The plot might have been created by Henry James in collaboration with Tennessee Williams. The place: Lausanne.
The victim was Marjorie Winifred Bird, a rich, neurotic American widow who hoped that the U.S. would one day be come a monarchy so that she could be its queen. The accused were Nicolas Sturdza, a penniless Rumanian homo sexual who styled himself prince and claimed that he was descended from the Moldavian kings, and Dr. GĂ©rard Sa voy, a shady Lausanne psychiatrist who specialized in wealthy female patients and who, over the course of 18 months, prescribed for Mrs. Bird 18,970 barbiturate...