A Spark of Death

by Bernadette Pajer

  As helpful as Professor Bradshaw was, the overwhelming circumstantial evidence goes against him. He was arrested the night before the inquest and released the following morning with no charges….

  Justin came running into the front hall, the screen door slamming behind him as Mrs. Prouty descended the stairs. Bradshaw carefully folded the newspaper over the headlines.

  “No running in the house,” Bradshaw and Mrs. Prouty declared in unison. Mrs. Prouty disappeared down the hall, and Justin’s steps slowed to a hurried walk as he approached his father in the parlor. Bradshaw didn’t think he’d ever seen a sight as precious as his child, hair rumpled from play, knickers stained with grass, nose smudged with dirt.

  “Dad, can I go to the zoo with Paul?”

  “You and Paul are too young to be going to Woodland Park on your own, Justin.” Paul’s mother, Mrs. Dickerson, in the house across the street, had telephoned earlier to ask if she and her husband might bring Justin along. Either Mrs. Dickerson had not yet read the morning paper or she didn’t believe it possible that Bradshaw was a murderer. Or maybe she did and inviting Justin was her way of rescuing the boy from his evil father for the afternoon.

  Justin, oblivious to his father’s thoughts, was nonetheless a clever boy for his age. He knew he was being teased. “I’m eight and one quarter, Dad. I know how to get to the zoo, and I’ll be sure to keep Paul out of trouble.”

  “Very well then.” He fished in his pocket for a dime and Justin took it eagerly. “Don’t spend it all on sweets. And tell Mrs. Dickerson I said thank you for her generosity and that if you misbehave, she has my permission to feed you to the bears.” And what would Mrs. Dickerson make of that comment, if the boy repeated it?

  Justin giggled.

  “Wash your face and change into your school suit.”

  “Aww, Dad.”

  “Or you can stay home.”

  “I’ll change.”

  “Wear your winter knickers. You’ve nearly outgrown them and Mrs. Prouty won’t complain if you get them dirty—and no,” he said, in response to Justin’s wicked pink-cheeked grin, “I am not giving you permission to get dirty.”

  Justin ran upstairs to change and was back in record time, looking decently enough put-together in woolen knickers, a slightly worn jacket and a soft cap. He’d washed enough to remove the dirt from his nose and his hair had been raked by wet fingers. He kissed his father good-bye, then was out the door, the screen door slapping noisily behind him.

  A few minutes later, Mrs. Prouty passed down the hall with one of his suits draped over her arm, a pair of polished shoes in her hand. They looked suspiciously like those he’d deposited into the burn pile.

  He called out to her, and she came to stand in the doorway, not meeting his gaze, her shoulders back defiantly.

  He said, “I don’t want those in this house.”

  She hesitated. “Waste is a sin, Professor.”

  “Then give them away.”

  She pursed her lips a moment, then her broad face relaxed. “Church bazaar?” She looked at him directly. “I’ll be off in another quarter hour, Professor. That be alright?” She spent Saturday afternoons and evenings in the company of her cousin, who also had a live-in position. They did the town, first bargain shopping at The Great Western Company department store, then lunching at Frederick & Nelson’s counter, followed by the new showing at the nickelodeon. A game of bridge amongst a troupe of housekeepers lasted well into the evening and so Mrs. Prouty stayed overnight with her cousin.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “I’ll be back at my usual time tomorrow morning. There’s roast meat in the icebox and a pie cooling on the counter.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Prouty. Enjoy yourself, and give your cousin my best regards.”

  “I could come home after the picture.”

  She made the same offer every Saturday, fussing and fretting as if she were to be gone a month rather than just one night. She’d been fussing longer than usual today. She’d read the newspaper article, too. And discovering his clothes in the burn pile yesterday had distressed her. He hadn’t anticipated that.

  “We’ll be fine, Mrs. Prouty. See you in the morning.”

  After she’d finally closed the door behind her, Professor Bradshaw found himself alone and disliking it. With the street no longer carrying the sweet sound of children’s voices, he felt restless. He checked his calendar, but the neatly printed entries in the precise white squares— “grade papers” and “rebuild model generator”—didn’t inspire. He went down to his basement shop and stared at the organized array of tools and gadgets, motors and copper coils along his workbench, then decided what he really wanted to do was to go to the university and look for what might have caused Oglethorpe’s death. He couldn’t just sit around while the police and the newspapers made him out to be a murderer. He had to clear his name soon, today if possible.

  Like his son, he changed out of his casual clothes and into a proper suit. His thoughts were random, reviewing bits and pieces of yesterday’s trial. Who had that woman been, the one who resembled Mrs. Prouty and had delivered that forged note? Did Detective O’Brien know?

  That note. The very existence of that note pointed at murder with Oglethorpe as the intended victim. But what of President McKinley’s visit? Bradshaw took the time now to ponder the instinctive feeling of relief he’d felt when Tom had said the visit was cancelled. That relief meant that Bradshaw’s subconscious believed McKinley was somehow involved. Who would want to harm the President?

  Anarchists. Not a day went by that the newspapers weren’t reporting some anarchist somewhere in the country being arrested for plots to assassinate leading officials.

  But an anarchist at the university? Had that woman who delivered the note to Oglethorpe been an anarchist? Had she followed Oglethorpe down to the lab? For what reason? McKinley hadn’t been scheduled to see the Electric Machine for another week.

  So what had been the purpose of the note? Why lure Oglethorpe down to the lab on that particular day?

  Bradshaw left the house through the backdoor, eagerness energizing his step. He could not be accused of plodding today. Today he moved like a young man. He chastised himself as he rolled his bicycle to the sidewalk. He shouldn’t be enthusiastic over this serious situation. Oglethorpe’s death should sober him. A possible violent anarchist in their midst should anger him. Yet there it was. His step bounced. His mind hummed with ideas about whom he should see, what he should ask. God forgive him, he was enjoying himself.

  At the street he paused. Northeast led to the university, southwest to downtown. He propped his bicycle inside his fence then headed south. If he were to cover so much ground today, he’d best save his legs and take the streetcar.

  He walked roughly one mile southeastward to catch the Madison Line. Once he left the peace of his small section of Gallagher Street, he found himself constantly detoured by construction. Houses were springing up like out-of-control mushrooms, rising overnight from the cleared muddy soil. The last of the enormous stumps, which a decade ago had been towering giants of cedar and Douglas fir, were being ground and burned to make way for development. Pipes for new sewer and gas lines lay along the new cement sidewalks, bare power and telephone poles waited for linemen to string them. He could hear nothing but hammering and sawing, the rattle of wheels, the shouts of workers. The air was thick with noise and soot. It was a mad frenzy of human activity.

  The commotion matched his mood. He found he couldn’t sit still, so he rode the front platform of the streetcar with the motorman, the sun and breeze on his face. He disembarked on Fourth Avenue and soon came upon a crowd outside Butterworth’s Funeral Home. The crowd was there, he understood from murmured conversations, to view the body.

  Bradshaw didn’t ask whose body. He heard his own name mentioned, and he was again grateful the newsp
aper had not printed his photograph. He tilted his hat low over his eyes, got in line, and slowly progressed into the funeral home. The crowd hushed, then silenced, as they moved down the dim paneled hall and into the parlor that yesterday had been a courtroom. Today, the room had been restored to a place of mourning. The overhead electric lights were off, and the gas wall sconces glowed softly. The air was still and somber and slightly stale with the mingled smell of breath and wool and cloying perfumes emanating from the constant line of curious viewers filing by the open casket.

  Bradshaw didn’t linger when his turn came. Nor did he hesitate.

  Oglethorpe’s hands were crossed, palms down over his chest, hiding the burn marks. In one quick movement, Bradshaw reached into the casket, twisted Oglethorpe’s cold left hand enough to see the burn, then returned the hand to its original position. The woman behind him gasped with horror, but then the same morbid curiosity that had compelled her to view the body of a complete stranger compelled her to imitate Bradshaw, to see what he’d had seen.

  After she’d peered at Oglethorpe’s palm, she whispered, “What do you make of it?”

  Bradshaw shrugged. He began to move away then noticed a tiny speck of something reflective in Oglethorpe’s hair. He reached into the casket again, pinched the sparkling black speck, capturing it between his thumb and index finger.

  He went in search of an employee of the funeral home and found manning a desk a bored young clerk with a sour expression.

  “Do you know where I might find Coroner Cline?” As County Coroner, Cline could be nearly anywhere in King County. He might be in his office up on “Profanity Hill” in the Courthouse, at any number of other funeral homes, or at some other death scene.

  “He’s indisposed.” The clerk didn’t bother to look up.

  “Is he here?”

  “He’s indisposed.”

  “I need to speak with him.”

  “He’s—”

  Bradshaw leaned forward and the clerk not only looked up, he pulled back.

  “I’m Professor Bradshaw. Maybe you read about me in the newspaper?”

  The clerk’s mouth dropped open. His eyes wide and staring, he sidled from behind the desk and down the hall. Bradshaw followed until they came to the back of the building, to an examination room brightly lit and smelling of something foul that a heavy dose of antiseptic hadn’t masked.

  The clerk appeared confused, as if he’d expected to find Cline in the room. “Wait here.” He scurried out.

  Bradshaw pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket and carefully deposited the shiny black speck onto the cloth. He folded the cloth and returned it to his pocket, trying hard not to breathe in too deeply. Across the room on a bier, a stark white sheet covered a mound far too large to be human. The foul odor was emanating from that general direction.

  A few minutes passed. The silence was like a coldness. Or was it the room? He shivered. He’d never considered himself to be a morbidly curious man like that woman and the others out there gaping at Oglethorpe. Yet the shape beneath the sheet intrigued him.

  He took a few steps toward the bier, and the smell increased exponentially. His shoes sounded gritty against the bare floor. He lifted the edge of the sheet half-expecting to see the hairy paw of a bear or the dorsal fin of a baby orca whale. But he found a human hand, an enormously fat hand, twice the size of his own, the skin hideously greenish-red.

  He moved to the top of the bier and lifted the sheet slightly, revealing a head of thin brown hair, a greenish-red face, the nose and eyes and mouth too small for the mass of cheeks and jowls and quantities of chins. The smell was positively putrid.

  “Recognize him?”

  Bradshaw dropped the sheet and pressed his nose into the crook of his arm to breathe in the scent of clean wool. He shook his head at Coroner Cline and moved as far away from the corpse as he could get. “Should I?”

  Cline stood beside the body, oblivious of the smell. “Only if you had need of a Pinkerton guard. He was found this morning in the bathtub of the Great Northern Hotel.”

  Surely, he hadn’t drowned. It stretched the imagination to even picture him fitting into a hotel bath. “What killed him?”

  “Overindulgence, most likely, although—well, never mind.” Cline breathed for a moment through his mouth, the spittle gathering at the corners. He met Bradshaw’s gaze as if measuring the wisdom of saying more. Factory managers who were worried about labor unions hired Pinkerton guards. And anarchists, as well as frustrated union organizers, attacked them. “What can I do for you this morning, Professor Bradshaw? I’m sure you didn’t come to view my latest corpse.”

  Bradshaw lowered his arm and swallowed, then wished he hadn’t. Now he could taste the putridness. “It’s Oglethorpe. Did you find anything unusual on him? In his hair or on his clothing?”

  Spittle bubbled at the corner of Coroner Cline’s mouth as he breathed noisily, his bushy brows narrowed. “I removed a small quantity of black grit. Turned out to be dried India ink.”

  “Why wasn’t this mentioned at the inquest?”

  “Because none of the witnesses brought it up, and it’s not my job to give away every piece of evidence at the inquest.”

  “Why are you telling me?”

  Cline grinned. “Because you asked. And because I don’t think you had anything to do with it.”

  It was the best news Bradshaw had heard in a long time. “Have you told Detective O’Brien your opinion?”

  Cline shrugged. “I’m an expert at judging dead men, he’s an expert at judging live ones. Is there anything else I can help you with? As you can see, I have an autopsy to perform.”

  “I do have a question. It’s about the injuries to Oglethorpe’s palm. Have you got a wire or rope or string handy?” He patted down his pockets in vain.

  Cline opened a drawer and pulled out a length of suture.

  “Something heavier.”

  Cline dug deeper into the drawer and found a ball of scratchy twine.

  “Yes, that’ll do. May I?” Bradshaw used his pocketknife to cut a five-foot length. “I’ve been puzzled about the mark on Oglethorpe’s left palm. He couldn’t have sustained it while in the Faraday cage and being struck by arcs from the coil. I thought it might be connected to the fatal shock he received before being put in the cage. Now, if Oglethorpe had been holding a wire,” he said, demonstrating how a man would typically hold a wire he was working with, “and if that wire became energized, say by the Leyden jars of the Electric Machine, the burn wound would be in this portion of the hand, running at about this angle.” He indicated a line from the base of his index finger to the outside of his palm below the pinkie. “But the burn is lower, near the center of the palm and extending to the base of the thumb. As if he caught a wire falling from overhead.” Bradshaw put up his hand, holding the twine as if keeping it from falling on him.

  Cline watched Bradshaw’s demonstration intently, not with O’Brien’s accusatory grin, but with sincere skepticism. The doctor was not a clever manipulator, he was a scientist employed to seek out the truth. He wanted to know what had happened to Oglethorpe, but he was experienced enough not to trust everything he was told or shown.

  “My assistant coroner observed the dismantling of the Electric Machine, Professor, and he examined the components as well as the room for any object that might have fallen onto the deceased. He found none.”

  “Under normal circumstances, that’s what I would expect. I can’t imagine a situation in which a non-insulated charged wire would be positioned above anyone, especially not in the lab.”

  “Circumstances appear to be far from normal, Professor.”

  “And the dried ink? Did you find it in the lab? I saw none when I was there.”

  “Maybe your esteemed colleague entered the lab having already encountered the ink elsewhere,”
Cline challenged.

  Bradshaw shook his head. “He was meticulous about his appearance. The moment a speck of dried ink touched him, he would go shake out his clothes and hair if at all possible.”

  Cline’s bushy brows lifted. Oglethorpe had not found it possible.

  Chapter Ten

  By the time Professor Bradshaw reached the university, he wished he’d taken his bicycle this morning after all. With its numerous stops and snarls with traffic the streetcar made for a slow and tedious journey.

  He found the campus relaxed and basking in the rare spring sunshine. Co-eds with their parasols strolled arm-in-arm along the paths, making their way to the young uniformed men of the University of Washington Cadets. Bradshaw could hear them drilling on the grounds near the gymnasium.

  The light sandstone towers of the Administration building glowed cheerfully, but inside echoed that empty feeling a school gets on Saturdays, when the school term is nearly over and minds have turned prematurely to summer folly. Bradshaw hurried down to the basement. He found the door unlocked, the Faraday cage still perched upon its insulating platform, and the disassembled components of Tesla’s oscillator spread along the back wall.

  “Come to decipher whodunit?”

  Bradshaw jumped. Tom Hill stepped from behind the Faraday cage and laughed.

  “Sorry, old man. I came down to have a look myself. It is a bit spooky in here, isn’t it?”

  Bradshaw doubted he’d ever be able to enter it again without seeing, for a split second, Oglethorpe’s dead body topple over inside that cage. He said, “Since you’re here, help me look.”They approached the apparatus and began inspecting. The job would have been easier had the Machine been left intact. The guilty wire or component that actually caused Oglethorpe’s death may have been inadvertently moved into some unsuspecting position.

  They first examined the Leyden jars. Bradshaw even used a magnifying glass to peer at the connective metal knobs, but there was nothing whatsoever to indicate that the jars had discharged a fatal blow. Bradshaw and Tom moved slowly on to other components.