Monday morning – another day in the office. But for the first time since she started work at the paper, Poppy had a spring in her step. She was doing what she loved: following down leads on a story that would hopefully bring the bad fellas to justice and right a fair few wrongs. The only problem was, she wasn’t supposed to be doing it.
Fortunately, Paul Saunders had been seconded to the crime department to cover for the reporter who was off sick, so at least she didn’t have him leering at her across his typewriter. Poppy shuddered at the thought of it.
Her first job for the day was, as usual, to read the morning edition. The lead was about New York dock workers objecting to a pay cut and threatening to close down the ports in strike action. So, it was happening this side of the Atlantic too… Then there was a report from Paris where German representatives of the Weimar Republic had apparently balked at the $32 billion reparation demands of the Allied powers. There was talk too of it leading to unrest and even revolution, once again threatening the peace of Europe. Dear God, we’ve just got out of one war; let’s not start another. There was an intriguing story from Chicago about a young woman called Marie Vance who was part of a love triangle. She died suddenly of apparently natural causes but her body was later exhumed and an autopsy revealed she might have been poisoned with nicotine. The coroner in Chicago was urging the police to open a murder inquiry.
However, here in New York there were no further updates on Prince Hans von Hassler. So the coroner’s findings had not yet been released into the public domain. Rollo would be checking the copy for the next edition; hopefully it would be in there. They had agreed to meet up at lunchtime to swap notes.
Her next job was to check the crime report to see if there had been any overnight deaths of public figures: none. There was, however, mention of the body of a young woman that had been found in a tenement house in the Garment District. The police were still trying to identify the body, as none of the neighbours seemed to know her name. She had died of “natural causes” – whatever that meant. The poor girl. Anonymous in life. Anonymous in death. It was further noted that she was believed to be a prostitute. Poppy doubted it had anything to do with her case but she would ask Elizabeth about it when she next spoke to her.
Poppy spent the next two hours going through the long list of “about-to-turn-seventy” public figures and wrote up three draft obituaries.
At twelve o’clock she closed the file and checked to see if any of the other journalists were watching her. There was only the young telegram operator and an older man who was dictating a telegram to him.
“Anyone mind if I use the telephone?” she asked. “I need to fill in some gaps in an obit.”
The journalist waved her away, seemingly annoyed that she had interrupted him. The telegram operator ignored her. She shrugged, taking the non-response as permission, and made her way to the office telephone.
She sat down at the telephone desk with her notebook and pencil, gingerly moving a cup with cigarette butts festering in dregs of coffee onto the windowsill behind her. Then she picked up the earpiece and spoke into the receiver. She lowered her voice so the other journos wouldn’t hear what she was saying, but spoke loud enough for the operator to understand her: “Carter Shipping office, please, New York City.”
She waited a few moments and listened to the whirrs and clicks of the exchange, before a female voice declared “Connecting” and a male voice answered, “Carter Shipping, how may we help you?”
“Ah, good day. I wonder if you can help me. I travelled recently on the Olympic and I am trying to get hold of a fellow passenger. We met briefly and agreed to get together for lunch here in New York. But, well, I seem to have lost her contact details. Might you have them, please?”
“Well,” came the reply, “I’m sorry, ma’am, but we don’t usually give out our passengers’ details. We honour their privacy.”
Poppy had prepared herself for this. “I understand, completely, and I’m grateful you take this sort of thing so seriously. However…” she allowed her voice to crack a little, “… I – I just want to thank this lady for her kindness. You see I was upset about something – the recent passing of my brother – and she was so kind to me. Please, could you make an exception, just this once?”
There was an uncomfortable silence on the other end of the line, followed by: “Well, I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am. I’ll see what I can find.”
“Oh, thank you!” said Poppy, trying not to sound triumphant. “The name is Mimi Yazierska… No, I’m not sure how that is spelt… I think it starts with Y-A-Z, but it could also be Y-I-Z. Can you check both? Thank you… Oh, and she was travelling with her younger sister… No, I don’t know the name. But it might help you if there are two Yazierskas together – easier to spot, perhaps?”
The man asked her to wait while he found the correct ship’s manifest and muttered to himself as he went through the list. Poppy imagined him running his finger down the column of hand-written names.
“Aha! I think I’ve got it, ma’am. There is a Miriam Yazierska – you were right, Y-A-Z – and an Esther Yazierska who embarked at Southampton. Do you think that might be them?”
Miriam… Mimi… it has to be. “Yes, that sounds like the right lady. Foreign. Russian perhaps…”
There was another pause and then: “Ukrainian. From Yalta. But…” The man’s voice took on a puzzled tone. “She and her sister were travelling steerage class. I’m not sure how you could have met them. Are you sure it’s the right name?”
Poppy laughed – hopefully engagingly – and answered, “Oh, I got lost one day. You know how big the ship is. I couldn’t find my way back to my cabin and took a wrong turning…”
There was silence again and then the sound of a muted conversation. Poppy imagined a hand over the mouthpiece as the clerk spoke to someone else.
Eventually he spoke to her. “May I ask your name please, ma’am?” Poppy’s heart sank. Should she give a false name? Despite the little pantomime she’d just engaged in, lying did not come easily to her. “It’s Denby, Miss Poppy Denby. You’ll see I am on the manifest too.”
“Indeed, I see that. I see too that your occupation is listed as ‘journalist’.”
Poppy laughed again, trying to keep the tone light. “It is! I’m working here for a few months.”
The hand went over the mouthpiece and more mumbles were heard. “I’m sorry, Miz Denby. If this is about Seaman Jones, we have nothing more to say. The port authority has cleared us of all on-board negligence and the immigration authorities have cleared us of all wrongdoing too. Those two women escaped from the island on their own. It had nothing to do with Carter Shipping. As ever, our reputation remains impeccable. My supervisor here tells me that if anything contrary to that appears in your newspaper you will be hearing from our lawyers. Good day.”
The line went dead. Poppy stared at the telephone, wide-eyed. Good heavens! What on earth was all that about? And then her newshound nose began to twitch. She grabbed the pencil and wrote down, verbatim, as much of the conversation as she could remember. She must show this to Rollo! She circled the words “Seaman Jones”, “port authority”, “immigration”, and “escaped from the island”. Seaman Jones, Seaman Jones. What had he said the day she visited him in hospital? Something about it not being his fault… that other people were doing it too… Doing what? Something to do with immigrants escaping from Ellis Island? But how could Seaman Jones have helped the Yazierska girls escape? He was unconscious when they arrived in port. In fact, hadn’t he been taken off the ship the evening before the passengers disembarked? Yes, that’s right… so what did he mean? And why had the Carter clerk made the connection between Jones and the girls? Or had he? Perhaps they were two separate incidents that he just mentioned at the same time… Hmm, no, I think there’s something else going on here. I need to speak to Seaman Jones… and I need to track down those girls.