Capacity for Murder (Professor Bradshaw Mysteries)
Read Capacity for Murder (Professor Bradshaw Mysteries) Online
Authors: Bernadette Pajer
Tags: #FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Historical, #FICTION / Mystery & Detective / General
Capacity for Murder
A Professor Bradshaw Mystery
Bernadette Pajer
www.BernadettePajer.com
Poisoned Pen Press
Copyright © 2013 by Bernadette Pajer
First E-book Edition 2013
ISBN: 9781615954490 ebook
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
The historical characters and events portrayed in this book are inventions of the author or used fictitiously.
Poisoned Pen Press
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Contents
Author’s Note and Acknowledgements
To my sisters, Becky & Beverlee.
I’m so glad we are the three little B’s.
A note on spelling: Sanitarium verses Sanatorium. In 1903, the former spelling was commonly used to indicate several types of healing centers: health resorts (such as Kellogg’s famous one in Battle Creek), facilities that treated tuberculosis (TB), asylums for the insane or “feeble-minded,” and hospitals for recovering alcoholics and addicts. Eventually, “sanatorium” was officially chosen for TB hospitals, but “sanitarium” continued to have many meanings. In this book, “sanitarium” is used to indicate a health resort.
It all began with a freckle-faced youth delivering a telegram.
WESTERN UNION
To: Professor Benjamin Bradshaw, Electrical Forensic Investigator, c/o the State University, Seattle, Wash.
Message:
Your expertise urgently needed. Accident of electrical nature. Normal routine suspended until resolved. Please come at once.
(signed) Dr. Arnold Hornsby, owner and chief physician, Healing Sands Sanitarium.
Ocean Springs, Wash., August 17, 1903.
c/o Hoquiam Western Union Office
To which Bradshaw replied:
To: Dr. Arnold Hornsby
Message:
I regret my obligation to teach prevents travel. Please send particulars. Will examine.
(signed), Benjamin Bradshaw
And Dr. Hornsby replied:
To: Professor Benjamin Bradshaw
Message:
Impossible. Your presence required. I beg you! Bring students. Abundant education at Sanitarium. Nature, science, ocean. All expenses paid. PLEASE COME AT ONCE!
(signed) Dr. Arnold Hornsby
Such urgency, blended with the generous cordial invitation, gave Professor Benjamin Bradshaw the impression that Dr. Hornsby was fond of hyperbole. Bradshaw had never been to a sanitarium and couldn’t see the appeal. The very idea of being subjected to a rigorous diet, exercise, and questionable treatments in a social setting made him cringe. However, electrotherapeutic equipment was likely involved in the “accident of an electrical nature,” and this intrigued him. He’d once built a portable electrotherapy outfit for Arnold Loomis, a medical supply salesman, and he knew their construction and safety issues well. He glanced at the location. Ocean Springs. That was on the remote coast. He’d read in the paper about the new Northern Pacific line under construction in that area, but it hadn’t yet reached the coast, which meant the area was unlikely to have telephone or electricity. So was battery power involved in this summons? What sort of accident would prevent the resumption of normal routine and yet allow the invitation of so many? He ought to simply say no. His first duty was to his students, and he couldn’t drag them to the remote coast.
Could he? As Doctor Hornsby said, there was an abundance of education to be had at the coast. And there was the lure of the ocean itself. The endless vistas, the crashing waves, the sheer power of nature. It was tempting.
This was happening more frequently to Bradshaw, this tug between teaching and investigating. His career as a teacher he’d chosen, studied for, pursued. His career as an investigator had been dropped in his lap. Two years ago, he’d been the prime suspect in the electrocution death of a colleague and was forced to investigate to clear his name and find the true killer. Afterward, the Seattle Police began seeking his help in cases involving electricity. Word spread, and soon he was consulted by insurance companies, manufacturers, power companies, even private individuals. Those investigations had often led him far beyond electrical forensics, and so he and his investigative partner Henry Pratt, who boarded in Bradshaw’s home, were both now licensed private detectives.
What surprised him most was how much he enjoyed the investigations. But since he also found great satisfaction in teaching at the university, he had moments of being torn between the two. As he was at this moment.
He lifted a critical eye to his students. Five young men, a diverse collection of personalities, they had in common their love of learning. They sat perched on stools at the lab tables with magnets, copper wire, aluminum pipes, Leyden jars, vacuum tubes, and other bits and pieces, playfully yet diligently connecting and assembling components and noting the results. The class was called Experimental Physics. Each summer, Bradshaw invited five students from across the entire engineering department to take this hands-on exploration of physics, and he was rewarded by observing their discoveries, those “aha” moments of seeing and truly understanding the forces at work.
While they undoubtedly enjoyed the class, all week he’d seen their covetous glances out the basement windows at the blue sky and beckoning sun. Summer had come at last to Seattle, and they were missing it in pursuit of higher learning.
He hesitated, thinking of other faculty members qualified to assume his class, but none of them were currently free. Perhaps he
could
take his students to the coast. The university encouraged field trips.
“Sir, do you want to send a reply?”
The telegram boy stood so quietly Bradshaw had nearly forgotten he was there. Beads of sweat glistened on the boy’s freckles and darkened the brim of his cap. He’d cycled three times round trip from the telegraph office in the hot sun.
Bradshaw smiled at the boy, then said to his students, “May I have your attention?”
All eyes turned in his direction. The telegram boy, who was no more than twelve, squared his shoulders importantly under their gaze. Bradshaw said, “I don’t suppose you would all like to relocate for the remainder of classes to the ocean? To study the physics of sand, the generating capabilities of the wind, and the potential in tidal movement?”
They stared at Bradshaw, then they stared at one another. Then Knut Peterson, the clown of the group, whooped, and the others joined in, and they dissolved from disciplined young adults to jubilant children.
A crooked grin lit the face of the telegram boy. “I think that’s a yes, sir.”
Bradshaw tore a clean page from his lab tablet and wrote out a reply to be wired to Dr. Hornsby. Before handing it to the messenger boy, he quickly tore out another page and wrote a separate message. He asked quietly, “Do you know the florist on Second Avenue?”
“Of course, sir.”
“Please give this note to the clerk.”
The boy accepted the request without question, his eyes widening when Bradshaw added a generous tip. When he’d gone, Bradshaw told his students to settle down, conclude their experiments, then go home and pack their bags. They were all of an age that required no parental approval, but he instructed them to inform their families, and he would inform the dean. They would be departing first thing in the morning for Washington’s North Beach on the Pacific Ocean.
The sight of a large body of water was nothing new to anyone who called Seattle home. Besides Puget Sound, there were Lake Washington, Lake Union, and Greenlake, and flowing into them all were numerous rivers, streams, and creeks. Water surrounded Seattle, fell often from the sky, and topped the ring of mountains in glorious white.
But the ocean was different. The difference was reflected on the face of Bradshaw’s ten-year-old son. The boy stood barefoot in warm, soft sand, his mouth agape at the never-ending expanse of steely water cresting in a series of waves that thundered and crashed, then withdrew with a hiss. Bradshaw’s heart tightened. Why had he not brought Justin to the ocean before now? What sort of father was he that he let the first decade of his son’s life go by without showing him the ocean?