Aunt Dot had a few months still to find a replacement, but, thought Poppy, if the information from Yasmin Reece-Lansdale was anything to go by, she need not worry. Yasmin, Rollo’s sweetheart and now Aunt Dot’s solicitor, had hope that Grace Wilson – Dot’s dearest friend – might soon be released on parole. So all would again be well in Aunt Dot’s world.
“Happy to be home, Poppy?” asked Rollo.
Poppy looked down at her editor and grinned. “Oh yes; it’s been a long three months. An exciting three months, but my word, am I looking forward to a few quiet gallery openings!”
Rollo laughed. “And I’m looking forward to kicking that shyster Archie Weinstein out of my office!”
Poppy chuckled. The day before they had left New York Rollo received a telegram from senior reporter Ike Garfield which read: “Greetings Rollo STOP Re your request to get intel from ad dept STOP Weinstein swore them to secrecy STOP But a couple of beers loosened tongues STOP Happy to report Weinstein failed to double ad revenue STOP Welcome back chief STOP”.
So, having won the bet with his former colleague, Rollo was returning to London once again the sole proprietor of The Daily Globe. He was relishing getting back to work – the old Rollo was back!
However, Poppy noticed, there was something different about him. He appeared more at peace with himself and the world. He had spent the last three months being reconciled with his mother while she did everything she could to distance herself from the disgraced Amelia Spencer. She even resigned from the board of the Eugenics Society and allowed Rollo to accompany her to various social engagements, where she introduced him as “my son the journalist who exposed that dreadful Spencer woman”.
Rollo had done more than simply “expose that dreadful Spencer woman”, Poppy thought. If he and the Dorchesters hadn’t arrived when they did, Delilah would have been dead and she, Mimi, and Estie… Well, she wasn’t sure what would have happened, but she doubted she could have saved the girls on her own.
On the drive back to New York, once statements had been given to the police, and Slick, Parker, and Amelia had been carted off, Rollo told Poppy, Delilah, and Elizabeth what had happened with Mrs Lawson.
He had met her at the apartment, as arranged, but the woman had seemed distracted and kept looking at her watch. She had been evasive, too, when questioned, and Rollo soon suspected something was wrong. Rollo decided to put some pressure on her and informed her that he knew she was the second beneficiary to the will and that the police might consider that motivation for murder. She almost fainted when she heard that, and, when recovered, blurted out her innocence and pointed the finger squarely at Amelia Spencer. The housekeeper told him that Mr Parker downstairs had discovered Mrs Spencer was the real killer but had paid her to keep quiet about it and help him, instead, frame the nephew, Otto von Riesling.
After hearing all that Rollo had rushed downstairs to ask the concierge to accompany him to Parker’s apartment. But it was too late. By the time they got there, Parker, Delilah, and Poppy had gone.
Fearing the worst, Rollo was not sure what to do at first. Then he remembered what Poppy had told him about Elizabeth saying Alfie knew something about the murder. So he called a cab and went over to Elizabeth’s house to press her further.
When Elizabeth heard Poppy and Delilah might be in danger she told Rollo her brother was still hiding out, waiting to leave the next morning on a train. She took Rollo to him; then, after hearing what was at stake and being begged to help by his sister, Alfie took them to the factory where he said they could find Parker’s assistant, a fella called Slick. But at the factory, which, as a shareholder “Otto von Riesling” was able to gain entry to, they were told Slick had left with a couple of girls. When pressed, and threatened with being turned over to Immigration, one of the other girls – a blonde Russian called Kat – told them Slick had taken two of the girls to see “the Boss Man” out at the lake.
Rollo telephoned Quinn from the factory and asked him to use his contacts to get the police out to Ronkonkoma. Quinn said he would, but it might take a while as the NYPD would have to ask the Suffolk County PD for help. But Rollo wasn’t prepared to wait it out. Instead, he commandeered a motor car and Alfie drove him and Elizabeth out to the lake, arriving there shortly before midnight and – as if it were the plot of a detective novel – they got there just in time to help Poppy and save Delilah.
Phew! It was exhausting just thinking about it. Yes, thought Poppy, a few quiet gallery openings are just what I need. I’ve had enough complications in my life for a while – professionally and personally.
Poppy sighed as she thought of Toby. Needless to say she did not manage to get to the dinner date with the young doctor. And although in the subsequent three months he was cleared of any involvement in his mother’s crimes, any spark of romance that might have been between them was well and truly quenched. She saw him, occasionally, with his father, accompanying Amelia to court, but they never had another conversation. Oh well, perhaps it’s for the best.
Now that she was back in London she would see Daniel every day at work. She had no idea how she would cope with that. She fingered the red enamel poppy brooch he had given her for her birthday. She had started wearing it about a month ago. Delilah noticed and asked her if that meant things were back on again. Poppy said she wasn’t sure. Too much water might have gone under the bridge. She was still angry with him for not being prepared to support her in her career, and although, she admitted, she still loved him, there could be no future for them unless his views in that regard had changed.
Might they have changed? Poppy simply did not know.
The gangplank was finally down. Poppy and her friends descended with the rest of the first-class passengers and at the bottom were greeted by the smiling face of Ike Garfield.
“Rollo! Poppy!” Then he tipped his hat to the rest of the party. “Welcome home, ladies. As per your request, Miss Denby, I arranged to get the yellow Rolls out of storage. My, what a lovely vehicle! There’ll be room for you three ladies and your luggage.” Then he turned to Poppy and Rollo. “I’ve made other arrangements for you two.”
“What’s that?” asked Rollo.
But Ike didn’t have to answer. Strolling through the crowd with car keys in hand was Daniel. “He’s brought the Model T,” Ike explained.
“Not much room in there,” observed Rollo. “Surely you can squeeze another one into the Rolls, Ike.”
Ike grinned. “We’ll give it a go, chief.”
Delilah and Aunt Dot giggled.
They’re setting us up! thought Poppy. But she didn’t care. And neither, it seemed, did Daniel. He barely looked at the rest of the party and homed in on the young blonde woman in the middle.
“Welcome back, Poppy,” he said, his grey eyes full of love.
Poppy felt her heart melt.
“Thank you, Daniel. It’s very good to be home.”
THE WORLD OF POPPY DENBY: A HISTORICAL NOTE
Mimi Yazierska, the young Jewish immigrant, first appeared when I was writing the second book in the Poppy Denby Investigates series, The Kill Fee. Mimi was originally a maid in the house of the wealthy Moscow family who feature in book 2. However, I struggled to weave her story into the already complex narrative, so I decided to leave her out. Fortunately for her – and her newly created sister – she was given another chance in The Death Beat.
I was interested in contrasting the experiences of rich and poor refugees and how the privilege of wealth and social connections can make the journey to safety far easier for one group than another. At the time of writing that book – and this – I was assailed with images of refugees fleeing the modern-day civil war in Syria. The wealthiest are able to buy air tickets out, the less well off, a spot in an inflatable raft, and the very poorest have to stay where they are or flee on foot and be housed in refugee camps.
I have an emotional connection to immigrants and immigration because my parents immigrated to South Africa when I was ten – and li
fe was not easy as an “outsider”. I now live in England, and here it is my South African husband who is an immigrant.
Those readers who have read The Kill Fee will know that the early 1920s, like today, was a period of mass migration, when people from the war-torn countries of eastern Europe and the Russian empire tried to find a safe place to call home. And then, like now, countries on the receiving end of migration, like Britain and the USA, held public debates on how many more people they could or should receive. I was fascinated to read about the American Immigration Restriction Act of 1921. In that act quotas were put on immigrants from different countries, with some countries of origin considered less desirable than others. I’m sure I don’t have to point out the parallels with what is happening now. In addition, fuelled by the popular theory of eugenics, which aimed to “purify” the bloodline of the population, there were other restrictions (pre-dating the 1921 act). People with physical illness or disability, mental health issues (which were frequently confused with a simple lack of education), communist sympathies or morally questionable behaviour were regularly denied entry to the United States.
Since conceiving the character of Rollo Rolandson as a New York expat I knew that at some stage he was going to take his protégé to visit his home town. As a young journalism student in the late 1980s I was fed on a steady diet of New York Times articles as examples of excellent reportage and design. So for me the Times had always held an exalted position. Oh, what I would have done to work on that newspaper! But my life has taken me in another direction. Poppy, however, still had a chance – and I gave it to her!
So we have Poppy and her friends travelling to New York first class and Mimi and Estie in steerage. Both have problems getting into America, but both eventually succeed. And of course, because this is a Poppy Denby mystery, their paths inevitably cross.
As mentioned in my acknowledgments I am deeply indebted to Professor Vincent Cannato of the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Professor Cannato’s book, American Passage: The history of Ellis Island, was invaluable in my research, and he was gracious enough to personally respond to various queries. He very kindly helped me decipher an original 1921 ship’s manifest, which I used in the scene with Aunt Dot being interviewed by the immigration official. I would, however, like to point out that the people-smuggling storyline in The Death Beat is entirely fictional. While no doubt some illegal immigrants did slip through, on the whole Ellis Island ran a tight ship. This is a story of what might have happened to two illegals if they had managed to get through the back door.
My re-creation of life on the Olympic was helpfully aided by some wonderful original film footage from 1922, which readers can find on my Poppy Denby website, www.poppydenby.com, under “locations”. Poppy and Delilah’s dresses were based on originals in the Victoria and Albert Museum fashion archive.
As always in the Poppy Denby books, I have tried to include as much historical fact as I can, without overshadowing the fictional tale. The news stories you read of in The Death Beat, apart from the main story with Poppy and her friends, are all original articles from the 1921 archive. The New York Times publicity department was very helpful in this regard and pointed me in the direction of additional resources.
The radio broadcast of The Wolf is also based on fact. Both the Lyric Theatre in New York and radio drama expert, Professor Richard Hand of the University of East Anglia, were very helpful in helping me track down original material. There is some debate as to whether the first radio drama broadcast was in 1921 or 1922. In 1921 there was a broadcast of an audio track of the Broadway stage play Perfect Fool, but the first play that was especially recorded as a radio play was The Wolf in 1922, an adaptation by Edward Smith of the Eugene Walter stage play of the same name (which was first staged at the Lyric Theatre, New York, in 1908). So I have taken some creative licence and merged these two broadcasts. Needless to say, Aunt Dot and Delilah were not part of the original cast.
Another piece of creative licence is linked to Chester’s Speakeasy. In my research I discovered that the famous Chumley’s Speakeasy was originally housed at 86 Bedford Street, Greenwich Village, which is where the term “doing an 86” came from. However, Chumley’s, owned by Leland Chumley, only opened in 1926. So I decided to create a fictional speakeasy, Chester’s, at the same address and brought the use of the term “86” forward. In addition, although the Rudolph Valentino film The Sheik was released in 1921, it didn’t receive its London premiere until 1922. So Poppy and her friends got to see it early.
Apart from these, I’m unaware of any other conscious historical discrepancies and I hope you have enjoyed reading Poppy’s latest adventure as much as I did writing it.
FOR FURTHER READING…
www.poppydenby.com, for more historical information on the period, gorgeous pictures of 1920s fashion and décor, audio and video links to 1920s music and news clips, a link to the author’s website, as well as news about upcoming titles in the Poppy Denby Investigates series.
Cannato, Vincent J., American Passage: The History of Ellis Island, New York: Harper Collins, 2009
Clement, Elizabeth A., Love for Sale: Courting, Treating and Prostitution in New York City, 1900–1945, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006
Davis, Elmer, History of the New York Times 1851–1921, New York: Greenwood Press Publishers, 1969 (first published in New York, 1921)
Ewen, Elizabeth, Immigrant Women in the Land of Dollars: Life and Culture on the Lower East Side, 1890–1925, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1985
Fitzgerald, F. Scott, The Great Gatsby, London: Penguin, 1974 (first published New York, 1926)
Klein, Jef (photos: Hazlegrove, Cary), The History and Stories of the Best Bars of New York, Nashville: Turner Publishing, 2006
Sayers, Dorothy L., Whose Body?, London: Penguin, 1968 (first published New York, 1923)
Shrimpton, Jayne, Fashion in the 1920s, Oxford: Shire Publications, 2013
Time Life (Ed: Bishop, Morin), The Roaring ’20s: The Decade that Changed America, New York: Time Inc, 2017
Weil, Francois (Trans: Gladding, Jody), A History of New York, New York: Columbia University Press, 2004
Welch, Frances, The Russian Court at Sea, London: Short Books, 2011
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