Summary
In a labyrinthine mansion swathed in Venetian silks and gaslight, Jessica Dale—ornamented in borrowed diamonds, her throat bruised by secrets—collapses amid waltzing masks, her earrings spirited away like exhaled smoke. Only a mangled cigarette, its paper still warm with the killer’s breath, lies beside her cooling cheek. Enter Tex, the hawk-eyed criminologist whose mind is a card-index of sin, chasing a phantom whose calling-card is the self-same Turkish blend. Every guest clutches the identical brand: Edward Clive, the debt-ridden fiancé, exhales guilt in perfumed spirals; Henry Jevons, the silk-gloved secretary, ashes into a porcelain tray shaped like a skull. Tex stalks corridors where mirrors double identities, discovers Jevons shredding Jessica’s photograph into paper-thin confetti, and forces the gentleman-burglar to confess: murder committed not for diamonds but for the image itself—evidence of a liaison that would have toppled Hortense Bates’s dowry. The cigarette, once a clue, becomes a metaphor: pleasure stubbed out, identity burned down to the filter.
Synopsis
When Jessica Dale, a companion to wealthy Hortense Bates, is found dead and her valuable earrings missing at a masked ball being held at the Bates's home, the only clue is that of a crushed cigarette found beside her. Because the brand of cigarette matches that found in a similar crime being pursued by Tex, the famous criminologist is called in to investigate. The case is complicated by several of the suspects smoking the same brand of cigarettes. Edward Clive, Hortense's fiancé, smokes the brand, as does Henry Jevons, Clive's secretary. Tex finally unravels the mystery when he discovers that Jevons has shredded Jessica's picture, forcing the gentleman burglar to confess to the crime.
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