Pilfered Promises

by M. Louisa Locke

  Mrs. Dawson sighed. “I am sorry to have brought it up, Biddy. I know this is a loss for you personally. I am just feeling frustrated. You see, I was supposed to interview Mrs. Fournier yesterday, ask her these questions. But our meeting got postponed until tomorrow.”

  Kathleen gasped. “Ma’am. Maybe she knew who’s been stealing from the store? And had to be killed before she had a chance to speak to you!”

  “Kathleen was so upset…begged me to ignore what she’d said. But of course it was exactly what I had been thinking ever since Patrick announced that Mrs. Fournier was dead and it might be murder. That my request to interview her caused someone to silence her.” Annie tied a ribbon to the end of her braid and went over to her husband where he stood at the end of the bed.

  “Well, you need to stop thinking that.” Nate pulled her into his arms and kissed her on the tip of her nose. “A big leap from you wanting to question her about some problems with the cloth they were using and someone killing her. You don’t even know for sure that her death has anything to do with the Silver Strike itself.”

  Annie pulled away and said, “You mean that there could be a personal reason, completely unconnected to the store?”

  “Yes, and don’t tell me that isn’t possible since neither of us really know anything about her. Could be something from her past…before she even started working at the store. Some old family feud, a jealous lover?”

  “But…”

  “No buts.” Nate tugged at her braid. “You said she was out of the store the day before on some errand. Maybe wherever she went or whoever she met was related to her death…and it had nothing to do with her current responsibilities. She saw something or said something to someone who sneaked into the Silver Strike the next morning and killed her.”

  “Well, I guess that is possible. I mean with all those staff members coming into the front entrance and deliveries coming in the back. Easy for a door to get left open for a moment. Oh Nate, when I heard there were over forty people in the store, I couldn’t help but think what an impossible task it’s going to be to figure out who among them could have done it. But if it also could be someone from outside!”

  Annie sighed and turned to climb into bed, where she plumped up the pillows behind her so she could sit. She tugged her shawl around her more securely, since both she and Nate liked to keep a window opened slightly, even in the winter.

  Nate clambered in and put an arm around her, snugging her up close to his side, and said, “This really is a police matter, love. Certainly you can help provide them some insight into possible motives. But it’s their job to track down everyone’s movements.”

  “I am worried about telling Laura about what happened.” Annie put her head on his shoulder.

  “Because of how Mrs. Fournier died?”

  “Yes.”

  When Sergeant Thompson showed them where the body was found, Annie couldn’t help but think of Laura’s friend who’d died in a similar fashion less than a year ago. She wouldn’t be surprised if hearing of a death on a stairway would bring up bad memories for Nate’s sister, although Laura was a resilient young woman.

  “Well, she’s going to be very busy over the next three weeks with end of term papers, so maybe she won’t be interested in the details.”

  “Nate, we are talking about Laura!” Annie smiled at him. “You probably didn’t hear, but when she said good night she whispered that I could tell her everything tomorrow.”

  Nate chuckled. “I must say I am glad we got back early enough to spend some time with her and her friends. They seem like a nice bunch. It is good to see her happy again. And you were right, Mitchell and Seth Timmons hit it off.”

  “Stands to reason. They are closer in age. But it wasn’t just Seth who Mitchell liked.”

  Annie saw her husband’s confusion…dear man. Oblivious to the fact that the young medical student had fallen like a ton of bricks for Laura’s friend, the lively and very wealthy Kitty Blaine.

  She sighed, thinking what a long day it had been. She was so tired she felt achy. Thank goodness they hadn’t been called away until the meal was over…she didn’t know how she would have been able to look Beatrice in the face otherwise. Laura apparently had done an admirable job of hosting in their absence.

  Nate started to reach over to pinch out the candle beside the bed, and she put out her arm to stop him. “Before you put out the light, tell me what happened today with your divorce case. Did you find out anything more about Mrs. Inglenook’s half-brother?”

  “Oh heavens. That seems so long ago. I am going to make this short because we both have to get up early tomorrow. First of all, Sergeant Thompson was helpful, assigned a constable to look up O’Grady in the back files. Turns out he’d been arrested a couple of years ago. Minor vandalism and drunk and disorderly. When the constable pulled the records for me, I discovered the property he’d damaged was the Inglenook’s house. He threw a stone through a back window and resisted arrest. And it was Mr. Inglenook who came in the next day and told the police he’d decided not to press charges.”

  “Oh my, Nate. Did you ask your client about this?”

  “Yes, she said that she’d begged her husband not to withdraw the charges. Told him that she was frightened of her half-brother and thought if he went to jail he would stop harassing her. But her husband said he didn’t want to have to testify…too embarrassing. Instead he told her he’d paid O’Grady off and warned him not to bother them again.”

  “Well, that’s certainly useful information.”

  “Yes, because if I do have to call Mrs. Inglenook to testify, I can ask her about this…which will help her establish that it was unlikely that she would have confided in O’Grady. But even better, this morning, when I went to his lodging house and talked to his landlord, I found out that he’s been in the city for two weeks. The landlord said that he paid in advance with crisp new bills. And one night when he got particularly drunk, he told the man that he was due for a big pay-off at the end of this week. Also went on and on about how he hated his sister, who thought she was better than him, and that he’d have been willing to ‘do her harm,’ even if he wasn’t offered money.”

  “Wonderful! And the landlord is willing to testify?”

  “Yes, it seems he doesn’t like O’Grady much. Something about the man burning a hole in his best parlor’s carpet.”

  That made Annie laugh, and for the first time since Patrick had arrived at the boarding house, she felt her stomach unknot.

  `

  Chapter 13

  “A silk-house on Market street, between Second and Ecker, was entered by burglars on Thursday night and a large quantity of valuable silks carried away.”––San Francisco Chronicle February 13, 1880

  Friday morning, November 26, 1880

  “Please be seated, Mrs. Dawson.” Sergeant Thompson gestured at the hard wooden chair across the desk from where he was standing. “Thank you so much for taking the time to meet this early in the day. My first interview with staff is in an hour, and I am hoping some of what you’ve discovered will help me with my questions. I’ve asked Officer McGee to bring us up a pot of tea and a few biscuits from the restaurant downstairs. I hope that will be acceptable.”

  “Thank you, that will be quite lovely.” Annie was still feeling slightly unwell this morning, so much so that she’d not been able to get down any breakfast before coming to the Silver Strike. She also had a scratchy sore throat. The hot tea should help.

  She unbuttoned her navy coat and took out the folder of notes she’d brought with her. The fourth floor office the police were using was small and sparsely furnished, but welcome heat radiated from the floor register and the overhead gas fixture supplemented the weak light filtering in from the window.

  Sergeant Thompson bent over the desk to arrange a pile of papers, giving Annie a moment to study him. She had first met him over a year ago. At the time, she’d been working as a maid called Lizzie as part of her first criminal investigation. That w
as back when she made her living as the pretend clairvoyant, Madam Sibyl, and it had been very important to her that the police not know her real identity. She’d met him several times since then in the course of other investigations, but he never alluded to that first, rather embarrassing, meeting. That alone meant she viewed him favorably.

  He’d also once used a bloodhound he owned to help one of her boarders, Barbara Hewitt, when she was concerned about the disappearance of a neighbor woman. Now that Annie thought about it, he rather resembled his dog…with his long face and sad brown eyes. Otherwise, he was a rather unremarkable man in his fifties, with gray hair and a small undistinguished mustache. The very ordinariness of his looks was probably useful in fooling those he investigated. Nate said he was smart as a whip.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Dawson. Sir, where should I put the tray?” said Patrick McGee as he entered the office.

  “On the edge of the desk will be fine. Please pour Mrs. Dawson a cup. Sugar? Cream?”

  “Just sugar, please,” Annie replied. “But I will gladly have one of those biscuits. Good morning, Patrick.” Annie took the cup and small plate from the young policeman, smiling warmly at him.

  Thompson asked Patrick to sit and take notes, after ascertaining if Annie had any objections, and then requested that she give him an overview of her impressions of the Silver Strike and its employees. He said, “Even though only a few staff members from each department were working yesterday, it is possible that other employees might have sneaked into the store.”

  Annie gave him a brief description of the first floor departments and the two managers, who both had been present yesterday, relating the discussion the Silver Strike owners had over whether the heavy customer traffic on the floor might be one of the reasons for increased thefts.

  “However,” she added, “I have found something that might interest you. Bridget O’Malley, a young woman who works in the dressmaking department, is a family friend. And she told me that there are rumors that Cherry, one of the cash girls, often takes longer returning from the cashiers. Since Nate said you’d told him that sometimes cash girls fudged the receipt books, taking money or giving back too much change to a confederate, I checked the records and Cherry was hired four months ago. Just a little before the discrepancies in the daily tallies began to appear. There is some bad feeling among the other cash girls because a floorwalker named Rutgers has been letting this Cherry get away with flouting the rules.”

  As Thompson ran his fingers down the list of names of staff he was going to interview, Annie thought about how easy it had been to identify the floorwalker from Biddy’s description when she entered the Silver Strike this morning.

  Once she’d identified him, it was a simple matter to ask Jenkins for the man’s name. The manager looked at where she pointed, spit out the name, and then turned back to instruct a clerk on how to arrange a stack of pin cushions in a bed of holly. Jenkins was clearly a man who had more important things on his mind this morning than Annie’s investigation, something she understood as she’d looked around.

  Somehow, overnight, he and his staff had created a winter wonderland on the first floor. A twenty-foot fir sat in the center of the notions department, decorated with multi-colored glass balls and silver tinsel. Ropes of greenery wound around the columns, framed the mirrors, and ran along the edge of every counter. Displays of toys intermingled with the more prosaic stacks of sewing supplies, and bolts of cloth shot with red, green, and silver were draped in eye-catching arrangements.

  Thompson brought her back to the present, saying, “You said Rutgers is the name of this floorwalker?” He then nodded with satisfaction. “Yes, he was here yesterday so I will be interviewing him later this afternoon. McGee, you do what you can to find out about this cash girl, Cherry, but tread softly. We don’t have a reason to interview her, and I don’t want to spook her if she’s part of an organized ring of shoplifters. But she bears watching.”

  Annie then went on to tell Thompson that, even though Cherry and Rutgers could be responsible for some of the shortages from the second floor as well as the first, her main concern was the question of inventory going missing from the third floor, particularly in home furnishings and furs. She told him about Mr. Gower’s complaints, and that Robbie, Mr. Livingston’s son, had downplayed the seriousness of the problem by blaming it on a long-standing feud with the head receiving clerk, Flanagan.

  She handed Thompson a piece of paper, saying, “I have written down the names of the delivery companies that Silver Strike uses, although the wholesale companies and manufacturing firms might have their own delivery services. There is some correspondence that says there are goods that the companies say were sent but were never received. One explanation could be that these goods are being diverted by someone in the delivery company before even reaching the store. Alternatively, it could be they were delivered but not checked in properly by a clerk in receiving…whether by accident or intentionally. If by accident, then the goods should be somewhere in the basement. If not, then we can assume the purpose was theft.”

  Thompson said, “Thank you, this is very useful, Mrs. Dawson. I will be interviewing Flanagan today. I can ask him the names of the companies that delivered goods to the store yesterday morning. We will need to ask around and see if any of the men who work for Flanagan have money they shouldn’t…or debts they recently repaid.”

  “Sir,” Patrick said, “I think we should consider whether someone working for the store might not just be taking things out of the store at night. The goods could be delivered, checked in and put in the proper storerooms, or sent up to a department, but then go missing once the store is closed.”

  “That only works if there is someone involved with a key, who also knows the routine of the night watchmen,” Thompson said. “Do we know who has keys to the back doors?”

  Annie knew the answer to this, and she replied, “Livingston, Villeneuve, and Miss Birdsoll all have master keys that work everywhere in the building. The Villeneuves, Miss Birdsoll, and Mrs. Fournier also have keys to the door at the bottom of the stairs since that is the main way they come and go to their apartments on the fifth floor. Flanagan has the keys to the two doors in receiving. But there is a set of spare keys to those doors that hang in Flanagan’s office so that one of his assistants or a porter can use it to unlock these doors on the rare occasion when Flanagan isn’t there. His office is supposed to be locked at night, so theoretically those keys couldn’t be used for night-time thefts.”

  Thompson frowned. “What about the night watchmen? You’ve been checking on them, haven’t you, McGee?”

  “They don’t have keys to the outside doors. They come on duty before the store is closed and stay on until the next morning when the store is opened. If they discover an outside door is unlocked on their rounds, they are supposed to get Mr. Villeneuve or Miss Birdsoll to come downstairs to lock it.”

  “But if someone did have a key and knew when the night watchmen were elsewhere in the building, they could unlock the door and lock it back up with them being none-the-wiser,” said Annie.

  “Yes ma’am, which is why Livingston hired me to stay in the store at night to get a feel about how easy it would be to figure out their routines. Or see if there was anything going on after hours, because it is possible one of the watchmen is actually participating in the thefts. In my opinion, the night watchman who covers Sunday afternoon and then Monday through Wednesday nights is very diligent, but this means it would be easy to figure out when the basement is safe because he always follows the same pattern. He also tends to whistle while making his rounds…I don’t think he even knows he’s doing it…but it does mean you can hear him coming.”

  Thompson chuckled dryly then said, “What about the other one? The one who covers the store Friday and Saturday nights and half of Sunday?”

  “Well, he isn’t as diligent. Fact is he often falls asleep. He’s an older man, used to work as a delivery man for Livingston, who sort of let him retire
into the job.”

  Annie thought to herself that here was another one of Livingston’s staff who he saw as “family.” Another person who would break his heart if they were involved in the thefts, much less Mrs. Fournier’s death.

  Patrick continued, “The bad news, sir, is that on this watchman’s nights there are long stretches when the job just isn’t being done. The good news is that he is very inconsistent. No routine at all, so he might be actually harder to fool. And I must say he is a light sleeper. He woke up and came by a couple of times to find out what I was doing when I made too much noise on my own rounds.”

  The three of them briefly discussed the possibility that any wholesale thefts might have been suspended as soon as Patrick started working at night and word of Annie’s investigation got out. Now that the police were directly involved because of Mrs. Fournier’s death, it was even more likely that thieves would lie low.

  Thompson looked at his watch and said, “That’s a problem the police always face. One of the reasons we recommend that businessmen hire private detectives who can go undercover. But Livingston refused. Now it’s really too late.”

  “Well, if it means the shortages stop, at least during this Christmas season, Mr. Livingston will be pleased,” Annie said. “But none of this seems to help you in the question of who killed Mrs. Fournier…unless for some reason she was involved in the thefts herself. I guess the Villeneuves, Miss Birdsoll, and Marie Fournier, since they live here and have keys to the back stairs, could be accomplices…although I have difficulty imagining any of them doing anything that would hurt the firm in that fashion.”

  Thompson shrugged. “I’ve seen stranger things, ma’am. But I was thinking more that Mrs. Fournier might have accidentally discovered something. Come in late one night when the thefts were going on.”

  “But wouldn’t she have told Mr. Livingston right away or called the police?” Annie asked.