The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Mysteries and Impossible Crimes

by Mike Ashley

  Abel Chase ran a finger pensively beneath his moustache. “What is your professional opinion, then? Are you suggesting that Hunyadi died of erythroxylon alkaloid intoxication?”

  “I think not,” frowned Claire Delacroix. “If that were the case, I would have expected Nolan Young to report damage to the heart, and none was apparent. Further, the condition of the needle-pricks is most intriguing. They suggest that Hunyadi had received no injections for some time, then resumed his destructive habit just tonight. I suspect that a second substance was added to the victim’s customary injection of cocaine. The first drug, while elevating his spirits to a momentarily euphoric state, would have, paradoxically, lulled him into a false sense of security while the second killed him.”

  “And what do you suppose that fatal second drug to have been?”

  “That I do not know, Abel. But I have a very strong suspicion, based on my conversation with the ladies of the company – and on your own comments earlier this night.”

  “Very well,” Chase growled, not pleased. He knew that when Claire Delacroix chose to unveil her theory she would do so, and not a moment sooner. He changed the subject “What did you learn from the Misses Miller and Stallings?”

  “Miss Miller is a local girl. She was born in the Hayes Valley section of San Francisco, attended the University of California in Los Angeles, and returned home to pursue a career in drama. She still lives with her parents, attends church regularly, and has a devoted boyfriend.”

  “What’s she doing in a national touring company of the vampire play, then? She would have had to audition in New York and travel from there.”

  “Theatre people are an itinerant lot, Abel.”

  He digested that for a moment, apparently willing to accept Claire Delacroix’s judgment of the ingenue. “Her paramour would almost certainly be Timothy Rodgers, then.”

  “Indeed. I am impressed.”

  “Rodgers did not strike me as a likely suspect,” Chase stated.

  “Nor Miss Miller, me.”

  “What about Miss Stallings?” he queried.

  “A very different story, there. First of all, her name isn’t really Jeanette Stallings.”

  “The nom de theatre is a commonplace, Delacroix. Continue.”

  “Nor was she born in this country.”

  “That, too, I had already learned. That was why Pollard was coaching her in diction. Where was Miss Stallings born, Delacroix, and what is her real name?”

  It was the habit of neither Abel Chase nor Claire Delacroix to use a notebook in their interrogations. Both prided themselves on their ability to retain everything said in their presence. Without hesitation Claire stated, “She was born in Szeged, Hungary. The name under which she entered the United States was Mitzi Kadar.”

  “Mitzi Kadar! Imre Hunyadi’s Hungarian wife was Elena Kadar.”

  “And Mitzi’s mother was Elena Kadar.”

  “Great glowing Geryon!” It was as close to an expletive as Abel Chase was known to come in everyday speech. “Was Jeanette Stallings Imre Hunyadi’s daughter? There was no mention of a child in any biographical material on Hunyadi.”

  “Such is my suspicion,” Claire Delacroix asserted.

  “You did not have the advantage of reading the threatening note that Captain Baxter found in Hunyadi’s dressing room, Delacroix.”

  “No,” she conceded. “I am sure you will illuminate me as to its content.”

  “It was made up to look like a newspaper clipping,” Chase informed. “But I turned it over and found that the obverse was blank. It appeared, thus, to be a printer’s proof rather than an actual cutting. Every newspaper maintains obituaries of prominent figures, ready for use in case of their demise. When the time comes, they need merely fill in the date and details of death, and they’re ready to go to press. But I don’t think this was a real newspaper proof. There was no identification of the paper – was it the Call or the Bulletin the Tribune or the Gazette? The proof should indicate.”

  Abel Chase paused to run a finger beneath his moustache before resuming. “The typographic styles of our local dailies differ from one another in subtle but significant detail. The faux obituary came from none of them. It was a hoax, created by a malefactor and executed by a local job printer. It was cleverly intended as a psychological attack on Hunyadi, just as was the dead rodent that was found in his dressing room.”

  “And for what purpose was this hoax perpetrated?” Delacroix prompted.

  “It did not read like a normal newspaper obituary,” Abel Chase responded. “There is none of the usual respectful tone. It stated, instead, that Hunyadi abandoned his wife in Hungary when she was heavy with child.”

  “An act of treachery, do you not agree?” Claire put in.

  “And that his wife continued her career as a medical researcher while raising her fatherless child until, the child having reached her majority, the mother, despondent, took her own life.”

  “Raising the child was an act of courage and of strength, was it not? But the crime of suicide – to have carried her grief and rage for two decades, only to yield in the end to despair – who was more guilty, the self-killer or the foul husband who abandoned her?”

  Chase rubbed his moustache with the knuckles of one finger. “We need to speak with Miss Stallings.”

  “First, perhaps we had best talk with Captain Baxter and his men. We should determine what Sergeant Costello and Officer Murray have found in their examination of the premises.”

  “Not a bad idea,” Chase assented, “although I expect they would have notified me if anything significant had been found.”

  Together they sought the uniformed police captain and sergeant. Costello’s statement was less than helpful. He had examined the inner sill opening upon the window through which Abel Chase had peered approximately an hour before. It was heavily laden with dust, he reported, indicating that even had a contortionist been able to squeeze through its narrow opening, no one had actually done so.

  “But a bat might have flown through that window, sir, without disturbing the dust,” the credulous Costello concluded.

  Murray had gone over the rest of the backstage area, and the two policemen had examined the auditorium and lobby together, without finding any useful clues.

  “We are now faced with a dilemma,” Abel Chase announced, raising his forefinger for emphasis. “Count Hunyadi was found dead in his dressing room, the door securely locked from the inside. It is true that he died of heart failure, but what caused his heart to fail? My assistant, Doctor Delacroix, suggests a mysterious drug administered along with a dose of cocaine, through one of the marks on the victim’s neck.” He pressed two fingers dramatically into the side of his own neck, simulating Hunyadi’s stigmata.

  “The problem with this is that no hypodermic syringe was found in the dressing room. Hunyadi might have thrown a syringe through the small open window letting upon the alley. But we searched the alley and it was not found. It might have been retrieved by a confederate, but the lack of footprints in the so-unusual snow eliminates that possibility. A simpler explanation must be sought.”

  Abel Chase paused to look around the room at the others, then resumed. “We might accept Sergeant Costello’s notion that a vampire entered the room unobtrusively, in human form. He administered the fatal drug, then exited by flying through the window, first having taken the form of a bat. It might be possible for the flying mammal to carry an empty hypodermic syringe in its mouth. This not only solves the problem of the window’s narrow opening, but that of the undisturbed dust on the sill and the untrampled snow in the alley. But while I try to keep an open mind at all times, I fear it would take a lot of convincing to get me to believe in a creature endowed with such fantastic abilities.”

  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 compl
exion 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.”

  Abel Chase placed a hand gently on her dark hair. “Poor child,” he murmured, “poor, poor child. I will do what I can to help you. I will do all that I can.”

  ICE ELATION

  Susanna Gregory

  Susanna Gregory (b.1958) is the author of the historical mystery novels about Matthew Bartholomew, a teacher in medicine at Michaelhouse in Cambridge, in the fourteenth century. The series began with A Plague on Both Your Houses (1996). Previously she had worked in a coroner’s office, which gave invaluable insight into criminal behaviour. By
profession she is a biologist with a special interest in Antarctic research, spending every winter (or summer in the southern hemisphere) in the Antarctic. And what better place for an impossible mystery, than a scientific station with no one else for miles around. Miss Gregory provides her own background to the story.

  The point on the Antarctic Continent that is farthest from the coast in all directions is called the Pole of Inaccessibility. Since 1957, a Russian base has operated from near this remote spot, where scientists have been drilling through the 3,700 metre-thick ice – partly to reach the bedrock that lies below, and partly because the gasses contained in the compacted layers of ice that are excavated provide valuable information about past climate.

  In 1995, a startling discovery was made. The ice does not lie directly on top of the bedrock at Vostok; instead, surveys have detected a body of water about the size of Lake Ontario, which has been sealed between ice and rock for at least half a million years, and possibly a lot longer. The scientists were faced with a dilemma: should they stop drilling, so that this “sterile” lake remains uncontaminated, or should they continue to dig and risk damaging a unique environment – and possibly risk it harming us? In September 1999, the decision was made to continue, using the Russian base and funds from American sources.

  It will be some time before we know the secrets of Lake Vostok, and until then we can only speculate about what has laid undisturbed for aeons. This story does just that, and starts on one short, bleak day in late autumn, just as a team of eight scientists are about to break into the lake with a drill that is on its last legs . . .

  “Hurry up,” ordered Paxton, shivering in the sharp wind that gusted across the ice cap. “I’m freezing.”

  “I’m trying,” replied Hall, tugging furiously at the door to the drill-house. “But something’s jamming this closed.”

  Paxton sighed, stamping his feet and rubbing his hands together in a futile attempt to keep warm in the sub-zero temperatures. Even in the dim daylight of a late-autumn morning, Vostok Station was a frigid place: the coldest temperature ever recorded on Earth had been at Vostok.