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

Read Edison Effect, The: A Professor Bradshaw Mystery (The Edison Effect) for Free Online Page B

Book: Read Edison Effect, The: A Professor Bradshaw Mystery (The Edison Effect) for Free Online
Authors: Bernadette Pajer
some questions about this morning.”
    Before sitting, Bradshaw quietly closed the door. Billy was eighteen, old enough that his mother could not demand a presence at his interview. With the door closed, Billy seemed to relax a bit, although he fidgeted with the tape, unspooling a short length, then reeling it back in. Up close, dark smudges were visible under his eyes, as if he needed sleep.
    “What time did you arrive at the store this morning?”
    “At six. I signed the register. We all do.”
    “Can you walk me through your morning, everything you can remember up until you found Mr. Doyle?”
    “I did what I usually do when I arrive, which is to see to all the window displays, replace any merchandise that was sold from them, and change out any merchandise that we no longer have in stock. I didn’t get to that window in the Men’s Department until half past seven, and it was then I found Mr. Doyle and called for Mr. Olafson.”
    “Did you see anyone unusual in the store this morning? Anyone unexpected?”
    “No, I can’t say I did.”
    “Did you see anyone near that window before you entered it?”
    “No, no I didn’t. I passed through the department a couple times this morning, collecting things I needed for displays. There wasn’t anyone on the sales floor near the window that I can remember. The stockroom was busy, and the clerks were at their counters doing inventory and cleaning fingerprints off the glass cases, but nobody was over by the window.”
    “Do you know anyone who didn’t like Mr. Doyle? Or who had been arguing with him?”
    “I didn’t work much with him. His shifts usually began just as mine were ending. He was a bit full of himself, but I don’t think anyone at the store had anything against him.”
    “Full of himself?”
    “He was always saying, ‘In the beginning, God said, “Let there be light,” then He created the electrician to distribute it.’”
    Bradshaw was familiar with the expression, except the standard version had God creating linemen, not electricians, to distribute light. Practical electrical work took intelligence, skill, and a certain amount of self-confidence that bordered on bravado, especially for the men who restored downed power lines after storms. It was an amusing quip coming from a swaggering lineman in climbing hooks who carried a fifty-pound crossarm up a pole with the ease of a mother carrying her child, but it could seem boastful from an electrician climbing a ladder in a department store to change out an incandescent lamp. Doyle’s job had been far more complicated and potentially dangerous than changing bulbs and trimming arc lamps, but the environment of the Bon Marché, with its ferns and finery, did not lend itself to such statements of bravado.
    “Do you know of anyone not employed at the Bon who had argued with Mr. Doyle?”
    “Funny you ask because I’d never heard anyone arguing with Mr. Doyle until yesterday. A man named Maddock, that attorney in town that represents Thomas Edison and has all those advertisements in the papers offering a reward for information about that lost invention. He was in the store last night, arguing with Doyle.”
    “What time?”
    “About nine, I’d say. No, more like half past. Mr. Doyle had just started his shift.”
    “You work long hours.”
    “They don’t make me. I love my job. I plan to be a manager one day of a place even bigger than the Bon. Why, do you know that at Marshall Field in Chicago—a store ten times the size of the Bon—their manager, Mr. Henry Gordon Selfridge, began as a stock boy in the wholesale house? If he can do it, so can I. I’m on salary at the Bon, not hourly. It was my idea so I could work as much as I wanted without costing them overtime.”
    “What did Mr. Doyle and Mr. Maddock argue about?”
    “I didn’t hear enough to follow. They kept their voices low, but I could tell they were angry. When Mr. Maddock left, he said to Mr. Doyle, ‘You know where to find me if

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