And household dynamics, with the man in charge, was a tradition for a reason. Men typically understood the world better than women. Men were better at finances and management and leadership. And yes, Catholicism supported this. Husbands and wives filled different family needs, but they did so with respect. As his thoughts continued, he found them becoming more and more defensive. He heard Missouri’s laughter, saw her rolling her eyes, heard her telling him she knew he didn’t truly believe that men were naturally better managers. But he did. Didn’t he? Men and women had roles in life. That was that. And to that, he distinctly heard Missouri say, as if she were standing before him, I think he doth protest too much. As usual, she made him question the very foundations of his beliefs, and she was twenty-five hundred miles away. What would life be like if they married? If conversations such as these were real? He could well imagine a sort of emotional vertigo taking hold, feeling dizzy all the time because he would no longer have the stability and structure of his beliefs. She would say that of course men and women were different, but those differences were not limitations. Women should be as free as men to pursue their heart’s desires.
And then he imagined her smiling at him with both pity and love, stepping up to him with a challenge in her eyes and a tease on her lips …He shook his head and with a deep breath said in a tone he hoped would make his son smile, “Can you imagine Missouri promising to obey anyone?”
But it wasn’t Justin who replied, it was Mrs. Prouty. “Not for a minute,” she declared, then untied her apron from around her ample waist. Bradshaw glanced around, and Mrs. Prouty said, “He ran off to school a minute ago, just as the first mail arrived.” She waved a sheet of paper and he caught a glimpse of Bon Marché letterhead.
“A personal invitation, Professor! It’s a secret sale. I’m going downtown to catch it, and I know just what I’m getting, too. That music box I’ve been wanting for so long, with the carousel. It’s way beyond my means, usually, but with this letter, I’m going to get it. I’ll stay all day, if I have to, to be one of the chosen shoppers.”
The Bon was likely trying to make up for lost sales yesterday and erase the stigma of a death in their store. It must be quite a sale to get Mrs. Prouty willing to be extravagant and out of the house before her dishes—he mentally stopped himself—her dishes? Was this one reason why Justin so easily accepted that women were subservient to men? Having a housekeeper around, but no mother figure to show him a relationship different from one between a man and paid help?
She hurried off to take advantage of the sale, and Bradshaw, after a glance at the sky to see that it was blustery but not pouring, pedaled his bicycle to the university to review for his freshman students the term’s work on magnetism. Afterward, he climbed the stairs to his office and telephoned Henry, but the operator said there was no reply at the requested number. Henry was likely still asleep. Interviewing in the Tenderloin was hard work.
Bradshaw bundled up, hopped on his bicycle, and headed back to town, toward the Cascade neighborhood of South Lake Union. It was time for one of his least favorite parts of investigations. It was time to meet the widow.
***
In many areas of Seattle, keeping mud out of the house required constant vigilance, and Republican Street was no exception. Blocked from the main part of town by Denny Hill, the hill where the tunnel supporters were losing to the demolish supporters, Vernon Doyle’s neighborhood was a mix of industry and homes, and the result was not harmonious for the homeowners. Noise, steam, construction, and functional but unattractive factories and businesses marred the coziness of residential lots. When the landscape architect John Olmstead had come to Seattle in the spring to advise on the development of parks, he’d opined that this part of town was best suited for industry, and Bradshaw had to agree. He would not want to live here.
Doyle’s house had no front yard to speak of, just a strip of scraggly grass and dirt between the street and the road. Bradshaw propped his bicycle against a utility pole and picked his way across the muddy strip to the cement steps leading up to the door. It was a narrow house with cedar shingle siding, two stories high, if you counted the tall attic space, which, from the curtains in the window, appeared to be used as living space.
Mrs. Doyle opened the door on his first knock. Her gentle appearance surprised him since her husband had been rather rough. She was small and slender in a black mourning gown, her dark hair showed streaks of gray where she wore it swept up in the current style, but her rounded cheeks and warm brown eyes gave her a tender countenance her husband had lacked.
“Yes?” In the flatness of her voice her grief was revealed.
Bradshaw introduced himself, and she nodded in understanding, but her eyes remained kindly and somber. “The detective said you would be by sometime. Please, come in. I’m sorry things aren’t more tidy.”
He stepped into an immaculately clean parlor, with gleaming floors, bright wool rugs, and the welcoming warmth of a small wood-burning stove. She took his coat, hanging it from a coatrack where he spied the temperance sash O’Brien had mentioned. He left his rubber overboots by the door before taking the seat she offered him by the stove. Although there were two weeks yet until Christmas, red glass and shiny silver ornaments hung from a metal stand in the corner, and boughs of evergreen and holly berries decorated a sideboard.
“I’m very sorry about your loss, Mrs. Doyle.”
“Thank you. That’s kind of you.” She wrung her hands, twisting the simple gold band on the ring finger of her left hand. “I hear myself saying thank you, but it’s like somebody else is speaking. It’s been three days since Vernon didn’t come home, but I still don’t quite believe it. He’ll walk in the door any minute now, and I’ll wake up from this dream.”
He noticed she didn’t say nightmare, or even describe the dream as awful. “I understand what you’re feeling, Mrs. Doyle. The shock of a sudden death can be hard to accept.” And was it simply the suddenness of it that made it hard for her to accept? Had he heard grief in her voice, or merely the trauma of the unexpected? Or the shock of having done something so terrible it didn’t seem real?
“I haven’t told the boys yet. I think about it. I sit down to write, or several times I’ve put on my coat to send a wire, but then it seems so wrong. Like I’m about to tell them a lie.”
“You have two sons?”
“Yes.” Her eyes went to a framed photograph on the wall of two boys a bit older than Justin, with mischievous smiles, so difficult to capture in children. Getting them to hold still for the length of the exposure was nearly impossible.
“That’s by Edward Curtis of Curtis and Romans Photographers,” she said, and there was pride in her voice. “I don’t think he’s there anymore, though. They say he’s off photographing Indians before they’re all gone. His brother takes pictures, too, but not portraits. He does buildings and streets and things.” She smiled tenderly at the photograph. “My mother gave me the sitting as a gift seven years ago. They grow up so fast, and then they move away, but in your heart, they stay your little boys.”
“Where did they go?”
“Junior, our eldest—his name is Vernon, like his father, but he goes by Junior—he’s in the army, in Virginia. Fort Myers. They’ve assigned him to the Signal Corps, and he says he loves it, but I’m not—I wasn’t supposed to tell his father. Vernon always wanted Junior to follow in his footsteps, but Junior didn’t want to be anything like his father. It turns out, he has Vernon’s cleverness with mechanical things, though, and the army saw that right away. He’s working with the wireless telegraph, learning how to send and receive signals.”
“That will be a good career for him. And where is his brother?”
“Charlie got the itch to see the world, and went off tramping. He’s not as clever as Junior at schoolwork, but he more than makes up for it with energy and, oh, a hunger for life, you might say. But he didn’t get any further than O
hio before he a met a girl.” A wry smile put a touch of life in her eyes. “He’s working at a lumber mill, of all places. He could have stayed right here and done that.”
“But the girl wasn’t here.”
Mrs. Doyle’s sad smile momentarily brightened. “No, she wasn’t here.”
“They’ll want to come home for their father’s funeral.”
Her smiled vanished. “No, they won’t.” She covered her wedding ring with her other hand, and didn’t meet his eye. “They didn’t get along, truth be told.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You know how it is with boys, and Vernon could be—” She twisted her ring, and chewed her lip. “He could be difficult. They both left as soon as they finished school.” Her voice had gone flat again.
He would like to comfort her, tell her that her sons would surely want to come home to see her, but he didn’t know that to be the truth.
“Do you have other family in Seattle?”
“My mother passed last year. Vernon has some kin in eastern Washington, but I didn’t tell them. They surely read it in the paper. They get the Seattle papers over there. I haven’t heard from them, and I don’t expect to. Vernon didn’t get along with them, either.”
“What about friends?”
She flashed him a small smile. “You are kind. I am not alone in the world, Professor, but I do thank you for your concern. I have friends who are near and dear to me, and they have been checking on me every day. They will be coming tonight with a meal and plan to sit and keep me company awhile.”
“That’s good.”
“I’ve been keeping busy. Sticking to my routine. If I try to think about tomorrow—I’ll have to find a job. I’ve never had a job. What would I do? I can’t imagine. I don’t know how to do anything, except work around the house. I’m too old to go into service. Aren’t I?”
He opened his mouth to reply that his housekeeper was more than a decade her senior, but he realized she might not find that a comfort, and so he held his tongue.
“I’ve never had a maid, not even a daily. I don’t know what’s expected of them. I’ve always done without help. With the boys gone, it’s much easier, and I save on the household budget. Vernon works so hard at his job, such long hours, and for very little pay. You’d think a big store like the Bon Marché could afford to pay better. The tent factory he worked for a few years back paid twice as much, but of course it burned down and Vernon had to find work where he could.”
Bradshaw had seen the Bon Marché’s payroll ledger, and he knew for a fact that Vernon Doyle had earned a respectable salary, indeed a wage higher than most electricians, and more than the tent factory had once paid.
“He’s highly skilled,” Mrs. Doyle went on, and seemed relieved to find something about him to be proud of, “but he says—he said—stores like the Bon like to give bonuses rather than a regular high wage. It helps them manage through bad times. He was always saying a big bonus was just around the corner, but it never was, and I see how busy that department store is from morning until night. I think they were taking advantage of him.”
“How did he get along with everyone at the store?”
“They all admired him, Professor. You must know how it is, working with electricity. You and my husband are to be admired. Not many men are brave or intelligent enough to work with such a dangerous thing. And he’s always so very careful. I don’t know how this could have happened. Detective O’Brien said it might not have been an accident? Is that true? How can that be?”
“That’s the question I need to ask you, Mrs. Doyle. Do you know if anyone was angry with your husband?”
She shrugged and shook her head. “Most people liked him well enough, I think.”
“But he could be difficult, like he was with his sons and family?”
“Oh, no. He was different outside the home.”
Bradshaw understood her meaning. Wasn’t he the same? Weren’t most people? With masks of social appropriateness and good manners worn in public, and true emotions, often the most hurtful, unleashed at home? Wasn’t that why he’d chosen to work late last night, so that he wouldn’t expose his son to his confused and angry mood?
“Mrs. Doyle, might it be possible for me to look at your husband’s personal papers? His accounts?”
She twisted her ring, not looking at him. “The detective must be wrong about someone killing him. It must have been an accident. Can’t you tell things like that, Professor? With electricity?”
“His death was not an accident. I examined the scene. I may find something in his personal effects that will lead me to who did this.”
She put a hand to her mouth, and he could see her struggling with the decision. Finally she said, “You can look, if you really think it will help you. He kept no journal or diary that I know of, and I manage all our accounts and bills. I’m handy with numbers, and good at keeping a budget. Vernon didn’t like me to admit that. I don’t suppose it matters now. I don’t want you to think he couldn’t manage our budget.”
“Of course not.”
She led him upstairs to the door of the attic bedroom. “When the boys moved out, Vernon set up this room as his own so that he wouldn’t disturb my sleep when he worked late shifts at the store.” Her eyes lingered on the door, and she looked about to change her mind. “He won’t let me go in to clean. I don’t know what you’ll find in there. I’ve been putting off—” She pressed her lips tight, and covered her face with her hands.
“Would you rather go through the room alone first?” He knew he shouldn’t offer. She was giving him the opportunity to search and perhaps find a clue to Vernon’s death. If left alone, she might hide or destroy something important that she believed to be useless or embarrassing. But he would want to be given that opportunity, that respect, in her circumstances.
He was relieved when she shook her head. “Would you like coffee? I’ll go make coffee. She left him on his own, hurrying away to set a pot percolating. Escaping from whatever lurked in the room.
It wasn’t as bad as Mrs. Doyle feared, though surely not up to her standards. The single narrow bed with a handmade quilt was made up, the wood floor and braided rug relatively clean. A secretary desk and chair, a small bookshelf, and a long wide dresser, made up the rest of the room’s furnishings. A cardboard box on the floor held the remnants of an electrician’s work. Lengths of wire, half-used rolls of tape, attachment plugs, fuse links. There were a few assorted tools, pliers and wire cutters, but Bradshaw doubted they represented the whole of his tool collection.
He sat in the chair without hesitation. Usually, he had to push past the feeling that he was violating the deceased’s privacy, but that emotion had been tempered by anger. It was looking like Vernon Doyle had not been a decent husband or father.
The papers on the desktop were innocent enough. Portions of newspapers, advertisements from the Bon and elsewhere, crumpled and pulled from pockets. Business cards from fellow electricians, salesmen, the local hardware and electrical supply stores. He made note of them all in his pocket notebook, then piled them neatly to the side. He moved on to the over-stuffed cubbies and slots at the back of the desk. He found a letter from a cousin in Spokane dated a year ago, containing bland family news and not much warmth, and letters from organizations he belonged to, such as the Electrical Union. And he found two recent letters from J. D. Maddock, Attorney at Law.
The first letter asked for an interview concerning “a matter of mutual interest which may prove financially rewarding.” The second letter, dated one week ago, referred to an in-person meeting in mid-November, and said, “I am prepared to reconsider the terms of my offer.” No particulars were given. The letter had been designed to deliver little information and much temptation to motivate the recipient to return to the sender’s office.
If Doyle had paid the visit to Maddock’s office, the visit hadn’t gone well
for Maddock. He’d sought Doyle out at the Bon, and their discussion had grown so heated that Billy had scolded Doyle for his use of foul language. Bradshaw set the letters in a separate pile.
In a lower drawer, he found a file stuffed with sketches. A few were neatly drawn as if by a steady and skilled hand. More of them were rough, sloppy, ludicrous. A drunken hand, an inebriated mind. The style and letter shapes of both the neat and the rough revealed the same man had drawn both, and the external design of all of them—rectangular boxes with two projecting metal rods—told Bradshaw that Vernon Doyle very much wanted to recreate Oscar Daulton’s mysterious invention. He’d done an excellent job replicating the exterior. In fact, it looked exactly as Bradshaw recalled seeing it for that brief time at the student exhibition. However, the internal designs, even those neatly drawn, didn’t represent anything new or revolutionary. Nothing capable of boosting the voltage of a direct current. While Doyle’s practical skills and knowledge were solid, his understanding of theoretical principles was not. It was no wonder he’d not gone into partnership with Edison’s representative. Despite his boasting, he had nothing at all to sell.
Beneath the sketches winked a shiny metal lockbox. Bradshaw’s pulse quickened. He placed the box on the desk, but a search of the desk and room produced no key. With only the slightest qualm, he pulled his own keys from his pocket, isolated the pick attached to the ring, and sprang the lock with a few quick twists, revealing a green passbook from Union Savings and Trust, and cash. Nearly five hundred dollars in assorted bills. An examination of the entries in the passbook revealed he’d made regular deposits of his paychecks dating back to 1901, when he was first hired by the Bon Marché, withdrawing half of those deposits in cash. Those withdrawals likely represented the money he presented to his wife as his pay. Over the past two years, there had been many other withdrawals, both large and small, but with no notation as to what use the money had been put. The final balance recorded was a mere $8.26.
Edison Effect, The: A Professor Bradshaw Mystery (The Edison Effect) Page 10