Shortly they stood outside a plain door. Another police officer, this one with sergeant’s chevrons on his uniform sleeve, stood guard.
“Hello, Costello,” Chase said. “How are your daughter and her husband doing these days?”
“Doctor.” The uniformed sergeant lifted a finger to the bill of his uniform cap. “They’ve moved in with the missus and me. Times are hard, sir.”
Chase nodded sympathetically.
“This is Count Hunyadi’s dressing room,” Quince explained, indicating the doorway behind Costello.
Chase asked, “I see that the door was removed from its hinges, and that Captain Baxter’s men have sealed the room. That is good. But why was it necessary to remove the hinges to open the door?”
“Locked, sir.”
“Don’t you have a key, man?”
“Count Hunyadi insisted on placing a padlock inside his dressing room. He was very emphatic about his privacy. No one was allowed in, even to clean, except under his direct supervision.”
Abel Chase consulted a gold-framed hexagonal wristwatch. “What time was the third act to start?”
“At 10:15, sir.”
“And when was Hunyadi called?”
“He got a give-minute and a two-minute call. He didn’t respond to either. I personally tried to summon him at curtain time but there was no response.”
Abel Chase frowned. “Did you then cancel the rest of the performance?”
“No, sir. Elbert Garrison, the director, ordered Mr Hunyadi’s understudy to take over the role.”
“And who was that fortunate individual?”
“Mr Winkle. Joseph Winkle. He plays the madman, Renfield, And Philo Jenkins, who plays a guard at the madhouse, became Renfield. It was my duty to take the stage and announce the changes. I made no mention of Count Hunyadi’s – illness. I merely gave the names of the understudies.”
“Very well. Before we proceed to examine the victim and his surroundings, I will need to see these so-called threatening notes.”
Captain Cleland Baxter cleared his throat. “Looks as if the Count was pretty upset by the notes. Everybody says he destroyed ’em all. He complained every time he got one but then he’d set a match to it.”
An angry expression swept across Chase’s features.
Baxter held up a hand placatingly. “But the latest – looks like the Count just received it tonight, Major – looks like he got riled up and crumpled the thing and threw it in the corner.”
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.”