1 INTERVIEW WITH MRS. SOPHIE HOCKING CONDUCTED BY AMBROSE LOGAN, U.S. MARSHAL CASE NUMBER 069308 Official transcript San Francisco, CA November 6, 1906 QUESTION: Thank you again for coming. Could you please state your full name, age, birth date, and the city where you were born, for the record, please? ANSWER: Sophie Whalen Hocking. August 24, 1884. Donaghadee, County Down, Ireland. I''m twenty-two.

QUESTION: Whalen is your maiden name, correct? ANSWER: It is. QUESTION: Thank you. Now, if you don''t mind, I''ve a few questions for the record, since you and I have not had an opportunity to speak before now. You emigrated from Ireland to the United States in 1903 and spent your first two years in this country in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Is that correct? ANSWER: Yes. Nearly the first two years. Not quite that. QUESTION: So you were nineteen when you emigrated? ANSWER: Yes.

So why is it you and I have not spoken before? Has the other detective moved away? QUESTION: No, Detective Morris is still on the case. I was brought in only recently. I''m a U.S. marshal. ANSWER: I don''t know what that is, sir. QUESTION: United States marshals serve at the federal level of law enforcement rather than local. ANSWER: Oh.

So . so you are also a detective, then? QUESTION: I investigate federal crimes, yes. May we continue? ANSWER: Yes. QUESTION: Can you confirm for me that you married one Martin Hocking on March 10, 1905, at the courthouse here in San Francisco? ANSWER: Yes. Yes, I did. Do you have news of my husband? Is that why you''ve called me in? QUESTION: Possibly. Again, for the record, did you report your husband, Martin Hocking, missing six weeks after the earthquake that occurred on April 18 of this year? ANSWER: I did, yes. QUESTION: Can you tell me why you waited six weeks to notify the police that your husband was missing? ANSWER: He travels for his job.

I didn''t know for sure he was missing at first. QUESTION: You''ve stated previously you fled your home on Polk Street with your stepdaughter, Katharine Hocking, in the minutes following the earthquake. Is that correct? ANSWER: Yes. QUESTION: And the house on Polk Street was still standing when you left? ANSWER: It . everything was broken and shattered inside, and the chimney had fallen off, but, yes, it was still standing. QUESTION: And when you returned six weeks later was it still standing then? ANSWER: I told the police before. It had burned. Every house on the street had burned.

Every house in our neighborhood burned. Beggin'' your pardon, sir, but do you not know what happened in this city? Have you not looked around? QUESTION: I assure you, I''m not here to mock the loss of your home, Mrs. Hocking. I am only establishing the facts for the record. My record. I apologize for asking questions you have already answered. But I must ask them. You returned to your home six weeks after the earthquake and found it had burned? There was nothing left of it? ANSWER: Nothing but ashes.

QUESTION: And you would have no way of knowing if Mr. Hocking returned to the house after the earthquake but before it burned? ANSWER: How could I? I was not there. QUESTION: Yes. Now, if we may go back to the day of the earthquake. You have said that you and Katharine found your way to the refugee camp at Golden Gate Park when the fires began. Do I have that right? ANSWER: Yes. QUESTION: And during your four days at the refugee camp you didn''t hear from your husband, correct? He did not join you there? ANSWER: No. As I said before, he was away on a business trip.

He travels for a living. QUESTION: So, to be clear, your husband left on his business trip before the earthquake and you have had no contact with him since? ANSWER: I have not. Have you come by some new information about where he is? I think I have a right to know. QUESTION: I believe I have come upon some new information, yes. But I''m not sure if this new intelligence aligns with what we know already. That is why I need to revisit some of the details you provided from the initial investigation into his disappearance, to see if what I''ve recently learned is consistent with the previously reported details. May we continue? ANSWER: If this will assist you in finding my husband, then of course. QUESTION: Thank you.

Now, for the record, then, you married Martin Hocking the same day you met him, is that correct? ANSWER: Yes. QUESTION: And can you tell me why you did that? ANSWER: Why I did what? QUESTION: Married Mr. Hocking the same day you met him. ANSWER: It is not against the law to marry someone you''ve just met, is it? QUESTION: Indeed, it is not. I am curious, you see. ANSWER: I married Martin because he asked me. QUESTION: You had answered a newspaper advertisement that he''d placed in the New York Times? For a wife and mother. He had advertised that he was a widower with a young child.

Do I have that right? ANSWER: Yes. QUESTION: And then you traveled to San Francisco from New York to marry Mr. Hocking, even though the two of you had not yet met? ANSWER: I did. QUESTION: Because? ANSWER: Because, what? QUESTION: Mrs. Hocking, are you declining to tell me why you married a man you''d only just met? ANSWER: I am not declining, sir. I married him because I wanted to. 2 March 1905 The sun is dissolving like an enchantment as I stand at the ferry railing and look out on the San Francisco horizon. The day will end jubilant.

Jubilant. This is the word I chose this morning from Da''s book of words, and I''ve been keen to use it since breakfast. My father wrote that jubilant means you feel as though you finally possess everything you''ve always wanted, you are that happy. I like the way the word rolls off my tongue when I say it. I want to believe the day will end on a jubilant note. I am counting on it. Most of the ferry''s passengers aren''t on the deck watching the golden sun fold itself into the western rim of the sky. They are seated inside, out of the bracing wind, but I don''t want to be tucked indoors after six long days on a train.

I close my eyes as the heady fragrance of the ocean transports me as if in a dream to Gram''s cottage in Donaghadee above the slate Irish Sea. I can see the house in my mind''s eye just as it was when I was young, back when life was simple. I can see Gram making me a cup of sugar tea in her kitchen while a harbor breeze tickles the lace curtains she made from her wedding dress. On the kitchen table are shortbread cookies arranged on the daisy plate, and still warm from the oven. She is humming an old Gaelic tune. But no. I''ve spent too many hours pondering what I wouldn''t do to go back in time to Gram''s kitchen, what I''d be willing to give up. What I''d be willing to give.

I open my eyes to behold again the nearness of the San Francisco docks. Backward glances are of no use to me now. I move away from the railing to the shelter of an overhang and tuck loose strands of hair back into place. I don''t want to step off the ferry looking like a street urchin. Not today. I look down at my skirt to see how bad the wrinkles are. Not too noticeable in the day''s diminishing light. My journey from New York to California took place on a second-class seat, not in a private sleeping car, hence the creases.

I''d not expected anything different, as Martin Hocking had written that he is in good financial standing, not that he is rich. That he has means of any amount is miracle enough. I would have ridden in the baggage car all the way to get out of the umbrella factory and the tenement, and especially away from young Irishwomen just like me who reminded me too frequently of what I left back home. If my mother could see me now, she''d no doubt put me on the first train back to New York. But then, Mam doesn''t know how bad it was. I didn''t want to worry her, so she doesn''t know that the room I was subletting with four flatmates was no bigger than a kitchen pantry and that a single spigot in the back alley provided the only water to drink, bathe, and cook with for the entire building. She doesn''t know everyone dumped their chamber pots out their windows because there were no indoor toilets-despite city ordinances requiring them-and that the stink of human waste hung on the air like a drape. The tenement wasn''t a place to come home to at the end of the workday.

It was just a shared room with sagging mattresses, a place where dreams for a better life could unravel faster than your threadbare clothes, and where girls like m.