Princess of the 19th Century Department Store - Chapter 31

Forty years ago, across the Channel in France, golden sunlight broke through the clouds and spilled over a lush green garden. That was where Mr. Tarr was born.

He came into the world in warm May, on a country estate in Provence steeped in the fragrance of lavender.

His mother was a marquis’s mistress. After giving birth to him, she received a modest allowance and an antique. Later, both the boy and the antique were sent across the sea to be raised by relatives in cold, damp England.

The couple had no children of their own and treated him like a son. From the time Tarr entered his teens, his foster father took him along to help run the family’s tea shop in Whitechapel.

Tarr inherited every bit of the older man’s eye and skill for choosing tea. He managed the business conscientiously, won the trust of its investors, and expanded the little shop one step at a time. It had grown into one of the largest and most successful establishments on all of Whitechapel’s commercial streets.

Tarr could safely say that he had spent his entire life in the company of tea. He understood the plant better than he understood his own wife.

And this was the first time anyone had ever looked him in the eye and solemnly declared that there was something wrong with his goods.

His expression turned serious at once. He drew his brows together and focused.

“The aroma is wrong? Impossible!”

He scooped up a handful of black tea and held it beneath his nose. It smelled no different from usual.

Daisy, perfectly composed, lifted some leaves and rolled the wiry strands between her fingers.

“The large-leaf Assamica variety, grown in the valleys near the Brahmaputra River, has only two picking seasons each year—March through May, and June through September.

“The first flush is the finest. Its taste is fresh, lively, and full-bodied.”

She made a show of smelling the pinch of leaves in her hand.

“But this tea has a faint malty scent. It’s obviously from the second flush. Haven’t you noticed?

“The tea I bought on my last two visits was still first flush. Did your broker cheat you this time?”

Daisy sounded utterly certain. There was not a trace of doubt on her face, and every word came with a reason behind it. Only her tone was infuriating.

Yet Tarr’s confidence, built over decades, would not allow him to question his own nose.

Could half a lifetime in the tea trade truly have left him less knowledgeable than some little girl who had appeared out of nowhere?

He bent over the leaves and smelled them again. The more he tried to deny it, the more he seemed to detect an elusive trace of malt.

But Tarr knew perfectly well that this batch had not just arrived in London.

His story about the shipper being held up at the docks for several days had been nothing more than an excuse to raise the price. Bulk suppliers all had powerful backers. What customs official would dare detain them over a trifle?

The tea had been stored in a dealer’s warehouse south of the Thames. Tarr had placed one large order and collected it in several smaller shipments.

Wait.

He knew where that malty smell came from.

Realization dawned, and a confident smile spread over Tarr’s face.

“No, no, no. You’re wrong—completely wrong!

“This is first-flush tea. There may be a malty smell, but it doesn’t come from the tea itself!”

Daisy folded her arms, apparently curious. “Then where does it come from?”

“There can only be one answer—the warehouse! The tea dealer’s warehouse!

“It stands right beside two breweries. That’s where the smell seeped in.”

Daisy nodded, pursing her lips in thought.

“I see. But didn’t this batch just arrive? How long could it possibly have sat in a warehouse to pick up such a strong smell?”

Tarr’s cheek twitched.

He had been so eager to prove this ignorant little girl wrong that he had let the truth slip.

After fumbling through a couple of excuses, he muttered, “I’ll knock two pence off. But this is hardly a problem. It won’t affect the flavor.”

Daisy had already obtained the information she wanted. With a shrug, she reluctantly agreed.

“Very well. Deliver three barrels of Assam and three of Darjeeling to my house before tomorrow morning…”

…

An hour later, close to noon, the fine misty rain still came and went. Fred pedaled while Daisy sat inside the carriage, and they returned home on schedule.

With one competitor gone from the neighborhood around Clark Street, all the customers it had once attracted were now flowing into Nash Grocery.

Her grandfather had just finished a rush at the counter. When he saw the two of them arrive with the new vehicle, he came outside and inspected it from front to back.

At first, he thought it was merely a sensibly designed pedal tricycle—acceptable, but nothing remarkable.

Then he heard the price they had paid, and the longer he looked, the more magnificent it became.

“Now this is a fine vehicle!” Mr. Nash declared, beaming as he stroked his chin. Then something occurred to him. “Oh, right! The agent wrote back.”

They locked the tricycle and went inside. Mr. Nash took a sheet of good-quality stationery from behind the counter and handed it to Daisy.

She sat down in the kitchen, opened the letter, and unfolded the page.

The agency manager wrote that the premises Lobit had rented would not be ready for another week.

The rent remained forty-five shillings a week, or nine pounds a month, increasing by five percent each year. The lease would be renewed quarterly.

There would also be a service fee of six pounds per quarter, payable before the lease expired.

If the price was acceptable, they should write back to arrange a time to sign. The manager would bring the contract from his office on Whitechapel’s commercial street.

Daisy went straight behind the counter for pen and paper and wrote her reply.

Then she took out her notebook and turned to an inconspicuous page. Lifting an old newspaper clipping that had stuck to it, she crossed names from a list four or five lines long until only one remained.

Malagor Tea Trading Company.

There were dozens of medium-sized and large tea-trading companies in London. Once she eliminated those that did not deal in black tea, only twenty or thirty remained.

She removed the most exclusive firms and those with the worst reputations, leaving a little over a dozen. Daisy had investigated every one of them.

She knew which districts housed their warehouses, which buildings in the City of London contained their offices, how large the firms were, and even who owned them.

Of all those tea merchants, only one had a warehouse beside several breweries.

Getting the name of Tarr’s supplier had never required any special trick.

All Daisy needed to do was find some excuse to criticize his goods. Out of habit, Tarr would search the real circumstances for an explanation, then eagerly brandish it to refute her mistaken judgment about the tea itself.

She could have accused the leaves of smelling strange, of being damp, or of having ugly, uneven strands. It would have made no difference.

In the end, he would have handed her the truth.

Malagor Tea Trading Company’s office occupied the third floor of Balton Commercial Building, at 12 Lothian Lane in the City of London.

Now all she had to do was write and make a few inquiries.

Viewed through Daisy’s capitalist eyes, this letter was the most significant one she had written since entering this world.

Until now, Nash Grocery had been a tiny shop in the tertiary market, bringing up the very rear of the industry’s chain.

But the moment this letter was posted—whether or not the proposed partnership succeeded—the shop would have crossed the threshold into the lower reaches of the secondary market.

In the economy of this era, the upper end of the primary market consisted of the governments that controlled the places of origin, as well as the British government itself.

England’s great international trading houses and shipping companies occupied the lower end of that primary market, coming and going through trading posts in the producing regions.

Companies like Malagor Tea Trading held a special position. They linked the primary and secondary markets, moving between the two and doing business on the London exchanges.

Such firms assumed none of the risk at the place of origin. They bid for shipments and covered the freight. Once the goods arrived, they sorted them by quality, stored them in their own warehouses, and sought large wholesalers in the secondary market to distribute them.

Middlemen who made fortunes without producing a thing possessed enormous pricing power and influence in every specialized trade.

They were the gatekeepers of the capitalist world—and the busiest players at the table.

As far as Daisy was concerned, the rules of this game remained the same in every age and every country.

Tea, alcohol, and tobacco were the three great mountains of retail. No one in the trade could go around them. They had to be climbed, one pass at a time.

She put the two letters in order, carefully sealed them with wax, pasted on the stamps, and set them aside to post that afternoon.

In the blink of an eye, it was noon, time for the family’s simple lunch. The kitchen was filled with the smell of roasting sausages.

Mary kept coming out to call Fred, who was cleaning and oiling the tricycle by the door, and tell him to come in and set the table.

Daisy went into the kitchen first, ate a little to fill her stomach, then returned to relieve her grandfather.

Business was excellent that day. Customers arrived one after another, and someone had to watch the counter at every moment. There was no longer time for a proper, uninterrupted break.

Her grandfather had handled the shop alone all morning, working with great care and following every rule she had established. When he turned over the accounts, the morning’s revenue came to five pounds—an excellent result by any measure.

It proved that there were no hopeless employees, only managers who did not know how to manage.

Daisy first filled a new order her aunt had sent from Camden that morning.

When Fred finished eating, he carried basket after basket of goods onto the new tricycle and set off for Camden.

This time, Daisy asked him to discuss another arrangement with her aunt. She wanted her aunt to act as a sales agent for their prepared foods in exchange for a five-percent share of the profits.

It would not be much at first, but once the operation grew, it could become a respectable sideline income.

No matter how close the relative, labor needed a clear price before people would put their hearts into the work.

After lunch, Mr. Nash returned to his station behind the counter, while Daisy sat nearby and carefully drafted a purchasing plan for the new shop.

She continued writing letters as well, preparing for the renovation, the business license for the new address, tax registration, and all the other procedures to come.

She also needed to register a trademark for the prepared foods her family produced, laying the groundwork for future expansion.

That meant finding a solicitor who handled such matters and offered commercial legal advice. The solicitor could prepare all the documents required for the various applications and save Daisy a great many brain cells.

…