Title page

No Police Like Holmes

introducing Sebastian McCabe

Second Edition

by

Dan Andriacco

Publisher information

2015 digital version by Andrews UK Limited

www.andrewsuk.com

First edition published in 2011

© Copyright 2011, 2015 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.

Originally published in the UK by MX Publishing

335 Princess Park Manor, Royal Drive,

London, N11 3GX

www.mxpublishing.com

Cover design by www.staunch.com

Dedication

This book is fondly dedicated to

PAUL D. HERBERT, B.S.I.

and members of the Tankerville Club, past and present - they are nothing like the Sherlockians in this book!

Chapter One - Murder, She Said

Lynda Teal, my former lady love, had lied to me.

Looking back now, I realize that wasn’t the only possible explanation for why she had driven away from her apartment instead of toward it after telling me she was going home to change her clothes. But it was the only one that occurred to me at the time.

She was up to something and she was dealing me out. Was it a line on the crime we’d been investigating - or some new romantic entanglement? I had to know.

Her bright yellow Mustang was just at the edge of campus, stopped at the traffic light - a notoriously long light. I still had a chance, just a chance, of catching up. I pulled my Schwinn out of the rack behind Muckerheide Center, mounted it, and shoved off, pedaling furiously.

Unseasonably warm wind for March pushed across my face. It was six-twenty on a fine near-spring afternoon, clear and fresh. Birds should have been chirping.

I felt like hell.

Lynda had never lied to me before, so far as I knew. She’d yelled at me, sure, and called me unpleasant names on numerous occasions. But she’d never lied to me when we were a couple. The realization that things were different between us now, and probably always would be, cut into my gut like a butcher knife. I pedaled harder.

I weaved in front of an elderly woman hunched over the wheel of a silver-gray Buick Lucerne. She had her windows up and her air conditioning on, rushing the season by at least a couple of months, so I don’t know what she had to say to me, but she was vigorous about it.

By the time the light changed I’d managed to get behind Lynda. Being on two wheels instead of four, I was able with effort to weave myself into what I judged to be her blind spot.

We snaked through downtown Erin, past the Gamble Bank & Trust Co., the Masonic Hall, the Beans & Books coffee house and bookstore (right across the street from Starbucks), the Sussex County Court House, Garrison’s Antiques, Daniel’s Apothecary, and the offices of the Erin Observer & News-Ledger, where Lynda works as news editor. Just as I was beginning to wonder how much longer I could keep up the pace, Lynda turned into the garage of the Winfield Hotel several blocks ahead of me.

Erin also has another quality hotel, the Harridan, and a few chain motels, but the Winfield is the oldest hostelry in this college town, the most elegant, and the closest to campus. Most of the out-of-town participants in the “Investigating Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes” colloquium were staying there.

The lobby had flocked wallpaper, red carpeting, and two banks of three elevators each, with walnut doors. The tan of Lynda’s skirt was just disappearing into the farthest elevator when I entered the lobby. The old-fashioned needle above the elevator door slowly swung in a half-moon arc to the number nine as I watched. When the middle elevator opened in front of me and a family with three kids spewed out, I got in and pushed the same number.

My stomach was in Ulcer City on the way up. Here my ex-girlfriend was meeting somebody in a hotel room and it didn’t take a sleuth in a deerstalker cap to figure out who and why. That hurt me like I hadn’t been hurt since Wendy Kotzwinkle threw me over for a football player in the eleventh grade. (The football player later became a used car salesman, and not a very good one.)

I guess I wasn’t over Lynda after all. Who had I been trying to kid?

When the elevator doors opened on the ninth floor, I found myself in an alcove. Feeling like some sleazy private eye - much sleazier than Max Cutter, the hero of the detective novels I write in my all-too-abundant spare time - I peaked around the corner into the main corridor.

Nothing to the right.

I turned my head the other way for a second, then quickly jerked it back before Lynda could see me. She was in the hallway, standing in front of a door, fingering one of the those rectangular pieces of plastic that passes for a hotel key these days.

I risked another look and she was gone, having no doubt disappeared into the room.

Now what the hell should I do?

For some time I essentially did nothing, just stood there waiting for a brainstorm. I didn’t get one. Just as I finally started walking tentatively down the hallway toward where I had last seen Lynda, she re-emerged, coming out of the room back first. When she turned around I was right in front of her. Her face was pale, her eyes wild.

“Jeff!” She threw her arms around me. Her body was trembling. Instinctively, I held her tightly. The proximity was not unpleasant.

“What’s wrong?” I said finally. “What is it, Lynda?”

“It’s murder,” she said. “That’s what.”

Chapter Two - You Call This a Party?

Before the mayhem was all over I was accused of murder and Lynda got conked on the head. But the whole business started innocently enough at a party less than twenty-four hours before she found the body.

Everywhere I looked that night, people were wearing deerstalker caps. Not everybody, mind you, but enough to give the idea that this was no ordinary cocktail party. Which it sure wasn’t. From where I stood in my sister’s hallway, nursing a caffeine-free Diet Coke, I was bombarded with snatches of strange conversation from the living room on one side and the dining room on the other.

“Of course Sherlock Holmes was illiterate. Why else would he have Watson read everything to him?”

“I’m so tired of Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper stories.”

“In fact, Holmes is still alive.”

This last was proclaimed by one of the deerstalkered gents, a tall, lean specimen in his early forties with a sharp nose. He was holding forth to the living room contingent, a group of half a dozen or so, a few of whom seemed to be actually listening. I stepped into the room for a better look and saw that, sure enough, he was wearing a button that said SHERLOCK HOLMES LIVES!

I didn’t hang around for the rest of the lecture. I turned, intending to check out the action in the dining room. At least there was food there. The movement brought me practically nose to nose with the kind of woman you don’t often see outside of Greek and Roman statuary: oval face, creamy complexion, wide brown eyes, raven hair spilling over bare shoulders. The simplicity of her black dress was counterbalanced by enough silver at her throat, wrists and ears to keep a crew of Navajo silversmiths in business for a good while.