Capacity for Murder (Professor Bradshaw Mysteries) (21 page)

“I wouldn’t have abandoned the Hornsbys or Martha—Mrs. Hollister. I just don’t want to be the one in charge here. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“I’ll take charge until the sheriff arrives in the morning. Your job until then is to simply watch those three and don’t let them talk to each other.” He nodded toward the library where Ingrid Thompson, Zebediah Moss, and Arnold Loomis sat silently, with Doctor Hornsby keeping watch. Two hours had passed since Freddie’s death. In that time, Bradshaw had assisted Hornsby with moving Freddie’s body from the beach to the Manipulation Room and helped with the unpleasant tasks associated with tidying a fresh corpse. Afterward, Hornsby had questioned the need for Mrs. Thompson to be pulled from her room and forced to sit in the library.

“She just lost her husband,” Hornsby said, the pained expression in his eyes revealing the depth of his empathy. His own daughter had been in this very situation just a few days ago.

Bradshaw felt the sting of Hornsby’s words, but answered, “It’s necessary to my investigation.”

Mrs. Hornsby, Martha, Dolley, and Abigail were in the kitchen, brewing tea and baking cookies: for the shock, they said. He wondered if they were using flour and sugar, and if the taste would match the delicious smell. He wondered if he was being insensitive, even morbid, to think of food at such a time. But there was something comforting about the scent of warm cinnamon that softened the harsh reality of death.

Once he felt confident that Mitchell was capable of maintaining order and silence in the library, he brought Hornsby up to the doctor’s office to conduct an experiment. Hornsby found his jar of dried gentian and medicinal alcohol in order to make a fresh tincture like the one that had gone missing.

“It’s vodka,” Hornsby said, “The best alcohol for making tinctures.” He crushed the gentian with a mortar and pestle, then blended it with the vodka. “It should sit for two weeks. Ideally, I would make it on the night of a full moon, then filter it with a new moon.”

“Is that science or folklore, Doctor?”

“I don’t know if science has yet proved this traditional method, Professor. But you’ve seen the power of the moon with each tide, and my instincts tell me if the moon can move oceans, it surely imparts some stimulating action on smaller liquid bodies.”

“It’s not necessary for our purposes to wait for the moon. We’ll fill a second jar with plain warm water and compare the results when lucifer tips are added.”

This was done, and several dozen match tips added to each. Bradshaw flipped off the electric light, plunging the office into darkness. As their eyes adjusted, Bradshaw agitated the jar containing plain water to introduce oxygen, and it began to emit a slight green phosphorescence and a whiff of garlic-like odor. He repeated the agitation with the gentian jar, but produced no glow, no garlic odor, only the bitter, weedy scent of gentian.

“You may turn on the light,” he said, and Hornsby flipped the switch. “We won’t put it to the test, but my guess is that even the taste of the phosphorus has been negated by the gentian.”

“Professor, I’ve been dosing Mr. Thompson with gentian since his arrival. Do you suppose he knew it would mask the phosphorus? Working at the assay office, he must know something of chemistry.”

“Doctor, we don’t know that it was Mr. Thompson who added the match tips to the tincture.”

Hornsby’s face registered surprise, and then dismay. From below his wash basin, he lifted a clear bottle marked “French Oil of Turpentine” and shook his head. “It’s the French oil that is said to work with cases of phosphorus poisonings. Resinified turpentine works, too, if the French can’t be found. A few drops of this, floating in hot water, and I might have saved him.”

“It’s not a certain cure. You mustn’t torture yourself. You were given no clues to phosphorus poisoning. You couldn’t have known. No one could have. There’s nothing more we can do this evening. It’s time now for rest. Tomorrow, you’ll need your strength. My associate will be returning with the federal authorities.”

“The federal…that’s where Mr. Pratt went today? Is this a federal matter?”

“Tomorrow more information will be revealed. For now, it would be best if you and Mrs. Hornsby tried to sleep.”

Hornsby looked near collapse. He held out a trembling hand to Bradshaw. “I’m glad you’re here, Professor. I don’t know how I would have managed on my own.”

“We shall have answers. Get some rest.”

Hornsby left to find his wife, and after checking on the deputy and his detainees, Bradshaw went to see his son. In a small bedroom in Paracelsus Cottage, Justin and Paul were asleep in their beds, snuggled down beneath woolen blankets. He left them to their dreams after a careful, quiet examination of their peaceful faces. He told Mrs. Prouty about Mr. Thompson’s death and left it to her to tell the others as she thought best. He knew she could do so without alarming them while also verifying that each and every one of them was of sound health. He didn’t believe any of them had been poisoned, but to presume and be wrong didn’t bear contemplating. As he left the cottage, a framed quote by the door caught his eye: “Poison is in everything, and nothing is without poison. The dosage makes it either a poison or a remedy.”

Before returning to the main house, he entered Moss’ small cabin, Hippocrates Hut, without bothering to ask permission. Moss’ habits were tidy enough for a bachelor, his clothes slung over a chair, his wash basin filled with fresh water. An effort had been made at pulling the bedclothes up, but the rumpled result wouldn’t have passed Mrs. Prouty’s inspection. There was nothing else in the cabin to see, other than framed quotes: “Let food be thy medicine,” and “Opinion breeds ignorance.” Bradshaw had always been fond of Hippocrates.

Moss possessed no personal items other than a shaving kit. No photographs, no reading materials. A pen and ink, but no writing paper. Bradshaw got down on the floor to look under the bed and found Moss’ leather suitcase, unstrapped.

He hauled it out and discovered, beneath several new union suits, a child’s school journal with the letters A-B-C on the cardboard cover. Inside, the paper was wide-lined for a young hand. At the top of each page simple words were printed, meant to be copied. And they had been copied. Page after page of careful lettering, well executed but for direction and order. Some letters faced the wrong way, despite the clear example. Some words were scrambled or backwards. Occasionally a few accurately spelled words emerged, but their occurrence was random. Bradshaw had not pegged Zeb Moss for a genius, but this evidence of illiteracy, the struggle with the simple words and shape of the letters, meant the miner was incapable of understanding the complicated electrical materials in the library. Or the inspiring quotes on the walls.

He slid the suitcase back under the bed, felt under the mattress for any hidden objects, and when he found none, he returned to the main house. By now, the cookies and chamomile tea had made their appearance in the library with the confined guests. Bradshaw stepped in long enough only to snatch a warm cookie and confirm that Deputy Mitchell was competently guarding the trio. Moss never looked up from his slippered feet, and Loomis offered his help. Ingrid Thompson glared at him, a handkerchief clutched in her hand, telling him he was heartless. She wasn’t sobbing or being overdramatic. She appeared genuinely upset. Hers had not been an ideal marriage, but she must have been fond of her husband once, and now he was dead.

Hadn’t he been in a similar situation once? He felt a pang of empathy followed by doubt. Was he being cruel to keep her here rather than letting her return to her room to get through this time of shock privately? Wouldn’t he have preferred to be let alone on the night his wife died, rather than hauled down to the police station and forced to answer humiliating questions?

But he had not had a hand in Rachel’s death. He had not put the carbolic acid on the sideboard or encouraged her to drink it.

Could he say the same of Ingrid Thompson? Had she had a hand in Freddie’s death? Had she poisoned the tincture of gentian on the eve of the glowing sand and offered a dose to her unsuspecting husband?

He left without comment, feeling cruel but not knowing how else he could fairly and systematically proceed. He devoured a cookie as he went upstairs. It was unlike any cookie he’d ever eaten, dense and moist and chewy. But it was sweet and spicy, like pumpkin pie, and he hoped there’d be more later.

Loomis’ room resembled Moss’ for level of tidiness, but with far more possessions. As a traveling salesman, he carried his home in a pair of suitcases, and his room looked as if he’d lived there for years, with framed photographs on the dresser, adventure novels beside the bed, and an array of souvenirs from towns he’d visited on display.

He apparently wasn’t so confident about his rights to David’s washhouse designs that he left them out in the open, but the small padlock on his metal cash box was meant only to discourage honest men. Bradshaw had it open in seconds. He leafed through carbon-copy deposit receipts written to dozens of physicians throughout the West and as far east as Chicago, letters of interest from others, and much literature on the rich potential of Washington’s coast. The washhouse designs were neatly rolled, and as Martha said, beautifully drawn. He tore the designs in two, enjoying the ripping sound, then tore them again, until the pieces fit easily in his jacket pocket. If the design didn’t exist, there could be no dispute over possession. He left all else intact and locked the box.

A thorough search of the room revealed no food or drink or medicine, tainted or otherwise, and no empty matchbox. He lastly got down on his knees to check under the mattress, expecting nothing, surprised when his fingertips met something. About the size of an egg, but rougher and more solid. He pulled it out. It was a crumpled ball of tinfoil. Flecks of green glimmered in the dull silver.

What had Dolley and Abigail said? Someone had taken cheese from the larder. Cheese wrapped in colorful tinfoil. He attempted to pick loose a corner. Tinfoil, unlike aluminum, was high in lead and very soft. When balled tightly, it almost melted to itself.

He crossed to the electric light, and after a few moments of careful peeling, he could just make out the words “Zuyder Zee.” The Hornsby girls said the guests had been served this cheese in the library. That’s how they knew about it. So it had been Loomis that entered the larder and helped himself? Loomis that stripped off the foil wrap, changed his mind about the cheese and abandoned it untouched on the dining room sideboard? And then balled up the tinfoil and shoved it under his mattress? Why would he try to hide the foil rather than simply leaving it with the cheese, or throwing it in the wastebasket?

Tinfoil made an excellent conductor. Loomis knew that, surely. Unraveled, there would be enough to extend over the tops of the Leyden jars inside the electrotherapy outfit, or prop against their sides to connect them. The tinfoil could be the conductive material that had shorted the machine and killed David Hollister.

For a few minutes, Bradshaw sat on the floor beside the bed, pondering the tinfoil, where he’d found it, and all the implications. This discovery pointed to Arnold Loomis as David’s killer. And yet…Loomis was a confidence man, dishonest to his core. But a murderer? Over the years, Bradshaw had met several murderers, and each of them had surprised him in some way. It was a fact he knew about himself, that despite his cynicism, he had difficulty believing the worst of people. He was more like poor Deputy Mitchell than he cared to admit, always thinking the bad guy should look the part. Well, in this case the bad guy being a con man, he did look the part, and Bradshaw still didn’t want to believe it. He pocketed the foil and got wearily to his feet.

He moved on to Freddie Thompson’s room.

Entering a dead man’s bedroom is never a pleasant task. Bradshaw had experienced it several times in his investigative work, and it never got any easier. It made him think of his own habits and wonder what others would one day think of him when they had to sort through his belongings. And who would that be? Mrs. Prouty? His son? Henry? Missouri? He stood very still, for a moment trapped inside his emotions.

He shook himself, whispered an apology to Freddie Thompson, and began to search. The room was obsessively tidy, the bed so tightly made a coin would bounce if dropped upon it. Freddie’s reading choices, literary novels and poetry, were stacked spine to spine and his toiletries arranged with geometric precision. Bradshaw found a cedar box with hundreds of hand-rolled cigarettes, each perfectly and precisely formed. He found two full boxes of nontoxic safety matches, and one half-full box. He found no food or drink or tinctures of any kind.

The only item of interest, which he left in place for authorities to see, was a ten-pound bag of black sand in the bottom of Freddie’s trunk.

He moved lastly to Ingrid Thompson’s room. The door was barred from swinging fully open by clothes strewn upon the floor. The bedspread hung from the rumpled sheets. Every surface of the room was cluttered with toiletries, jewelry, and fashion magazines. In the wardrobe, freshly laundered clothes were hung or folded with a precision that told Bradshaw they’d come from the Healing Sands laundry that way.

A blend of scents perfumed the air, feminine and flowery. He made a systematic search of the messy room, finding discarded magazines and empty bottles of lotion, but nothing that hinted of poison. He realized as he grew frustrated that he wanted to find evidence of Ingrid’s guilt—he wanted to find soggy match tips and Hornsby’s missing gentian. He wanted to find proof she killed her husband, and he knew such a want could undermine his clarity and objectivity. Evidence shouldn’t be gathered to prove a theory but to create one.