Capacity for Murder (Professor Bradshaw Mysteries)

by Bernadette Pajer

  “How old was he?”

  “Nineteen. He’d taken to his bed with a bellyache, and when the nausea and vomiting started his mother got worried and sent for me. He was senseless when I got there, and when I examined him I found scratches on his arms and neck and a nasty bruise on his leg. He’d been in a fight, and I knew who’d fought him. He never came ’round.”

  “Did you tell his parents about Marion visiting you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  “When I saw their faces…they were in shock. For all their harsh ways, and their cold manner, they loved that boy. Spoiled him. Ruined him. But they loved him. I knew what that boy had done to the girl, but I didn’t think his parents should suffer for it. He was gone and wouldn’t hurt her again. What was the point in telling them?”

  “What did you put on the death certificate?”

  “Kinked intestines.”

  “What really killed him?”

  “Oh, his intestines were kinked, that wasn’t a lie. But there’s one detail I didn’t put down and it haunts me to this day.” He struggled, having kept the secret for so long he couldn’t bring himself to speak of it.

  “I think I know, Doc. The boy’s vomit and breath were luminescent. They glowed green.”

  “I dread to think how you know that.”

  Chapter Thirty-five

  By the time Bradshaw climbed back on his bicycle the clouds had rebuilt, filling in the patches of blue and threatening to lower. It would be dark soon. There was no sense in going to the old Vogler place until morning.

  He returned to town and booked a room at the Grand Hoquiam, finding it as luxurious and the food as good as Henry had reported. He contemplated contacting Captain Bell but decided to wait until after he saw the house and gathered more information. After all, even if Ingrid Thompson was Marion Vogler, it proved nothing regarding the deaths at Healing Sands. He needed hard evidence, and the chances of finding it were slim. But he did send Henry a telegram asking him to come at once.

  Bright and early the next morning on the red eye, Henry arrived, eager to hear the news. As they left the depot and headed into town, Bradshaw, pushing his bicycle, said, “We need to find you some wheels.”

  “A bicycle? For what?”

  “It’s the best way to get to the Vogler Farm.”

  “I can’t ride a bicycle.”

  “Yes, you can.”

  “You ever seen me on a bike?”

  “Not since college. It’ll come back to you.”

  “Hire a horse, you cheap skate.”

  “Because you’re too lazy to pedal? Horses need food and water, and I don’t know how long we’ll be gone.”

  “Horses eat grass, and in case you hadn’t noticed, there’s plenty of grass out in the country.” Henry put a hand to his back, and though Bradshaw knew the gesture was meant to play on his sympathy, he also knew his occasional flare-ups were painful.

  “You can get a motorized bike.”

  Henry’s eyes lit up. “No fooling? Hot damn, I’ve always wanted to try one of them.”

  ***

  The shop owner’s thorough lesson on the art of operating a motorized bike took the better part of an hour. It was a complicated machine that required precision in the timing of the start-up procedure, but once it was alight and chugging, it hummed along beautifully. They strapped their supplies, Bradshaw’s tool bag, and food and water, to the machine and were off.

  Henry delighted in racing ahead, charging up hills, then turning back around to rejoin Bradshaw.

  “You’ll run out of fuel and then have to pedal,” Bradshaw warned, and this put a stop to Henry’s circling.

  The weather was once again with them, cool enough to be comfortable, the sky a blanket of drabness, but with no rain threatening.

  A mile after passing the doctor’s little red house they came to a handsome farm carved out of the forest, with a cedar home, outbuildings, cows grazing, fields of corn ripening. Bradshaw hailed the farmer, a lanky gentleman in overalls, who crossed his field to greet them.

  “We’re going to the Vogler place, do you know it?” Bradshaw asked after introducing himself and Henry.

  “Oh, aye,” said the farmer, “But there ain’t nobody home. The place is empty.”

  “Do you know the people who own it?”

  “Marion Vogler, you mean?” The farmer scratched his weathered cheek thoughtfully. “Can’t say I know her, but I know who she is when she passes by.”

  “Does she pass by often?”

  “Ah, no. She don’t live round here no more.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “Oh, that’d be just a few weeks past. It was a Sunday, as I recall, and early morning. I was in the milk barn,” he said, nodding toward the barn closest to the road. “And the cows all perked up their ears and turned their heads, so I looked out and there she was.”

  “Was she alone?”

  “Far as I can tell. I only saw her. Riding a donkey.”

  Henry guffawed. “They eat grass, too, Ben.”

  The farmer said, “If you’re thinking of making an offer for her property, you’ll be disappointed.”

  “Why is that?”

  “She swears she’ll never sell. I’ve made an offer every time I seen her since she inherited the place. I’d tear down the house but the land is good for farming, and there’s timber. Can’t be she’s sentimental over the place. The Voglers weren’t what you called warm people. Well, we’ll see. The new railroad line they’re building to the beach passes not more than a mile from her property. Somebody will make an offer high enough, I suspect.”

  Bradshaw showed his map to the farmer, who confirmed they were heading in the right direction and warned them the road was maintained only about another half mile. Bradshaw thanked him, and he and Henry started out again.

  As warned, the road maintenance came to an abrupt end. There were visible marks where the plow turned. From there, the road became a path, decent enough for their bikes, then an overgrown trail, with brush and saplings attempting to reforest where loggers had felled giants two decades ago. For the last half mile, they walked, pushing their bikes to avoid being unseated by low hanging branches or bucked off by ruts.

  Finally, the trail opened to a small clearing backed by towering Douglas firs and western hemlock, where stood a sagging house, a dilapidated barn, and a string of weathered and disintegrating chicken coops

  The house was a two-story farm style. The roof hung low over the offset porch, casting the entrance in deep shadow. The white clapboard siding was streaked black and peeling, bisected by an oddly positioned red brick chimney. The windows on the first floor had been boarded over, and the porch steps lost in a tangle of weeds. From the eves of the upper story hung delicate lace trim, making the place look tawdry, like frilly bloomers on a streetwalker.

  Henry said, “This place gives me the creeps. I don’t have to go in, do I?”

  “You wouldn’t let me go in alone.”

  “Like hell, I would.”

  “Let’s look around outside first.”

  They examined the yard, the chicken coops, the barn, looking for signs of something recently hidden or moved or changed, without disturbing anything themselves.

  The kitchen garden had years ago gone to seed and was a tangle of wildflowers, vegetable greens, weeds, corn stalks, even a few cedar and fir saplings. The coal shed was missing its heavy door.

  A broken rail fence marked the boundary to a field tall with grass. A doe and her two fawns lifted their heads, ears alert, then resumed grazing. Henry grunted but made no comment.

  The tangle of weeds and layers of grime in the yard were marked only by the trails of insects and the footprints of wild creatures. An experienced tracker might have been able to say if a human had recently been here, but neither Bradshaw nor Henry could.

  Bradshaw looked at Henry. “What do you think?”

  Henry stomped his foot. “We could spend a hu
ndred years searching out here. But goldarn her eyes, I betcha the gold’s in the house.”

  They approached the small back porch with a sense of curious dread. Weeds grew up between the boards. The wind shifted, rustling their clothes, suddenly flooding the house and yard with sunshine that revealed in greater detail the weeds and peeling paint.

  Henry hung back, giving Bradshaw a small shove.

  “Henry, there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  “You trying to convince me or you?”

  Bradshaw gripped the bronze knob. The door was locked.

  Henry said, “That’s telling. Country folk don’t usually lock their doors.”

  “They do if they no longer live there and want to discourage tramps from moving in.”

  “Got an answer for everything, don’t ya? Well, come on then. Pick it.”

  The lock easily gave way to Bradshaw’s pick. He pushed the door open. It squeaked on its hinges into the dim interior. A tunnel of sunlight poured through the open door and narrow chinks slipped in through the boarded windows revealing a scarred table and chairs, a sink with a pump handle faucet, an icebox, and an ancient coal range. Dust and cobwebs coated the shelves, corners, abandoned oddments, dishes, pots, and canisters.

  The moldy smell of the place wafted out to them. Not the pleasant mustiness of the cabins at Healing Sands, but a sour stench of things left too long in damp and darkness.

  “Not much of a housekeeper, our Mrs. Thompson,” whispered Henry.

  “Shh.”

  “Why? No one’s here.”

  “We are.”

  Henry rolled his eyes but remained silent as they stepped inside. He’d been often enough with Bradshaw on investigations to need no reminders about watching where he stepped and what he touched.

  With slow deliberation, Bradshaw moved about the room. Unlike the yard, here was ample evidence of human movement. Scuffed footprints in the dusty floor, and swaths of table and drain board recently wiped, as if they’d been swept clean by shirtsleeves, revealed someone had been here fairly recently.

  The footprints were small, slightly turned-in with a narrow heel and toe, most certainly a woman’s. They led to a cellar door.

  Bradshaw wondered if his own face reflected the same foreboding that he saw in Henry.

  “It’s just another part of the house, Ben.”

  “A dark, underground, spider-filled, airless part of the house.”

  “And you call yourself a Professor.”

  “I don’t profess to like cellars. You go down, I’ll check up here.”

  He turned away and headed into the parlor, Henry defiantly on his heels. There they found a photograph of a young woman with a square jaw and sultry eyes.

  Henry whispered, “Spitting image of her.”

  They discovered a moldering family Bible inscribed with a list of births, marriages, and deaths.

  1855, Jacob Herbert Vogler married Cordelia Colby, West Virginia.

  1861, son born, Jacob Herbert, Jr., California.

  1866, Marion Ingrid Colby, born out of wedlock to Helen Colby, sister of Cordelia.

  1871, Helen Colby died, Oregon.

  Henry said, “That makes our Mrs. Thompson thirty-seven. Kind of them to put her illegitimacy right there on the page. We got our proof. Ingrid Thompson is Marion Vogler.”

  “If those are her footprints in the kitchen, we know where we need to look first.”

  Bradshaw returned to the kitchen, to the cellar door.

  Henry followed, but he didn’t reach to open the door. He swallowed hard. “Let’s look around upstairs, first.”

  “At twenty dollars an ounce, seventy-five thousand in gold dust weighs over two hundred pounds, Henry. Do you think they piled it upstairs?”

  “Why not? They got it in small doses over more than a year. You know, I was thinking, Freddie must have had days when he walked out of that office with five pounds of dust on him. How in the Sam Hill did he get away with it?”

  “It’s why his nerves were shot.”

  “I don’t want to go down there.”

  “Neither do I.” Bradshaw found a lamp with a bit of oil, struck a match to light it, then pulled open the door. They were hit by an updraft of sour rot.

  Henry coughed. “Smells like a bushel of rotten potatoes.”

  At the bottom of the stairs they found an upturned crate that had been used as a table. Piled on it were mason jars and lids, a pair of scissors, and scraps of white cloth. They both examined the scraps that appeared to be garment seams and laces.

  Henry said, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “She sewed the gold into her underclothes and wore it here.”

  “Then cut out the pockets of gold and stuffed them into jars? But where are the full jars?”

  Armed with the lamp, the explored the sour cellar. They found no rotting root vegetables, but they did find steps dug into the earth floor that led down to a squat padlocked door.

  Henry whistled. “That’s the door missing from the coal shed. Frame and all.”

  It looked as if someone had carved a space to fit the frame, then packed earth solidly around it.

  “I don’t like this. Goldarn it, the hair’s standing up on my arms. Look.”

  Bradshaw was too busy picking the lock to look. The heavy iron at last yielded to the pressure of his tools. He removed the lock and placed a hand on the latch, but didn’t pull.

  He said, “It’s probably just the gold inside.”

  “Then why do you look like a scared rabbit?”

  “Oh, shut up.”

  The smell hit them as Bradshaw pulled open the heavy door. It was the same as upstairs, only fouler, riper, more potent.

  Inside was a dungeon-like space, too short for Bradshaw to enter completely upright. He thrust the lantern in and crouched, burying his nose in the crook of his sleeve. He took only two steps before he saw the four mounds of dirt, each about six feet long and three feet wide. The mounds were dimpled and lumpy. From the nearest one jutted a familiar shape.

  Bradshaw backed out, nearly knocking Henry over and swung the door shut.

  They staggered up the steps, through the kitchen, and out into the yard. Henry coughed until he almost vomited, but then finally got in a good breath and let out a deep rumbling belch. They sat far across the yard from the house in the fresh air.

  “Ben—that wasn’t gold buried in there.”

  “Not unless gold can grow feet.”

  Chapter Thirty-six

  “Who are they?”

  “I don’t know. Henry, I need you to get Captain Bell.”

  “Hell, we need the whole damn army.”

  “No, just Bell and a few of his men. Plain clothes. Don’t be followed.”

  “You don’t expect him to ride a bicycle here, do you?”

  “However he wants to come. Don’t be followed.”

  “You already said that.”

  “It bears repeating. Everyone is looking for Ingrid Thompson and the gold. The doctor and the neighbor know we’re asking questions about Marion. It’s only a matter of time before they make the connection. If word gets out, the gold-diggers will be swarming the house and woods. I want every scrap of evidence I can find.”

  “How much evidence you need? You got four corpses!”

  “Evidence she’s responsible for the deaths at Healing Sands.”

  “You going back in there?”

  “Not the cellar. But I still need to inspect the rest of the house.”

  Henry got up, coughing again and clearing his throat. He screwed up his face, shaking his head. “I don’t get it, Ben. She hides the gold in her underthings but leaves the evidence out in plain sight.”

  “I think she feels safe here. No one knows she’s Mrs. Thompson, wife, now widow, of a gold thief. If we didn’t know about her connection with stolen gold, we wouldn’t have guessed by simply finding the scraps of cloth and jars. I find it far more troubling that she can set up a worktable just outside th
e room where four bodies are rotting.”

  “Something wrong with that woman.”

  “She has no conscience.”

  “I’ll vote for that.”

  “Leave me my tools and the food.”

  Once Henry had gone on the motorbike, Bradshaw reentered the house. He moved through the rooms systematically, startling a few mice back to their nests. Spiders occupied every corner and he hoped they stayed there.

  Upstairs, he found Ingrid’s room. There was no mistaking it. The room was a filthy shrine to her obsession for riches. Advertising posters of foreign castles and pages of fashion magazines covered the walls. The floor was strewn with discarded garments and mouse-nibbled magazines. In a jewelry box he found three men’s pocket watches, a pair of gold cuff links, and a pocket knife. He picked through the mess and found a writing desk with several years’ worth of correspondence, receipts, telegrams, and letters.

  There was no order to any of it, and for an hour he sorted, pausing to read the personal letters completely. The most telling, the most damning, was dated three years ago.

  Dear Miss Vogler,

  I received your letter and am happy to provide all you ask. Yes, it was in response to your classified advertisement that I first wrote. A woman in your position must of course go about seeking a farm manager and prospective husband with the utmost care. I assure you my intentions are noble, and should I satisfy you as to the former and not the latter, I shall gladly serve in that capacity as long as needed.

  I am thirty years of age, in the best of health, and have been employed in farm management for the past ten years. I have no close kin and very much would like to marry and have children. I am a man of frugal nature and have saved a tidy sum in hopes of one day buying a small farm of my own. Your situation near the coast of Washington State appeals to me greatly. I am prepared to make a down payment on the purchase of your property to show you I am earnest in my desire to ease you of the burden of responsibility. If you will let me know where to have the funds sent, I will do so immediately via Western Union.