“Dad!” It was Justin’s sixth shout. Bradshaw tucked the letter away in his dresser and padded to the top of the stairs.
“Don’t shout in the house, Justin. If you want me, come upstairs and find me.”
Justin climbed the stairs until he stood directly below his father. “Hello,” he said cheekily.
“Hello, young man. What may I do for you?”
“The telephone operator is on the line and says she remembers who called Uncle Henry last Thursday.”
Bradshaw’s stomach did a somersault, and his feet nearly followed as he slipped on the wooden stairs in his hurry to get down to the phone. He found the receiver dangling by its long braided cord.
“Hello? This is Professor Bradshaw.”
“Good morning, Professor,” said a very sweet voice, well articulated and slightly formal. “I was told you wanted to know about a call connected to your line last Thursday.”
“Yes?”
“I was working last Thursday, and I placed two calls from the same party. One to a Henry Pratt, at your number, and immediately following, a call to a Mr. Lowe at the Lincoln Hotel.”
“Mr. Artimus Lowe?”
“Yes, that was the name. I don’t listen in to the conversations, Professor, it’s a strict rule. But I do remember those calls, not because there was anything special about them at the time, but when it was reported that afternoon that Professor Oglethorpe had been killed, I remembered the name.”
“You mean Oglethorpe? Professor Oglethorpe placed the calls? I understood it was a woman who called Henry Pratt.”
“Oh, it was sir. It was Mrs. Oglethorpe.”
“Mrs. O—I see. Thank you.” Bradshaw replaced the receiver and realized Justin was staring up at him.
“Can I help you?”
“You didn’t use the rail.”
“I what?”
“The rail, coming down the stairs. You always use it, and you yell at me to use it, but just now you ran down the stairs and didn’t use it and you almost fell.”
Bradshaw looked at the stairs. He didn’t even remember descending them. He climbed them now, as Justin watched. At the top, he turned around. Nothing. Not a twinge. He took a few steps, his hands by his sides, then tripped—in the light-footed sense of the word—down to the hall.
“Does that mean I don’t have to hold on either?”
“No. Stairs are potentially dangerous, especially the way you throw yourself down them.”
“Aah, shucks.”
“Shucks are for corn, son.” But he was smiling as he climbed up to finish dressing.
***
Despite the tragedy, work in the Oglethorpe’s yard had progressed over the past few days. The planks had been replaced with handsome stones that formed a walk to the front porch, then split off to encircle the house. The trees were now in the ground and grass seed sprinkled on the smoothed soil. But death marred the house. Black cloth draped the doorway, and the blinds were pulled against the sunshine. The maid Sheila opened the door to Professor Bradshaw and greeted him warmly. She told him that Mrs. Oglethorpe wouldn’t be home until after the reception at the Rainier. A fact he already knew. He’d just come from the funeral, having endured not only the hateful stares of shocked mourners, but a eulogy so false it hurt to listen. Oglethorpe in death had metamorphosed into a saintly educator, a loving husband, and a generous father.
Sheila gave him a kind smile, revealing her unfortunately crooked teeth. He was invited in to wait. He followed her to the back of the house and the bright, modern kitchen. The coal stove and icebox were of the newest line, the linoleum a rich pattern of black and white squares. He glanced at the clock as she filled the kettle under the running tap. A half hour, and he’d be gone, long before Mrs. Oglethorpe returned.
“How’s your young son, Professor?”
“Fine, thank you.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t able to help your Mrs. Prouty this spring.”
“Oh? Well, that’s alright.” He recalled Mrs. Prouty’s recent bout of deep cleaning, blankets aired, drawers emptied, walls washed.
“Since I started working for the Oglethorpe’s, I haven’t had time to pick up the odd job. I miss the extra pocket money, but there’s only so many hours in the day.”
“Yes,” he said. He wasn’t used to small talk with maids. How would he even begin to question her?
She shut off the tap and sighed.
“I’m glad you’ve come today, Professor. Things have been so upsetting around here, I get gloomy when I’m alone too long, and to be totally honest, a little scared. Murder! Poor Mrs. Oglethorpe. Have a seat, Professor, and I’ll get your tea. The police came yesterday, if you can imagine the gall. Come to ask me questions the day before Professor Oglethorpe is laid to rest.”
Bradshaw sat at the rough oak table.
Sheila set the full kettle on the already hot stove. She removed the pressing iron from its nook in the stove, tapped a licked finger to the bottom, and at the sound of the sizzle, returned to her ironing board and began pressing a white apron. She said with an audible sigh, “I really shouldn’t say on today of all days, Professor, but I won’t miss the shouting.”
Unsure of what she meant and hoping she would elaborate, Bradshaw ventured, “Arguing is never pleasant to overhear.”
“No, it wasn’t arguing, it was shouting, and all on Professor Oglethorpe’s part. The Mrs. is such a strong woman when he isn’t, or I should say wasn’t around. I don’t know why she took it. And treated him like a king, kept his house in perfect order, his meals always the way he liked them, and did all his typing to boot, not that he appreciated it. Seemed to think it was his due.”
“She typed for him?” Oglethorpe had never mentioned that, taking full credit for the letter-perfect papers he was always submitting to scientific journals.
“Typing, filing, grading, you name it. She could have taught most of his classes herself, she knew his work so well.”
“Helping and understanding are not exactly the same. Typing up notes and grading papers from an answer sheet—”
“Oh, no sir, Professor Bradshaw. Mrs. Oglethorpe often corrected the Professor’s students’ exams herself. Fifteen years they’d been married, and fifteen years she’s been listening and learning. To tell the truth, she’s handier around the house than he ever was. He might know about the things in books, but he wouldn’t lift a finger to wire a lamp. It was Mrs. Oglethorpe who put in that fancy electric chandelier, ‘electrolier’ I think it’s called, in the dining room.”
Bradshaw imagined Marion Oglethorpe, that sturdily built woman, standing on a ladder, wiring the electric lamp. But then his mental image jumped to the engineering lab, and he saw as if watching a flickering moving picture, Mrs. Oglethorpe drag her husband into the Faraday cage and position him on the chair so that his arm reached outside the metal bars. He shook his head. “Sheila, did you tell this to the police?”
“They wanted to know did she know anything about electricity, and where was she when Mr. Oglethorpe was being killed. Can you imagine? They as good asked me if she did it? Well, I told them that Mrs. Oglethorpe knew as much as most people do about electricity, which wasn’t a lie, she knows that and more, and that she loved her husband, which wasn’t a lie either, though she had every reason to hate him.”
“And did you tell them where she was?”
“I didn’t know where she was.”
“The children were in school?”
“Olive and Wes were in school, I was here, and Mrs. Oglethorpe was out, she didn’t tell me where, and before you ask like the police did, yes, she often went out without telling me where she was going. I didn’t tell the police exactly when she left, I was vague about that and did it drive them mad! I knew exactly what time it was, one o’clock on the very nose because she slammed
the door as the hall clock struck and I thought to myself now I could put my feet up for a spell and read a bit of my new novel. It’s all about a poor girl in England who meets a prince, only she doesn’t know he’s a prince.”
Sheila could be as talkative as her mistress, once she got started. Professor Bradshaw feared the conversation was about to become mired in her dime novel, and he carefully steered it back to Marion Oglethorpe.
“Isn’t it unusual for a mistress not to tell her maid where she’s going or when she’d return? Did she have an appointment?”
“I worked for another woman who did the same thing, though for different reasons. She was just mean. Didn’t trust anybody and was always thinking the worst of people. Mrs. Oglethorpe, I think she went out to feel a bit of independence, if you know what I mean. It was bad enough she had to answer to him all the time, she didn’t need to answer to me.”
Artimus Lowe had been so right. How easy it was to get information from a household employee. And how alarming. A maid or a housekeeper was privy to all the private and intimate aspects of one’s life, seeing and hearing as much, perhaps even more, than a spouse. Yet a servant hadn’t the same loyalty as a spouse. A servant hadn’t the same fierce protective instincts born of love to stifle the desire to gossip. Sheila barely knew him, had simply worked in his home a few times with his housekeeper, and here she was, talking to him like an old friend.
He tried to think what sort of things Mrs. Prouty knew about him, his eating habits, the nightmares that woke him in a drenching sweat. But he couldn’t imagine Mrs. Prouty sitting in his kitchen and revealing such intimacies to a guest. Telling Artimus Lowe about Missouri Fremont was one thing—Bradshaw’s soaked sheets were quite another.
“She’s a good woman, and I wouldn’t like to see her come to harm. It sounds real mean of me, but I’m glad he’s gone. He was so awful about the baby on the way.”
He felt a twinge of dread. “Professor Oglethorpe wasn’t— pleased?”
Sheila shook her head, her mouth firmly closed. She seemed to suddenly realize she had been imparting extremely personal information about her employer. Her face infused with color. A tickle of awareness crept up Bradshaw’s neck. He turned to find Marion Oglethorpe standing in the doorway, in black cape and veiled hat. She came forward swiftly, lifting her veil to reveal a face as pale as her maid’s was red. Bradshaw stood with a greeting that was ignored.
“No, Professor Bradshaw, my husband was not pleased about having another child.” She reprimanded the maid with a silent glare, then her brave manner crumbled. He hastily pulled out a chair and she sank into it while Sheila busied herself pouring a cup of tea.
“To be carrying a child,” Marion said in a voice near a whisper, “and to be told it’s not wanted….”
Bradshaw covered Marion’s cold hands with his own. “I’m so sorry. I do understand, more than you know. My wife,” he began, then tried to censor himself, but it was too late. There in her eyes he saw the need to hear, to share and be truly understood. “The entire time my wife carried my son, she didn’t want him. I did, desperately. I felt so helpless. If I could have carried the child for her, I would have.”
Tears filled Marion’s eyes and a smile trembled at her lips. “You, Professor? With child? Wouldn’t you be a sight?”
“Not a pretty one,” he agreed, also smiling, and they both took much needed sips of their tea.
“You’re widowed, too, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes still pleaded for help.
“It really will get better.” He didn’t say how long it would take. He didn’t explain that he had only started getting better when her husband died, that his death had brought him new life. “Mrs. Oglethorpe, if ever you want to talk—”
She wiped the dampness from her eyes with a handkerchief procured from her sleeve. “Oh, dear Professor Bradshaw. You think I did it? Well, you can rest easy. I was at the doctor’s most of the afternoon, and the police have already confirmed my alibi. Is it called an alibi when it’s the truth? It doesn’t matter. There were times I wished Wesley were dead, but I could never kill him. You might find this hard to believe, but I loved him. Oh, I know, my Wesley seemed so unlovable, but that was the face he showed the world. He was terrified of failure. The higher his chin went, the more arrogant his boasting, the more afraid he was. Only rarely, once in fact, did he tell me how he truly felt. But he didn’t have to tell me. I knew. From the moment I met him, I knew. Sometimes he nearly broke my heart because I couldn’t help him, he wouldn’t let me help him. He could get so very mean in his proud ways. I admit there were times I was sorry I married him. There were times I wanted to beat some sense into him. But I never could hit him. I certainly couldn’t kill him. It would be like killing a defenseless child.”
This should not have been a revelation to Bradshaw. As a man often judged by his own misunderstood behavior, he should have stopped to consider what drove Oglethorpe to be so domineering. But he hadn’t. Like everyone else, he’d assumed Professor Wesley T. Oglethorpe was a selfish bastard and looked no further.
“Do you know of anyone who would kill him? Or anyone who might be so angry with him that an argument might get out of hand? Someone who might think killing him would help you?”
“Why would anyone think murdering my husband would help me? Oh, there are hundreds who had reason to argue with him, but I can’t think of anyone who would actually want to kill him. I would think you’d have to hate someone passionately to do something so violent, and he never let anyone get close enough to truly know him, except me.”
Another thing he never knew he had in common with Oglethorpe. Only Bradshaw didn’t even have a wife to confide in. “Did your husband know anyone who might be an anarchist?”
“You’re thinking of McKinley’s visit. I wish I knew of such a person. That would give Wesley’s death more of a noble meaning. He would have liked that. He wouldn’t like to know that someone killed him because he was so nasty.”
Bradshaw had a final question he hated to ask.
“On the day your husband died, why did you telephone Henry Pratt and Artimus Lowe?”
She exhaled wearily. “Because I learned from the morning paper—you know about the oil investment? How Wesley found others to buy the shares? The stock was all in Wesley’s name, but that didn’t make it right.”
“Didn’t make what right?”
“How he cheated them. He gave both men, technically, what the stock was worth when they demanded it back, even though he knew the price was about shoot up. What Wesley did was legal. But it wasn’t moral. I thought they had a right to know.”
Chapter Twenty-one
Bradshaw stood before his house, hesitating as he had five nights ago with a sense of comfort that this humble dwelling was home. Change had entered his life, and he sensed much more change was yet to come. Yet there was a relief to it, in a way. He had never shared with another soul Rachel’s hatred of her pregnancy. Sharing that hadn’t hurt as he’d expected it too, but it had comforted Mrs. Oglethorpe to know she was not alone. What sort of a life had she been living under her domineering husband? What sort of emotional sacrifices had she endured for the sake of the children? For the sake of the man she loved despite his unwillingness to be helped?
Bradshaw’s gaze drifted up to the second floor of his house, to Henry Pratt’s room now occupied by Henry’s innocent and disturbingly compelling niece. He turned his thoughts from Missouri to Henry, as Mrs. Prouty had described him behaving the morning he left, waving the newspaper about like a man conducting an orchestra. A joyful action, conducting. An action suggesting excitement, eagerness. Good fortune.
“Is this a new habit of yours, Professor!” Mrs. Prouty shouted from the front door, pulling him from his deep reverie. “Standing out there, staring at your own house?”
Bradshaw opened the ga
te and strode up the path to the porch. “Do we still have last Thursday morning’s newspaper, Mrs. Prouty?”
“It’s in the compost heap, if that’s what you mean.”
Bradshaw retreated down the porch steps and headed around to the back of the house. He heard Mrs. Prouty’s heavy steps behind him.
She had a system for composting. The refuse was divided into three chicken-wire bins, all in different stages of decay. The first held a ripe mixture of kitchen scraps and old torn-up newspapers, the second a more decayed and steaming pile, the third a nearly black and earthy mixture she shoveled lavishly each spring and fall onto the vegetable garden along the back fence. Thursday’s paper would be, of course, in the first and foulest bin.
Mrs. Prouty behaved as if Bradshaw had gone mad as he poked through the mess with a stick and pulled out ragged, limp bits of newspaper. When he continued his search, despite her protests, she at last offered helpful advice.
“Look for paper rolled up tight. I didn’t have the patience to unroll it after Henry’d been using it like, what’s it called, a baton.”
He found it then, covered in coffee grounds and sodden with rain and heaven knows what else. Carefully, he unrolled the pages, spreading them out over the grass. He peeled one page from the next until he found the headline he sought.
Cascade Oil Strikes Black Gold – Again.
Last December holders of Cascade Oil Stock found the value of their shares increase tenfold when drilling struck rich supplies far sooner than expected. Last week, in order to allow more investors an opportunity to participate, the stock split three-for-one. Within hours the value of the new shares had risen to exceed the old, making lucky shareholders thousands of dollars.
A Spark of Death Page 15