The Secret Life and Curious Death of Miss Jean Milne

by Andrew Nicoll

  “I remember, oh, some time ago now, of Miss Milne telling me of an incident which showed how plucky she was. Mr Trench, for many years she had been in the habit of sitting alone, writing or reading. The blinds were never drawn and she sat in full view of anyone in the garden. On this particular evening, as she sat reading, she became conscious of being watched. She looked up and saw a man’s face at the glass.”

  “My stars!” said Mr Trench.

  “My stars indeed. But Miss Milne was in no way alarmed. She simply walked to the window and boldly ordered the man to ‘Clear out!’ I told her anything might happen and, well, see for yourself, it has. That poor soul lying in there dead for days – weeks even.”

  Mr Trench looked at me. “Any report?” he said.

  “We never had any such report, sir.”

  Mr Trench put his cup down in his saucer. “How long is it since you last saw Miss Milne?”

  “I only saw light in Miss Milne’s house twice since she came home from London in the beginning of August last, and that was in the early part of September. I have always made it a point to look out of our . . . from the upper-floor window, each night before going to bed, to see if there was light in her house. I have done that for years. Faithfully.”

  “And is that what you wanted to tell us about, Mrs Ritchie? That you’ve not seen Miss Milne.”

  “Indeed not. You’d think me a very silly woman if that was all I had to say.” She had a small bag beside her on the settee and she reached in and took out a little pocket diary. “It was this. On September the 20th during the forenoon I joined the tramcar at Grove Road, for Dundee, and Miss Milne joined the car at Ellieslea Road. Now she might easily have got on at Grove Road and I can only think that she did not because it saves a penny on the fare.

  “She got on and I said to Miss Milne: ‘I have not seen you since you came home from London,’ and at once she began to speak about a nice gentleman she had met while in London, and oh, but he was a very nice gentleman and that he had been travelling for months before that.”

  “Did she mention a name?”

  “She did not. No names. Only that he was a charming man, that she had a letter from him a day or two before and that he was coming to see her at Elmgrove. She mentioned no names.

  “She was then on her way to Glasgow that very day and thence to Inverness – on that day.”

  “I see.” Mr Trench went back to sipping his tea, so it was left to me to say: “Is there anything else you can tell us?”

  But Mrs Ritchie only snapped off a bit of biscuit in her saucer and said: “I would have thought that information of that nature, that she had some strange man, a world traveller, coming up from London to be entertained in her very home, would have been sufficient for anybody!”

  We were out the door and back in the garden before Mrs Ritchie had finished her next mouthful of shortbread.

  And that was what our life became. The whole of that day and every day after that for days and days we spent tramping the streets of Broughty Ferry or riding the cars up to Dundee, knocking on doors, ringing bells, talking to folk who knew Miss Milne well, folk who knew Miss Milne slightly and folk who didn’t really know Miss Milne at all but who might once have seen her from afar.

  From early in the morning until late in the evening, we made our house calls and everybody who knew nothing – or next to nothing – was mad keen to tell us about a neighbour who swore she knew something. From one to the other we trudged, Mr Trench stepping along with me on one side and his umbrella swinging on the other.

  And little by little, slowly but surely, we began to see something of the picture, because wherever we went and whoever we spoke to, there was always one part of the story linking them all together. A man. There was a man. A man she had spoken of. A man she had boasted of. A man she was seen with. A man who was seen in the overgrown shadows of Elmgrove.

  Look in my notebooks. I have them with me still. David Nicoll, merchant of 22 Panmure Street, Monifieth. “One day about five or six weeks before the news of her death broke out, I chanced to meet her in Dundee in front of D. M. Brown’s department store. We stood chatting together a few minutes and I remarked that as I would be visiting some friends in West Ferry one day soon I might then pay her a visit.

  “She made a reply to the effect that she did not receive gentleman visitors, but added that she had received a letter the other day and was expecting a gentleman visitor from the south. By way of a joke, I remarked that in that case there was no chance for me then.”

  A man.

  Marjory Cassady, the wife of the dentist in Brook Street. “One day, shortly before 7th October 1912, I went up by a tramcar about noon to Dundee. When at Ellieslea Road in Strathern Road, Miss Milne and a gentleman joined the car. I was the only one sitting inside.

  “Miss Milne and the gentleman were talking to each other. I paid little heed to the gentleman, who was about five foot six inches in height.”

  A short man.

  Margaret Campbell, maidservant to Mrs Luke at Caenlochan Villas. “Our house overlooks the gardens of Elmgrove. In the mornings when I am making the beds I have often looked into the grounds and remarked to myself on their wild and neglected appearance.

  “About 10.20 one morning either in the first or second week in October, I was looking out of the bedroom window and I was surprised to see a man walking about in the private grounds at the back of Miss Milne’s house, walking up and down with his hands in his trouser pockets.

  “He was a man between thirty and forty years of age, about six feet in height, well-made and well-set-up, a handsome-looking man. I should say definitely a gentleman from his appearance, wearing an evening dress suit with an expensive shirt front, and bareheaded.”

  A man. A handsome man in evening dress in the middle of the morning.

  Margaret Sampson, a lady of independent means of 2 Blackness Crescent, Dundee, depones that she has known Miss Milne for many years. “In the spring of this year – I think April – my sister and I met her in Perth Road. We were going into town and she turned and walked with us.

  “She told us that she had just returned from London, where she had made the acquaintance of the very nicest man she had ever met in her life, a cultured, scholarly man, neither English nor Scotch.

  “She said that he wanted to come to Elmgrove to pay his respects to her. She said, however, that she was not prepared to receive his visit to Elmgrove in the meantime.

  “We had now reached the High Street, and she left us to board the car for the Ferry, saying she was all packed and going back to London. I remember I said to her: ‘He must be very attractive when you cannot stay away from London or from him.’ And she replied: ‘Oh, but he isn’t in London just now.’

  “She was tremendously excited, talking and giggling shrilly about the man so much so that people were turning round to look at her and we were relieved when she left us and we remarked to each other: ‘She’s insane.’

  “Some short time after this meeting I received a letter from her from the Strand Palace Hotel, London. The next communication I received were three postcards, one from Portree dated September 1st and postmarked the 3rd, the next written on Saturday, at Oban, and postmarked September 21st, and the third written the following Monday, at Fort Augustus.

  “On Monday, 14th of October 1912, my sister and I met Miss Milne in Nethergate, near Park Place. We stopped and spoke and she was showing a stone fixed at her neck. She said: ‘I bought this cairngorm at Inverness. It is a very fine one,’ and she also said: ‘I’ve got a new ring I’d like to show you,’ and she began to unfasten her glove and then she said: ‘Oh you will see it another time.’

  “I never saw her again.”

  A man, a man, a man. A short man. A charming man. A handsome man in evening dress. A foreigner. And a ring.

  11

  ALL THROUGH THAT week, the man haunted us. We pursued him through the Ferry. We saw the tail end of his coat disappearing round every street corner, we s
potted the top of his hat just on the other side of the wall, but we could never quite grasp him.

  And all that week we were hindered by reporters – and not just our own Norval Scrymgeour and his like. The Courier men were canny-enough lads who waited to be told, but the murder had brought floods of reporters to the burgh from Edinburgh and Glasgow, some from as far away as London, the Harmsworth papers, the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, the Graphic, the Illustrated London News, the News of the World and I don’t dare say who else, all tripping over themselves looking for a story, racing each other up and down the street, fighting to be first with “the facts” and, if they couldn’t get facts, any old rubbish would do. Every street corner had a photographer taking pictures or an artist making sketches for lurid engravings to titillate readers across the Empire, and more than once I had to chase a man with a notebook off a doorstep. It was wearing.

  And then came the Saturday papers.

  WHO TOOK LIFE OF

  RICH MISS MILNE

  Whose Body, Wrapped in Sheet, is found in Broughty Ferry Mansion?

  * * *

  Assailant Cuts Telephone Wire to Prevent Alarm Being Given

  And, under that, they had gathered together what few facts we had given them and mingled them with a rich stream of drivel, gossip and wild imaginings to produce the most offensive rubbish it was possible to imagine.

  She went her own way, lonely but happy . . .

  How could they possibly pretend to know that?

  . . . and that way has ended in death in one of its most chilling aspects. Miss Milne has been struck down by a ruthless slayer who has had a three weeks’ start in the flight from justice and the authorities are busy trying to solve the greatest mystery in the history of crime in this country.

  Happy in the belief that she was enjoying not only complete solitude but privacy, Miss Milne went her way, little dreaming that her movements were being watched by a ruthless killer bent on raiding her home . . .

  There was not a shred of proof of that. Not a shred.

  . . . who would not hesitate to crush the life out of her frail old body in order to accomplish his purpose. In the garden of Miss Milne’s villa, Elmgrove, West Ferry, near Dundee, the man who was soon to bear the mark of Cain upon his brow crouched in the shadows and followed with wild, restless eyes the doings of the rich lady who sat in the dining room with none of the blinds drawn.

  It was a simple matter to see that Mrs Ritchie had been as free with her anecdotes to the reporters as she was with us.

  What exactly he wanted in that house, no one knows but, whatever it was, he meant to have it at all costs. He chose his time, made his venture and found himself confronted by the solitary mistress of the house. The ruthless, cowardly assailant rained upon her blow after blow with a steel poker 15 inches long.

  How could the length of the poker have any import in the matter? I almost threw the vile thing in the fire, but then I was shocked to read a smaller headline in the middle of the column.

  Sovereigns in a Drawer

  They knew of that! And, a little further down

  Slayer Washes His Hands

  That too!

  The slayer, it would appear, took every precaution to destroy any clues to assist the police in tracking him down. He actually went into the kitchen and washed his hands before leaving and the towel, which the police took possession of, is deeply stained with blood.

  The absence of any fingerprints would seem to show that the miscreant took every precaution to cover up clues which may lead to his identification. But, in their cleverness, often the cleverest rogues err at times and the possibility of still securing a fingerprint will no doubt be uppermost in the minds of detectives.

  There was a good deal more of this stuff and then it descended into a torrent of the worst kind of vile, disrespectful, gutter filth.

  Dressed Like Lady of Twenty-five

  Miss Milne was a woman of a romantic disposition and the periodical journey to London seems to have afforded ample scope for the gratification of her whims.

  That. What could that possibly mean? What was that supposed to mean? “Ample scope for the gratification of her whims”? They might as well have come right out with it and accused her of whoredom and harlotry.

  Once away from home she despised convention . . .

  Again. That, again. Speak Scotch or whistle. “Despised convention” indeed.

  . . . she had a great love for finery and attracted a good deal of attention by her gaudy attire. More like a young girl than a woman nearing the allotted span.

  Gaudy!

  Indeed she did not mind being teased a little about having a sweetheart.

  WHO WAS THE HANDSOME STRANGER

  WITH WHOM MISS MILNE MADE TRIP

  IN HIGHLANDS?

  Without a doubt Miss Milne led a double life. Two ladies who paid a visit to the house of mystery . . .

  The house of mystery!

  . . . informed the News that they travelled with Miss Milne on the same steamer from Inverness to Fort Augustus, on board the Cavalier. When on the way Miss Milne and her male companion emerged from the cabin. Miss Milne and her male companion, a tall, good-looking man of about 35 years walked about the deck chatting. At Fort Augustus they left the boat together and were seen to proceed up the road into town.

  A man again. That man. More groundless accusations of whoring. I could not bear to read more. I cast the paper from me and went to find Mr Trench, who was in the back office and reading through another pile of witness statements, but I could see he had a copy of the same paper on his desk.

  I went up to where he sat and said: “It seems the newspapers know a great deal of our business. I am heartily sorry for that and I take the responsibility. I will have words with the men, find out which if them is responsible and take the matter further.”

  Mr Trench said: “You mustn’t blame the men. It’s nothing to do with them. I judged it useful to have a quiet word, here and there, with a few of the newsmen.”

  “You, sir?”

  “Yes.”

  “But the things they said, sir. This is pure invention and they have blackened that poor lady’s name.”

  “I can’t help that and Jean Milne is far past caring. These are modern times, Sergeant Fraser, and this man has a head start on us. I want this on the front pages. I want the hue and cry to go up from one end of these islands to the other. Take a look at that.” He jabbed his finger at the newspaper. “Latest certified circulation over 430,000 copies weekly. That’s almost half a million households, each paper seen by four or five people. That’s more than two million policemen looking out for this man and I want him to know it. Two million informants after his blood.”

  I make no secret of the fact: I did not believe that the ends justified the means. I still do not. However, I bit my tongue in front of Mr Trench. I said: “I have been informed, from a private source, that two days after the murder was committed, a telephone call came from London for Elmgrove – lY2 Broughty Ferry – but of course got no answer.”

  “ ‘A private source’? What do you mean ‘a private source’? You can’t go about having ‘private sources’. I need to be informed of everything. Who is this ‘private source’ of yours?”

  “It’s private,” I said, “but it wouldn’t take much working out.”

  “No. It wouldn’t take much working out because it’s an offence under the Telegraph Act to disclose any such information, and since the only person who would know about a telephone call that was never answered is the Post Office, I think we should take a stroll along there.”

  It is no distance at all from the Police Offices and the Burgh Chambers to the Post Office, which is a fine stone building just on the other side of the railway, a graceful addition to our little town with all the dignity you would expect from such an important institution. It has Roman pillars on either side of double doors and the royal cypher of the old King on the gable and, inside, a long counter where five attendants are co
nstantly employed.

  One of them was Annie Liddell. She was a poor, on-the-shelf sort of a woman, still unmarried at the age of thirty-one and sent out by her mother to work for her keep. She took fright when she saw me, thinking that I had betrayed her over the telephone call, but I tipped her the wink and shook my head to reassure her as I closed the door behind Mr Trench.

  He took no notice of the queues of folk waiting to conduct their business but simply announced: “We’d like to see the postmaster.”

  “Mr Smeaton,” I said, and Annie Liddell drew down the curtain over the front of her booth, shut her drawer and went hurrying off.

  A minute or two later and she was back at her seat, counting pennies and handing out stamps, and the big green door into the sorting office opened quietly beside us.

  Mr Smeaton was there in his dove-grey frock coat, looking at us over his half-moon spectacles and he didn’t say a word, simply opened the door and waved us through. With the door closed again he said: “It’ll be the murder,” in a quiet voice.

  Mr Trench said: “I understand a telephone call was placed to Elmgrove from London some two weeks ago and it went unanswered.”

  “I wouldn’t know. We keep no record of unacknowledged calls.”

  “But a call like that, from London, it must require a number of connections. Don’t they have to book? What would be the point of making such a call and going to all that effort if the person on the other end had stepped out for a moment?”