Capacity for Murder (Professor Bradshaw Mysteries) (6 page)

“Before you returned, did anyone leave the sanitarium?”

“No, everyone is still here. We aren’t many. Just four guests and minimal staff. We were between sessions. Sheriff Graham said we were to go nowhere, but where would we go? We wouldn’t abandon our home. We wouldn’t abandon David.”

Chapter Six

The color of old paste, the oat groats sat in a congealed lump in Bradshaw’s porcelain bowl with blackberries bleeding rivulets into the crevices. He lifted a spoonful and sniffed. Earthy, sour. Like a barn floor.

Henry was giving his bowl the same inspection. “They ain’t been cooked, I’d bet a hundred bucks.”

“Mrs. Hornsby called them fermented.”

“Only thing I like fermented comes in a bottle.”

At another table, Justin and Paul were devouring their bowls while Mrs. Prouty took more skeptical bites. Bradshaw braved a taste. Mostly sour, with a tinge of sweet, as it smelled, oaty with a hint of vinegar. Foreign to his tongue, not awful, but he found he could eat very little before a sort of revulsion took hold.

Henry ladled more blackberries into his bowl, shrugged, and dove in.

They’d had to serve themselves, following the posted rules, filing through the kitchen past a butcher block table stacked with bowls, plates, a cast iron kettle of lukewarm groats, and cut loaves of a dense, dark bread speckled through with seeds. Cutlery and crisp white napkins had been claimed at a sideboard, and each table set with bowls of fresh, slightly mashed blackberries, small pots of creamy butter, and pitchers of a fishy-smelling milk substance Bradshaw hadn’t the courage to taste.

The dining room buzzed with conversation. Four of his students found much amusement in attempting to eat the unconventional breakfast. Knut clowned as usual, swallowing with exaggerated difficulty, while Daniel, clever and bespectacled, and Miles, small and precise, gave sporting commentary. Oren, who was rugged and square, happily dumped two bowls of berries into his own and ate with gusto.

Under this noisy cover, Bradshaw quietly told Henry of David Hollister’s death and of his morning’s investigation. Henry reacted with raised brows and an increased rate of chewing.

At the table nearest them, Colin sat with Missouri. They ate their fermented meal without much attention as they swapped childhood histories and life ambitions. Bradshaw tried not to listen, but snatches of their conversation came to him anyway. He’d known Colin was fascinated with mechanical vehicles, automobiles, and the latest advances in flight, but he hadn’t known Missouri had decided to quit the university in order to study homeopathy. He wasn’t sure what to make of it. A moment later, their conversation had veered toward the financial when Colin suggested she marry a man with plenty of money in order to support her many goals. She declared she’d never marry a man for his money, and Colin said it was a shame because he planned to be rich.

Missouri said, “Oh, I didn’t say I would never marry a man
with
money. You must pay attention to my prepositions.”

“I will, if you pay attention to my propositions.”

A grunt alerted Bradshaw that Henry, too, was listening.

Henry growled, “We ever that nauseating?”

“Yes, which is why I avoid such discussions altogether.”

“Yeah, well, I’m usually smart enough to have a few drinks under my belt before I make the attempt.”

Bradshaw turned his attention back to his buttered bread, which was chewy but didn’t cause a revolt at the back of his tongue. He felt Henry watching him, heard him clear his throat like he had more to say on the subject. Then he did.

“I reckon if you can sit there calmly listening to that drivel then…I mean, it’s been two years….”

Bradshaw knew exactly what Henry was getting at and he had no intention of discussing his former or current feelings for Missouri Fremont.

“Henry, why don’t you go swap stories with that miner.” Bradshaw nodded toward the only person in the dining room not of their group, a man sitting by himself in the corner. Hornsby said there were just four guests at the hotel. He must be one of them.

Henry listed away from the table to get a better look. “How you know he’s a miner? Looks like an undertaker to me.”

The man wore a somber, expensive-looking black suit, custom sewn for his stocky frame. He was clean shaven, hawk-nosed, with deep-set dark eyes and fat lips.

“What clues am I missing, Sherlock?”

Henry had recently become an avid reader of Sir Conan Doyle’s detective novels and fancied himself a superior Watson. He was, but Henry’s ego was large enough without Bradshaw’s encouragement.

“He’s uncomfortable in the suit, although it fits him perfectly, which tells me he’s new to wearing it and has therefore only recently come into money. He has a scar on his hand that extends up his sleeve, severe enough that I can see it from here. Combined with his strong build, erect posture, and lack of reading material in his solitary state, tells me he’s a man with little education, used to hard physical labor. The tip of his nose has suffered frostbite from which he’s mostly recovered; you see the white patch of skin? But it’s the button on his lapel that’s most telling.”

Henry squinted, then gave a grunt, showing he recognized the gold-nugget button. He had one himself as a souvenir of his time up north.

“He’d probably enjoy telling you all about it.”

“What am I, one of them masochists? Why would I want to hear how he struck? Poke a stick in my eye, Ben, it’d hurt less.”

“His success hasn’t made him happy.”

Henry listed again. “No, he don’t seem to appreciate his good fortune. Looks downright morbid about it. Huh.” Henry pushed back his chair and crossed the room to the miner. He introduced himself with a hearty handshake and took a seat without invitation.

While Henry worked his verbal art, Bradshaw studied his silver spoon. It could just span the distance between the Leyden jars in the electrotherapy outfit, but getting it to stay in place would be difficult. If the cabinet were even slightly bumped, it would fall. Knives and forks posed the same problem. His thoughts moved to the kitchen, to the various knives, stirring spoons, graters, and mashers of various metals and coatings from silver to tin to nickel. From the kitchen, his mind roved to other rooms and other conductive items, from gold pens, to gold and silver necklaces, hairbrushes, safety pins strung together, key chains, and watch chains. When his thoughts moved outdoors, his mental pile of conductive items grew to a mountain. All of them could possibly short the machine, but few of them were probable or practical. Only wire, tin foil, or a chain fit the bill. Before Bradshaw finished his bread and grassy tea, the miner left the dining room and Henry returned to his chair, grabbing a slice of bread and slathering it with butter.

“Anything?”

“Name’s Zebediah Moss, fifty, never married, brought home a million in dust and nuggets last year. Lives in Seattle. You know that monstrosity up on First Hill? Three-story mansion with the pillars and turrets? That’s home-sweet-home.”

“So why is he miserable?”

Bradshaw had every confidence in Henry’s ability to extract details from the unwitting. Highly intelligent, Harvard-educated though not graduated, Henry had the brains of a scholar and the mouth of a day-laborer. He worked like a laborer, too, although ever since he’d injured his back on his last unsuccessful gold-seeking trip, his labors were of the temporary desk and sales variety, except when working for Bradshaw.

“I think he’s pining over some woman but I couldn’t drag it out of him. Says he came for a rest cure. He didn’t get any electric treatments. Mostly, he got packed up in hot sand and soaked his feet in the surf.”

“Is he here alone?”

“Yep.”

“What else did he tell you?”

“How he made his fortune. Lucky son-of-a-bitch fell off a cliff and struck gold with his grappling hook trying to climb back up.”

“What’s he been doing with his money?”

“Not much of anything. Says he can’t figure out what to do with it. Says life is empty and has no meaning. I told him to give me the money and I’d find meaning for him. He declined.”

As Henry spoke, Bradshaw became increasingly aware that someone had arrived at Healing Sands. He’d heard the whinny of a horse, the clomp of boot heels up the porch steps. The boots didn’t pause on the porch long enough to transition to felt slippers, but continued into the house, and down the hall.

By now, everyone in the dining room was aware of the approach of ringing boots steps and looked expectantly at the open doorway. A few strides later, he was there, a man built like a logger with a broad chest and a gleaming five-pointed star on his lapel. Sheriff Graham had arrived.

Chapter Seven

The sheriff’s sharp gaze panned the room, pausing long enough to give a polite nod to Missouri, the only female present. His eyes lit on Bradshaw.

“May I see you upstairs, Professor?” Without waiting for a reply, he turned and headed down the hall.

Henry flashed Bradshaw a conspiratorial look. “The game’s afoot.”

“This isn’t a game, Henry.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Ben. Life is the best game of all. Go solve the puzzle.”

***

Bradshaw reached the bottom of the stairs as the sheriff reached the top, and he saw that the soles of his boots were clean. In Hornsby’s office, after shaking hands, the sheriff seated himself in the doctor’s chair, placing his hat on the desk. Bradshaw sat across from him. This was often the most difficult part of an investigation, the first meeting with those officially in charge. Deputy Mitchell hadn’t presented any sort of challenge, but Sheriff Graham, from the wearing of his boots to his taking of Doctor Hornsby’s chair, was telling Bradshaw he was the one in control. Bradshaw accepted this without relinquishing his own authority.

“My deputy tells me you’ve figured how David Hollister met his death.”

The opening gambit, a challenge thrown to Bradshaw. He never played the game; he simply answered questions in a forthright manner until the official relaxed, confident of his position.

“I know the electrotherapy machine was made temporarily fatal, but I don’t yet know how it was achieved.” Bradshaw explained what he’d discovered this morning. “The conductive material that was used has been removed, and the likelihood of finding it are slim to none.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because it could have been one of hundreds of items here at Healing Sands. It could be in plain sight and there’d be no way of knowing or proving it had been used.”

The sheriff lifted a skeptical brow. “You’re telling me that the only evidence for foul play is a change in the sound emitted from the machine, a sound heard only by Dr. Hornsby, and which was triggered by some everyday household item that’s impossible to positively identify?”

“Yes.”

“You’re just full of good news. How do you know Dr. Hornsby didn’t short-circuit the damned thing himself and then hide the evidence out of sight?”

“Every action he’s taken since his son-in-law’s death tells me he is bewildered by what happened. He’s not covering up for a foolish mistake or an intentional act.”

“So you say, but unless proof of Hornsby’s innocence is found, Professor Bradshaw, he’ll be held fully responsible for the safety of his equipment and criminally responsible for his patient’s death.”

“Whatever happened to a man being innocent until proven guilty?”

“Doesn’t apply here. The doctor has admitted he administered a fatal dose of electricity to his patient. We know he’s guilty, we just don’t know why it happened.”

“Dr. Hornsby wants the truth as much as we do. He needn’t have summoned anyone. He could have said David died of natural causes, or that he had an unusual reaction to the treatment, and who would know differently in this remote location? Would you have questioned David’s death if Dr. Hornsby hadn’t notified you and given you the full details? He could have easily blamed his son-in-law, said he altered the machine because he was suicidal, or reckless. He has chosen instead to seek the truth despite putting his own life and liberty in jeopardy.”

“He’d never have gotten away with saying David Hollister was depressed. Everyone here has stated he wasn’t.”

“What was the coroner’s conclusion?”

“Electrocution was the cause, no doubt. The coroner can give you the gruesome particulars if you want them.” A small smile, not of humor but discomfort over those particulars, revealed the sheriff was beginning to relax.

“Not necessary, Sheriff. But I would like to know why you are detaining everyone here if you believe Dr. Hornsby to be responsible for Mr. Hollister’s death.”

“What do my actions tell you, Professor?” The sheriff sat back, folding his hands across his stomach. It was another challenge, but a friendly one.

“You don’t believe David’s death was a simple accident.”

The sheriff sucked his teeth and seemed to ponder how to reply. “The minute Hornsby mentioned electricity I thought of you. Your reputation has spread even down to our little neck of the woods. And I know a friend of yours, Detective O’Brien? I told Hornsby that you could find answers so he would summon you.”