by Ciji Ware
Amelia shot a look of outrage at Thayer and bent to her right to whisper to her attorney. “I knew nothing of the new will before I returned to San Francisco! It was made while I was still abroad. How could I have influenced its outcome or told anyone else to do such a thing?”
Damler swiftly patted her hand as if he feared she would violate courtroom decorum with an angry outburst. He nodded toward the judge, indicating they should give him their full attention.
“And even if it were Charles McQuinty Hunter’s intent to leave his estate solely to the petitioner,” intoned Judge Haggerty, “her father, Henry Bradshaw, had a perfect right to guide female family members as to the management and control of their property. This he did when his wife was sole heir, and in my opinion,” he added with a grimace from the bench, “the role of fathers’ inalienable rights to guide their unmarried children are still valid under California law, despite any newfangled pronouncements by the State Legislature.”
So much for the new California Code affecting the rights of women!
Amelia turned to look at her lawyer, unable to mask her ire at these pronouncements from the bench. The judge’s words proved too much even for the staid John Damler. Her attorney rose to his feet with a forefinger raised to the ceiling.
“A point of order, your Honor. Mrs. Henry Bradshaw is divorcing her husband on grounds of habitual drunkenness and mismanagement of her funds. Furthermore, Miss Bradshaw is not a child, but a mature woman of thirty and therefore in no need of guardianship, especially by a known drunkard. Mr. Bradshaw has, as these letters reveal, shown no steady guidance whatsoever. Rather, he constantly indulged in strong spirits while sacrificing the Bay View Hotel in an all-night poker match with Mr. Thayer when Charles Hunter’s true heir—my client sitting here—was en route from abroad where she’d been studying architecture.”
Haggerty’s frown deepened, but her lawyer drew a deep breath and continued stating his client’s case.
“Since by virtue of Miss Bradshaw’s traveling on the high seas from Europe and across the country by train during the period Charles Hunter changed his will, my client could not possibly have exerted undue influence on her grandfather to change his will in her favor, and thus it would seem, your honor, that Mr. Bradshaw’s actions are therefore invalid and—”
“Are you proposing to take my place on this bench, Mr. Damler?” Haggerty asked, slamming the palm of his hand on top of Charlie Hunter’s disputed will. “For you certainly appear to be offering the court your own, misguided legal conclusions.”
The judge turned his sour expression on Amelia. “It is not this court’s business regarding the Bradshaws’ divorce proceedings, of which any decent Christian court takes a dim view, by the way. Nor is it the court’s purview how well Mr. Bradshaw does or doesn’t hold his liquor. The new Civil Code,” he added with undisguised disdain for the recent laws defining a female’s separate property, “would perhaps apply to Miss Bradshaw if the new will was witnessed by disinterested parties—but it was not.”
Damler brazenly interrupted. “But, Your Honor, Miss Bradshaw hadn’t spoken to or conducted written correspondence with the witnesses to the new will and could not, therefore, have exerted any undue influence over them, despite her acquaintance with them in years past. And if you are ruling out the new will, what of the mother’s separate property rights as the former heir, under the new code? Is Victoria Bradshaw not, de facto, now entitled under current California law, the management and control of her separate property, nullifying her husband’s reckless actions?”
The judge looked startled and J.D. shifted in his seat.
Haggerty’s eyes had become slits and his bushy brows drew together as he declared, “Mrs. Henry Bradshaw is not a plaintiff before this court. If you will look around you, Mr. Damler, Victoria Bradshaw isn’t even in these chambers.” He smiled faintly in Thayer’s direction. “In my opinion, Mrs. Bradshaw has deserted her husband and fled our beloved land, forfeiting her rights under the laws of this state and nation. Therefore, it is clear to me that Mr. Bradshaw’s legal rights as a father and guardian of an unmarried female allow him to proceed any way he wishes—his recklessness notwithstanding.”
“May I say, your Honor,” Damler countered, “that in this new century, I had hoped to have the court affirm, under the new Civil Code, that an intelligent, highly educated woman architect like Miss Bradshaw would be deemed as far more capable than a man known in the community to be a hopeless drunkard, hazarding the Hunter family legacy in an imprudent game of chance!”
Judge Haggerty was rumored to be an officer of the court installed by the notoriously corrupt Mayor Schmitz, along with Schmitz’s enforcer, Abe Reuf, and their political circle downtown—which included Ezra Kemp. Even so, the jurist appeared mildly discomforted by Damler’s impassioned declarations. Haggerty shuffled the documents for a few moments and cleared his throat a second time.
“Nevertheless, counselor, I find that these letters—notarized and attested to by no one—are not the legal equivalent of a Last Will and Testament. Secondly, in my judgment, this document purported to be Mr. Hunter’s new will meets the test of ‘undue influence’ since it was drawn up when Mr. Hunter could barely move or speak clearly, and signed by witnesses who are obviously partisan to the sole beneficiary, Miss Bradshaw. Furthermore,” Judge Haggerty declared with a glare in Amelia’s direction, “legal precedence in this state confirms what this court deems is the proper guardianship roles of fathers and husbands. Notwithstanding the new Civil Code, society would fall into chaos if the court didn’t adhere to this hallowed principal of hearth and home! Case dismissed.”
Amelia ducked her head, her cheeks hot with indignation as she strove to control her emotions. She couldn’t bear to look across the courtroom at J.D. Thayer or imagine the relief that must have washed over him. He had bested her this day and unquestioningly was glad of it. No matter that her parents and his had once been friends. No matter that she had lost her grandfather, the dearest person in her life, and had been robbed of a precious legacy by such outrageous double-dealing. She doubted anything pulled on the man’s conscience.
Outside the courthouse, her attorney appeared as upset as she by the outcome of the hearing.
“It’s simply wrong-headed,” John Damler fumed as they walked down the courthouse steps. “We could appeal, Miss Bradshaw, but I fear Thayer and especially Kemp, with his political connections, will put this case before the same political hacks with the same hidebound views, wherever we might file in this state.”
“You’re probably right. And besides, I can ill afford any more California justice.”
Her words were tinged with defiance when, in fact, she yearned to simply weep as a child. Once she paid her legal fees, she was virtually out of funds except for the pittance she had remaining from her trip home from France. All she wanted at the moment was to get as far away as possible from Judge Haggerty’s courtroom so she could rage to the heavens or pound a fist against a wall. Indeed, suppressed fury was the only emotion she would allow herself, for if she accepted the truth that the Bay View Hotel no longer belonged to her family, she feared she would behave like a madwoman.
She blindly handed her lawyer an envelope containing what was owing—which he refused.
Yet she insisted. “No, please, Mr. Damler. You put on an excellent case. I appreciate your efforts.”
Just then, J.D. Thayer strode down the courthouse steps. As he passed, he offered attorney Damler and Amelia a civil nod, hurrying in the direction of a large, open-air vehicle parked at the base of the granite stairs. Amelia endured the final indignity of watching Thayer turn the crank and then climb into the driver’s seat of her late grandfather’s pride-and-joy, a gleaming, midnight blue Winton motorcar.
She turned back to Damler and nearly shoved the envelope into the lawyer’s hands. “You must take this. Perhaps it will further your work in Chinatown.”
Amelia knew from her brief telephone conversation with Julia
Morgan that John Damler also represented Julia’s friend, Donaldina Cameron, the Methodist missionary who ran a shelter for young Chinese women desperate to escape the brothels flourishing mere blocks from Nob Hill. The irony was not lost on Amelia that Miss Cameron was the same person whom both her own mother and the mother of J.D. Thayer had once supported in her efforts to help the city’s poorest women flee forced prostitution.
And now, Thayer had apparently taken the comely Ling Lee as his mistress and recruited similar young Chinese women to serve in the gambling club—or worse. How could he have become such a blackguard? What would drive a man who had good looks, breeding, and intelligence to use these gifts to such ill purposes?
Damler clutched the envelop Amelia had forced upon him and flashed her a smile that transformed his earnest expression. “I will use the money to fight for justice for those poor beleaguered women, kidnapped from their homelands and brought here to do the Devil’s work. You’ve made me feel better already, Miss Bradshaw. And you? What will you do now?”
Amelia turned to watch Thayer, outfitted in goggles and duster coat, shift the motorcar into gear and swiftly pull away from the curb. She knew it was childish, but she felt like throwing rocks at his windshield. Her chest felt hollow, her heart empty of all emotion but a sense of far-flung blackness like the bay on a moonless night. She stared vacantly as her grandfather’s magnificent machine turned the corner and disappeared.
“What will I do?” she repeated faintly. “I will try to accept the unacceptable, Mr. Damler, and begin to earn my own keep.”
Chapter 3
The day following the hearing, Amelia sat gazing out the Bay View’s Turret Suite window at the persistent fog that was as leaden as her mood. She longed to fling herself upon the silk coverlet gracing the handsome bed in the next room and cry until she had emptied herself of all feeling—but she couldn’t even do that. She supposed she was numb, barely able to summon the energy to look at the gray moisture curling over the bay.
It was hard to countenance that she and J.D. Thayer were still housed under the same roof. To her amazement, she had returned to the hotel prepared to pack her belongings, only to find a polite note in her room from the hotel’s now-legal proprietor urging her to stay as his guest as long as she needed before moving to her aunt’s home across the bay in Oakland.
What’s worse? Thayer’s charity or his double-dealing…
The Ferry Building’s new clock tower at the foot of Market and California streets was partially obscured by this shifting blanket of gray. The structure’s cloaked spire had been the subject of several letters to Paris from her grandfather who was justly proud of San Francisco’s emergence as an important seaport, opening to the vast Pacific.
Amelia ached with the sense that the loss of Charlie Hunter was now a raw wound that simply would not scab over. When she hadn’t slept following yesterday’s court hearing, she poured over her grandfather’s missives, running her fingers over his spiky penmanship to try to recapture his presence and gain some intuition of the actions he would want her to take next.
From Thayer’s point of view, she supposed she could understand why he hadn’t given an inch or proposed any sort of compromise—because neither had she. She felt like the proverbial immovable object that had slammed into an irresistible force.
By early the next morning, the fog finally lifted. Amelia forced herself to face facts. She had no choice but to be the one to give way. She couldn’t impose on Thayer’s pragmatic hospitality forever. Too many loyal hotel retainers of her grandfather’s providing for her comfort at the Bay View would probably pay the price at Thayer’s hand if she stayed much longer.
And besides, she had a profession to ply and a burning desire to make use of all that she had learned these last, arduous years. In the end, she had to admit that her own ambition got the best of her, not J.D. Thayer’s possession of her lost legacy. It was time to move beyond grief and resentment and begin her life over again.
She swiftly packed her trunk and portmanteau and ordered Grady O’Neill at the front desk to have it sent to her aunt’s bungalow on Thirteenth Street in Oakland, on the east side of the bay. Then she dressed and took the elevator to the lobby, vowing to make no public farewells, lest she embarrass herself or the staff by dissolving in tears.
Long before most guests were awake, Amelia marched through the lobby, seeing her profile reflected in the glittering succession of gold-framed mirrors that lined the walls. An unpleasant scent of sauerkraut permeated the hallway, the hallmark of the new chef that had replaced the wonderful Mrs. O’Neill, Grady’s wife and long-time hotel cook.
Amelia was dismayed to spot J.D. Thayer talking to Grady himself, along with a slender Chinese woman whom Amelia already knew was Ling Lee, Thayer’s Chinese concubine.
“Miss Bradshaw!” he hailed her across the lobby. “I see you’re—”
“Leaving,” she abruptly finished his sentence, continuing her pace.
“Can we call you a driver to—”
“The cable car stops at the corner,” she said between clenched teeth. “Grady has kindly seen to my luggage—which I hope will not jeopardize his future in any way,” she added, and realized how peevish her words rang.
“Of course not,” J.D. replied shortly. “He’s a good man, Grady.”
“The best… as are all my grandfather’s employees. I hope you’ll remember that, Mr. Thayer.”
And before her despised adversary could respond or defend the changes already wrought at the Bay View, she marched through the swinging brass-framed doors with a brief, stricken nod to Joseph, the hotel’s longtime doorman. Barbary, her grandfather’s faithful hound, stood sentinel beside the hotel’s majordomo, and when he wagged his tail at her passing, she nearly burst into tears.
Amelia virtually sprinted down Taylor Street, hardly glancing at the Bay View’s newest competitor, the spanking new Fairmont Hotel crowning the hill and due to open its doors to the public soon. She boarded a cable car poised on the summit of Nob Hill and blindly sat down on the hard, wooden bench, her chin on her chest so no one would see the moisture streaming down her cheeks.
Nothing in this world or the next could make her turn around to watch the Bay View Hotel receding from view.
***
Number One cable car squeaked and creaked down California Street past the quiet world of Nob Hill in early morning, toward the Ferry Building at the foot of the steep incline. The few people out at this hour went about their business in the usual fashion, yet to Amelia, everything was changed.
As far as she’d heard from Grady, no one—including Thayer or Kemp—had caught even a glimpse of Henry Bradshaw since the day of Amelia’s fiery arrival at the basement office of the Bay View. Brushing the moisture from her cheeks with her gloved hand, she finally raised her head to look out at the sapphire and green water at the foot of California Street, trying to convince herself that she hoped the father whose drunken behavior had caused her mother and her so much heartache had drowned himself in San Francisco Bay.
By quarter to eight, she had trudged from Market Street to the office building on Montgomery where Julia Morgan had established her fledgling architectural firm barely two years earlier. Nothing prepared her, however, for the small room on the ninth floor where slanted drafting boards were crammed into a space that could barely accommodate three normal-sized desks. The place had nothing in common with the airy ateliers she and Julia enjoyed while studying at L’École. Those featured large, open spaces and floor-to-ceiling windows to allow for natural light and a glimpse of the rooftops of Paris.
The glass door to Julia’s minuscule inner office was guarded by a table where a secretary pounded the keys of her typewriting machine.
“Well, my stars!” the young woman exclaimed, scrambling to her feet. “Amelia Bradshaw, you are a sight for sore eyes!” Blonde and pretty as a milkmaid, Amelia’s former college classmate Lacy Fiske rushed to embrace her. “Dear, dear Amelia,” the young woman added wi
th burbling sympathy, “I cannot tell you how sorry I am about the loss of your grandfather and what’s happened at your family’s hotel.”
Amelia gazed with surprise at the buoyant Miss Fiske. Lacy had been the person least likely of all the women she’d known at Berkeley to end up as an office mate. Lacy had changed her field of studies so often during college, Amelia didn’t actually know which department at Berkeley had ultimately granted her friend a degree. She was pleased, however, to see that the younger woman had finally settled on office administration.
Lacy reached out and gently patted Amelia on the shoulder.
“Your grandfather was such a dear man. I have so many happy memories of parties at the Bay View when we were in school.”
As usual, Amelia found herself fighting tears whenever someone spoke kindly of Charlie Hunter, the only person in the world that had stood between herself as a little girl and the utter chaos of her parents’ disastrous marriage. Lacy sensed Amelia’s distress and immediately changed the subject.
“I can’t believe it. Since we saw each other last, I’ve finally learned to type—can you fancy?—and you’ve become an architect!” She eyed the empty desks. “I suppose you’re accustomed to being around men all day, but I must admit, it still takes getting used to.” She lowered her voice a notch. “I’d better be quiet. The thundering hordes’ll be here any minute.”
Amelia glanced over Lacy’s shoulder at Julia, hunched over her desk in the inner office. “How long have you worked here?”
“Since the day the firm opened,” Lacy said proudly. “Julia was terribly long-suffering in the beginning while I was taking my typing course, but here we all are. Isn’t it grand?” she enthused. Then her face fell. “How thoughtless of me. I can only imagine how hard everything’s been for you since you came home.”