The Russian Hill Murders (11 page)

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Authors: Shirley Tallman

BOOK: The Russian Hill Murders
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Enough was enough! These far too personal—and embarrassing—statements had to cease. Straightening my skirt into neat folds, I looked him in the eye. “Mr. Godfrey, are we or are we not about to
attend a meeting involving matters of serious concern to your company?”
After a startled moment, he nodded. “Yes, but—”
“Then hadn’t we best use what little time remains to us to settle upon a strategy?”
“Yes, of course, you’re right.” Taken aback by my candid remark—ironically, one of the very qualities he professed to admire—Pierce took a moment to order his thoughts. “As I explained earlier, most of the vessels constructed on the Pacific Coast are two- or three-masted schooners. They’re not as grand as the down-easters built on the East Coast, but they’re more than adequate for the coastal trade, which constitutes a fair portion of our company’s business.”
“Yes, I understand.”
“In the past, we’ve purchased vessels from several local shipbuilders. Now, because of our planned expansion, we’re placing a more substantial order. That’s why we’ve approached Henry Finney, the largest shipbuilder in San Francisco.”
“I gather you’re not pleased with the prices Finney has quoted you.”
“No, I’m not. Yet he’s the only one who can fill our order in the specified time.” He smiled. “Which is why you’re here, Sarah.”
My returned smile was ironic. “To work a miracle, Mr. Godfrey? You don’t ask much of me.”
“No, not a miracle. A strategy. Henry Finney came over from Ireland on a packet ship, pockets empty, head crammed with ideas. He pulled himself up by his bootstraps, learned the shipbuilding business from the ground up, and eventually opened his own yard. He’s a ‘man’s man,’ a rough sort of fellow who’ll be taken off guard to find himself dealing with a woman attorney.”
I raised an eyebrow. “But you told Mr. Shepard you’d informed Finney about me.”
“Yes, that’s true, I did. What I failed to mention is that Finney thinks it’s a joke. He doesn’t believe for one minute that I’d hire a woman as an attorney.”
“I see,” I said, not entirely pleased. It was one thing to enter the meeting believing I was expected and quite another to discover I was being used as a ploy to throw Finney off guard.
I considered my options until our carriage halted in front of a weathered brick building at the waterfront end of Bay Street. Behind the structure I saw a vast shipyard, where a number of wooden ships were at various stages of construction.
“Are you ready?” Pierce asked, helping me out of the carriage.
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I am,” I replied, having just arrived at my decision. Regardless of Pierce’s
strategy
in hiring me, the fact remained that I was a licensed attorney. The happenstance of my gender was neither here nor there. I would ignore Pierce Godfrey and Henry Finney’s childish power plays and do the job for which I’d been trained, and for which I was now being paid.
I won’t deny that I was frightened. I was, after all, a woman entering a wholly man’s world. Nevertheless, I was determined to succeed. Paraphrasing a comment the tong leader, Li Ying, once made to me, it was sometimes necessary to make the opponent’s rules work for you.
Pierce and I entered a small room containing a single desk, behind which sat a middle-aged man I instantly identified as something of a dandy. Not only was he meticulously dressed—far more elaborately than his surroundings warranted—but everything about him spoke of fussy attention to detail. Each item on his desk was in its place and arranged just so, from his freshly sharpened pencils to the neat stack of papers from which he’d been working. At our approach, he looked up, then instantly assumed an expression of sympathy at the sight of my companion.
“My dear Mr. Godfrey,” he gushed, circling the desk to grasp Pierce’s hand. “I was so sorry to hear of the loss of your sister-in-law. Such a tragedy.”
“Thank you, Sloan,” Pierce said, looking ill at ease.
Pierce had explained in the carriage that, although Henry Finney was the driving force behind the shipbuilding company, Octavius Sloan managed the everyday running of the business with zealous control. Finney often joked that Sloan had more information stored in his head than in the office file cabinets. Pierce thought that Henry Finney stood somewhat in awe of Sloan, since the latter had spent a year or two at a university back east, while he’d received little formal education. In many ways, the office manager was treated more as a silent partner than a mere employee.
“Miss Woolson, I’d like you to meet Octavius Sloan,” Pierce said, introducing the thin, fidgety little man. “He’s been with Finney’s as far back as I can remember.”
“Twenty-two years, Mr. Godfrey,” Sloan put in proudly. “Since the day Mr. Finney first opened for business.” His face took on what I can only describe as a sly expression, as he turned the conversation back to Caroline’s death. “I realize, of course, that the relationship between you and Mrs. Godfrey was, ah, somewhat strained. Nevertheless, I’m sure you must feel her loss very deeply.”
Pierce’s face turned dark. I realized Octavius Sloan had overstepped some invisible line.
The clerk quickly recognized his faux pas and hastened to add, “I apologize, Mr. Godfrey. I assure you I did not mean to be impertinent. Naturally, it’s none of my concern.”
“No, Sloan, it isn’t,” Pierce told him bluntly. “We have an appointment with Mr. Finney. Please be good enough to inform him we’re here.”
I considered this surprising exchange as we were quickly, and
silently, led upstairs. Apparently I hadn’t merely imagined the hostility I noted between Pierce and his sister-in-law the night of the charity dinner. Once again, I wondered what had occurred between them to cause such animosity.
We were led into a spacious office on the third, and highest, floor of the building. The room had several large windows, two of which afforded a splendid view of the Bay and a busy wharf with long finger-piers pushing out into the water. A third window looked out over a bustling shipyard, where construction workers scurried over the skeletal spines of ships like ants on a pile of sugar. The poor immigrant boy from the Emerald Isles had done very well for himself, I thought.
Henry Finney was a short, genial man in his early fifties, with sandy-red hair beginning to fade with age. Twinkling blue eyes smiled out at us from a lined, weatherbeaten face. His speech was heavily flavored with a rich Irish brogue, his movements energetic and sure. He had the habit of waving his hands as he spoke, revealing thick ropes of muscles stretching in his neck and beneath his rolled-up sleeves.
“How are you, Mr. Godfrey?” Finney said, taking Pierce’s hand in a firm grip. Without waiting for a reply, he turned to me, his craggy face expressing surprise, not only, I surmised, at finding his client accompanied by a woman, but one moreover with a badly bruised face. “And who is this fine lady you’ve brought with you?”
“Finney, this is Sarah Woolson, an attorney with Shepard, Shepard, McNaughton and Hall. I’m afraid Miss Woolson met with an accident yesterday,” he added, as Finney continued to look curiously at my blackened eye.
Finney’s bushy red eyebrows rose. “Well, now, I’m sorry to hear that, Miss Woolson. Be that as it may, Mr. Godfrey, you can’t expect
me to believe this young lass is a lawyer. Come now, lad, introduce us good and proper.”
“I assure you it is nothing less than the truth, Mr. Finney,” I said, impatient to end this wearisome game. “I have been employed by Mr. Godfrey to represent his company’s interests in these negotiations.”
“Negotiations?” The Irishman’s eyes widened in what appeared to be genuine astonishment. “But we’ve already come to an agreement now, haven’t we, Mr. Godfrey?” He motioned for us to be seated at a table overlooking the Bay. “You said you’d be wantin’ four two-masted scows and two three-masted schooners, the last of the six to be delivered no later than fifteen months from signin’ the contract.” He grinned easily at Pierce. “Nothin’ could be more straightforward than that now, could it? And we’ve already agreed on the rates, which are fairness itself.”
Pierce started to speak, then caught my eye. “Miss Woolson has gone over your proposal, Finney. Perhaps she’d be good enough to give us her professional opinion.”
Several expressions crossed Finney’s face—skepticism that I could have an opinion worth listening to, impatience that his valuable time was to be so flagrantly wasted, then resignation that he had no choice but to humor his customer.
“Right then, Mr. Godfrey,” he said with a sigh. “But I’m tellin’ you flat out you won’t find a better deal than mine anywhere on the West Coast, and that’s a fact.”
Now that the time had come for me to play my part in this little drama, I found myself curiously calm. So far, Finney had fairly dripped Celtic charm. Despite that, I was sure that beneath the jocularity he possessed a shrewd mind and probably a will of iron.
“Mr. Finney,” I said in my most professional voice, “the terms you outlined for the purchase of these six ships are not satisfactory.”
Finney’s face, which was already a ruddy color, turned a decidedly darker shade of red. “What do you mean, not satisfactory? I’d be losin’ money if I set them any lower.” He regarded me with narrowed eyes, as if wondering how far he could go without antagonizing his prospective buyer. “No disrespect intended, Miss Woolson, but I’d hardly expect a woman to understand matters of such a confusin’ nature. And havin’ to do with shipbuildin’ in the bargain. Now, if you’ll let Mr. Godfrey and me get back to—”
“I have not yet finished, Mr. Finney,” I broke in, noticing Pierce trying to stifle a grin. “Surely you’re aware the British have started building steel-hulled ships. Those companies that have switched to steel are receiving very favorable insurance rates from Lloyd’s of London, far better, I might add, than the insurance rates charged to the wooden boats our country currently builds. It isn’t difficult to see—even for a mere woman—where this will eventually lead. Already, the down-easters are being replaced by the new steel-hulled vessels. Which means, Mr. Finney, that there is a surplus of the down-easters to be had at greatly reduced costs.”
Finney’s face grew darker by the minute. A shadowy glint in his eyes told me he was only too aware of the changes in shipbuilding taking place abroad.
“But they wouldn’t be new, nor would they be built to Mr. Godfrey’s specifications,” he argued. “They’d have to be completely refitted. And there’s the cost of sailing them around the Horn.”
“Yes, that’s true. But I understand there are many years of service left in the down-easters. Even with refitting and sailing them to California, my client would still realize a substantial saving over buying new ships at the prices you’ve quoted.” I gave the irate Irishman my sweetest smile. “Of course, we’d prefer to do business with a local merchant.”
“Price isn’t everything,” Finney all but exploded. “Reputation must be taken into consideration. The quality of our ships can’t be bested by anyone on the West Coast.”
“That may be, Mr. Finney,” I replied calmly. “The same cannot be said of the New England ships, which even you must agree are renowned as the cream of the American fleet. They are nearly as fast as the clipper ships, can be used for either local or international trade and, as I’ve pointed out, may be obtained for far less money than the price you quoted Mr. Godfrey.”
Finney seemed incapable of speech. He turned his furious gaze to Pierce, as if hoping a member of the male sex would be more open to rational thought than this demented female who had somehow found her way into his office. Pierce pretended not to notice the shipbuilder’s distress.
In a reasonable voice, Pierce said, “You’ve brought up some valid points, Miss Woolson. Certainly the possibility of purchasing some distressed down-easters must be taken into consideration.”
“Wait, not so fast!” Looking as if he might choke on his words, Finney said, “Perhaps my man was too hasty drawin’ up these figures. Give us a day or two to rethink matters. As you say,” he added, throwing me a sour glare, “it’s best to keep business close to home. Finney’s looks after its own. We’ll see that you come out ahead with this order, Mr. Godfrey, and with six of the finest ships to be found anywhere in the country in the bargain.”
Pierce was laughing so hard by the time we entered our carriage, he could hardly give my address to the driver.
“If I didn’t already have a luncheon engagement,” he said, wiping his eyes, “I’d take you to the finest restaurant in town. The look on Finney’s face when you trotted out all that business about the down-easters was priceless. By the way, how did you come to know all that?”
“One of my close friends is a newspaper reporter,” I said, not mentioning Samuel’s name. “You’d be surprised how quickly he can come up with even the most obscure facts. And this information was readily available.”
“I’ve heard about the British building steel-hulled ships, but I had no idea they were being given special insurance rates by Lloyd’s of London. You’re right, you know. When the wooden-ship owners have to start paying higher rates, it’s going to revolutionize the industry.”
He stared at me. The expression on his face made me acutely uncomfortable. “I know I’ve said it before, but you’re absolutely amazing!”

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