of olive complexion, flashing black eyes, and crimson lips matched in hue by a daringly modish frock.

Even her makeup case, an everyday accoutrement for a member of her profession, and which she held tucked beneath one arm in lieu of a purse, was stylishly designed in the modern mode.

“Yes, my mother was the great Elena Kadar,” she was quick to admit. In her agitation, the nearly flawless English diction she had learned with the assistance of Samuel Pollard became more heavily marked by a European accent. “And that pseudo-Count Hunyadi was my father. I was raised to hate and despise him, and my mother taught me well. I celebrate his death!”

Abel Chase’s visage was marked with melancholy. “Miss Stallings, your feelings are your own, but they do not justify murder. I fear – I fear that you will pay a severe penalty for your deed. The traditional reluctance of the State to inflict capital punishment upon women will in all likelihood save you from the noose, but a life behind bars would not be pleasant.”

“That remains to be seen,” Jeanette Stallings uttered defiantly. “But even if I am convicted, I will have no regrets.”

A small sigh escaped Chase’s lips. “You might have a chance after all. From what I’ve heard of the late Count Hunyadi, there will be little sympathy for the deceased or outrage at his murder. And if you were taught from the cradle to regard him with such hatred, a good lawyer might play upon a jury’s sympathies and win you a lesser conviction and a suspended sentence, if not an outright acquittal.”

“I told you,” Jeanette Stallings replied, “I don’t care. He didn’t know I was his daughter. He pursued the female members of the company like a bull turned loose in a pasture full of heifers. He was an uncaring beast. The world is better off without him.”

At this, Chase nodded sympathetically. At the same time, however, he remained puzzled regarding the cause of Hunyadi’s heart failure and the means by which it had been brought about. He began to utter a peroration on this twin puzzle.

At this moment Claire Delacroix saw fit to extract a compact from her own metallic purse. To the surprise of Abel Chase, for until now she had seemed absorbed in the investigation at hand, she appeared to lose all interest in the proceedings. Instead she turned her back on Chase and Jeanette Stallings and addressed her attention to examining the condition of her flawlessly arranged hair, her lightly rouged cheeks and pale mouth. She removed a lipstick from her purse and proceeded to perfect the colouring of her lips.

To Abel Chase’s further consternation, she turned back to face the others, pressing the soft, waxy lipstick clumsily to her mouth. The stick of waxy pigment broke, smearing her cheek and creating a long false scar across her pale cheek.

With a cry of grief and rage she flung the offending lipstick across the room. “Now look what I’ve done!” she exclaimed. “You’ll lend me yours, Mitzi, I know it. As woman to woman, you can’t let me down!”

Before Jeanette Stallings could react, Claire Delacroix had seized the actress’s makeup case and yanked it from her grasp.

Jeanette Stallings leaped to retrieve the case, but Abel Chase caught her from behind and held her, struggling, by both her elbows. The woman writhed futilely, attempting to escape Chase’s grasp, screeching curses all the while in her native tongue.

Claire Delacroix tossed aside her own purse and with competent fingers opened Jeanette Stallings’ makeup case. She removed from it a small kit and opened this to reveal a hypodermic syringe and a row of fluid-filled ampoules. All were of a uniform size and configuration, and the contents of each was a clear, watery-looking liquid, save for one. This container was smaller than the others, oblong in shape, and of an opaque composition.

She held the syringe upright and pressed its lever, raising a single drop of slightly yellowish liquid from its point.

“A powerful solution of cocaine, I would suggest,” Claire ground between clenched teeth. “So Imre Hunyadi behaved toward the women of the company as would a bull in a pasture? And I suppose you ministered to his needs with this syringe, eh? A quick way of getting the drug into his bloodstream. But what is in this other ampoule, Miss Kadar?”

The Hungarian-born actress laughed bitterly. “You’ll never know. You can send it to a laboratory and they’ll have no chance whatever to analyze the compound.”

“You’re probably right in that regard,” Claire conceded. “But there will be no need for that. Anyone who knows your mother’s pioneering work in anesthesiology would be aware that she was studying the so-called spinal anesthetic. It is years from practical usage, but in experiments it has succeeded in temporarily deadening all nerve activity in the body below the point in the spinal cord where it is administered.”

Jeanette Stallings snarled.

“The danger lies in the careful placement of the needle,” Claire Delacroix continued calmly. “For the chemical that blocks all sensation of pain from rising to the brain, also cancels commands from the brain to the body. If the anesthetic is administered to the spinal cord above the heart and lungs, they shortly cease to function. There is no damage to the organs – they simply come to a halt. The anesthetic can be administered in larger or smaller doses, of course. Mixed with a solution of cocaine, it might take several minutes to work.”

To Abel Chase she said, “In a moment, I will fetch Captain Baxter and tell him that you are holding the killer for his disposition.”

Then she said, “You visited your father in his dressing room between the second and third acts of the vampire play. You offered him cocaine. You knew of his habit and you even volunteered to administer the dose for him. He would not have recognized you as his daughter as he had never met you other than as Jeanette Stallings. You injected the drug and left the room. Before the spinal anesthetic could work its deadly affects, Count Hunyadi locked the door behind you. He then sat at his dressing table and quietly expired.”

Still holding the hypodermic syringe before her, Claire Delacroix started for the door. Before she had taken two steps, Jeanette Stallings tore loose from the grasp of Abel Chase and threw herself bodily at the other woman.

Claire Delacroix flinched away, holding the needle beyond Jeanette Stallings’ outstretched hands. Abel Chase clutched Stallings to his chest.

“Don’t be a fool,” he hissed. “Delacroix, quickly, fetch Baxter and his men while I detain this misguided child.”

Once his associate had departed, Abel Chase released Mitzi Kadar, stationing himself with his back to the room’s sole exit.

Her eyes blazing, the Hungarian-born actress hissed, “Kill me now, if you must. Else let me have my needle and chemicals for one moment and I will end my life, myself!”

Without awaiting an answer, she hurled herself at Abel Chase, fingernails extended liked the claws of an angry tigress to rip the eyes from his head.

“No,” Chase negatived, catching her once again by both wrists. He had made a lightning-like assessment of the young woman, and formed his decision. “Listen to me, Mitzi. Your deed is not forgivable but it is understandable, a fine but vital distinction. You can be saved. You had better have me as a friend than an enemy.”

As suddenly as she had lunged at the amateur sleuth, Mitzi Kadar collapsed in a heap at his feet, her hands slipping from his grasp, her supple frame wracked with sobs. “I lived that he might die,” she gasped. “I do not care what happens to me now.”