Murder, She Wrote Season 1, Episode 1
"The Murder of Sherlock Holmes, Part I"
Original airdate: Sept. 30, 1984
Story by: Richard Levinson and William Link, Peter S. Fischer
Teleplay by: Peter S. Fischer
Director: Corey Allen
Cast: Angela Lansbury, Arthur Hill, Michael Horton, Ned Beatty, Brian Keith, Jessica Browne, Bert Convy, Eddie Barth, Herb Edelman, Anne Lloyd Francis, Tricia O'Neal, John Hancock, Dennis Patrick
"The Murder of Sherlock Holmes" first aired as a feature length television event, but it was eventually divided into two episodes for syndication. Given the density of the story, I'll be doing the same with the recap. Look for Part Two next week.
Part One
A young woman in a satin negligee descends the stairs of a gothic manse, eyes welling with tears. She holds a trembling candle to the darkness.
"Roger, is that you?"
French doors to a veranda swing open in the breeze and she hurries to close them. Something clatters behind her. Her eyes widen in terror.
"Roger!" she pleads with the shadows. "If this is some kind of sick joke…"
Tentatively, she approaches a closet door and pulls it open. An expressionless leather daddy in an executioner's hood waits inside, broad axe at the ready. The woman shrieks, collapsing to the floor as the man raises the axe upward toward … stage lights?
"House lights!" a man shouts from off screen. The illusion erupts in a burst of stage lamps. "Still too long! We've got to pep it up, people!"
This is a dress rehearsal for Something Terrible, a Broadway-bound murder mystery. The lavish production is in tryouts in Cabot Cove, Maine.
The irritable young director calls for a ten-minute break, reminding cast and crew that they open tomorrow night. He glances over the rows of seats behind him to a trio of women observing the scene. He asks them to leave the closed rehearsal, but one reminds him they were asked to meet him there. They introduce themselves as the refreshment committee from the P.T.A. He attempts to brush them off, but they're effusive in their praise of the show.
"It's so … mystifying!"
"It gave me goosebumps!"
"Oh, yes, and I'm sure no one will ever guess the uncle is the killer."
This last remark, offered casually, alarms the director, and he hurries after the woman who introduces herself as Mrs. Fletcher (Lansbury). He nervously asks if she's seen some leaked draft of the play. She didn't. She explains, cheerfully and matter-of-factly, how she arrived at the solution from the few scenes she just saw during the rehearsal of Act One. Jessica and her friends thank him and hurry off. The director fumes.
"George! Get me that idiot of a writer! I want to talk to him now!"
We cut to a montage of our hero, Jessica "J.B." Fletcher, jogging and biking through seaside Cabot Cove (population 3,560) by day, and tapping away at her jet black Royal typewriter by night. She's accompanied throughout by John Addison's buoyant, Emmy-winning score. We learn that Jessica is an active woman in her late 50s, widowed, and a much-loved substitute teacher at the local high school — students rush to greet her each morning at the bike racks.
Returning to her stark white Victorian after a jog one morning, Jessica hears the phone ringing and rushes inside. It's Grady.
I was born one month before this September 1984 series premiere, which means this hapless, detestable failson has been around for forty years. Grady Fletcher (Horton) is simply the worst. Imagine Peter Parker with all of his redeeming qualities allotted to his aunt, his Spider Totem fully asleep at the loom. Jessica loves the kid, but I'm grateful he's only in 12 of the 264 episodes.
To his credit, Grady features rather prominently in his aunt's origin story. He admits to finding the manuscript for her mystery novel the last time he visited from Manhattan. Impressed, he shared it with his girlfriend, who in turn submitted it to her boss at the publisher Coventry House. They want it. Jessica is embarrassed at first, having never intended to let anyone read the thing.
What happens next happens fast. Jessica watches as her debut novel, The Corpse Danced at Midnight, climbs up the bestsellers list from eight to two, though I've never been sure if we're talking about the New York Times list, or just the Cabot Cove Bookseller's. Between the premiere and early episodes of Season 1, Jessica is firmly established as a bestselling, world-renowned mystery author of multiple novels. Though we see her working on drafts and revisions throughout the series, much of her rise to prominence happens off screen. Guest stars are often presented as industry professionals and luminaries she's befriended previously. Her social circle is enormous. For now though, Jessica is new to fame and celebrity.
Coventry House books a junket of promotional interviews; Jessica and the "cookie ladies" are particularly aroused to hear Phil Donahue among them. Grady seems to be operating as his aunt's manager at this point, filling her in on the details while on break at his day job as an accountant for Cap'n Caleb's Chowder Houses' corporate headquarters.
Sidenote: Cap'n Caleb's Manhattan offices — turquoise with orange and seafoam accents, ferns pouring out from brass diving bells — might boast the ugliest interiors outside an episode of Columbo. It's like the Mystery Machine opened up into a TARDIS.
Jessica's friends pressure her into undergoing a TV-ready makeover at the local salon, but she ultimately maintains her tweedy elegance. She arrives in Manhattan to meet Grady and his girlfriend Kitt Donovan (Browne). In trademark fashion, Jessica has befriended Daniel, the train's porter. She thanks him and extends best wishes to his son, who's trying for a scholarship. Fun fact: John Hancock played a Starfleet admiral in two episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Michael Horton played Lt. Daniels, a tactical officer in First Contact and Insurrection.
Grady and Kitt usher Jessica to meet her publisher, Preston Giles. The silver fox arrives late to their meeting, but he's charming in his heartfelt apologies. Here Jessica recommends he eat more apples, noting the pectin will help with his gray complexion. It's an odd bit of writing because the Jessica we come to know is much more tactful, but his reaction is helpful for anyone assembling clues. Preston says he hasn't been sleeping well. He apologizes again and ducks into his office.
No matter. It's time for a whirlwind publicity tour. Jessica more than holds her own in interviews with a condescending Charlie Rose type, a bored shock jock, and a buttoned-up academic reading a bit too much into the caper's themes. She signs copies of her book for a disinterested memorabilia collector just out for an investment before a woefully ADRed crank named Agnes Peabody serves her with a subpoena for allegedly stealing her ideas.
After four days of such nonsense, Jessica is ready to hightail it back to Maine, despite Kitt's protests to continue the tour. Just as she's about to board her train, Preston Giles meets her with a bouquet of roses, urging her to reconsider. She expresses her frustration with the insults she's suffered in New York.
"You know," says Jessica, "Back in Cabot Cove, the only thing we have with claws are lobsters, and we eat them."
Preston offers her a break from the critics, extending an invitation to his country house for a party he's hosting over the weekend. Grady and Kitt can tag along too. If Jessica still wants to go back to Cabot Cove on Monday, he'll put her on the train himself. Charmed, she agrees.
Preston drives Jessica to his country estate in the fictional upstate community of New Holvang. We meet Grady's employer, crusty "Cap'n" Caleb McCallum himself (Look, Manhattan's a small town) played by Brian Keith, the dad from the original The Parent Trap. He also voiced Uncle Ben in Spider-Man: The Animated Series. Shooting skeets off by the pool, he's Mr. Krabs without the complexion. Caleb's long suffering wife Louise (Anne Francis, of Forbidden Planet fame) greets Jessica warmly, saying she loved her book. Louise is icy with Preston, thanking him for accepting Caleb's assistant, Ashley Vickers, to the party. Preston's apology is drowned out by a sonic boom from the nearby airport. Foreshadowing! Louise asks Jessica about her "costume" so they don't duplicate. Confused, she turns to Preston; he forgot to mention that they're all going to the party as their favorite fictional characters. Jessica is perturbed at the short notice, but she's nothing if not adaptable.
"I could always come as Lady Godiva," she muses with a wink.
Guests arrive later that night, and there was clearly some pre-gaming. A stoic butler greets an impish Peter Pan and Chanticleer at the door, truly snookered. Preston, a dashing Count of Monte Cristo, extends an arm to Jessica as she descends the stairs, a dazzling Fairy Godmother she assembled from "odds and ends" with some help from Louise. Preston kisses her hand, ensorceled.
Let's see. What have we got? A toy soldier. Cleopatra. The Scarecrow. Humpty Dumpty (Richard Erdman in one of the countless roles he played before played Leonard on Community). And at the piano, one of my very favorite game show hosts, Bert Convy, as Ebenezer Scrooge — though friends know him as a composer named Peter Brill. Peter improvises on the keys for the other guests. Cap'n Caleb enters in the cloak and deerstalker cap of Sherlock Holmes and sidles up to Little Red Riding Hood. Without so much as a word, he runs a hand up the back of her costume. Bold and reprehensible! The Big Bad Wolf she arrived with doesn't seem to notice, but Caleb's assistant, Ashley Vickers sure does. She stares daggers at them.
Outside, Grady, garbed as Robin Hood, leads Kitt through the darkness, eager to get the poor girl alone. They kiss, but Grady is distracted by a light from a second story window. Someone's snooping in his guest room with a flashlight. Totally out of pocket, he charges inside and up the stairs. He surprises the intruder (Patrick), punching him (!!!!). They grapple for a moment before the man dashes from the room and down the hall, where Jessica trips him with her sizable magic wand.
Preston and Grady question the intruder, Dexter Baxendale, in a parlor with Jessica and Kitt observing. Baxendale explains that he's a private investigator for wealthy clients, though he won't reveal who hired him or why he's snooping around at the party. Preston is ready to call the police, but a sneering Baxendale gives him pause by promising to drag the rest of his guests through the dirt. Preston asks Grady to escort the man to his car without disturbing the party and he complies. Preston apologizes to Jessica for the seventeenth time, promising the rest of the weekend will be much quieter. She doesn't seem too bothered.
A drunken Louise makes a bit of a scene, more than insinuating that Caleb and Ashley Vickers are engaged in an affair that everyone knows about. She heads out without him and Jessica instructs Grady to make sure she gets home alright. She leaves him in her dust, peeling off into the night. The party rages on, Peter Brill besieged by show tune requests. He teases Ashley Vickers about the open secret of her relationship with Caleb and she confides that they've cooled off in recent months. She points out that he and Little Red Riding Hood have both been missing for hours. She spills a drink on her gown and Jessica quickly ushers her to the kitchen to assemble the ingredients — lemon, eggs, milk, baking soda — for a time-honored stain cleaner. The woman says not to bother, but Jessica insists.
The next morning, Jessica takes her constitutional across Preston's wooded property. Louise returns, hungover but lucid. Jessica suggests a cup of coffee, but the woman is eager to scrape Caleb off the carpet and get him back home. Has she seen him? Jessica feigns ignorance of Caleb's debauchery for Louise's sake, but she knows what's up. Their conversation is interrupted by Kitt's scream from the pool area.
Jessica hurries to Kitt's side, Louise close at her heels. Still screaming, Kitt points to the pool where a lifeless Sherlock Holmes floats facedown in the water. A shotgun lies at the pool's edge over smeared blood.
Jessica takes it all in as Louise appears behind her, desperate to see what's going on. Though she tries to shield her, Louise sees the body and knows her husband is dead.
Or is he?
Chief Roy Gunderson (Beatty) arrives to start the murder investigation under the assumption it really is Caleb's body they found; whoever it was took a shotgun blast to the face. Peter Brill and Ashley Vickers both say that Caleb wasn't especially well-liked, though nobody despised him enough to kill him. Louise concedes that she did, and she can't recall where she was much of the night after taking off in her car. Not the soundest legal strategy.
As the other guests complain about the ongoing questioning keeping them from outside engagements, Gunderson recognizes the famous mystery writer snooping out in the garden. He interrupts Jessica as she's attempting to climb some lattice to Grady's window, betting that's how Baxendale entered last night.
She's already arrived at the conclusion that it couldn't be Caleb in the pool because the corpse's shoes didn't match the pair the Cap'n was wearing at the party. Though they would've been well-suited to climbing the fence. Gunderson is about to torpedo the notion when Caleb approaches, very much alive. Louise embraces him before hauling back to slap him in the face.
Back inside, Caleb explains that he'd hired Baxendale to investigate the leak of confidential documents from his business and that he'd been close to tracking down the culprit. He suggests that Baxendale, now presumed to be the murder victim, had been trying to bring him his findings at the party. Preston says that doesn't explain why the man was wearing Caleb's Sherlock Holmes costume. Caleb has no explanation except to say he left the costume in the hall closet before sneaking off to a nearby inn with Little Red Riding Hood.
Grady and Kitt depart for the city with Jessica close behind in a limousine arranged by Preston (along with a kiss on the cheek). She's visibly wary. Writing about murder is one thing. Being so close to it is another. Gunderson flags the car down and steps inside to ride along. He saw the hesitation on her face before she left and wondered if she had some insight that might help with the case. She confides that she can't make up her mind. Did the killer think they were shooting Baxendale, or the man whose costume he'd borrowed? Should Gunderson be looking for someone out to kill Caleb after all?
Jessica and Grady meet up back at her hotel. He reads from the front page story about the murder as she packs her things. Grady thinks, rightly, that his aunt could probably solve this case, but Jessica is eager to go back to Maine and resume the quiet life of a substitute English teacher. She's had her fill of New York society, Kitt and Grady aside. He asks if she's said goodbye to Preston. That strikes a nerve. Jessica lovingly asks him not to meddle. She's starting to fall for Preston, and that scares her.
Jessica is about to board her train later that morning when a panicked Kitt reaches her. Grady's been arrested for Baxendale's murder.
Jessica confronts Gunderson who explains the arrest was out of his hands; evidence from Baxendale's car points to Grady stealing the confidential real estate documents from Caleb's office. Jessica argues that Ashley Vickers also had access to those papers. It was Grady's scuffle with Baxendale in the guest room that sealed it for the county investigators. Preston arrives, assuring Jessica that his lawyer is already arranging for Grady's release.
Team Grady meets at a nearby restaurant to strategize. Preston explains the detectives' narrative, that Baxendale was thought to have discovered Grady's conspiracy, sought him out to extort a payout, and Grady killed him instead. But there's still no explanation for the Sherlock Holmes costume! Ashley Vickers, hot off an hours-long interrogation by the police, enters to use a payphone. Jessica intercepts before she can leave and invites her to join their war council. Strength in numbers after all.
Ashley Vickers doesn't need their help though. Preston's neighbors reported a loud bang at 11:15 on the night of the murder. The complaint went unheeded at the time, but investigators have since established that it couldn't have been a sonic boom as there was no recorded flight at that hour. That sound was the gunshot. Ashley Vickers has an alibi. She was in an upstairs bedroom with Jessica waiting for her dress to dry.
To be concluded in one week!
