The Secret Life and Curious Death of Miss Jean Milne

by Andrew Nicoll

  While they all crowded round the cemetery gates, I stood a little way off, on the other side of the street, with my detective lieutenant. He perfectly understood that a man in the midst of the crowd could see nothing of the crowd and the only way to keep a proper watch was to maintain a distance.

  There was a murmuring in the street until we heard the sound of horses’ hooves on the road and the crowd began to notice the approach of Coullie’s glass-panelled hearse.

  Coullie himself was walking in front, swinging his cane, top hat in hand with its long ribbons of black fluttering in the wind. He had provided two black horses to draw the hearse – he hired them in as needed – and it was driven by his elderly father, who sat on the box with the ease of a man who had performed such a service for his neighbours these many decades.

  Behind the hearse, with its grim cargo, there came the minister. Mr Trench asked who he was and I told him it was Mr Shaw, the minister of St Andrew’s Kirk in Dundee, for Miss Milne, who as an incomer to Broughty Ferry had continued her connection with that congregation. At his side, walking bareheaded, another, younger man in a very suitable broadcloth coat, just newly bought, I took for the deceased Miss Milne’s nephew.

  “Frank Milne, “ I told Mr Trench. “He lives in a place called Croydon, on the outskirts of London. We asked the local police to advise him of the circumstances. He must have come up by train overnight. The only living heir, so far as I know. The son of her late brother. I suppose he agreed the expenditure for Coullie’s glass hearse with her man of business in Dundee.”

  The crowd parted to allow the coach to pass in silence, the men doffing their hats as it went by, and, once it was through the gates, they followed along towards the grave, as indeed we are all doing.

  But Mr Trench remained leaning quietly on his umbrella, so I stood with him like his loyal hound. “We’re not here for the funeral, Fraser. We are here to observe the funeral. Observe the faces. Is there someone here more interested in looking at us than looking at the coffin? Is there someone taking delight in the day’s events when they ought to be shedding a tear? Is there someone excessively affected, someone perhaps with a guilty conscience and bloodstained heart? You are a man of the world, Fraser. You know well enough what is usual at a funeral. Look out for the unusual.”

  After a time Mr Trench judged it appropriate to follow the funeral party up to the grave and we watched the whole proceedings from afar, but we noticed nothing remarkable.

  The Minister preached at the graveside most touchingly, taking as his text the eighth chapter of Romans: “For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God,” which is most appropriate for a funeral service and offered great comfort, I am sure, to the poor lady’s grieving friends and could not have failed to touch those who had come merely as sightseers. I know I found great solace in his remarks. But, as I say, we observed nothing out of the ordinary.

  With matters concluded, the funeral procession broke up and made its way back to the cemetery gates. It was then that Mr Trench walked up, tipped his hat and made himself known to Miss Milne’s nephew. “The police forces of Glasgow and Broughty Ferry join me in expressing sincere sympathy and sorrow,” he said.

  Young Mr Milne seemed as upset as any man could be who has just come into a large mansion and a considerable fortune. He shook hands and said: “Thank you for your kind interest,” and he was making as if to walk on when Mr Trench put his hand on his elbow and, very gently, held him back.

  “Were you very fond of your aunt?” he asked.

  “We weren’t all that close. We lived, well she lived here and I live in London.”

  “Did you have much to do with her? By that, I mean, can you tell us anything about her life or habits? Anything that might give us any insights. To help with the inquiry, you understand.”

  Young Mr Milne said: “I’m most eager to assist in any way I can,” in that peculiar English accent of his.

  He nodded towards a gentleman standing at his side and said: “Mr Kyd here, he’s Auntie Jean’s solicitor, and he tells me I can expect to come into quite a sum of money. I’d like to offer a reward of . . .” He looked at the lawyer, almost as if he needed permission to spend his own money as he chose. “A reward of one hundred pounds.”

  And then he seemed to understand the weight of what he had just said, although there was nothing we could do to hold him to it, and he said: “It’s her money. Not my money, really. It should go to catching the man. Bait the hook. You know.”

  Mr Trench made a great show of thanking him for his generosity and assuring him that we would make the reward widely known through the papers and all along the police telegraph. “I feel certain that it will produce speedy results,” he said. “Now, can you tell me when you last saw your aunt?”

  “As I said, we were not close. She was a bit, well, eccentric, I suppose. When Father was alive we used to come up and visit, but she wouldn’t allow us in the house. Wouldn’t hear of it. She used to make us take lodgings and we would see her in tea shops and so on. It was strange. She bought me a motor car not too long ago. What do you think of that? But I’m afraid I’ve seen nothing of her since some time in July. It was during her last visit to London. She came up to town pretty frequently but the exact date I cannot say.”

  “Were you expecting her?”

  “No, we never knew when to expect her. One day a postcard came . . .”

  “A postcard?”

  “Or maybe it was a letter. I don’t recall, but it definitely said that she would be pleased to see me at the Palace Hotel, Strand, where she was staying. About a week after, I called at the Palace Hotel and saw her.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “Oh, you know, this and that.”

  “Did she mention why she was in London? Did she say anything about anyone she had met, anyone who had befriended her?”

  “Oh, she was always making friends. That was what she liked most about travelling. She liked going about and meeting people.”

  “But did she mention anyone she had met on this trip? Did she mention a Mr Clarence Wray?”

  I recognised the name. Clearly Mr Trench had spent the night wisely, reading through that pile of correspondence.

  “If she spoke of him at all, I don’t recall it.”

  “You’re quite certain? Clarence Herberto Wray?”

  Young Milne glanced at Mr Kyd as if seeking reassurance. The lawyer said: “I think Mr Milne has already explained that he does not recognise the name.”

  But Mr Trench ignored him. “Mr Milne, are you quite certain?”

  “I’m not being unhelpful,” he said.

  And the lawyer said: “I would have thought that Mr Milne’s generous offer of a reward would have been indication enough of that.”

  “No. No, I’m sure. But you do understand, every scrap of information is vital to us.”

  “I only wish I could tell you something more. I met her at the Palace on the Strand and we took tea and we chatted about this and that. That’s all.”

  “And you never saw her again?”

  “The last time I saw her was about a fortnight afterwards, when I again visited her at the hotel. She seemed in good health and quite cheerful.”

  “Then let that be a comfort to you,” Mr Trench said, and he tipped his hat and stood aside to let the two men pass on their way.

  When they were gone, he said: “I suppose there’s no possibility he could have done it? The sole heir. Just got sick of waiting for the apple to fall from the tree? Maybe he tired of taking tea with his auntie and talking of this and that.”

  “The local police say there’s no indication that he’s been out of London for years, but the train will get you there and back in a day and a night,” I said. “The proof is before your eyes.”

  10

  MR TRENCH WENT ste
pping out, back down the hill to Barnhill railway station, long legs going like a windmill and his umbrella over his shoulder like a gun. He kept up a pretty pace, but I am a man of above the average height and I matched him stride for stride easily enough.

  A number of the ladies we had seen at the cemetery gates were still waiting there on the wooden platform and they whispered to each other behind their gloves. Mr Trench might have gone as far as touching the brim of his brown bowler hat, but beyond that I don’t think he gave them any acknowledgement whatever.

  We rode together, without a ticket I may say, through Broughty Ferry station and on to the West Ferry station, where Mr Trench walked up the stair and past the ticket collector with hardly a glance, saying no more than “Police business.” I gave the man thruppence for his trouble.

  Once out of the carriage, he felt more free to talk, and though he spoke to me on the walk up the hill to Elmgrove, I had the firm feeling he was really talking only to himself.

  “We’ve got this all wrong, you know.”

  I said nothing.

  “I said: ‘We’ve got this all wrong.’ ”

  “How so, sir?” I said.

  “The dates. The dates. The dates.”

  “The dates, sir?”

  “The dates, Fraser. She couldn’t possibly have been seen alive on the 16th, as Dr Sturrock says, far less the 21st.”

  “No, sir. That’s obvious.”

  He stopped in his tracks. We were just at the place where Grove Road makes its sharp turn to the right and the brae flattens out. “Obvious? What do you mean, by that, Fraser?”

  “Only that the evidence of the newspaper suggests she died much earlier, and her post, sir. Why would she have let the post lie unattended for days in that box in the back court? The earliest stamp on those letters is the 14th, the same day as the newspaper, and they continue to Saturday, the day Postie Slidders raised the alarm.”

  Mr Trench looked at me with such a look. “You’ve known this all along?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And yet you allowed Mr Sempill to publish that damned stupid handbill.”

  “The Chief Constable did not seek my opinion, sir.”

  “So you did not offer it, I know. Fraser, from here on take it as a standing order that I am seeking your opinion. Anything that occurs to you, anything that you know, share it with me. I need all the brainpower I can muster on this case and it seems at least one officer of Broughty Ferry Constabulary has a brain.”

  That pleased me very much.

  “But,” he said, “it doesn’t explain away what the doctor saw.”

  “Mrs McDougall, sir. Just up the road, at Caenlochan Villas on the other side of Strathern Road. And there’s also Miss Jane Miller of 176 King Street. They are both somewhat like Miss Milne in appearance and style of dress. They dress, well . . .”

  “They dress younger than their years.”

  “I suppose so, sir.”

  “Let’s see if we might not introduce the doctor to these ladies. Get him to change his mind.”

  We were nearly at the gates of Elmgrove and I was just reaching into my pocket for the keys when he said: “Have you looked at the lady’s letters?”

  I told him I had.

  “And what did you think?”

  “I thought them odd, sir.”

  “Some of them are downright queer. I sat up with them last night. She seems to be endlessly hinting to her women friends that she has some kind of intrigue going on with a man – at least one man or maybe more. It would not be respectable in a woman half her age. It’s half mad in an old lady.”

  I told Mr Trench that I had always found Miss Milne respectable, never mad, and that she had not struck me as elderly.

  “What age do you think she was?”

  “She was a lady in her fifties,” I said.

  “She admitted to sixty-five and I wouldn’t wager my pension on that either. Did you read the letter from Clarence Herberto Wray?”

  I told him that I had and that I was surprised by it.

  “On violet paper. What man writes his letters on violet paper – even letters of that nature?”

  I said that I had never written a letter of that nature, on violet paper or on paper of any other colour.

  “It’s not manly. We need to find this Wray character and account for his movements. And ‘Herberto’. That’s odd too. That’s not a British name. Herbert is a British name, but there’s something odd and foreign about ‘Herberto’, something Spanish or South American. Those are hot-blooded peoples, Fraser. They lack self-control.”

  We were standing at the small gate for foot passengers that leads into Elmgrove and I was just about to turn the key in the lock when he said: “The house has nothing more to tell us. We need to talk to people. We need to find out more. And we need to find Wray.”

  “Will you go to London?” I asked him.

  “No, I’m needed here. Mr Sempill can go to London and gather some more pieces of the jigsaw, but somebody has to fit them together. Now, who have you got on your list of witnesses? Who’s handy?”

  My notebook was almost full to bursting with lists of concerned citizens, gossips and busybodies, anybody who had the tiniest bit of information to offer and plenty of others who simply wanted the attention.

  I said: “We might do worse than speak to Mrs Ritchie, up at Lindisfarne,” and, I suppose because he had no better idea, that was what we did.

  The Ritchies lived up at Lindisfarne, in Edward Street, which is the name they used to give to Grove Road after it has crossed Strathern Road, but Dundee already has an Edward Street so they took ours away and now the whole thing is Grove Road. It was to avoid confusion, they said. In my view they simply wanted to remind us who is the master now.

  Lindisfarne is exactly the sort of fine house you would expect to go with a fanciful name like that. There were well-kept hedges with a fine gravel walk through an entirely ornamental garden, which, although it spoke of idleness and frivolity, no doubt kept a man hard at work. The brass bell sheltered under a broad porch, and when the maid answered, Mr Trench handed in his card.

  We had not long to wait. We both of us took off our hats as the lassie showed us in. Mr Ritchie was a figure in the jute trade of Dundee, a broker marrying cargoes with customers and customers with cargoes. He had a fine, comfortable house and the wife to match.

  Mrs Ritchie received us in her downstairs sitting room, where she was taking her morning tea. She was one of those women, the sort who never trouble too much to be right in the fashion because they know very well their own quality. The fashion that season was to be thin, but Mrs Ritchie tended to the old style of things.

  She did not get up when we entered the room but she offered her hand, indicated where we were to sit, and told the girl: “Effie, bring some more cups on a tray for the gentlemen.”

  Mr Trench had not given up his umbrella at the door. It seemed to go everywhere with him and he sat now with it planted in front of him and his bowler hat dangling from the top of it. It made a comic picture and left him without any hands for taking notes, so that fell to me, as usual.

  “I understand, Mrs Ritchie, that you might have some information about the terrible tragedy that happened over the road,” he said.

  Mrs Ritchie expressed her deep shock and distress as she poured out the tea and handed us our cups. The saucers sang and tinkled in her plump fingers. I left my tea sitting on the arm of the chair and began taking notes.

  “It’s a terrible thing,” she said. “We’ve known – that’s Mr Ritchie and I – have known Miss Milne seven years, since Mr Ritchie took this house, and we always spoke if we met in the street.”

  “Did you know her well?” Mr Trench said.

  “I don’t know that anybody could say that. For my own experience, I could not describe Miss Milne as anything but a hard, greedy woman.”

  Mr Trench’s eyebrows rose a little.

  “Yes, I know you think that harsh, but there’s no poin
t in anything but directness now. That won’t do you any good at all. Cake?”

  Mr Trench declined.

  “She was absolutely money-obsessed. I recall once I was in a shop in the town and there was Miss Milne and she said to me, ‘What would you like to buy?’ and I said how many lovely things there were to choose from but one must consider the expense, and then she held up a shabby little purse and said: ‘There’s £90 in there.’ Can you imagine? Look at that.” She pointed at an advertisement on the front page of the paper. “A three-piece suit for ten shillings and a coat for ten shillings more. She was carrying clothing for a hundred and eighty men in that one little bag.”

  “What did you say to her?”

  “I advised her to get to the bank as fast as she could.”

  “Very wise.”

  There was a lull in the conversation as Mr Trench cast his eye round the room. “You have a lovely home,” Mr Trench said.

  “Thank you.” She sparkled a little at that. “A biscuit? They’re awfully good. Well, we overlook Elmgrove from our . . . from the upper floor and I always had, well, I don’t know what you’d call it, but, let’s say a certain fear about Miss Milne staying all alone in there.”

  “Did you ever visit? Did you ever go into Elmgrove?”

  “No. Oh no. It wasn’t quite that kind of an acquaintance. Anyway, we, that is, my husband and I, we quite remonstrated with her for so doing – for living all by herself with not even a lassie. Miss Milne assuredly did not know what fear was, living alone in that big house without even a dog for company – that would have tried anyone with the best of nerves. I don’t believe a maid would have stayed even one night there.