Edison Effect, The: A Professor Bradshaw Mystery (The Edison Effect) Read online

  A small fresh-cut Douglas fir stood in the center of the display, its tip nearly touching the low ceiling. It had been decorated in gold tinsel garland and red glass balls. Gaily wrapped gifts were piled under the tree along with several Edison GE Holiday electric outfit boxes.

  The body of Vernon Doyle lay on its side amidst the artificial holiday happiness. Doyle’s hands were near his chest gripping the green cloth-wrapped wire of a holiday festoon. Shards of glass winked where several of the small carbon lamps had shattered. Doyle’s eyes were partially open, his features frozen in a mask of confusion, his lips parted, his brow furrowed. He hadn’t expected what hit him. His skin was ruddy over his cheeks. A web of broken capillaries over his fleshy nose told not of his death but of a life of habitual drink.

  For a moment, Bradshaw simply stood outside the display, taking in the details, while O’Brien jotted down notes. The festoon wire trailed from Doyle’s hands to a clockwork mechanism mounted to the back wall of the show window. It was a type of automatic timing clock that Bradshaw was familiar with. Many businesses with regular lighting needs were beginning to use them.

  He stepped aside to the cabinet located in the wall adjacent the window. The door of the asbestos-lined cabinet stood open, revealing the neatly labeled fuses and switches within. The panel controlled the power to two of the show windows and the lighting in the nearby entrance. All but one of the knife switches were up, in the “on” position, but no electricity flowed through them since they’d been cut off at a main terminal. The switch in the “off” position was labeled “special.”

  “Mr. Olafson? Does this ‘special’ switch operate the timer there on the wall?” He pointed to the clockwork mechanism where the festoon was attached.

  “Yes, you are correct. Mr. Doyle installed that clock device especially for this holiday display. Mr. Andrews explained to me that it is on a separate circuit from the rest of the window lights. When the windows are switched on and off from the main box, anything attached to that circuit is not affected. It is used for special lighting and other electrical displays. That’s why we chose this window in which to feature Edison’s Christmas outfits, because it has a separate circuit that can be dedicated to them. Doyle intended to have Edison’s lights cycle on and off every twenty minutes to prevent them from overheating.”

  “Did you throw this switch to the ‘off ’ position?” The glass fuse looked dark, but he couldn’t tell for certain if it had blown.

  “No, I touched nothing,” Olafson said, peering into the electrical box. “Neither did Mr. Andrews, although he did look inside. He turned the lights off from the main box, as I explained.”

  Bradshaw believed in redundancy when it came to electrical safety. Had he been the electrician given this task, he would have disconnected the holiday lights entirely from the circuit before exposing his fingers to bare wire. But he knew many electricians grew complacent. After years of working with electricity without incident, they felt safe in situations that placed their lives potentially in the hands of someone else. Doyle had trusted the position of the knife switch. He’d not foreseen anyone coming along and throwing it, sending a current into his body, from one hand across his chest to the other hand. The muscles of his heart would have been shocked from life-giving beats to unproductive quivering. The medical term was cardiac fibrillation. He taught it to his students as well as the technique of artificial respiration, which had the potential to prevent death in such cases. No steps had been taken to save Doyle. While gasping for breath, he would have been aware of his approaching death.

  Bradshaw instinctively drew a deep breath.

  The mood in the store was somber, but it was far from quiet. Warm air thrummed in the central air ducts, water gurgled in the pipes. No effort had been made to hide the mechanics of the store. The pipes and conduits were routed on the ceiling along with cables suspending arc lamps, and cables bearing wire baskets that whisked orders and payments to cash boys for delivery to bookkeepers on the third floor. Some of those baskets were in action now, sailing through the darkness with a metallic zing between stockrooms and floor displays as clerks took advantage of the delayed opening by stocking displays and filling mail and telephone orders for merchandise. A swooshing sound echoed from somewhere in the building. A spiral steel chute ran from the top floor to the basement, Bradshaw knew, and wrapped merchandise was sent sailing down to the Delivery Department.

  “Mr. Olafson,” Bradshaw said. “How many employees are here now? In all the various departments?”

  “Oh, somewhere between two and three hundred, I’d say. There are usually around fifty here at night between midnight and six, when the day shifts begin to arrive. We have more than four hundred employees. This time of year, we run beyond full staff from opening until closing, with extra stockers at night.”

  Plenty of time, and plenty of people, Bradshaw thought, to remove or destroy clues to what had happened, whether intentionally or accidentally.

  “Do you have a guard patrolling at night?”

  “Of course! We have a man on duty seven days a week, from midnight until six in the morning. He’s been sent for but hasn’t yet returned. He reported nothing irregular upon leaving.”

  “Who handles security during the day?”

  “Two lead detectives split the day, both female—they make the best store detectives, you know—and a dozen plainclothes men and women who mingle with shoppers. Our floorwalkers and managers are also trained to watch for theft from both customers and employees.”

  O’Brien asked for names, jotting them in his book, and Bradshaw stepped up into the window, ducking his head to keep from bumping the ceiling. “Who placed the screens?”

  “I did that myself,” said Olafson. “I let no one enter the window. My clerks brought them from Women’s Furnishings, and I alone carried them in and disturbed as little as possible.”

  While still overcast, the day was brightening, and feeble sunshine filtered around the edges of the screens. Bradshaw peered behind one and was dismayed to find curious faces pressed against the glass trying to see in.

  He turned to face the holiday display. A handwritten sign before Edison’s holiday lights announced that a single outfit of eight lamps cost five dollars, and a triple outfit of twenty-four lamps cost twelve dollars. While Bradshaw had known the cost of the lights would be high due to the price of the fragile bulbs and the wiring labor, he hadn’t anticipated they’d be out of range for the average family. Most men scarcely made twelve dollars a week.

  He turned to the window lighting. Several incandescent lamps with silvered reflectors ran the length of the window at the top and bottom. The bottom row was now blocked by the screens. On the oval wool rug of the display floor, Bradshaw spied a linen handkerchief that showed severe scorching. It appeared brand new, and Bradshaw’s first thought was to glance at the mannequins. A linen kerchief was tucked into the breast jacket pocket of the grandfather figure. The father figure had no kerchief, yet the handwritten sign at its feet listed a kerchief with the other articles on display.

  He sniffed the linen. The acrid smell was strong and fresh.

  O’Brien asked, “What is it, Ben?”

  Olafson clapped his hands together. “I clean forgot! The handkerchief was on the floor by the footlights when I placed the screens. I kicked it aside and it went out of my mind. I saw that it looked burned. Is it, Professor? Has it been burned? Tell me it has not!”

  “It is scorched. You found it beside the footlight? Was it touching the lamp?”

  “No, not touching, but it was close enough that it alarmed me. We so worry about fire, you know! The sprinkler system does not extend into the windows. We keep a bucket of water handy at all times, of course, and one of sand for electrical fires. They are here,” he said, pointing to a storage bin beside the window that served double-duty as a display stand.

  Olafson began to wring his hands. “Oh
, dear me. If it had caught fire! Careless! My window dresser thinks only of the aesthetic lines of his displays. It is not the first time he’s nearly set the place ablaze. I may have to let him go, but he is the best window dresser on the west coast. Where will I find another half so good?”

  It was a rhetorical question, but Bradshaw found it curious that Olafson immediately blamed the designer. The window was easily accessible; anyone could have entered. A designer would, before he left, step back and inspect his work and surely see a kerchief out of place.

  “The window lights were turned on at seven?”

  “Yes, at seven.”

  “What time was Mr. Doyle found?”

  “At half past seven. I had Andrews turn off all the lights almost immediately, even before summoning the police. Is that important?”

  Past experience had taught Bradshaw to add as little information as possible to a crime scene, and the scorched cloth proved to him that this was a crime scene. How severe the crime, he didn’t yet know. The heat of an incandescent lamp would set a linen cloth ablaze within minutes. If the handkerchief had indeed been on the footlight when Mr. Andrews turned on the power, then someone must have entered the window display shortly after seven and moved it, deliberately leaving it behind. That someone could not have missed seeing Doyle lying dead.

  “Who removed the cloth from the light?”

  “Who? Oh, that I don’t know. It was there nearby, as I said, when I placed the screens. It was Billy Creasle, the assistant window dresser, who found Mr. Doyle and reported to me, but he said nothing of preventing a fire. Of course he was so upset, it might have gone clean out of his mind, too.”

  “I’d like to speak to him.”

  “He was unnerved by his discovery, as you can imagine. He is young, just turned eighteen. One of my most promising workers, but still a boy. I sent him home.”

  O’Brien reached for the scorched cloth, but Bradshaw carefully tucked it inside the breast pocket of his jacket. “I’d like to keep it until I can perform some tests.”

  “Don’t forget, it’s evidence.” O’Brien made note of it in his book. The Detective Department of the Seattle Police, and thus Detective O’Brien, had recently come under the command of Captain Tennant, who had established more rigorous procedures for recording and preserving evidence. O’Brien was ambivalent about some of the new requirements, such as regimented note-taking. While he’d always been careful with evidence, and he’d been championing for the routine use of modern methods such as fingerprinting and the Bertillon Anthropometric System, O’Brien had been investigating crime on the streets of Seattle long enough to have established his own system, which was based more on common sense than on strict adherence to procedural rules.

  O’Brien snapped his notebook closed. “So what was Doyle doing?”

  “Joining festoons.” Bradshaw got down on all fours to peer closely at Doyle’s hands. He then saw that the cord had been supplied with a junction plug to make joining easier. This plug was in Doyle’s grip. The few inches of bare copper he’d exposed, and that he’d intended to join within the junction plug, was pinched between his fingers. The charge had left telltale evidence of its deadly passage. A slight swelling and blistering of the fingertips and palms that must have at first been red were now turning gray against bloodless white. The skin was not burned, indicating exposure had been of short duration.

  Whoever had thrown that “special” knife switch must have almost immediately turned it off. But it had been too late.

  Bradshaw got back on his feet to make an inspection of the automatic time switch.

  O’Brien watched over his shoulder. He asked, “Is the clock to blame?”

  “No,” said Bradshaw. “Doyle hadn’t yet wound the clock mechanism or set the time. The festoon is properly attached, however, completing a circuit to the special switch in the cabinet.” He drew another deep breath. “I’ve seen all I need here. Let’s speak to Mr. Andrews.”

  ***

  Bradshaw and O’Brien and Mr. Olafson met up with the chief electrician on the second floor, where he was inspecting an electrical panel situated in a hat stock room, lit by lamplight. Martin Andrews was a man of fifty-odd years, with sandy hair going to gray. He shook Bradshaw’s hand firmly, and readily offered all he anticipated Bradshaw might ask.

  “I arrived just before seven as usual, lit up the show windows from the main box, and at half past was summoned by Mr. Olafson to the Men’s window. It looked just as you found it. I touched nothing, other than to cut off power to all the lighting from the mains. Vernon Doyle was our window man. His duty was to install and maintain all show window lighting, and the lighting in the department display cases. I have two other electrical men working for me. An apprentice, who changes out lamps, cleans the globes, and trims the arcs, and a skilled man, who troubleshoots and handles major repairs. Professor, from what I saw, I know you’re looking for whoever threw that special switch in the cabinet and energized that wire when it was exposed in Doyle’s hands. I know you’ll be wanting to know pertinent facts. Doyle worked hard and was respected as an electrician. I was not his friend, nor were the others, but there was no dislike between us. I’d say it was a matter of having no common interests, other than electricity. I was home with my wife all last night. Her parents are visiting for the holidays, they can attest to that.”

  O’Brien jotted down names and addresses in his little notebook.

  “My apprentice works from ten in the morning until eight at night, and he is staying at the YMCA. My skilled man has been in Portland since last Monday. His mother passed away. He’s due back tomorrow.”

  More names and information went into O’Brien’s notebook. He gave Bradshaw a look that said he wished everyone were so easily interviewed.

  Bradshaw said, “Thank you, Mr. Andrews. If you think of anything else, let me know.”

  “I will.” He closed the panel door and said, “If you’re done examining the window downstairs, we’re safe to turn the lights on.”

  “As soon as the scene has been cleared,” said O’Brien, who took charge of removing Doyle’s body to the morgue. A few minutes later, the store and show windows erupted in light. A cheer sounded outside, but the employees within, who were aware of the cause of the delay, simply hurried to their positions.

  Bradshaw and O’Brien fought the tidal surge of incoming shoppers and finally gained the street, turning toward Yesler and police headquarters, hunched into their coats against the cold wet wind.

  “Notebook’s shut up in my pocket, Ben. What didn’t you say back there?”

  Bradshaw didn’t answer immediately. In another half block, he stopped, facing the new brick home of the Seattle Tent Factory.

  O’Brien shook his head and implored with a whine that would have done Justin proud, “Not with Christmas coming. Make it a simple accident, Ben. Or at least keep it inside the Bon. Lorraine will kill me if I miss another holiday.”

  “Vernon Doyle worked here in the spring of 1901 with Oscar Daulton. He was here the day the old factory burned to the ground.”

  “Well, that’s just a coincidence, not a connection.”

  “I spoke with Mr. Doyle after Daulton’s arrest and he told me all he knew about Daulton, which was very little.”

  “See there, you’re worrying for nothing.”

  “After Thomas Edison paid me a visit, Doyle began saying he knew the secret to Daulton’s invention. Not to me. I did not socialize with the man, but to others in the electrical trade. Gossip of that sort spreads.”

  “Son of a—is it true?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Aah, Ben. The notebook’s gotta come out of my pocket.”

  “I know, but it’s not my fault. Blame the Wizard of Menlo Park.”

  Chapter Four

  “We hanged Oscar Daulton two years ago,” Chief Sullivan said after hearing
Bradshaw explain the possible connection between the death of the Bon Marché’s electrician and the young man convicted and executed for murder. “And you’re telling me he’s still causing trouble?”

  “It’s the search for his lost invention that may be to blame. As I said, it’s only one theory, but one I feel must be explored.”

  “It’s out in the bay, isn’t it? Didn’t you chase Daulton onto a ferry?”

  “I did.”

  Sullivan scowled, but Bradshaw felt no need to defend himself. He might help the police, but he didn’t play the games of power that at times crippled the department. His single-minded goal was to find the truth of the matter. His methods would not be swayed by police or city politics. Rumors were flying that Mayor Humes might soon give Sullivan’s job to a new man, and an upcoming mayoral election had the names of potential chiefs and mayors flying. Sullivan’s wasn’t among them. Some of the men on the force had been quoted as saying a new chief would clean up the detective office, which rankled Sullivan and angered O’Brien. The city of Seattle had never seen such tight control over gambling and the Tenderloin District.

  The realities of policing a modern city of over one hundred thousand citizens with a force of eighty-some men clashed daily with the idealists who wanted the city squeaky clean. Seattle was not the wide open city it had once been, yet it was true that below Jackson Street, in the section of town designated for such businesses, parlor houses and dance halls thrived and continually attempted to crawl back up toward Yesler.

  Bradshaw knew that the public didn’t cringe at news of a murdered gambler or drifter, but murder at the Bon Marché, the store that had become a beloved institution to Seattle residents, was different. Chief Sullivan would be facing intense scrutiny from all factions, from the mayor in city hall to the mothers who visited the Bon daily, taking advantage of the free child care provided to shoppers.