Moriarty Meets His Match: A Professor & Mrs. Moriarty Mystery (The Professor & Mrs. Moriarty Mystery Series Book 1) (31 page)

Historical Notes

Conan Doyle’s characters

I didn’t dig too deeply into the world of Sherlock Holmes in this book. We have Sherlock, of course, and Dr. Watson. Mrs. Hudson makes a brief appearance. Inspector Gregson of Scotland Yard helps get the investigatory ball rolling. I also employ one Inspector Forbes, who was with Scotland Yard in “The Naval Treaty.” I translate him to the wilds of Surrey for a murder at a country estate.

Real people

Only a few historical persons found their way into this book. I mention a Moriarty who “was bishop of Kerry not so long ago.” The astute reader will notice that I do not explicitly claim this Moriarty was actually related to my Moriarty. The good bishop would surely not appreciate the connection. He was David Moriarty,
(1814–1877), an Irish Roman Catholic bishop known for his oratorical skills.

I let Angelina imply that her late husband Victor was closely related to John Jay Gould, the real live Railroad King. For all I know, Mr. Gould the Actual had many such relations.

The Patent Office is as real as I could make it, though it’s now known as the Intellectual Property Office. Moriarty’s two colleagues were also real people: Moses Jackson and Alfred E. Housman. Yes,
that
A. E. Housman, author of “A Shropshire Lad.” He worked at the Patent Office after graduating from Oxford, following his friend Moses to London.

Other bits of reality

The
Tower Spherical Engine
was displayed to the world and his wife at the International Inventions Exhibition at South Kensington, London, in May 1885. It did not, however, explode. I had to get a real engineer, Jerry Cavin, to help me make that happen.

Admirers of the stately homes of England may enjoy knowing that several houses in easy reach of London contributed to the comfort of the characters in this book: Apsley House, once the London residence of the Dukes of Wellington, Ham House in Richmond on the Thames, and Osterley Park in the western suburbs. I’ll revisit them all next time I go.

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About the Author

Anna Castle holds an eclectic set of degrees: BA in the Classics, MS in Computer Science, and a Ph.D. in Linguistics. She has had a correspondingly eclectic series of careers: waitressing, software engineering, grammar-writing, a short stint as an associate professor, and managing a digital archive. Historical fiction combines her lifelong love of stories and learning. She physically resides in Austin, Texas, but mentally counts herself a queen of infinite space.

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Francis Bacon is charged with investigating the murder of a fellow barrister at Gray's Inn. He recruits his unwanted protégé Thomas Clarady to do the tiresome legwork. The son of a privateer, Clarady will do anything to climb the Elizabethan social ladder. Bacon's powerful uncle Lord Burghley suspects Catholic conspirators of the crime, but other motives quickly emerge. Rival barristers contend for the murdered man's legal honors and wealthy clients. Highly-placed courtiers are implicated as the investigation reaches from Whitehall to the London streets. Bacon does the thinking; Clarady does the fencing. Everyone has something up his pinked and padded sleeve. Even the brilliant Francis Bacon is at a loss — and in danger — until he sees through the disguises of the season of Misrule.

Thomas Clarady is recruited to spy on the increasingly rebellious Puritans at Cambridge University. Francis Bacon is his spymaster; his tutor in both tradecraft and religious politics. Their commission gets off to a deadly start when Tom finds his chief informant hanging from the roof beams. Now he must catch a murderer as well as a seditioner. His first suspect is volatile poet Christopher Marlowe, who keeps turning up in the wrong places.

Dogged by unreliable assistants, chased by three lusty women, and harangued daily by the exacting Bacon, Tom risks his very soul to catch the villains and win his reward.

In the summer of 1588, Europe waits with bated breath for King Philip of Spain to launch his mighty armada against England. Everyone except Lady Alice Trumpington, whose father wants her wed to the highest bidder. She doesn't want to be a wife, she wants to be widow; a rich one, and the sooner, the better. So she marries an elderly viscount, gives him a sleeping draught, and spends her wedding night with Thomas Clarady, her best friend and Francis Bacon's assistant. The next morning, they find the viscount murdered in his bed and they're both locked into the Tower.

Lady Alice appeals to the Andromache Society, the widows’ guild led by Francis Bacon's formidable aunt, Lady Russell. They charge Bacon with getting the new widow out of prison and identifying the real murderer. He soon learns the viscount wasn’t an isolated case. Someone is murdering Catholics in London and taking advantage of armada fever to mask the crimes. The killer seems to have privy information — from someone close to the Privy Council?

The investigation takes Francis from the mansions along the Strand to the rack room under the Tower. Pulled and pecked by a coven of demanding widows, Francis struggles to maintain his reason and his courage to see through the fog of war and catch the killer.

Professor James Moriarty has but one desire left in his shattered life: to prevent the man who ruined him from harming anyone else. Then he meets amber-eyed Angelina Gould and his world turns upside down.

At an exhibition of new inventions, an exploding steam engine kills a man. When Moriarty tries to figure out what happened, he comes up against Sherlock Holmes, sent to investigate by Moriarty’s old enemy. Holmes collects evidence that points at Moriarty, who realizes he must either solve the crime or swing it for it himself. He soon uncovers trouble among the board members of the engine company and its unscrupulous promoter. Moriarty tries to untangle those relationships, but everywhere he turns, he meets the alluring Angelina. She’s playing some  game, but what’s her goal? And whose side is she on?

Between them, Holmes and Angelina push Moriarty to his limits -- and beyond. He’ll have to lose himself to save his life and win the woman he loves.

What happens when the Internet service provider in a small town spies on his clients' cyber-lives and blackmails them for gifts and services?

Murder; that's what happens.

Penelope Trigg moves to Lost Hat, Texas to open a photography studio and find herself as an artist. Things are going great. She's got a few clients, some friends, even a hot new high-tech boyfriend. But when Penny submits some nude figure studies of him to a contest, she gets hit with a blackmail letter in her inbox. "Do what I want or your lover's nudie pix get splattered across the Internet." The timing couldn't be worse, so Penny is forced to submit to the blackmailer’s demands. Then people start dying and all the clues point to her. She has to rattle every skeleton in every closet in Lost Hat to keep herself out of jail and find the real killer.

Nature photographer Penelope Trigg has landed the job of her dreams: documenting the transformation of over-grazed rangeland into an eco-dude ranch and spa, owned by her boyfriend Tyler Hawkins. Then a body is found on the ranch and Ty is arrested. The victim was an aggressive real estate developer with his greedy eyes on Ty’s land and Ty’s sister Diana, who was almost engaged to the senior deputy sheriff. Clues put her at the center of the puzzle.

Determined to prove Ty’s innocence, Penny stirs up Diana’s old flames, trying to shed enough light to develop an alternative suspect. She mainly learns how to lose friends and annoy people, until she realizes someone has been manipulating the evidence. But is Ty the framer or the framee? Penny uses her eye for detail and her camera's memory to put the picture together and reveal the killer.

Moriarty Meets His Match

A Professor & Mrs. Moriarty Mystery — #1

Kindle Edition | June 2016

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Copyright © 2014 by Anna Castle

Cover design by Jennifer Quinlan

Editorial services by Jennifer Quinlan,
Historical Editorial

All rights reserved. No parts of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Characters, places, and events are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

ISBN-13:
978-1-945382-03-1

Produced in the United States of America