“I’ll be damned. I’d like to have seen that. I was in Aberdeen on Monday night. What makes it glow?”
Hornsby said, “Some sort of phosphor in the water, I believe. Is that right, Professor?”
“That’s what’s commonly believed,” he said, sticking to his habit of not muddying an investigation by adding previously unknown facts. The truth was more complicated than simple phosphor. The glow was created by ocean plankton. Always present, when the conditions were right, they experienced enormous blooms. The action of the waves and the impact upon the sand triggered the tiny creatures to glow in a process known as bioluminescence.
Hornsby’s brow suddenly furrowed, and then he gasped with a sharp intake. “The glowing sand, Professor, it didn’t affect the apparatus here, did it? Is there some electrical aspect to it? It sparked!” Panic filled his voice. “Should I have not have performed an electrotherapy treatment so close to such an event?”
“No, Doctor Hornsby. The glowing sand did not alter your equipment.”
Even so, tears rolled silently down Hornsby’s cheeks and welled in his mustache.
“We will discover the truth of what happened here, but it will be difficult for you.”
Hornsby nodded. “That doesn’t matter. Whatever you need, I’ll do.”
“First, tell me. Was David in here alone at any time?”
“The sheriff asked me that, too. He was alone for a few minutes that morning. As I said, Mrs. Thompson had come to speak to me. Freddie, her husband, had a severe bilious attack during the night and was still feeling poorly. I went to see him, and determined his usual treatment might improve his condition, so I escorted him back to my office and got him settled there. By then, David was here waiting for me. During that time, I suppose it’s possible he tampered with the settings, but probable? No! Why would he? And you said you saw nothing wrong.”
“But David was killed, and so we know something went terribly wrong.”
“But I can’t believe he’d do anything so foolish, and I couldn’t live with myself if I falsely blamed David for his own death. He was a good man, devoted to my daughter. I loved him like he was my own son.”
“I understand. But I still must ask you what David knew of electrical matters.”
“Quite a bit, although he wasn’t a trained electrician. His knowledge was all practical. He was very clever. You’ll see for yourself when you visit the powerhouse and laundry. He knew enough to never have done anything to harm himself or others.”
“Can you say with complete certainty that nothing had been altered on the machine when you entered the room?”
“No! If only I could, this tragedy would never have occurred. If I’d seen it had been touched, I would not have continued with the procedure! I looked at the machine, as I always do, and I saw nothing unexpected. I didn’t examine the entire outfit, you understand, or open the panel. Why would I? I’ve kept up on the maintenance, and I knew the Leyden jars had adequate saline solution. I looked at it in the usual way with my mind on the procedure and saw that the settings were as they should be for administering autocondensation. My eye met nothing unusual and yet I can’t say for certain now what I saw.”
Bradshaw spent the next half hour running standard tests on the individual components and found all in perfect working order. He asked Dr. Hornsby and the deputy to stand back at a safe distance, then he threw the knife switch, energizing the machine. At once it began to thrum, and a tiny spark buzzed across the narrow gap of the spark interrupter. The glass electrode wand that Bradshaw had attached by cord to the diathermy post glowed purple. He touched the tip of it with his knuckles, feeling a slight stinging buzz, then he picked it up, shook back his cuff to expose his wrist, and applied the end to his skin. He felt a pricking heat, and smelled the sharpness of ozone. He glanced at Hornsby and saw him shaking his head, his eyes wide.
“I understand you weren’t using diathermy on David, I’m simply checking the output.”
“It’s not that, Professor. It’s the sound. The sound is different. It was different.”
“The sound emitted by the spark interrupter you mean? How so?”
“Now it sounds as it usually does. Crackling, and with that small bright arc. But with David that morning, it was different, more like a hiss. And the arc flamed.”
Hornsby’s confused expression showed his lack of understanding, but Bradshaw’s chest tightened. He knew what that change in sound indicated. He unplugged the machine, discharged the Leyden jars, then examined the interior closely. Using a magnifying glass he examined the insulating space between the primary and secondary coils, then he went over every inch of the Leyden jars, spotting two inconclusive darkish smudges on the outer foil and the connecting posts of the caps.
He straightened, leaving the machine open.
“Doctor, would you step into your office, please? Leave the door ajar. Have a seat, and when I tell you to, please listen carefully.”
Hornsby did as asked without question, for which Bradshaw was grateful. He was about to attempt to replicate what had happened to David Hollister and it was unnecessary for Hornsby to put himself through it. It would be enough that from the adjoining room he would be able to hear the sound of the spark gap.
Deputy Mitchell rubbed his chin, looking uncomfortable. “Where do you want me, Professor?”
“In the doorway is fine if you want to observe.”
The deputy took up a position in the door where he could see both Bradshaw and Hornsby.
From his electric kit, Bradshaw found a length of copper wire, and he stood for a moment considering it. He glanced around the room at Hornsby’s electrotherapeutic supplies, searching for something of the right size and conductivity. The electrodes and knives all possessed insulated handles. A small spool of copper or a roll of sheet block tin would suit his need, and many physicians who worked on their own machines and fashioned their own instruments possessed them. He stepped to the doorway and asked Hornsby about them.
Hornsby shook his head. “I don’t keep wire or tin in here. David has those in the washhouse. If I ever needed anything, I’d simply ask him.”
“I see. Thank you.”
He returned to the open cabinet of the outfit and positioned the copper wire across the Leyden jars in a manner that shorted the path of the current passing through them. With a glance to the doorway to see that the deputy wasn’t paying attention, he pulled the patty pan squash from his pocket, and inserted a small electrode into the flesh to ensure a current path. He turned the machine’s dials to the autocondensation settings, soaked the felt pad in salt water and placed it over the squash on the therapy chair, which he also attached to the machine. His last step was to wire an ammeter into the circuit to measure the current. When all was in readiness, he screwed the plug into the light socket and threw the knife switch. The spark gap produced a glowing, hissing flame, distinctly different from the earlier crackling spark. He heard a gasp from the other room. The ammeter registered a lethal amperage. The felt pad steamed.
David Hollister would have been dead almost instantly. With a small tremor, and perhaps a silent gasp. Or an attempt to gasp. His heart would have stopped, irrevocably damaged.
Bradshaw cut the knife switch and slipped the warm patty pan into his pocket before asking Dr. Hornsby to return. The deputy stepped aside to allow Hornsby, pale and trembling, to enter.
Bradshaw asked, “Did you recognize the sound?”
“Yes, that was it exactly. What did you do?”
In short-circuiting the capacitor, he’d sent a fatal current from the coil directly to the electrodes, but he hesitated explaining this to Hornsby. He unattached the ammeter, weighing the disclosing of information against the gathering of further testimony. It was Hornsby’s devastated eyes that decided him. He had no evidence, but he didn’t believe Dr. Hornsby was to blame.
He could perhaps lessen some of the doctor’s overwhelming feeling of guilt by revealing this fact with a partial disclosure. “I altered the conf
iguration, increasing the current to the electrodes.”
“I don’t understand. How could it have made that sound when I ran it? Can it do that all by itself, spontaneously?”
Not if the machine was in good working order, which it was. He said simply, “No.”
Hornsby began to tremble. “I thought—I noticed the sound—but I thought it was simply operating efficiently. It sounded so smooth. I didn’t know it might mean—”
Hornsby sat heavily, dropping his head into his hands. For several minutes, throat painfully tight with emotion, Bradshaw pondered the implication of the change in the spark interrupter’s sound emission, while Dr. Hornsby was swept by grief and Deputy Mitchell stared out the window at the ocean.
When Hornsby’s sobs quieted, he whispered in horror, “But who? Why?”
Bradshaw said, “It could not have been David. The evidence has been removed.”
The deputy’s head snapped around.
Bradshaw said, “It would be best to keep this to ourselves for now. The sheriff must be told, of course, but no one else.” The deputy nodded his understanding, but Hornsby was too stunned to respond.
“Dr. Hornsby, I must ask you to mention this to no one, not even your wife.”
“Not Miriam?”
“Not yet. I’ll let you know when it’s safe to tell her.”
“Safe? Oh, yes, of course. I’ll keep her safe. Not a word.”
“Good. Now, tell me. What happened next. After the incident?”
Hornsby took a deep breath. “I went into my office. Mr. Thompson was still there, waiting for his session. He asked me what was wrong. I frightened him, I think. I must have been a sight. I told him there’d been a terrible accident and to go get Mrs. Hornsby. He did so. And Martha came…after awhile, after I administered a sedative to Martha, and my wife got her to bed, I locked the door. I left to report what had happened. The tide was high, so I walked to Copalis. By the time I arrived, the tide had dropped, and I got a ride the rest of the way, with the mail. I wired you from Hoquiam after I talked to the coroner. The sheriff and deputy and coroner returned with me.”
“Before you returned, did anyone leave the sanitarium?”
“No, everyone is still here. We aren’t many. Just four guests and minimal staff. We were between sessions. Sheriff Graham said we were to go nowhere, but where would we go? We wouldn’t abandon our home. We wouldn’t abandon David.”
Chapter Six
The color of old paste, the oat groats sat in a congealed lump in Bradshaw’s porcelain bowl with blackberries bleeding rivulets into the crevices. He lifted a spoonful and sniffed. Earthy, sour. Like a barn floor.
Henry was giving his bowl the same inspection. “They ain’t been cooked, I’d bet a hundred bucks.”
“Mrs. Hornsby called them fermented.”
“Only thing I like fermented comes in a bottle.”
At another table, Justin and Paul were devouring their bowls while Mrs. Prouty took more skeptical bites. Bradshaw braved a taste. Mostly sour, with a tinge of sweet, as it smelled, oaty with a hint of vinegar. Foreign to his tongue, not awful, but he found he could eat very little before a sort of revulsion took hold.
Henry ladled more blackberries into his bowl, shrugged, and dove in.
They’d had to serve themselves, following the posted rules, filing through the kitchen past a butcher block table stacked with bowls, plates, a cast iron kettle of lukewarm groats, and cut loaves of a dense, dark bread speckled through with seeds. Cutlery and crisp white napkins had been claimed at a sideboard, and each table set with bowls of fresh, slightly mashed blackberries, small pots of creamy butter, and pitchers of a fishy-smelling milk substance Bradshaw hadn’t the courage to taste.
The dining room buzzed with conversation. Four of his students found much amusement in attempting to eat the unconventional breakfast. Knut clowned as usual, swallowing with exaggerated difficulty, while Daniel, clever and bespectacled, and Miles, small and precise, gave sporting commentary. Oren, who was rugged and square, happily dumped two bowls of berries into his own and ate with gusto.
Under this noisy cover, Bradshaw quietly told Henry of David Hollister’s death and of his morning’s investigation. Henry reacted with raised brows and an increased rate of chewing.
At the table nearest them, Colin sat with Missouri. They ate their fermented meal without much attention as they swapped childhood histories and life ambitions. Bradshaw tried not to listen, but snatches of their conversation came to him anyway. He’d known Colin was fascinated with mechanical vehicles, automobiles, and the latest advances in flight, but he hadn’t known Missouri had decided to quit the university in order to study homeopathy. He wasn’t sure what to make of it. A moment later, their conversation had veered toward the financial when Colin suggested she marry a man with plenty of money in order to support her many goals. She declared she’d never marry a man for his money, and Colin said it was a shame because he planned to be rich.
Missouri said, “Oh, I didn’t say I would never marry a man with money. You must pay attention to my prepositions.”
“I will, if you pay attention to my propositions.”
A grunt alerted Bradshaw that Henry, too, was listening.
Henry growled, “We ever that nauseating?”
“Yes, which is why I avoid such discussions altogether.”
“Yeah, well, I’m usually smart enough to have a few drinks under my belt before I make the attempt.”
Bradshaw turned his attention back to his buttered bread, which was chewy but didn’t cause a revolt at the back of his tongue. He felt Henry watching him, heard him clear his throat like he had more to say on the subject. Then he did.
“I reckon if you can sit there calmly listening to that drivel then…I mean, it’s been two years….”
Bradshaw knew exactly what Henry was getting at and he had no intention of discussing his former or current feelings for Missouri Fremont.
“Henry, why don’t you go swap stories with that miner.” Bradshaw nodded toward the only person in the dining room not of their group, a man sitting by himself in the corner. Hornsby said there were just four guests at the hotel. He must be one of them.
Henry listed away from the table to get a better look. “How you know he’s a miner? Looks like an undertaker to me.”
The man wore a somber, expensive-looking black suit, custom sewn for his stocky frame. He was clean shaven, hawk-nosed, with deep-set dark eyes and fat lips.
“What clues am I missing, Sherlock?”
Henry had recently become an avid reader of Sir Conan Doyle’s detective novels and fancied himself a superior Watson. He was, but Henry’s ego was large enough without Bradshaw’s encouragement.
“He’s uncomfortable in the suit, although it fits him perfectly, which tells me he’s new to wearing it and has therefore only recently come into money. He has a scar on his hand that extends up his sleeve, severe enough that I can see it from here. Combined with his strong build, erect posture, and lack of reading material in his solitary state, tells me he’s a man with little education, used to hard physical labor. The tip of his nose has suffered frostbite from which he’s mostly recovered; you see the white patch of skin? But it’s the button on his lapel that’s most telling.”
Henry squinted, then gave a grunt, showing he recognized the gold-nugget button. He had one himself as a souvenir of his time up north.
“He’d probably enjoy telling you all about it.”
“What am I, one of them masochists? Why would I want to hear how he struck? Poke a stick in my eye, Ben, it’d hurt less.”
“His success hasn’t made him happy.”
Henry listed again. “No, he don’t seem to appreciate his good fortune. Looks downright morbid about it. Huh.” Henry pushed back his chair and crossed the room to the miner. He introduced himself with a hearty handshake and took a seat without invitation.
While Henry worked his verbal art, Bradshaw studied his silver spoon. It co
uld just span the distance between the Leyden jars in the electrotherapy outfit, but getting it to stay in place would be difficult. If the cabinet were even slightly bumped, it would fall. Knives and forks posed the same problem. His thoughts moved to the kitchen, to the various knives, stirring spoons, graters, and mashers of various metals and coatings from silver to tin to nickel. From the kitchen, his mind roved to other rooms and other conductive items, from gold pens, to gold and silver necklaces, hairbrushes, safety pins strung together, key chains, and watch chains. When his thoughts moved outdoors, his mental pile of conductive items grew to a mountain. All of them could possibly short the machine, but few of them were probable or practical. Only wire, tin foil, or a chain fit the bill. Before Bradshaw finished his bread and grassy tea, the miner left the dining room and Henry returned to his chair, grabbing a slice of bread and slathering it with butter.
“Anything?”
“Name’s Zebediah Moss, fifty, never married, brought home a million in dust and nuggets last year. Lives in Seattle. You know that monstrosity up on First Hill? Three-story mansion with the pillars and turrets? That’s home-sweet-home.”
“So why is he miserable?”
Bradshaw had every confidence in Henry’s ability to extract details from the unwitting. Highly intelligent, Harvard-educated though not graduated, Henry had the brains of a scholar and the mouth of a day-laborer. He worked like a laborer, too, although ever since he’d injured his back on his last unsuccessful gold-seeking trip, his labors were of the temporary desk and sales variety, except when working for Bradshaw.
“I think he’s pining over some woman but I couldn’t drag it out of him. Says he came for a rest cure. He didn’t get any electric treatments. Mostly, he got packed up in hot sand and soaked his feet in the surf.”
“Is he here alone?”
“Yep.”
“What else did he tell you?”
“How he made his fortune. Lucky son-of-a-bitch fell off a cliff and struck gold with his grappling hook trying to climb back up.”
“What’s he been doing with his money?”
Capacity for Murder (Professor Bradshaw Mysteries) Page 4