Character Showcase - Mr. Alaric Jacoby

 In A DEADLY SHADE OF NIGHT, Mr. Alaric Jacoby is a wealthy mill-owner from Harrogate. Although he’s a widower, he lives with a house full of nieces and nephews. This being the case, it might seem impossible that he leads a lonely existence; sadly, however, the residents of his house are all waiting for their share of the inheritance when he breathes his last. And he is fully aware of their impatience, as well as their concern with the way he spends his own money and the manner in which he runs his mill.

Jacoby takes pride in looking after his workers and their families, believing that happy, safe, well cared for employees make for a more efficient business. His safety precautions and the high standards he insists upon are the sort of thing that his nephews consider a waste of coin. Interested only in profit, they cannot wait to take over the reins. Jacoby knows that when he’s gone, they will undo all the good he has tried to achieve. Alas, he’s a large man who enjoys rich food and strong drink, and he's been warned that his heart could give out at any time.

But rather than dwell on this problem, he throws himself instead into an old mystery that once plagued his grandfather, William Jacoby— the founder of the mill and a good man, who believed in honesty and justice.

William had spent the last forty years of his life trying to prove the innocence of a young maid accused and convicted of murdering an entire family on Whitherward Fell. The maid, Josefina Dallet, was an orphaned girl William once took under his wing, so he felt responsible for her and never believed her guilt. Even after her execution, he continued the struggle to clear her name. Unfortunately, he never succeeded. Upon his death, he passed his diaries and his fight for Josefina’s exoneration into the hands of his grandson who, at the time, was only ten.

Now in his late forties, warned that he might not have long to live, Alaric Jacoby is determined to take up the gauntlet and prove that his grandfather was right. He pays to put the story back in the newspaper, hoping to dig up old memories.

Will he also dig up some old skeletons? Or some new corpses?

When the story falls into the hands of Detective Inspector Deverell, it stirs up more than the dust on an eighty-year-old murder case.

There are rumblings heard on Whitherward Fell, as the Beast, prodded awake, yawns, turns over, and stretches its claws.

And a music box, long silenced, begins to play again.

 

Find out more about Alaric Jacoby and his mission for justice in A DEADLY SHADE OF NIGHT. Coming soon!

(Image: Dr. Horatio Wood by Thomas Eakins 1886)