The Secret Life and Curious Death of Miss Jean Milne

by Andrew Nicoll

  “I’m certain I cannot advise you,” said Mr Smeaton. He raised his hand and snapped his fingers and called out: “James!”

  A young man emerged from among the tall shelves of pigeonholes where the post was sorted and came trotting up as Mr Smeaton said: “Ask Miss Liddell to join us for a moment and we’ll see if there is something which we can talk to these gentlemen about.”

  We waited awkwardly for a few moments until Annie Liddell returned with James and Mr Smeaton gave her permission to speak. “Tell these gentlemen what happened,” he said.

  The poor lassie. Looking at Mr Trench, it was all she could do not to bob a curtsy, and when she spoke it was little more than an embarrassed whisper that none of us could make out.

  The postmaster said: “Speak up, Miss Liddell. You have no reason to fear the police. This is Britain. In this country the policeman is not your master but your servant, your protector and your friend. Simply tell the gentleman what happened.”

  “Well, sir, I . . .”

  “It was just coming up for closing time on October 11,” James said.

  “And who are you?”

  “James Delaney, sir. Telegraphist and sorting clerk. The way I remember is, I was off duty but I came in to see Mr Smeaton because he was going on his holidays and I was supposed to take over his duties while he was away and he wanted to sort out a few things.”

  Mr Smeaton nodded and said: “Quite true.”

  “I was standing right there, in that doorway, between the public counter and the back office here, and a man came in – didn’t he, Annie?”

  “A man came in,” she said.

  Mr Trench tried to be charming, but his moustache and his umbrella had quite overwhelmed the poor woman. “Did you see the man, Miss Liddell?”

  “I saw the man, yes.”

  “And did he speak to you?”

  “He spoke to me, yes.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He asked me where Elmgrove was.”

  “And what did you tell him?”

  James Delaney burst in. “She never told him anything. She’s no more idea how to give directions to Elmgrove than fly to the moon.”

  Mr Smeaton said: “That’ll do, James.”

  “Yes, sir. Miss Liddell came up to me and asked me where Elmgrove was and I told the man. I just hope to God that I didn’t send the murderer to her door.”

  “It would be wise,” Mr Trench said, “not to go about repeating things like that, not with all these reporters around the place. Describe this man to me.”

  “He was a queer-looking type. He was wearing a tile hat – what you might call a top hat, sir. But there was something about him. What was a man like that doing asking for Miss Milne at Elmgrove! That was what struck me, sir. That was what made me look at him.”

  “You’re sure he asked for Miss Milne by name.”

  “Oh certainly, he asked for her at Elmgrove.”

  “He asked for her, sir,” said poor Annie.

  “And there he was, a man in a tile hat, badly needing a shave. He had the look of a broken-down cabman. He was about five foot ten and he had what you’d call an ordinary face – although I only saw him side-on – brown coat and either the collar of his coat was turned up or he had a muffler on and I think he had a small handbag. It’s just that . . .” He seemed unwilling to say more, but Mr Trench encouraged him with a gesture. “It’s just that it seemed strange for him to be asking for Miss Milne at Elmgrove after what the Postie Slidders said about her.”

  Slidders again. The man who had brought all this down on my head. “What did Slidders say about Miss Milne?”

  “Only that she was a wee touch, well, that she had her eccentricities.”

  “And so have we all,” I said. “You nor Slidders have any right to make remark on that good lady. Judge not that ye be not judged!”

  I found Mr Trench looking at me with a queer look. “Right you are, Sergeant Fraser,” he said. “Right you are.”

  He thanked Mr Smeaton and his staff, and asked them to come into the station at their convenience to make signed statements, and we went out again into the weather. Mr Trench turned his collar up against the wind and he said: “Had you some special fondness for Miss Milne?”

  “She was well known to me,” I said, “and to many folk in the Ferry.”

  “But had you some special fondness for her?”

  “I like to think I have a special fondness for everybody who is entrusted to my care. I am a policeman, as Mr Smeaton said, a servant, a friend and a protector.”

  He said once more: “Right you are, Sergeant Fraser,” and we left it at that, as I did not care to explain myself further.

  But we had not gone more than a few yards before Mr Trench spoke again. “Is that one also in your special care?”

  He looked me full in the face, but with his eyes he was indicating a rough and shabby old man on the far side of Queen Street with a large, square pack on his back.

  “He is also of my flock,” I said. “That’s Andy Hay the pedlar.”

  “Well, he seems awful keen to get your attention.”

  And, true enough, though he was standing in the one place and making no attempt to cross the street, by a strange system of jerks and winks and twitches he was trying to attract my attention.

  “I’ll wait here,” Mr Trench said, and as soon as Andy saw me coming towards him, he stopped his twitching and turned and looked deep into the hedge at his back.

  “Dinna look at me, dinna speak,” he said. “Ahm no here. Yiv no seen me.”

  I made an effort to look the other way.

  “Ah canna be seen talkin wi you, Mister Fraser, but it’s the lady. It’s the lady. The lady that was murdered.”

  I stood quietly, not looking at him, listening to Andy’s story, about how he walks the same route, regularly, never calling at any house more than once in three weeks, never wearing out his welcome. That was how he knew he was on Grove Road on Wednesday three weeks before. And he was fond of Miss Milne.

  “She never bought a thing aff me, but she was very good at giving me a thrupenny piece. Ah was just goin in by the wee gate when Ah met a gentleman comin on his way oot. He didna speak.

  “Ah went on up tae the hoose and rung the bell but got no answer. When Ah went back tae the gate – are yi lookin at me, Mr Fraser?”

  “No, Andy, I’m not looking at you.”

  “Ah went back tae the gate and, when I was at the ootside o the gate the same man Ah met comin was ten or fifteen yards up Grove Read, comin doon towards me. Ah got oot his way an crossed the street, but the man went in by the gate.

  “Ah went along Albany Road to the junction wi Ellieslea an I sat on mah pack tae hae a smoke, waitin so as to allow the servants at Miltonbank time tae get their dinner before Ah should go up tae them. While sittin smokin, the same man come back doon Albany Road again, tae whaur Ah wis an he says tae me: ‘You are taking it very easy,’ he says, ‘You are taking it very easy.’

  “Ah answert him sayin, ‘The servants in the big hoose are aw at their dinners an they widnae look at me the noo.’

  “The man stood at the roadside for twa, three minutes, but he didna speak again tae me. Then he went up Ellieslea Road towards the car route. He returned back again to whaur Ah wis, lookin backwards and forwards but he didna speak. Then he ran up tae the car route again. Ah heard the bell but Ah couldna say if he got on.”

  I said: “What like a man was he, Andy?”

  “He was past thirty but he wisna forty, the ordinary height, a wee, thin fair moustache, stout wi a braw, heavy gold double Albert watch chain across his breast, wi a jewel hingin aff it.”

  “And you’re quite certain of the date? That would be Wednesday the 16th.”

  “The very day Ah sold a comb tae the maid at Miltonbank.”

  And then a strange thing happened. Andy looked at me and he gripped me by the wrist. “Yir askin aa the wrang fowk,’’ he said. “Yir askin aa the grand ladies and gentlemen.
They never see us but we see them. Ask the wee fowk like masel.”

  12

  I LOOK BACK on that time now as one of impossible strangeness. We were not idle in Broughty Ferry, never idle, and the men always had enough to do. I made sure of that. But in those days after the murder was discovered, we learned what work was. We rose early and sometimes we left so late for our beds that we met ourselves coming in. There was no time to waste rising from our desks in the morning to turn down the gas in the lamps since we would still be there, working, when it was time to light them again. There was never a minute of peace. The reporters were constantly at the front counter, and even when we told them there was nothing to say, as we always did, they would linger at the door for an hour and then come back to ask again. The police telegraph was constantly chattering, the Fiscal telephoned for information morning, noon and night, there were all the usual duties of the Burgh Police, which never slackened, a lost dog, a broken window, a day’s washing stolen from the line, drunkenness and wife beating, everything as much deserving of all our care and attention as before, but now suddenly silly and small and pointless. There was no rest, a shortness of sleep, we were stretched like fiddle strings and sometimes I recall those days through a cloudy, milky glass of exhaustion.

  Mr Sempill very well knew, as did we all, that if the papers could not deliver a story of detection and arrest they would provide a story of baffled, clueless, incompetent police officers, and the pain and disgrace of that would only be sharpened by the ill-disguised delight of the City of Dundee Police.

  The magistrates and councillors of the burgh were every bit as insistent as the press in their demands for some sign of progress and poor Mr Sempill had nothing to offer them. I know he felt the weight of that terribly, for the responsibility fell on his shoulders, but he was not alone, as we of lower rank lived among the ordinary folk of the burgh and every tradesman, every shopkeeper, every neighbour, if they did not dare to speak it aloud, looked at us with burning, questioning looks.

  None of us was spared. The Chief Constable looked to Mr Trench for results, insight, clues, some definite line of inquiry which might be pursued, and every hour that passed, every hour when we had to tell the crowds of reporters that “You will be kept informed of developments,” was another blow.

  But, all unknown to us, the dreadful burden of the murder was bearing down on others too. Mr Trench and I had not long returned from our meeting at the Post Office when I heard the voice of Dr Sturrock at the front counter, asking for the Chief Constable, and Broon, as calm and quiet as an ox, as he always was, saying: “I’ll just see if he’s in, sir.”

  Broon had no sooner turned away from the bar to make his way to Mr Sempill’s office than Dr Sturrock lifted the latch and came bustling through, saying: “Enough of your nonsense, man, you know very well he’s in,” and on he rushed to the Chief Constable’s room, bursting in with barely a skim of his knuckles on the door.

  Mr Trench rose to follow after and I, ever the loyal hound, came a step or two behind. “That’ll be all, Broon,” I said, “go about your duties.”

  Standing in the doorway, I could see Mr Sempill at his desk looking startled and Dr Sturrock, grey in the face and his eyes all rimmed red like a man who has wasted his nights pursuing sleep. Mr Trench took him by the elbow and pressed him to a chair and the doctor spoke in a great sob.

  “Sempill, I’ve been up for days. I cannot get sleep. I’m troubled in my conscience.”

  At that, Mr Trench looked at me and I looked at him, and for a moment he and I were thinking the same thing: that perhaps Dr Sturrock had come to confess to the killing. Trench was a stranger. I could not blame him for feeling that washing wave of relief and delight, as of a weight lifting, but I knew Dr Sturrock, I had known him for years, I knew his wife and his children, and the thought that he might soon hang revolted and terrified me.

  The Chief Constable said: “Speak your mind, Doctor, speak your mind,” and then, to me, “Close that door, Sergeant.”

  When we were all inside and quiet together, Dr Sturrock began to talk in a quiet, tired way. He said: “Have you removed the productions from Elmgrove?”

  “Everything material has been brought down from the house. The men have been working on cataloguing every last item.”

  “And what about her clothes?”

  “They are still at Elmgrove.”

  “The clothes she was murdered in? The clothes she was wearing? The ones they took off her at the post-mortem?”

  “Oh, those. No, those are here.”

  “Then I need to see them. There’s something I want to show you. I’m tormented with the most awful notion.”

  The Chief Constable looked at me with a raised eyebrow.

  “Everything is secured in the cells, sir. In boxes.”

  “Then let’s take a look, Fraser, let’s take a look.”

  So we all trooped out of Mr Sempill’s office and down the back corridor to the cells, every eye on us as we passed. “Get on with your work,” I said and I was careful to close the door at our backs against prying eyes.

  Dr Sturrock seemed more like himself now, a little restored, as if the fever had broken. “John Fraser, let me see your list of labels.”

  I handed him my ledger and he began running his finger down the long list of labels. “Where are her clothes?”

  “Here, sir.”

  “Roll out that mattress.”

  The mattress in a police cell is none too thick and none too clean, but I did as I was bid and and spread it over the iron-framed bed, and the doctor started to lay out Miss Milne’s bloodied clothing: her blue serge skirt, her linen blouse with its lace collar and then, on top of those, her corsets, her camisole, her linen chemise until there was the shape of a small woman lying there on that filthy bed.

  When he was finished, Dr Sturrock said: “You remember the night of the post-mortem – you were there, Fraser.”

  Mr Sempill and I agreed.

  “That was the night before you got here, Mr Trench. During the examination I drew attention to holes in the flesh of the deceased lady.”

  “Yes, I recall,” said Mr Sempill. “Maggots.”

  “Maggots. Exactly. Maggots. Sergeant Fraser, would you be so good as to hand me Label 31?”

  That was easily done. I gave the doctor the big, bone-handled fork from the carving set, the one that was lying on the floor of the hall by Miss Milne’s body when we broke in. It had a paper luggage label tied round the handle with brown string and my signature and Broon’s and a large “31” written in ink.

  “This has been rattling round in my head for days, gentleman. Observe.” Dr Sturrock took the fork and held it against two small holes in Miss Milne’s blouse. The prongs of the fork matched exactly. “There,” he said, “and there. And there. And there. And there.”

  I heard Mr Trench saying: “Dear God. Dear God,” and Mr Sempill said nothing at all.

  Suddenly we could see that her clothing was full of holes – riddled with holes. The more we looked, the more we found, holes in the shoulder, holes in the breast, holes in the back, through her blouse, through her underwear, through her corsets right through to her flesh. We counted twenty holes in the back of her clothing; on the right breast, eight punctured holes; on the right wrist, two more; and on the left breast, just over the heart, two more. Where they pierced her undergarments, the cloth was stained with blood and not one of the holes was placed over her corsets, which, as the villain well knew, would have resisted his blows.

  “Maggots,” said Dr Sturrock. “There’s your maggots. Thirty-four separate wounds. He stabbed her with this fork seventeen times. Seventeen times front and back. Seventeen times! And to think I bowed down and worshipped in front of the professor and his damned maggots.”

  The doctor flung open the cell door and went staggering out with Mr Trench and the Chief Constable on his coat-tails and so it was left to me to pack everything away.

  Afterwards I washed my hands under the tap i
n the back yard.

  And when I came into the building again, bolting the door at my back, Dr Sturrock and Lieutenant Trench were once more gathered in the Chief Constable’s office, where Mr Sempill had opened a restorative bottle of sherry.

  Dr Sturrock was sipping from a glass held in trembling fingers and the Chief was talking to Dundee on the telephone, demanding “an urgent meeting with Mr Procurator Fiscal Mackintosh, most urgent. In fact, immediate.”

  They made an odd picture sitting there together: the doctor who was well known to us all as one who cared for the weak and the infirm of our community, himself being tenderly cared for, and Mr Trench, with his great hedge of a moustache, a hand on the doctor’s shoulder, playing the nursemaid.

  Like an eavesdropper I found myself lingering aimlessly on the threshold of Mr Sempill’s office, where I had no business to be and, certainly, I had work of my own to be going on with, but the gentlemen were taken up with their own matters, and if they noticed me at all they made no sign.

  They seemed somehow set apart there together, the Chief Constable, the respected professional man and the lieutenant of detectives, and although I had handled all her clothing, although I had unpacked it from its boxes, although I packed everything away again, I was not offered a glass from the Chief Constable’s bottle.

  In very truth, I suppose I remained there only a moment and I was about to return to sit down at my own desk when Constable Suttie came hurrying up with a message from the police telegraph. He wanted to take it in to Mr Sempill, but I prevented him. “Give it to me,” I said.

  Suttie handed me the slip of paper. It was a message for the Chief Constable from the detective branch of Scotland Yard reporting that one Clarence Herberto Wray was in residence at the Bonnington Hotel, London.

  “They are busy with important matters,” I said. “I will hand it over in a moment. When they are free.”

  13

  A NUMBER OF events then transpired of which I have no direct knowledge and of which I learned only later, at second hand by way of conversation or through police reports which I have read with very close attention.