1895 Murder

Dan Andriacco

Description

Sebastian McCabe Book 3. Popular mystery writer Sebastian McCabe is about to conquer a new world with his Sherlock Holmes play 1895. On opening night, however, his Erin, Ohio theatrical debut as both playwright and actor is upstaged by a murder in back of the newly renovated theater. His brother-in-law, Jeff Cody, evicted from his long-time apartment to make room for fiancee Lynda Teal's gun-toting father, is busy trying to keep Lynda s gorgeous and famous mother from hijacking their swiftly approaching wedding. Both men are pulled into the murder investigation by the pleading of Sister Mary Margaret Malone, Lynda's best friend and maid of honor. The dead man was an old flame of the sister and the chief suspect is a troubled young man she is trying to save. Convinced of his innocence, she wants Mac and Jeff to prove it. The many fans of the first two mirthful mysteries starring McCabe and Cody will be delighted to see how Jeff placates Lynda, pacifies her mother, gets to know her father, keeps the wedding plans on track, and helps Mac solve the mystery. But first he almost gets killed, as usual.

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 04 septembre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781780922386
• Langue: English

Extrait

Title Page
The 1895 Murder
A Sebastian McCabe - Jeff Cody Mystery
Dan Andriacco



Publisher Information
First edition published in 2012 by
MX Publishing
335 Princess Park Manor, Royal Drive,
London, N11 3GX
www.mxpublishing.com
Digital edition converted and distributed in 2012 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
© Copyright 2012 Dan Andriacco
The right of Dan Andriacco to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without express prior written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted except with express prior written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and not of MX Publishing.
Cover design by www.staunch.com



Dedication
This book is lovingly dedicated to our guys
DAN, MIKE, AND BETH



Quote
But there can be no grave for Sherlock Holmes or Doctor Watson... Shall they not always live in Baker Street? Are they not there this moment, as one writes?... Outside, the hansoms rattle through the rain and Moriarty plans his latest deviltry. Within, the sea coal flames upon the hearth and Holmes and Watson take their well-won ease. So they still live for all that love them well: in a romantic chamber of the heart, in a nostalgic country of the mind, where it is always 1895.
Vincent Starrett,
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes



Chapter One
Overture
Opening night of Sebastian McCabe’s first play went off without a hitch, except for the dead body - the off-stage one. For me, the murder hit close to home and distracted me from the chaos surrounding my upcoming wedding. That was the upside.
The downside was that, not for the first time in my association with Mac, I almost got killed. I don’t blame the play for that, but it’s hard to separate the two events in my mind.
My brother-in-law has written half a dozen mystery novels about his amateur sleuth, a magician named Damon Devlin. But he probably never would have felt the need to write a play if Lafcadio Figg hadn’t moved to Erin.
Mac and Figg had known each other for years as members of the Anglo-Indian Club, a scion society of the Baker Street Irregulars in Cincinnati, about 40 miles downriver from our little town. Since I’ve never been to one of their meetings, I have no idea how the club managed to fit both egos into one room. It must have been quite a trick.
Figg is a retired high school drama teacher whose mannerisms tend toward the dramatic. A short, stocky fellow with gray chin-length hair and mutton-chop whiskers, he looks like somebody out of another century. At times he even wears a cape. I keep expecting him to say “Egad!” or maybe even “Gadzooks!” But there’s no denying his energy. He hadn’t been in Erin more than a month before he hatched the idea of acquiring the abandoned Odd Fellows Hall on Broadway Street and turning it into a theater. By the end of his first year in town he had patched together enough money from donations and grants to make it happen.
From the start, Mac was outwardly enthusiastic about the project. I couldn’t help but wonder, though, how long he was going to let the new kid on the block have the spotlight to himself. The answer came one winter evening when I had walked next door from my carriage house apartment to shoot the breeze in Mac’s study before going out to dinner with my fiancée, Lynda Teal.
After circling for a while around the subject of the new theater, which would be called the Lyceum, Mac finally came out with his news:
“A new theater deserves a new play, Jefferson, and I am just the person to write it. For a strong start to this noble venture, the drama should be one with instant audience appeal. I was thinking, perhaps, of a Sherlock Holmes adventure.”
“Of course you were.” I sighed. With Figg and Mac both involved, how could it be anything else? It was a cinch they weren’t going to ask me to adapt one of my unpublished Max Cutter mystery novels. “Are you sure you can work with Figg?”
“And why the devil not, old boy? Are we not both mature individuals?”
I wasn’t sure either of them was, but I let that pass. “You realize, of course, that you can’t play Sherlock Holmes.”
Okay, I admit that was a little cruel. Mac is by nature a performer, like every great teacher. He’d even been a professional magician in Europe as a young man. But the only way he could ever portray Sherlock Holmes would be on the radio or in some other kind of audio production. He carries something close to a hundred pounds more than he should on his five-ten frame and he wears a full beard.
“Perhaps not,” he conceded with a “gotcha” smile. “However, my girth would certainly be no bar to assuming the role of Mycroft Holmes, old boy.”
He had me there. I’m no Sherlockian, but even I know that Mycroft is Sherlock’s smarter and wider brother. The plan was clear now: Mac would write a script giving Mycroft the best lines. Oh, Figg was going to love this.
“You’d have to shave off your beard,” I pointed out, enjoying the role of spoilsport. The ill-fated Peter Gerard may have played Sherlock Holmes with a goatee in his controversial movie 221B Bourbon Street , but Sherlockians were still screaming about that even though Gerard was dead.
Mac struck a noble pose. “Like all true artists, I am willing to sacrifice for my art.”
So that’s how the play came about. Looking for a Holmes story to dramatize, Mac turned to one of the two in which Mycroft had a speaking part. It’s called “The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans,” but Mac named the play based on it 1895 . That’s the year in which the story takes place. Apparently it also has great symbolic value to Sherlockians as a magic year or something. Mac even brandishes those four digits on the rear end of his 1959 Chevy in the form of an oval bumper sticker - right next to his 221B license plate.
In the next few months, Mac was a tornado of activity instead of a mere whirlwind. In addition to finishing his yearly mystery novel and keeping up his day job as a professor and head of the popular culture program at St. Benignus College, he managed to write the play, land the role as Mycroft (Figg made him audition), and become a founding member of the Lyceum Players.
And he wasn’t the only McCabe involved in this project. My sister, the artist Kathleen Cody McCabe, designed her husband a cool poster that started appearing around town in early April. At the top in bold was the name of the play: 1895 . Beneath, in the center of the poster, were two silhouettes like a pair of unmatched bookends. The unmistakable outline of Sherlock Holmes looked off to the right and a more corpulent form faced left. The words on the left said:
Plans stolen . . .
an official killed . . .
And on the right:
M needs
the help of one man,
his brother -
The sentence was completed at the bottom:
Sherlock Holmes
All of this was barely on my radar screen, though, because I was involved in another highly complicated theatrical production - the wedding of Lynda Teal and Thomas Jefferson Cody. After four years of serious dating, a little over four weeks of estrangement, six months of limbo, and an engagement of about eight months, we were scheduled to walk down the aisle at St. Edward the Confessor Catholic Church on Saturday, May 26. That was the weekend after 1895 completed its two-weekend run.
In the several months leading up to that happy day I helped Lynda plan the wedding. This consisted mostly of saying, ‘‘Great idea!’’ Admittedly, that wasn’t so tough. But the whole planning thing had gotten a lot more stressful recently with Lynda’s parents coming to town. (You’ll see what I mean later.) So, by the time 1895 opened, I was ready for a relaxing evening at the theater.
Yeah, well, that didn’t work out so great for Abraham Lincoln, either.



Chapter Two
A Killer Opening
From the opening night excitement, you would have thought we were on Broadway, New York, not Broadway Street, Erin, Ohio. Never mind that most of the actors were ordinary folks that we knew in real life, amateurs who had never trod the boards before. This was opening night at the Lyceum.
Lynda was dressed in a bright yellow dress, close to the color of her Mustang, but much more frilly and feminine than the muscle car. It had a boat neck, poufy short sleeves, and a hem that fell just above her sandals. She wore her curly, honey-blond hair in a French braid, showing off a pair of simple gold earrings that contrasted well with her dark complexion. She looked like a million neatly bundled euros, and was just as stacked. I smiled.
“You look happy,” she said in her husky voice.
“I’m looking at you.”
“Well, look a little higher, will you?”
Methinks the lady didst protest too much. I was pretty sure she wasn’t working out with me in the gym every day because she didn’t want anybody to notice her curvaceous figure. But I did as requested and refocused on her oval face and gold-flecked eyes. That wasn’t a bad view, either. I leaned forward.
“Nice crowd,” Lynda said, pointedly ignoring my body language.
If she was trying to get me to take my eyes off of her, it worked. I looked around the