The Secret Life and Curious Death of Miss Jean Milne

by Andrew Nicoll

“The body was discovered on a Sunday, Trench. The banks were shut.”

  Mr Trench took out his watch and consulted it. “And now it’s past four o’clock and the banks are shut for another day.”

  “She certainly never gave any indication of being short of money. She liked to travel. She was always going away on trips here and there – wasn’t she, Sergeant?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “And she would alert your office before she left?”

  “As a matter of routine. The house was regularly patrolled – several times every day. That’s how we know she’s been at home since August.”

  “But she was gone for months. Was she visiting somebody?”

  Mr Sempill looked at me with a frown. “Sergeant?”

  “I’m sorry, sir, I have no idea.”

  “Well, that’s something to be looking into, I suppose,” a remark which I thought remarkable for its generosity.

  In the small number of minutes that it took for the car to reach the top of Fairfield Road, Mr Sempill and I explained all that we had discovered of the killing, the money found in the house, the great amount of correspondence which had first raised the alarm and which now must be gone through, all the tiny bits of circumstance which, together, amounted to almost nothing. And then, since ours was the next stop, we made our way downstairs with Mr Trench insisting on carrying his own bag. It was but a short step from Strathern Road to the gates of Elmgrove, where we saw Constable Suttie standing at his post with a fallen leaf stuck to his helmet.

  Mr Sempill brushed past him, saying: “Smarten yourself up, man,” and he led the way through the small gate.

  “There are some things I’d like to show you,” he said.

  But Mr Trench said: “Please show me nothing. I’d prefer to look with fresh eyes.” He went off down the path that led to the ruined garden, head up like an animal scenting the air, looking at everything, noting everything. Would you believe he went so far as to count the number of chimney cans? I saw him standing there, sinking into the mossy grass and picking them out against the western sky and noting them down in his notebook. He examined the fern house and the conservatory and the vinery, all of them dirty and dusty and broken down, their glass broken, the fine tiled floors strewn with broken pots and rubbish, piles of dried leaves whispering in the corners.

  “We have made a thorough investigation of all the outbuildings and gardens,” said Mr Sempill.

  Mr Trench said: “I do not doubt you for a moment. But I would like to see with my own eyes.”

  He carried on round the house, looking, looking, looking, rattling at doors, pressing through neglected bushes that brushed their damp fingers against the dirty windows, down the stairs to the back court and the iron postbox with its broken lock and the shattered glass where Coullie had forced a way in.

  Mr Trench found nothing. We had found nothing and he found nothing. When he returned at last to where he had begun, the Chief Constable was standing at the door, ready to lead the way, but Mr Trench said: “If you please. Fresh eyes.”

  I suppose Mr Sempill realised he had called for help because he had not the skills nor the wit to do the job for himself, so he simply turned the key in the lock, opened the door, stepped aside with a modest good grace and said no more than: “Of course.”

  When Mr Trench dropped his case on the floor of the vestibule, the whole house rang with that same sad, empty echo I had heard when first I tried the door, two nights before. His umbrella clattered on the tiles. The noise of it, like a gunshot going off, set the crows complaining from the trees that lined the garden and they whirled round the house in the gathering shadows and settled again in the branches, trailing a little more darkness in their wings when they came. It was a mischancy place.

  We held back a little, as we had been bid, but I heard Mr Trench inside, the soles of his boots moving on the bare boards of the hall where the carpet had lain beneath her body, grit and dust grinding under his feet as he felt his way to the gas, the rattle of a matchbox in the darkness, the scratch and flare, the hiss of gas, the pop of its lighting, the glow of it flushing across the room like dawn – not like the electric lamps that are so commonplace now, that come on with a flash and fill the whole room in an instant with their cruel light.

  Though it was not yet fully dark, Mr Trench went round the lobby, lighting every lamp as we stood together, the Chief Constable and I, watching from the vestibule doorway.

  He had the envelope in his hand again and he had taken Mr Rodger’s photograph from it. He stood near the corner of the room, in just the place where Mr Rodger had set up his tripod, and he held the photograph before his eyes until it matched the scene in front of him, up and down, the picture, the room, the picture, the room, matching and comparing, checking, looking with an artist’s eye.

  “And she lay exactly here.” He pointed in a long line across the boards. “Just as you see in the picture. Was the gas lit?”

  “Not when we found her,” I said.

  “Then, it happened in the daytime? But I suppose that signifies nothing. He could easily have turned it off when he left. Would he do that? Why would he do that? Where is her sitting room?”

  But before either of us could answer, he set off at a trot and found it for himself. “Here. And the table. And the lamp.” He picked it up and shook it gently. “Empty. Burned dry. So, if it happened at night, he could have left it burning and walked out the door.”

  “She has the gas in,” said Mr Sempill. “Maybe she forgot to fill the lamp. She had no need of it. Maybe it’s been dry for months.”

  “Maybe. Maybe. You could be right. I have no idea. I’m attempting to fill in the gaps. I’m inventing. I’m making up stories, that’s all. One of them might fit.”

  “And this is your investigative technique? You might have done as well making up stories sitting on your lavvy back in Glasgow, man!”

  “We’ve not begun yet,” Mr Trench said. He was trying to be respectful.

  The shadows were creeping closer round the old house. Mr Trench reached up and lit the gasolier that hung over Miss Milne’s table and the glow of it shone back from the big, mirrored sideboard.

  “These drawers were like this, half opened, when you found them?”

  “Exactly as you see them, sir.”

  “And the carving set? Open and on view, just like this?”

  “Nothing has been moved, sir.”

  He looked at the half-eaten pie on its plate and he looked at the newspaper it sat on. He turned his head to look at the date. “I see,” he said. “In the fireplace. Why hasn’t that been removed?”

  “What, sir?”

  “That cigar stub.”

  I looked and he was right. There was a cigar stub poking out of the ashes. The Chief Constable was gaping into the grate, half astonished, half embarrassed.

  Mr Trench said: “To judge by the label, that’s a Romeo y Julieta. You might pay a shilling or more for a cigar like that. And it’s still there, so the ashes were cold when it went into the fireplace. Did Miss Milne smoke a cigar?”

  “Not as far as I’ve ever heard, sir.”

  “The notes you gave me suggest she was in the tobacco trade.”

  “Oh, that was long years ago,” said Mr Sempill. “I think we can say this is not old stock left lying about the place.”

  Mr Trench said: “I see. Fire tongs, shovel, no poker. It’s outside.”

  “Yes, sir. Broken in half.”

  And then he was on the move again. “The bedroom is . . . Here! Bed dishevelled, but she kept no maid. Wardrobe. Just as it was found?”

  Mr Sempill said: “You may take it from me that everything is just as it was found. Everything. My men know their jobs, Trench.”

  “And you recovered the bag of coin from this drawer?”

  “That very drawer. The Fiscal and I were making investigation.”

  “Was it well hidden? How long did it take to find it?”

  “A matter of seconds, man. He open
ed the drawer, put his hand in and came out with the purse. It lay there,” Mr Sempill pointed, “on top of her linen.”

  “So, not hidden at all. I see. Back to the hall.” He was off again. He almost trotted out of the bedroom, stooping to examine the piles of dried twigs lying on the table and in the doorway, the poker, in its two parts, the broken rock at the cloakroom door, the garden secateurs, everything, minutely. And then, as if in answer to some far-off call that neither of us could hear, he broke off and bounded down the kitchen passage. Mr Trench had his Vesta case out again and he was lighting the kitchen lamps and then, with that done, he sat down at the table and began to disturb the piles of letters I had spent so long sorting.

  “You were right about the great amount of correspondence. Is there anything of interest?”

  “I’ve not had an opportunity to go through it all perfectly, sir,” I said.

  “Never mind. You’ve made a good start, Fraser. And now,” as if he was stopping to draw breath, “I noted the blood spots on the carpet of the third tread of the stair.”

  “Yes, that has been noted,” said Mr Sempill.

  “And, close by, more blood on the railings – with hair attached and further spots of blood on the wall at the foot of the stair, together with the blood smears on the finger plate on the hall door – that will have to be removed for forensic examination.”

  “All noted,” said Mr Sempill.

  “And, from where I’m sitting now, I see a towel by the sink, clearly stained as if by blood.”

  “Already noted. I discovered that myself, Trench. The culprit obviously washed blood off his hands.”

  “And that bit of paper on the floor.”

  “It’s a bit of paper, Trench. A bit of paper.”

  I got down on my knees and reached under the sink. “There’s blood on it, sir.”

  “Blood?”

  “Looks like finger marks, sir. Three finger marks.” I carried the scrap of paper to the kitchen table and I laid it down in front of Mr Trench, like a dog bringing game to his master. We all looked at it for a while, none of us saying anything. He was in the room with us. These were marks that he had made. This was the shape of his fingers. These were the fingers that held the poker. This was the hand that beat Jean Milne to death, and he had come into this kitchen and put his hand down on that little bit of paper, without thinking, without even noticing, and he stood at that sink and washed the blood away. But he left the paper. It was proof that he was there.

  “This could put a rope round somebody’s neck,” said Mr Sempill.

  “It might at that.” Mr Trench took a plain, greaseproof envelope from his pocket and very gently, with the tips of two fingers and being careful not to touch the blood, he tucked the scrap of paper inside. “We can have that down to Scotland Yard tomorrow, the day after at the latest. They have fingerprint men there who can do miracles.”

  He looked up from his work, smiling: “We’re making progress already, gents.”

  The Chief Constable was pleased too. “I promised them modern policing and modern, scientific method and, by God, that’s what they’re going to get.”

  “But we’re not done yet,” said Mr Trench. “The rooms upstairs.”

  “Entirely empty.”

  “Astonishing. A house this size would need at least three servants, gardens like that – with all that glass – a man and a boy, at least. And yet she lived in just these rooms, entirely alone. Let’s take a look anyway.”

  “The rooms have all been swept, as Mr Sempill ordered,” I said. “And the sweepings preserved for your examination.”

  “Did you discover anything?”

  “Dust and mouse droppings, sir.”

  We came out of the kitchen corridor and back into the hall. The carpet, with its odd, black stains soaked through it, was standing rolled and tied with string in the far corner of the room. Everything else was just as it had been. There were marks on the floorboards and each of us in turn was careful to avoid them as we passed on our way to the stair. The gaslight glinted back from her false hair where it lay against the skirting board, the cut cables of the telephone prodded the air. There was the gluey lump of blood and hair on the bannister rail, there was the dark mark on the stair carpet, the landing, the turn up the stair, the second piece of curtain cord, left exactly where it was found, exactly where it featured on Mr Roddan’s drawing, and then the upper landing and darkness.

  But the rooms were not empty. Not entirely empty and the darkness was not complete. There at the end of the corridor, the silent dance of candlelight and, in the glow of the candles, Miss Milne lying in her coffin.

  It was a scene I found greatly affecting: to think that she lay there now, on this last night, in the house where she had lived and died, where perhaps in that very room she had slept as a child, surrounded by the homely comforts of a loving family and where now she slept alone, as we all must do.

  I am sorry to have to report that the Chief Constable again gave way to profanity and blamed the joiner Coullie for having done his work too well and without informing the police of his actions.

  “She’s to go to Barnhill in the morning,” he told Mr Trench. “I’m afraid there was no possibility of delay.”

  “Then I should see her,” Mr Trench said.

  The Chief Constable looked at me and I looked at him and Mr Sempill said: “My best advice is not to bother. She’s been dead for weeks. For God’s sake, leave her alone. The doctors’ report will tell you all you need to know.”

  But Mr Trench insisted. “I don’t relish it, but it is my duty. I understand if you prefer to stand apart.”

  We did stand apart. Neither Mr Sempill nor I ventured over the threshold of that room, and if either of us had shown a shred of good sense, we would have waited out in the garden while Mr Trench got on with his work. But it did not seem right to abandon him entirely, so, instead, we stood in the shadows of the corridor, not talking, trying not to breath. We heard Mr Trench try to lift the coffin lid, but Coullie had already screwed it down.

  The click of his pocketknife opening. The long business of turning the screws. His breathing as he lifted the lid, the wooden sound as he propped it against the wall and then the stench, everything that had been trapped inside that box for a night and a day coming pouring out. It seemed to seep from the room in a gasp that dipped the candles as it passed and Mr Trench, poor Mr Trench, was in the middle of it.

  After a few moments we heard him replace the lid and begin to replace the screws and, before long, he came out of the room, wiping his fingers on his handkerchief. I was glad that we could not see his face in the shadows.

  “We may be not much closer to catching the man who did this,” he said, “but from all we have seen, from all you have told me and from all my experience, I can tell you this for a certainty: no sane Britisher did this. A murder of this cruelty and ferocity and brutality could have been committed only by a maniac or a foreigner.”

  9

  I DOUBT THAT you can properly imagine Mr Sempill’s relief and delight when he heard those words: “A maniac or a foreigner.”

  There were no maniacs in Broughty Ferry – or none that we knew of and, even if some poor soul had escaped from a shameful, private confinement, they would surely be held blameless on account of their madness. Better still, if they were blameless, then we of the Broughty Ferry Constabulary and, especially, its Chief Constable must be equally blameless.

  But a foreigner! A foreigner was a Heaven-sent blessing. A foreigner was beyond the control of anybody. The magistrates and ratepayers of Broughty Ferry could never hold the force responsible for the actions of a foreigner, and, best of all, he must have left the burgh as quickly as he came, unseen and unnoticed, and we could, all of us, sleep soundly in our beds.

  First thing in the morning, when I arrived at the police office, I found Constable Suttie sitting at the police telegraph with Mr Sempill standing over him dictating a warning that: “Following the murder of Miss Jean Milne
of Elmgrove, Broughty Ferry, information is sought on any foreigner coming to the notice of the police.”

  I know these days, after Dr Crippen was hunted down in the middle of the ocean, after help was sent racing to those poor souls on the Titanic, such a thing is regarded as a commonplace, but I still think of it as a kind of miracle that communication can be achieved instantly from one end of the country to another in moments. From the extremes of these islands and, if needs be, across the breadth of the Empire, men could be put on their guard, thousands of pairs of eyes watching for our killer.

  But beyond “a maniac or a foreigner” they had little enough to go on, so Mr Sempill set us to finding out.

  “Fraser, from now on you are to consider yourself as Mr Trench’s right-hand-man. Abandon all other duties. Make yourself useful to him. Sleep when he sleeps and obey him in all things.”

  Mr Trench said: “Glad to have you, Sergeant. Let us begin with the funeral.” And so I found myself travelling one stop on the train from Broughty Ferry to Barnhill and then the step up the brae to the new burial grounds.

  After two days of newspaper reports and the Chief Constable’s handbills and a whole washing day of gossip, you may guess at the throng of folk who had come to gawk and gawp. The ladies, of course, did not approach the burial, as it would be both indelicate and unhealthy, especially in November. But the womenfolk of Broughty Ferry were well represented around the gates of the cemetery – not the fisher wives, you understand, for they were ordinary working women who could hardly take time away from baiting lines and caring for their children for a mere show – but ladies of quality who found themselves at a loose end on a Tuesday morning. I recognised several ladies prominent in the Anti-Suffragette League, of which Miss Milne had been a trenchant supporter. They had taken the trouble to find a bit of sombre black in their wardrobes, a mourning hat with perhaps a seemly veil to keep the chill wind off their complexions, and they were prepared to go out, see their friends and make sure that they were themselves seen. Our little murder had turned into quite the social event.

  The men, of course, were a little different. They made up all types and conditions; some of the quality had strolled along with their ladies, and the magistrates and baillies of the burgh council were there, of course. They would not normally attend the funerals of any but the most prominent citizens, but, in this case, a show of concerned fellow feeling was very much required. The Chief Constable, naturally, had gone on ahead and I noticed him making determined effort to avoid the gaze of Norval Scrymgeour, who, though his notebook was in his hand, at least had the good grace to arrive without his photographer while Mr Mackintosh, the Fiscal, could hardly bear to look at either of them and, filling out the crowd, were the usual idle loafers who might have been turning their hand to an honest day’s work but, instead, had chosen to come along for the fun.