Edison Effect, The: A Professor Bradshaw Mystery (The Edison Effect) (2 page)

Bradshaw met Edison’s gaze squarely. “I don’t know.”

Edison said nothing, but his jaw was set tight and he scrunched his mouth, either in disappointment or disbelief. Bradshaw hadn’t spent enough time with him to know which, but Edison stood with a swiftness that shouted his time had been wasted.

He tore the sketch of the device from the pad, folded it precisely, and tucked it into an inner jacket pocket.

“Well, Professor, I appreciate your time.”

Bradshaw resisted the impulse to apologize. “It was an honor to meet you, sir,” he said instead.

Edison started for the door, then halted, pointing across the room to a table by the window. There sat a small wooden box painted to depict Santa Claus and a Christmas tree and smiling children holding festoons of colorful electric lights. “I brought you a sample. They’ll be in department stores across the country by the holidays. We’re the first to the market with pre-strung lamps.”

The “we,” Bradshaw knew, meant Edison and the General Electric Company.

“Congratulations. And thank you.” Bradshaw had years ago devised his own festoons of colored electric lights that he placed on the Christmas tree each year, but he knew it was a luxury most Americans couldn’t afford since it required a skilled electrician to wire them. Prewired lights would be a money-maker.

With a nod, Edison opened the door to his adoring fans. Bradshaw crossed to the window, his thoughts spinning. Even the sight of the dancing box kite and of Missouri once again at Ingersoll’s side failed to pull him from the implications of Edison’s inquiry.

He’d not told the whole truth, and he sensed Edison knew it. No inventor could resist exploring the mystery of Oscar Daulton’s invention, not even Bradshaw. Despite his qualms, despite the moral conundrum surrounding the murderous use of Daulton’s discovery, Bradshaw had been compelled by inventor’s curiosity to follow clues. He was nearly certain that melted sulfur had been used as an insulator. And the components the sulfur insulated? He had ideas about those, too. Ideas that at times made his hands itch. But as yet the moral dilemma of what to do with the knowledge had held him back from exploring them, even from thinking too deeply about the possible flaws and feasibility of his guesses. If he was right about Daulton’s invention, it was both genius and yet obvious, and ironically based on something Edison himself had discovered many years ago. If he was right, Daulton’s invention followed a natural evolution in electrical engineering. The world of invention would grow in leaps and bounds, even faster than now, once it became known. And yet. And yet. The device had been used to kill.

Bradshaw couldn’t come to terms with it.

Someone would discover it eventually. Someone else. Without his help.

A movement below caught his eye. He saw Edison descend the wide stone steps of the building and head down the path that led to Fifteenth Avenue, surrounded and trailed by admirers for whom he was granting autographs as he walked. Among the group was the messenger boy who’d delivered the telegram, reminding Bradshaw he hadn’t yet read the message.

He pulled the telegram from his pocket and glanced at the sender’s location: Shoreham, Long Island, New York. The message read simply: TELL EDISON NOTHING and was signed N. TESLA.

Chapter Two

December, 1903

On a cold, dark, wet morning, as Bradshaw entered the picket gate before his home at 1204 Gallagher on Capitol Hill in Seattle, the front door flew open and his son came running out in his stockinged feet.

Bradshaw knew Justin’s exuberance had nothing to do with his father’s early-morning return home from the scene of an electrical fire. From the dark, drizzly sky, a few white flakes fell.

“Snow!” Justin shouted, his face turned up to the precipitation. Bradshaw swallowed admonishments about wet socks, understanding that to Justin snow was a rare and magnificent event. His own childhood in Boston had been blanketed white for days at a time, and he’d spent countless hours digging tunnels and building forts.

He gently prodded his son up onto the covered porch and they stood together, watching for flakes between the cold raindrops.

“Will it last?” At ten and a half, Justin stood nearly five feet tall, but his voice was still little-boyish, and he was able to give hope more credence than the factual evidence before his eyes. A few hours earlier, when Bradshwa had been summoned to the Ballard Power Plant, the flakes had been huge and prolific, covering the wet streets and the fringes of the smoldering building in a thin white sheet. By the time he had determined the fire’s origin to be a burned-out transformer, the whiteness had vanished. The temperature was nearly forty, he gauged, and not likely to drop.

“I’m afraid not, son. Best get your boots. I’ll walk you to school.”

***

Bradshaw believed the paving of Broadway, the main business street atop Capitol Hill, to be a vast improvement over the old dirt and gravel road, especially on miserably wet winter mornings. But his son and the neighbor boy, Paul, who accompanied them, bemoaned the lack of really good mud puddles and had to content themselves with small pools of rain that formed in the shallows of the concrete sidewalks and gleamed in the light of the arc street lamps. Justin was particularly expert at angling his rubber boot before stomping in such a way that he could aim the spray precisely on target. The target being Paul, who leaped out of the way just in time.

They arrived, damp but presentable, at the corner of Broadway and Madison where Justin and Paul were enrolled in the grammar school operated by the Jesuits of the Seattle College. Bradshaw watched them disappear inside, heard the final clang of the door as the last student arrived, sensed the noise of the waking city around and below him—streetcars, wagons, trains, pedestrians—but none of it concerned him. Nor did he move. He stood in the drizzle, chewing his lip, staring at the steps that led up into the church, knowing Father McGuinness was inside.

Since September, he’d postponed what must be done. He’d promised Missouri he would have a frank discussion with his priest while she was away. He now had less than a week until she returned home for Christmas. But his feet felt glued to the concrete.

A physician of homeopathy. That was her goal, and he had no doubt she would succeed. She’d passed with high marks the entrance exams to the Hahnemann Homeopathic College in Philadelphia without any sort of special preparation, demonstrating excellence in English, Latin, and algebra, and a respectable understanding of physics. One week. That’s all they’d had together before she’d left to pursue her dream. One week of looking into her eyes without hiding his love. One week of feeling like a much younger man, full of hope and happiness. After a decade of emotional isolation from anyone save his son, and more than two years of loving Missouri Fremont from afar, he felt as if he’d been broken open. He didn’t entirely like it. He felt vulnerable. Exposed. Foolish.

He’d come to the conclusion that romantic love, this sort of head-over-heels love, was for much younger men. While he was not yet forty, he was but a year and a half away from that milestone. If he were lucky and lived a long life, he was now middle-aged. He was a respected professor, private investigator, father. He’d established a solid, comfortable, secure life and he had no wish to do cartwheels down the street. Or cry like a child.

Yet he’d nearly done both. He’d been so choked up waiting with Missouri for her train at the station, he’d had trouble speaking, and he wondered at her ability to leave him. How could she? Did she not love him as much as he loved her?

“You could visit me,” she’d said in reply to his brimming eyes as they stood surrounded by other waiting passengers.

He’d said past the lump in his throat, “What if we married?”

It was not a matter foreign to them, but one they had not decided conclusively. There were variables, obstacles. Barriers. She searched his eyes, and he could see she was wondering at his meaning, questioning his asking when nothing had yet been resolved. She said carefully, “Are you proposing?”

“It’s a supposition. What if we married?”

She continued to look hard at him. “I have four years of schooling ahead of me.”

“What if we married …instead?”

“You’re asking me to give up homeopathy?”

“I’m not opposed to you being a doctor, I just can’t fathom living without you for years.”

“There are no homeopathic colleges here, you know that. And now that I know it’s my calling in life …it’s part of me. It’s bigger than me. The homeopathic approach to healing is being threatened.” She’d launched into a passionate speech about how the American Medical Association was determined to wipe out homeopathy, a topic now familiar to him, but he’d heard very little as he looked into her passionate amber eyes and silently begged her not to go. Her words penetrated his silent pleading when she said, “For me, it’s more than a calling, it’s matter of faith, of believing in something important and living in a way that supports that belief. Can you understand that?”

And there they were, at the crux of it. The reason why his question had been a supposition and not a proposal. He said quietly, “Indeed, I can.” He did not need to mention Catholicism.

She took a step nearer him, and all the people and noise of the platform became an insulating blur around them. She said without accusation yet with piercing directness, “Do you feel it would be a sin to marry me?”

“We’ve been through this.”

“No, we’ve discussed the laws of your church. I’m asking if you believe in those laws. Do you believe it would be a sin to marry me? Immoral? An act wrong in the eyes of what you call God?”

“Don’t we believe in the same God?”

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

“Missouri, the play you quote ends in tragedy.”

“Making it even more appropriate. I have no idea why anyone considers
Romeo and Juliet
the least bit romantic. It infuriates me. Two lovers choose death rather than follow their hearts and cast off the artificial bonds of family name.”

“You can’t be comparing family loyalty to religious faith.”

“Can’t I? Both demand members adhere to strict manmade rules at the cost of natural harmony.”

“You have no faith?”

“You know that’s not true. I have faith in love and kindness and decency and passion and the beauty of nature and the miracle of life.”

“You didn’t mention God,” he said.

“Didn’t I? We’re back to the rose again.”

“Couldn’t we deal with this issue simply? Without a complete reevaluation of the strictures of the Catholic Church?” Or, he thought, a complete upheaval of his understanding of the nature of God?

She said, “In other words, you want me to go through the motions and pretend to be Catholic to avoid the messiness of the two of us actually acting according to our true beliefs.”

“Yes. Could you?”

“You wouldn’t respect me if I did that.”

“I’d be willing to make that sacrifice.”

“I wouldn’t. Now, Mr. Bradshaw—”

“Yesterday, you called me Ben.”

“But today, I’m about to board a train and I can see from the look in your eyes and the direction of our conversation that you’re having a difficult time letting me leave, and I fear such an intimacy would send you over the brink. I know how you hate a public spectacle.”

He found himself once again unable to speak.

She said, “I know I am frustrating you, and I don’t want you to feel completely hopeless. So I’ll confess. I was baptized in the Catholic Church, my father insisted. It means nothing to me, but it means something to the Church, and it may prove helpful when you speak to your priest.”

Only now, he had no faith her confession would help. What good was a baptism if she no longer considered herself a Catholic, if she didn’t actively practice? Or believe?

And so he stood in the cold drizzle, stomach churning, feet planted, dreading the discussion he must have, a talk that could end in one of two ways. Either he would have to abandon the Church, or abandon Missouri. Food or water.

He was spared the dreaded conversation by Detective James O’Brien of the Seattle Police, who hopped off the streetcar and joined him on the sidewalk. In his usual garb, a long dark coat and Roosevelt hat, and with a friendly, freckled face and intelligent eyes, he always put Bradshaw in mind of a cowboy-priest. He was neither, of course, being both a city man and a married father of four, but he was Catholic. Besides Henry Pratt, he was Bradshaw’s closest friend. He knew about Bradshaw’s dilemma and sided with the Church. He thought Bradshaw should find a nice Catholic girl, like he’d done. Bradshaw had never intended to look for a girl, Catholic or otherwise. He’d been content as a widower. Mrs. Prouty, his stout and stern but devoted housekeeper twenty years his senior had been the only woman in his life until that fateful evening a couple years ago when he opened his front door to find Missouri Fremont on his porch.

O’Brien said, “Mrs. Prouty reported your calendar shows a class at noon today. Can you cancel?”

“I can call in a substitute if necessary.” Assistant Professor Hill was qualified to cover the class, but Bradshaw tried to not let his investigations interfere with his teaching. “What have you got?”

“You know Vernon Doyle?”

“Electrician at the Bon Marché?”

“He was found dead this morning in a show window, clutching a string of Edison’s Christmas lights.”

Chapter Three

The doors of the Bon Marché were supposed to open at eight a.m., but when Bradshaw and O’Brien arrived at the First Avenue entrance at half past, they had to elbow their way through a crowd of wet, disgruntled shoppers outside. With less than three weeks remaining before Christmas, shoppers had little patience for a police investigation that kept the doors of their favorite department store locked.

Bradshaw heard their grumbling only as a vague murmur. He’d begun his investigation the minute he’d heard Vernon Doyle’s name, mentally cataloging what he knew of the man: a competent electrician, mid-forties, balding, short and stocky. He worked two years ago at the tent factory that had gone up in flames, killing the manager. The fire had been set by a part-time employee, an electrical engineering student named Oscar Daulton. The very same student whose mysterious lost invention had drawn Thomas Edison to Seattle. And that connection unsettled Bradshaw.

Coming down Pike Street, he’d eyed the many telephone lines running to the Bon and the absence of lines from any electric utility. With a basement and three floors covering a total of nearly eighty-four thousand square feet, it was the largest department store north of San Francisco and west of Minneapolis. Several dynamos on the premises powered the elevators, carrier system, and electric lighting, and provided current to the telephone batteries and the sewing machines in Alterations. It was a city unto itself. As they drew closer, he could see that all the windows of the building, the outside signs, and lamps were dark.

When a uniformed patrolman unbolted the entrance door for Bradshaw and O’Brien, several female customers tried to push their way in, insisting they had toys to buy before the sale ended.

“Their Santa promised my Johnny a new wagon!”

The patrolman rebuffed them and bellowed above the growing complaints, “This is police business, have some respect!”

As they entered the Men’s and Boys’ Department, the oil lamp in the patrolman’s hand cast eerie shadows on the well-dressed mannequins. The air was rich with the scent of new fabric, and swags of holiday garland winked in the meager light. The overhead arc lamps and the incandescent lights in the glass cases were dark, but scattered oil lamps produced enough light for Bradshaw to read the enormous sign hanging from the ceiling: The Tunnel to Toyville. An arrow pointed into the depths of the store.

“Oh, you must be Professor Bradshaw! And Detective O’Brien? Thank you, thank you for coming!” Hurrying from the dark recesses was a tall gentleman in a crisp pinstripe suit and bow tie, an oil lamp swinging at his side. He spoke with perfect diction that nevertheless revealed his Swedish heritage.

“I am the store manager,” he said extending a strong, cool hand, “Ivar Olafson. The owners are away but I have sent them a wire to return at once. It’s a tragedy. A tragedy!”

“Is the lighting not working or has the power been turned off?”

“We, that is to say, our maintenance manager and chief electrician, Mr. Andrews, has turned off all the lighting. He left the power to the carrier system on, and the power to the elevators, as they are on entirely different circuits than the lights.”

Bradshaw had never met Andrews, but he’d heard of him and knew he was well respected. “I’d like to speak to Mr. Andrews.”

“Certainly! He is making an inspection of the wiring. Shall I send for him now?”

“Let him continue his inspection. I’ll see him before I leave.”

“Very well.” Olafson had an expressive face with bushy arched brows that lifted and lowered and contorted in ways that bordered on comical. “Please, come examine our situation and assure me I may turn on the lights again and open the doors to the public. If we don’t open soon, they will go to Leader’s or McCarthy’s or Frederick & Nelson!”

The show window was adjacent to the entrance. Because of the gathered crowd, Bradshaw had been unable to discern during his approach that oak-framed privacy screens of thick cream cloth had been placed to block the view into the window from the outside.

“Mr. Andrews said you may want to know some particulars about our window lighting system when you arrived, so I will tell you what I know. He, of course, will be able to explain in greater detail. All the windows have nearby electrical cabinets where fuses and switches can be accessed. Mr. Andrews lights the show windows at precisely seven each morning from a main switch box that is connected to the window circuits. Depending on the weather, the lights may be shut off again for a portion of the day, but they are always turned on again before dusk and left on until midnight. If it is Mr. Doyle’s night to work, he is in charge of shutting them off from the main. After midnight, enough light enters the windows from nearby departments that he can see well enough to continue working. The window lights were on for a short time this morning before the accident was discovered. At that time, I thought it best to shut off all of them in the entire store until we could be assured the wiring is safe. We were trained to do so, of course, but I never imagined an emergency would arise in which I would need to give such a command!”

Mr. Olafson had prepared the window for inspection with a half dozen bright lanterns. The base of the show window was raised six inches above floor level, and a low ceiling split the space in two, horizontally, providing a platform on which more merchandise could be displayed to the street. The four male mannequins in the lower display depicted a Christmas morning scene. A kneeling youth mannequin presented a gift to one made to look like a small boy; both wore warm woolen robes over flannel pajamas. Father- and grandfather-styled mannequins wearing smoking jackets and morning trousers watched from armchairs. Only the boy mannequin had been posed standing, for the ceiling was too low for the adult figures.

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?”