Free The Cliff House Strangler by Shirley Tallman Page B

nose in the tawdry tabloid, and began to read—
avidly
. Which brought me up short. Upset as I was about Samuel’s choice of reading material, I had never seen Eddie exhibit even a fraction as much interest in the Rollo books, despite their popularity. In fact, coaxing him to read the Jacob Abbott series was becoming a decidedly unpleasant chore.
    “If you want to teach someone to read, Sarah,” Samuel said with maddening superiority, “you must first capture their interest.”
    Directing a jaunty salute at Eddie, my brother gave me a wink and sauntered cheerfully out the door.
     
    I confess I spent the remainder of the afternoon creating busywork for myself, trying to keep alive the fading dream that I could make a go of my own law firm. Two months earlier, I had marched into the office of Joseph Shepard, senior partner of Shepard, Shepard, McNaughton and Hall, and with profound delight had tendered my resignation. My erstwhile employer had turned very red in the face, torn between relief that I would be out of his life and disbelief that I would relinquish my position in his prestigious law firm. He’d sputtered that no reputable law firm in the city would hire a woman attorney, a warning that caused me little concern, since I planned on establishing my own law practice.
    Famous last words, you might say, and if you did, you would be correct. Seven weeks after opening my Sutter Street law office, I had yet to entertain one client—one
paying
client, that is. So far, the only business I’d conducted had been for several of Eddie’s friends (who had paid for my services with pennies, a deck of playing cards minus all four aces—which, I feared, might still be lodged up the boy’s sleeve—and some moldy cheese), along with a drunken derelict whowas determined to sue a local saloon for refusing to serve him any more whiskey until he paid his bill. If it were not for the money generously given to me by Li Ying, an infamous and mysterious Chinese tong lord, following the Russian Hill murders, I would have been forced to close my office door weeks ago.
    As it was, my remaining funds would last but four more months, and then only with the most rigid budgeting. But what bothered me the most about failing was proving all the naysayers correct. My eldest brother, Frederick, was the most vocal of my critics, predicting not only my social ruin if I continued to act upon this insane idea, but also the end to any expectation I might entertain of contracting a suitable marriage. Since I had no desire to marry—a state that, even in 1881, places a woman firmly under her husband’s control—I’d ignored Frederick’s pessimistic ranting. So, too, had I disregarded Robert Campbell’s protests that only a fool would leave the premiere law firm in San Francisco to open her own office. Especially a woman attorney!
    The very thought of being forced to eat crow before either of these detractors was enough to make me see red. Which, of course, got me nowhere. Heaving a deep sigh of frustration, I berated myself for wasting valuable time and energy worrying about what might or might not happen four months from now. “Sufficient unto the Day” must become my motto, I vowed.
Defeat
was a word I could not and would not allow to enter my vocabulary!
    And so I spent the remainder of the afternoon reading the latest issue of the
San Francisco Law Journal,
an informative periodical that had commenced publication some three years previous. So immersed was I in an article concerning the law of negligence that I started half out of my chair when I was interrupted by a knock on my door. Opening the gold timepiece pinned to the bodice of my dress, I was taken aback to see that it was going on six o’clock. Assuming it was Fanny Goodman inviting me downstairs for a pot of tea before I left for the day, I called for her to enter.
    To my surprise, it wasn’t my neighbor who timidly entered theroom, but a woman I had never seen before. She