Prince Michael is murdered at Chimneys at the point where a political restoration scheme becomes a murder investigation. Anthony Cade arrives at the estate at 11:45 p.m., having followed a clue that identifies the time, and hears a shot from inside; the following morning, the body of a foreign guest is found in the council chamber. The victim is identified as Prince Michael of Herzoslovakia, not the Count Stanislaus by whom the household knew him. His death removes the leading proposed monarch from a British-backed restoration plan and throws the succession question into sharper relief.

Political Stakes

The murder takes place against the unsettled history of Herzoslovakia. After King Nicholas IV married Queen Varaga, whose background had been concealed behind a claim of royal descent, popular discontent culminated in an uprising that killed the royal couple and established a republic. Years later, supporters sought to restore the monarchy and were prepared to offer the crown to Prince Michael, with the support and encouragement of the British government. A large loan from Isaacstein and Co, in return for concessions, formed part of the proposed arrangement. Michael’s murder therefore interrupts more than a private visit: it strikes at a negotiated political and financial project.

Michael’s death also makes the question of succession immediate. The investigation establishes that Prince Nicholas, Michael’s first cousin, is next in line. At that stage, Nicholas is believed to be in the United States raising money on his expected position. The later revelation that he had deliberately spread a report of his own death, and had emerged in Africa as Anthony Cade, changes the significance of the succession problem: the man whose prospects become newly important has been present at Chimneys under another identity.

The Night at Chimneys

Anthony reaches the park wall shortly before the specified time, climbs over, and makes his way toward the house. At a quarter to twelve he is on the terrace, looking up at a dark and apparently quiet building. He hears a shot that he is sure has come from inside. After waiting and trying the handles of several locked French windows, he hears nothing further. He eventually leaves, uncertain whether the sound was a real shot or a stray report from the woods. As he looks back, a first-floor light comes on briefly and then goes out.

The next morning, a telephone message brings word of a murder at Chimneys. The initial report describes a foreign guest found shot, an open window, and footprints outside. When the household and investigators enter the council chamber, the body lies on its back near the left-hand wall, halfway between the door and the window. The room’s three French windows face the terrace; the middle one is closed but unfastened when inspected. Footprints lead up to it from outside and a second set leads away. The apparent route suggests entry and escape through the window, but the lack of footprints inside complicates that first impression. The floor had been partly polished that morning, and the housemaid had crossed the room to draw the curtains without seeing the body, which was hidden from her view by the table.

Identification and Evidence

The household had been told that its guest was Count Stanislaus. George Lomax tells Superintendent Battle that this was not the dead man’s real name: the victim was Prince Michael of Herzoslovakia. Michael had arrived the previous day with his valet, Boris Anchoukoff; his equerry, Captain Andrassy, remained in town. Saying that he was tired, Michael withdrew to his rooms and ate dinner there rather than meeting the rest of the party. The next morning, a housemaid discovered the body at about 7:45. Dr Cartwright determined that a revolver bullet had caused his death, but no revolver was found. No one in the house reported hearing the shot.

Michael’s wristwatch had been smashed in his fall and marked the time of the crime as exactly 11:45 p.m. That time coincides with Anthony’s arrival on the terrace and the shot he heard. The concurrence makes Anthony a witness whose account cannot be separated from the investigation: he had been at the house at the moment Michael was killed, though he had not entered the room or seen the shooting. When he later describes what happened, he acknowledges that he has become entangled in two crimes within a day. He has secretly disposed of Giuseppe Manelli’s body, and at Chimneys he arrived at the scene at the exact time of the second crime. He decides to tell the truth with one small alteration and one grave omission, so his evidence is both useful and deliberately incomplete.

A half-sheet bearing the Red Hand design is found beneath Michael’s body. Anthony recognizes it and connects it to the Comrades of the Red Hand, an organization he had encountered earlier. Its placement encourages the possibility that the group killed Michael, but recognition of the mark does not establish who put it there or who fired the shot. The clue consequently broadens the investigation while also exposing how readily an emblem can direct suspicion toward a known political organization.

Competing Accounts and Aftermath

The window evidence changes the apparent shape of the crime. When the body was discovered, the middle French window had been open, though not latched. Anthony points out that if the window was unfastened only after he left, an indoor killer could have staged an outside escape and left Anthony looking like an intruder; alternatively, the discrepancy could cast doubt on Anthony’s account. Superintendent Battle responds by ordering that nobody leave the house until he has finished his inquiries. The murder thus converts a supposedly straightforward trail of footprints into a contest between physical evidence, testimony, and possible concealment.

Anthony also recognizes Michael from an earlier encounter, but not as a prince. Michael had presented himself as an agent from Balderson and Hodgkins and used the name Mr Holmes. This previous disguise links the victim to the earlier struggle over Count Stylptitch’s memoirs and shows that identities and political roles at Chimneys are already obscured before the murder. Meanwhile, the death makes the succession question unavoidable: Battle identifies Prince Nicholas as the next heir, while Anthony knows that the supposed exile is much closer to the case than that account suggests.

The murder’s consequences reach beyond the council chamber. Michael had been the prospective recipient of the crown and the focus of negotiations involving British support and a substantial loan; his death disrupts that plan and elevates the importance of Nicholas’s claim. The eventual disclosure that Anthony is Nicholas gives the murder a further reversal: the witness who arrived at the precise hour of the shooting is also the heir whose position the killing has transformed. The case is therefore built not only around a missing weapon and an unlatched window, but around the unstable boundary between a man’s public identity, his concealed past, and the political meaning assigned to his death.