“Scotland,” said Mr Sempill. “You’ll be tried under Scots law.”
Warner flicked a mocking salute. “As you say, Chiefy. Just as you say.”
“And neither Mr Trench nor I has any wish to put you on trial for a crime you did not commit.”
“Well, let me say I take that as right neighbourly of you both and, for the record, let me also state that I believe that – of one of you.”
“Go to sleep,” Trench said.
“So what do you want to talk about? The ladies? I could tell you a few tales to put a smile on your face.” And he went on, jabbering that way about where he had been and what he had seen, everything he’d done and who he’d done it to.
Mr Trench folded his arms across his chest and pretended to sleep. He hoped that, as with a difficult child, indifference might be the best response, but Warner yammered on through the night for mile after mile and Trench found himself lulled into a doze, but as he dozed, he listened, and as he listened, he took notes. “No. Not a stupid man. In fact, I’d say he is a man of considerable intelligence and well educated but, at the same time, a man who can be very, very coarse and vulgar. Evidently travelled a lot. Claims to be a great Freemason. Never done with talking about the Lodge. Sneers at everything British. Says he’s forty-one years of age. We bargained him up from thirty-eight, anyway, but he looks at least sixty. Repulsive face. Repulsive. That’s the soul shining through. Good knowledge of prison life and discipline – particularly French and American. I’d bet my pension he’s seen the inside of a few jail cells. Claims he was once a wealthy man. He has that way about him. The entitlement that goes with money.”
Warner must have feared he was losing his audience when neither Mr Trench nor Chief Constable Sempill made him any reply. So he commenced to singing.
Who were you with last night,
Out in the pale moonlight?
It wasn’t yerr sister
It wasn’t yerr maa
Aaaa Aa Aha Aha
Who were you with last night,
Out in the pale moonlight?
Are yah gonna tell your missus
When you get home
Who you were with last night?
“Shut up, Warner, for God’s sake.”
“Come on, come on, let’s have a sing-song. They loved this one in the halls back in London. It’s absolutely the latest thing.”
“That’s true, actually,” said Mr Sempill. “It was all the go when I took the witnesses on their night out.”
Warner was suddenly furious. “Sonsabitches. So that was all it took was it? That buncha rubes and hicks and you paid them off with a night in a hotel and a trip to the music hall. That was all it took to buy them, the stinking bastards. Lousy, stinking bastards. You’d think a man like me would be worth more than a pint of warm beer and a plate of pie and mash. Bastards. Every one of you. Do you know – can you begin to think what it’s been like for me? I’m accused of murder. You’re out to kill me and you celebrate with a night at the music hall. Bastards.”
“Then talk to us,” said Trench. “Help us.”
“We’ve been through that!” Warner was almost screaming at them. “Go piss up a rope.”
Nobody said anything. They were embarrassed. The train rattled on in the dark. They heard the sound of rain, like gravel flung at a lover’s window. They waited for Warner’s anger to fizzle out.
“Did I ever tell you,” he said at last, “about Eddy Guerin?” The storm had passed. “Eddy Guerin the Devil’s Isle prisoner. Yes sir, he’s a friend of mine. A good friend. And the Frenchies took him off to that Hellhole. Eddy’s no more than a jewel thief.”
“A notorious hotel jewel thief,” said Mr Sempill.
“He’s only notorious because he got caught. When he wasn’t caught, nobody knew his name, which is considered as something of a qualification for a jewel thief. Not to get noticed, that’s the thing. Come and go.”
“If you know him, then you must know he is responsible for thefts worth many millions of francs.”
“Then I tip my hat to him, Chiefy. I tip my hat and I say with good ole Teddy Roosevelt ‘Bully for you!’ Yes, indeed, bully for you, Eddy Guerin, wherever you are!”
“He should be ashamed,” said Mr Sempill. “And you should be ashamed to know him. He is justly punished.”
“Oh get the burr out of your ass, Chiefy! What harm did Eddy ever do you or anybody else? He helped himself to a lot of old ladies’ rocks, that’s all. And how did they get them? Come on, Chiefy, we’re both men of the world here. They got them by whoring themselves to wealthy men, that’s all.”
“Ridiculous.”
“And how did their husbands get the money to pay for it all? Why, by grinding the faces of the poor, that’s how.”
“Absolute nonsense.”
“It’s the goddamn truth. Nobody lost out by what Eddy did. All those rocks were insured. They got their money back and the insurance companies stole it all back again with a penny on every policy.”
“Those pennies add up.”
“And they sent poor Eddy off to Devil’s Island for stealing a penny. Now that’s the real crime.”
Mr Sempill sat fuming like an outraged Sunday School teacher as Warner – “Lemme have another one of those cigarettes, Mr Trench” – boasted of the great men he had known. “The very best thieves and crooks and conmen,” Swenney and May Churchill and others Mr Trench knew only from the papers and Scotland Yard bulletins, and when his stream of raucous anecdotes dried up, he would go back to singing his song: “Who were you with last night, out in the pale moonlight?” The words of it seemed to rattle round in all their brains so that even when Warner wasn’t singing it or whistling it out between his gold teeth, the train clattered it out on the tracks: “It wasn’t yerr sister, it wasn’t yerr ma, it wasn’t yerr sister, it wasn’t yerr ma, it wasn’t yerr sister, it wasn’t yerr ma.”
“I know what you think,” Warner said. “You think a man like me, a man living by his wits, has to be a great talker. Well, as usual, boys, you could not be more wrong. It’s not fast talking that gets a man like me his scores, no, sir. It’s listening. If you want to get on, be a patient listener – and I mean really listen. You’ll pick things up. Information. Information is the key to the door. And don’t look bored. Never look bored. Listen with interest to what the other fella’s saying – especially if the other fella is a lady.
“Politics – stay off it. Wait for the other person to reveal any political opinions, then agree with them. Agree and agree and agree. Same with religion. If he’s a red-hot Bible-thumping Baptist, out-thump him. If he’s an atheist who wants every priest hanging from a lamp post, that’s fine too.
“And stay off sex. You can hint at it, but don’t follow it up unless the other person – man or woman – shows a strong interest. Same with illness. People don’t care about your ailments and they don’t like to be reminded of their own. But these are all just general rules. In general, stay off illness, unless some special concern is shown.
“Go slowly, that’s the thing. Never pry into a person’s personal circumstances. Believe me, they are bursting to tell you everything if you just give them time. Never boast. There’s no need for that. I’m a seriously important person. You’re damned lucky to have the chance to be in my company, so I don’t have to tell you that. It should be obvious. Keep clean and tidy – and I’m downright fastidious about that, boys – and stay off the drink. Stay sober at all times.”
“Are you downright fastidious about that too?” Mr Sempill said.
“When I’m working, yes.”
“Working!” Mr Sempill was a quiver of outraged whiskers.
“What I do is as much work as what you do. Persecuting world travellers and scraping old drunks off the road doesn’t count as work in my book.”
“Listen to me, you blackguard . . .”
But Mr Trench decided to intervene. “Just go to sleep, Warner. Go to sleep. I’ve done my best to make things comfort
able for you, but, if you prefer, I can just as easily cuff your hands behind your back.”
Warner showed his golden shark grin again, but he said nothing in reply. And that was how they passed the night: saying nothing more. The guard came in some time after ten and asked permission to turn down the gas. Mr Trench agreed. It left them with no more than a glow of blue round the edge of the blinds onto the corridor, faint and milky like those worn bits of sea glass you find tumbled on the beach, and, at the other side, sometimes suddenly wiped away by the startling lightning-flash clatter of a passing train, only a rain-streamed sheet of black where the orange tip of Warner’s cigarette reflected back at them.
Trench sprawled on his chair like a saloon bar bully, his legs stretched out to block the door, just in case Warner moved in the night. It was far from silent. The rain. The steam whistle howling like a lost beast in the darkness calling to its kin. All the shaking, rattling, thumping, creaking, squeaking noises of a moving train. The clickety-clack sound of the wheels moving over the tracks. Mr Trench had schooled himself to sleep whenever he got the chance and he might have slept through all of that, but there was something else too, very quiet and almost imperceptible so that sometimes he had to struggle to listen, as if to reassure himself that it was still there on the other side of the railway carriage and not right there on the seat beside him. It was Warner sucking and blowing through his golden teeth, not quite a whistle but more than a breath, and that tune: “Who were you with last night, out in the pale moonlight?” over and over again.
36
THE RAILWAY LINE passes through broad farmlands on its way north and then, briefly, into a tight cutting that contains and magnifies all the noise of the engine and then out again into open air along the edge of the Tay before launching itself onto the bridge. It was early in the morning – barely five o’clock – in late November and still as black as midnight with a heavy mist swirling about the train and clinging to the windows, but Mr Sempill could tell at once that they were almost home. The sound of the train changed and softened when they left the shore and went out onto the high bridge; everything became fainter, almost gauzy, as the roaring of the furnace, the screaming of great metal wheels turning on iron rails, the rattle of chains, the thump and bump and crash of carriages was carried up, out and down, warning them that they were now suddenly hanging over nothing with only the surge of black water waiting to swallow them if they fell.
The sound of the train changed again as it slowed on its approach to the other side, then on the long curving bend that was still, officially, “bridge” but now, at least, safely over land. Looking through the window they could see almost nothing – a few uncertain lights along the streets and, here and there, a lamp in the windows of a town waking to another day of misery and hard labour that only drunkenness could soften.
“Up,” said Mr Sempill.
They went through the tiresome business of disconnecting Warner’s chain, locking and unlocking, unfixing and refixing his handcuffs, and when it was done and his wrists were once again manacled together, Mr Trench stood, holding the chain that linked them in a fist the size of a ham.
“Don’t try to run,” he said.
Warner looked at him with cool contempt.
“I mean it. Believe me, you won’t get far with the cuffs on. It’s surprising how tying a man’s hands interferes with his legs, and you’ll have the whole city after you. You will be caught and it would look worse for you.”
“I’m not running,” Warner said. “I’ve got nothing to fear.”
The train stopped, so gradually and so slowly that, for a moment, they were unsure if it had actually happened. Trench got down first. Warner was waiting on the step of the railway carriage, Mr Sempill’s restraining hand on his shoulder. Trench turned and gripped the handcuff chain again, urged him forward, and put his free hand on Warner’s elbow to help him down. It was a kind gesture and Warner, who was unused to kindness, looked down and smiled.
On the platform, everything smelled of smoke and hot machine oil. There was the sound of heavy wooden doors banging shut along the length of the train. The engine released a gigantic fart of steam as they passed. It curled up and backwards from the concrete lip of the platform and was lost in the fog, disappearing among the billion drops of water already hanging in the air. Mr Sempill led the way, carrying his cane like a club, ready to bring it down on Warner’s head if he tried to break away. Behind him came Mr Trench, one hand gripping Warner’s chains, the other carrying his overnight bag with his umbrella – always his umbrella – securely buckled to the side of it with leather straps.
They went past the little wooden book stall with its bales of newspapers dumped by the door, up the stairs, through the abandoned turnstiles and out into the street. It was like walking into the midst of a cloud or seeing what the divers see when they are screwed into their huge, heavy brass helmets and dropped off the side of a ship. Everything was softened by the mix of darkness and mist and weary gaslights that made blobs of yellow in the air and shone no further than their own shadowed feet. Behind them there was the workaday brick of Tay Bridge station. Off to their right, the pier for the ferries that went back and forth across the Tay. To the left, the mad, baronial, Italianate fantasy of the West station, and across the road, silent but for an early coal cart, the Parisian grandeur of Mather’s Temperance Hotel with, beyond that, the lights of the ships tied up along Victoria Dock.
“I see they have failed to provide a police van,” said Mr Sempill. He made no complaint. It was as if he were pleased to be disappointed and let down by the City of Dundee Police. “They insist on us keeping him here, though God knows what’s wrong with our own cells. The very least they could have done was send the van on time.”
“They knew we were coming?” said Mr Trench.
“I sent the telegram myself.” He fished in his coat pocket. “Look, there’s the receipt. Every penny properly accounted for.”
Warner gave a throaty laugh. He held up a stub of cigarette in two cuffed hands for Mr Trench to light. He had a look in his eye that said: “Oh, you can just bet every penny is properly accounted for.”
“I could have the stationmaster call, if you like, sir.”
“We’ll give them a moment.” Mr Sempill knew the pleasure of calling Dundee Police headquarters would be all the sweeter if he could complain he had been forced to wait in soaking, freezing fog for a time.
But Warner’s cigarette had not burned down before they saw the lamps of a horse van approaching down Union Street, and not very long after that, it was rolling and clattering over the worn and broken cobbles in front of the station.
The man in front knuckled his hat and said: “Chief Constable Sempill?”
“You’re late,” he said, although it was clear he wished the man had been later.
The driver got down from his seat and unbolted the door at the back of the cab.
“Good God, man, what is that stench?” Mr Sempill was horror-struck and he clamped a handkerchief to his face.
“Last customer, sir. Boaked in the back. There wisnae time fer tae tak a bucket tae’t. But ah can pit a blanket ower it.”
“Please don’t trouble yourself,” said Mr Sempill. He slammed the door shut. “We’ll walk.”
“Gee whizz,” Warner said. “It’s mighty generous of you, Chiefy. I will say that. Real white of you, but please don’t trouble on my account. I’ve been in places that stunk worse, believe me. Last night, for example.”
Mr Trench said: “Shut up.” He took a key from his pocket, then released Warner’s left handcuff and fixed it round his own right wrist. “Now walk.”
They made an odd sight, the three of them, trudging through the waking town: Mr Sempill, quietly satisfied to have been so spectacularly let down, Mr Trench with his case and his umbrella in one hand, and Warner balancing the other side while the stinking police van rolled along beside them, back up Union Street, up Tally Street, through the Overgate with its tiny shopfront
s and its verminous closes and its tenements piled high to the dark and dripping sky, up Lindsay Street and then to the Police Chambers, just across the lane from the new burial ground with its mortuary, where Miss Milne had lain for a little while.
It was, without a doubt, considerably more impressive than the modest little station of Broughty Ferry. There were magnificent gates that led through to a courtyard and, beyond that, a great stone building fitting for a body of the power and majesty of Dundee City Police, with much in the way of polished brass work, gleaming mahogany and carved folderols. The police offices formed one wing of a massive monument to justice. In the centre there was the court, with its pillared entrance portico under the royal arms. Here were the offices of Mr Procurator Fiscal Mackintosh – no friend of Broughty Ferry Burgh Police – and the Sheriff Clerk. Here were several magnificent and terrifying court rooms, in one of which, Mr Sempill devoutly hoped, Warner would shortly be condemned to death, and, at the far side of the building, in a wing which mirrored the police station with a perfect Grecian simplicity, the city jail. It was a matter of deep regret to Mr Sempill that hangings were no longer permitted in Dundee prison. The authorities, in their great wisdom, had ruled that, for reasons of decency and dignity, His Majesty’s Prison at Perth was more fitting for such events. Still, as he signed the necessary papers consigning his prisoner to Dundee, Mr Sempill decided that a trip to Perth was not too severe an imposition. It would take no more than half an hour on the early train. He could arrive in plenty of time for an eight o’clock appointment. Or might it be wiser to stay overnight? The George? An ideal spot for a celebratory lunch. You could get an excellent steak pie at the George and a bottle of Guinness to wash it down. Mr Neaves would like that. It would make the whole thing into a jaunt and well worth the trouble of the visit. You couldn’t ask a man to come all the way from Kent for a hanging and not give him a bit of a feed too. Mr Sempill signed his name with a flourish.
The Secret Life and Curious Death of Miss Jean Milne Page 21