Pilfered Promises

by M. Louisa Locke

  “My, that seems quite a change. Do you miss running your own business?”

  Could this be a motive for Gower to be involved with the thefts? She’d heard a number of local businessmen complain about not being able to compete with the large stores like the Silver Strike Bazaar and the City of Paris. What if he’d been driven out of business and now was working for the person who’d done that to him?

  Gower chuckled. “Not at all. My own two sons took over the business four years ago, and I was beginning to feel like a fifth wheel. Wasn’t ready to just put my feet up and stare at the ceiling, though. Here I get the satisfaction of doing a job with a steady salary that I truly love. And since I am the chief buyer for this department, my wife and I get to do some of the travel we’d always wanted to do. Even took a trip to Europe for the first time last year.”

  “Yes, I can see how this position suits you,” Annie said.

  But what she thought to herself was that she should find some time to visit Miss Nancy Voss, who ran one of the largest furniture-manufacturing firms in the city. Find out what this indomitable old lady knew about Gower, his former business, and the furniture department of the Silver Strike Bazaar.

  Chapter 4

  “‘We estimate our losses from shoplifting at $10,000 a year,’ said one of the proprietors of a large East Side dry goods and fancy goods store yesterday.”––Chicago Daily Tribune May 11,1880

  Monday morning, November 15, 1880

  Livingston finally came to collect Annie just as Gower was asked by his head clerk, Miss Tolliver, to explain to a customer the insulating properties of their most expensive ice box. The Silver Strike owner took her up to his office on the fourth floor and succinctly laid out the reasons he believed that his business was being robbed.

  He said, “As I am sure you are aware, every merchant expects some difference between the estimated income and the actual income from goods sold. Often caused by damaged or lost goods, carelessness on the part of clerks in writing up the charges, cashiers making the wrong change.”

  “Or bookkeeping errors,” added Annie, nodding.

  “Yes, bookkeeping errors. I employ two regular bookkeepers. One tallies up the daily sales, the other generates the monthly and quarterly reports. I then check the work of both men.”

  Annie complimented Livingston for his firm grasp of business and accounting principles, something Annie had found lacking in many of her clients, some who seemed to operate more on intuition than anything else.

  He said, “I do what I can, but one of the most vexing kinds of revenue loss comes from petty theft. I wish I could say that the distressing incident of Mrs. Kemper this Saturday was an isolated event. You cannot imagine what sorts of petty pilfering goes on in a store this size. Respectable women who should know better are always trying to walk off with an extra pair of gloves or a lace handkerchief. They would dismiss their servants in a second if they found them engaged in a similar activity.”

  “How do you try to stop this sort of theft?”

  “Well, you will notice that we keep more expensive items visible but behind the counters so that a patron has to ask to have them brought out to look at more closely or try on. We instruct the clerks not to take their eyes off the goods until they are safely bought or returned to the shelves. But the more crowded the store gets, the harder that is to do. And in the days leading up to Christmas…with new hires…well, mistakes get made.”

  “But I gather that the losses have increased…more than just seasonal variations can explain.”

  “Yes.” He handed her copies of the monthly balance sheets for the past two years and said, “If these records are correct…and that will be your first task to determine…there has been a dramatic increase in the shortages recorded over the past two quarters, almost double what we suffered last year. The shortages last year varied between less than 1% and 3.5% of the total net sales…and the highest percentage came during the Christmas season. That is why I am anxious to clear up the matter quickly. We do at least thirty percent of our business between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. If we continue to sustain these increased losses, it could seriously undermine our year-end revenue.”

  “Do you know if the percentages of losses you were sustaining last year were normal for a retailer of your size?” Annie asked.

  “Yes. Although my local competitors haven’t been very forthcoming.” Livingston chuckled dryly. “Not that I would expect them to be. But I do have contacts in New York, Chicago, and Baltimore who say that the lower percentages are fairly standard.”

  Annie was really more experienced in doing accounting for manufacturers than retailers…and frankly retail operations on the scale of the Silver Strike Bazaar were rare anywhere in the nation. After the tour today, she didn’t doubt him when he said the store itself employed nearly 350 people and made over a quarter of a million dollars in sales last year. This was on a scale that only the largest boot and shoe manufacturers in the city approached. At the very least, this job was going to improve her understanding of modern retail operations. She just hoped she would be successful in discovering the source of his losses…and quickly.

  She said, “My husband mentioned the possibility these increases could be the result of some sort of organized gang of shoplifters operating in town.”

  “I did ask that Officer McGee who was here Saturday if the police had any knowledge of professional thieves recently targeting large retail establishments. He said he would ask, although this isn’t the type of information that businessmen share easily. Afraid it will hurt their reputations.”

  “I can see that. Unless the problem is simply with the bookkeeping itself, I agree that these figures suggest there is something serious going on in the store. I did bring some letters of recommendation…if you would like to see them before we go further?”

  When Livingston waved her offer away, Annie took out a single folded document from her purse, saying, “In that case, I brought the standard contract I usually ask clients to sign. My husband drew it up for me, but if you would like to have someone else look it over…”

  The old gentleman held up his hand while he quickly skimmed the short document. Then he took up a pen, dipped it in the inkwell at his desk, and signed on the bottom line with a flourish, saying, “Young lady, you have no idea how delighted I am to have Edward Stewart’s daughter working for me. He would be so proud of you.”

  “I hope you won’t mind sharing an office with my assistant, Miss Birdsoll,” Livingston said, showing Annie into the adjoining room. “She’ll be the one who can most easily find any files you might need, and what she doesn’t know about my business affairs and the Silver Strike isn’t worth knowing.”

  “I will be delighted to share an office,” Annie said, “if Miss Birdsoll isn’t inconvenienced by my presence. I promise to try not to get in her way.” She smiled warmly at the tall, thin woman who stood behind a desk the size of a billiard table.

  Between the pince-nez perched on her conveniently hooked nose and the grey-streaked hair pulled tightly back into a braided coil at the top of her head, Miss Birdsoll looked like she should be the no-nonsense head of a prestigious female academy, an impression that was reinforced when she came out from behind the desk, giving Annie a very firm handshake and saying, “I will be glad to be of assistance to Mrs. Dawson. Anything to help Mr. Livingston discover the miscreants involved in this terrible business.”

  “Now, now, Sophronia, we aren’t sure exactly what is going on. That is why I have hired Mrs. Dawson. But I will leave you two to get settled.”

  Livingston returned to his office, shutting the door behind him. He’d told Annie that until she had a chance to go over the books thoroughly, to double check they weren’t simply dealing with accounting errors, he didn’t want his two bookkeepers to know what was going on. So it behooved her to get this preliminary work done as fast as possible. She was glad she’d sent notes out this morning rescheduling all her afternoon clients. She would have the res
t of today to work here at the store in case she had any questions, but Livingston also gave her permission to take the reports home with her to work on overnight.

  Annie hung up her hat and coat and followed Miss Birdsoll over to the small desk outfitted with a new blotter, pens and inkwell, pencils and sharpener, and a stack of lined paper and folders. She was struck, not for the first time that day, how often the goods sold in the Silver Strike were used in the actual running of the business. The desks in Livingston’s and Miss Birdsoll’s offices, the linens on the tables down in the restaurant, the bathroom fixtures in the washroom she’d visited earlier this morning, and the desk set in front of her were all items she’d seen displayed for sale in the store. She wondered if she were to visit Livingston at his home if it would look identical to the home furnishings department she’d toured with Mr. Gower.

  “This will do perfectly, Miss Birdsoll,” Annie said as she sat down at the desk, spreading the monthly reports in front of her. “At some point I will need to look at the daily figures, but probably not today. And I may need to ask you exactly what is sold in some of the departments.”

  “Certainly, and you will find this changes over time since Monsieur Villeneuve and Mr. Livingston frequently decide to divide off a new department from an old when the volume of business gets too large. Very different from the days when the shoe department simply meant the three barrels by the front door that held men’s, women’s, and children’s shoes.”

  “Ah yes. And the notions department was a box of miscellaneous buttons on the counter. How long have you worked for Mr. Livingston, may I ask?”

  “Nearly thirty years. I started clerking for him in his first store in Sacramento, and I introduced him to his wife, a young cousin of mine who’d come out from Ohio to live with me. She’d always had lung trouble, and the family believed the western air would be better for her. After they married, it was her idea for him to move the store to San Francisco. She believed the opportunities for success would be greater here, and she needed to get away from the miasma of the Delta region.”

  “Am I correct that your cousin is deceased?” Annie was pretty sure she’d read that Livingston was a widower.

  “In 1870, when Robbie, Mr. Livingston’s son, was only fifteen. Such a shame she died so young, just a few months before Mr. Livingston made his fortune in the Comstock silver mines. I still miss her like it was yesterday. And poor Robbie was sent back east to boarding school, then Yale, then Europe for what he called the Grand Tour. Not good for a boy to be without his mother or father in those years. But here I am, nattering on about the past and keeping you from your work.”

  With a decisive nod, Miss Birdsoll returned to her desk and began busily shuffling papers, effectively dismissing her. Turning to her own papers, Annie wondered briefly if Sophronia Birdsoll was one of those women she admired who was content to remain married to a job rather than a man. Then again, maybe she’d hoped when her cousin died that she’d get to exchange one position for the other.

  “Mr. Livingston asked that I take you to see Monsieur Villeneuve at eleven so that he can show you around the dressmaking and millinery workshops, if you are amenable to that plan,” said Miss Birdsoll.

  Annie, seeing that the small clock on her desk said ten to eleven, was surprised at how quickly the morning had passed. But she’d made good progress, going through the monthly reports for the last year and a half and not finding any obvious accounting errors. This would give her a basis for comparison as she examined the reports covering the past five months, when the shortages began to escalate. It would also give her a good sense of which departments produced the most revenue and which ones seemed to suffer the greatest “shortages.”

  “That would be perfect, Miss Birdsoll. I am ready for a break from adding up columns of numbers.”

  She’d used the newest version of the Arithmometer, the mechanical calculator that Miss Birdsoll had thoughtfully put on her desk, which of course was also sold in the Silver Strike stationery department. But personally she found adding the numbers up in her head was faster. Maybe someday someone would invent a calculator that would combine the attributes of human mental swiftness with the reliability of a machine.

  Miss Birdsoll said, “He also would like to know if you would join him downstairs in the restaurant for lunch when you have completed your tour.”

  Annie said how glad she would be to do so, thinking that this would also give her a chance to ask a few questions about some of the staff and their salaries, including the two women listed as the heads of the workshops she was about to tour on the fourth floor. Miss Birdsoll had confirmed her guess that Madame Hortense Villeneuve, who was in charge of the millinery workers, was indeed married to Monsieur Villeneuve, the minority partner of the Silver Strike. But when Annie asked if Mrs. Marie Fournier, the dress designer who supervised the seamstresses, was another one of his French relatives, she’d gotten a decisive no…with no elaboration.

  Interestingly, the records she reviewed this morning showed that the Villeneuves, Miss Birdsoll, and Mrs. Fournier all lived in apartments in the fifth floor attic, evidently as part of their compensation. While it made sense that these very important employees have rooms in the store itself…since their work responsibilities probably started early and ended long after the store closed at six, she couldn’t help but think that those people living in the store would have the greatest opportunities to participate in any organized theft that might happen after hours. Surely Livingston would have considered this.

  She was looking forward to the tour of the workshops and starting to get to know Monsieur Villeneuve better. In addition to being the minority partner, he held the title of Superintendent, which she gathered meant he was in charge of the day-to-day operations in the store, including the ready-made clothing produced by the Silver Strike.

  She’d initially been surprised when Livingston told her that most of the fourth floor was taken up by the manufacturing of clothing––primarily women and children’s hats, men’s shirts, and women’s and children’s underwear, shirtwaists, suits, and cloaks. Made economic sense, though. This way Livingston would be able to keep down prices by making these goods at the store and cutting out the costs of middlemen. The lower prices, in turn, would attract women who couldn’t afford the time or money to produce every article of clothing they and their families needed, and while they were in the store, they might be enticed to buy a new pair of gloves, a Valentine’s day card, or that new-fangled coffee grinder they saw prominently displayed in the home furnishings department.

  Following Miss Birdsoll out of the office, Annie saw Villeneuve standing and waiting for them at the end of the hall. He was tall, with a thick head of glossy black hair swept back from a high forehead. His neatly waxed mustache, with jauntily upturned ends, accentuated his long aristocratic nose and the blinding white of his smile. Today, the Frenchman was wearing a pale pink rose in his boutonnière, which exactly matched the pink that alternated with stripes of silver in his vest, and his slender frame showed off the tightly fitted frock coat he was wearing, which was probably the height of fashion, if she paid attention to that sort of thing. Nate would look good in that style…

  “Madame Dawson, I am enchanted to make your acquaintance.” Villeneuve took her hand in his long fingers and kissed it in the continental style. He then said, “I am certain the estimable Mademoiselle Birdsoll has taken care of all your needs, eh? So we will permit her to return to her important duties, s'il vous plaît.”

  Miss Birdsoll’s smile at this dismissal could only be labeled as indulgent, and Annie thought that if the very proper and efficient Miss Birdsoll had succumbed to this man’s charms, they must be truly formidable. She would need to be very careful with Monsieur Villeneuve…since it was always possible he was involved in whatever was going on. Livingston had told the Frenchman the reasons for hiring her, arguing that because Villeneuve was minority partner in the store that he couldn’t possibly be involved. Livingston was pro
bably correct, but then there was the question of who Villeneuve might have told about why she was there.

  The Frenchman led her past the elevators, turning down a short corridor where he ushered her through a set of double doors into the millinery workshop. In the course of Annie’s new career as an accountant who also gave financial advice, she’d visited a furniture factory, a number of small boot and shoe workshops, two different print shops, an ironmongers, and a large steam-powered laundry. The large airy room she saw before her appeared qualitatively different from any of the other manufacturing establishments she’d visited.

  First of all, there was the sheer number of workers. At least fifty women and girls, some of the latter looking no more than twelve or thirteen, sat in small groups around a series of tables scattered around the room or stood at the counters that lined the walls. Even the largest boot and shoe firm she’d toured had no more than thirty employees working during any one shift.

  Secondly, she was struck by the comparative quiet, with none of the noise she’d encountered in other large factories with their steam-powered machines. Instead, there was simply the low hum of female voices, broken occasionally by the clatter of a foot-pedaled sewing machine as a woman ran up a seam in a piece of bright-colored silk.

  This lack of modern machinery was because, as Villeneuve was whispering in her ear, the Silver Strike Bazaar prided itself in producing custom-designed and hand-sewn hats. He pointed out that each group of five or six women, clustered around a single table, were designing hats following a different model that sat in the center of the table. These models had been designed by Madame Villeneuve, who “he’d lured away from the most prestigious millinery designer in Paris,” and they would be changed several times a day. In addition, under the close guidance of his wife, the workers were encouraged to vary the trimmings on the hats they were constructing, so each hat would be unique.