Mrs. Peacock-a-Doodle-Doo
Owner of Peacock Manor
From the Casebook of
Elliot Brick
The Case of
the Maltese Ferret
by Butch Maxwell & Bert Furioli
“A good detective never lets facts interfere with a promising deduction.”
Private eye Elliot Brick takes the easiest case of his career: tail a cheating fiancé for the jilted Mrs. Whitebread. The trail leads straight into Peacock Manor, a house stacked with eccentric relatives, secret passageways, and candlesticks in every room—the kind of place where somebody always ends up dead in the study. Brick just didn’t expect to be the one holding the murder weapon.
The house is expecting you
Welcome to Peacock Manor
Exotic vegetables are collected here with scholarly devotion. Scientific research strays well past the boundaries of accepted biology. Family fortunes rearrange themselves with alarming frequency. Every resident is certain someone else is up to something.
Then someone is murdered.
Nobody asked Elliot Brick to solve a murder tonight. He’s doing it anyway.
Secret passage?
Why This Case
A night that refuses to stay solved.
Brick’s investigation turns into a night that refuses to stay solved. Every suspect confesses. Every weapon gets used. Every room in the manor becomes the scene of the crime at least once—often for the same murder that supposedly only happened one way. The audience isn’t watching Brick figure out whodunit—they’re doing it alongside him, table by table, clue by clue, waiting to see if their guess survives the next absurd revelation.
That’s the difference between this and a country-house mystery played straight: nobody in Peacock Manor agrees on what happened, including the corpse. The comedy comes from a mystery that keeps confessing itself into a bigger mess.
For a theatre, that means a script built for a room full of people who came to participate, not just watch—accessible enough for volunteers with no acting experience, tight enough that the real clues still land, and funny enough that even the wrong guesses get a laugh.
Recovered from Peacock Manor
The Evidence Table
Everything is a clue. Everything.
The suspects, the client, and the detective
Meet the Residents of Peacock Manor
Miss Scarletta
Family Heiress
Professor Plumb-loco
Scientist
Colonel Condiment
Family Friend
Mr. Greenjeans
Attorney
Mrs. Whitebread
Brick’s Client
Your guide through the case
Elliot Brick
Private Detective
For producers and directors
Production Information & Script
Bring The Case of the Maltese Ferret to your audience. Download a twenty-page sample, request the complete script, or contact the playwright about production and licensing.
The sample downloads directly from this site—no registration required.
“There are a million stories in the Naked City, and most of them are dirty. But that doesn’t scare me.”I’m Elliot Brick,
Private Dick.
From the Casebook of Elliot Brick
The Elliot Brick Mysteries
Comic detective Elliot Brick investigates impossible crimes in equally impossible places.
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Peacock Manor Case File — Archived