The Secret Life and Curious Death of Miss Jean Milne

by Andrew Nicoll

  Mr Sempill did not rise when the young man approached across the platform, with Sergeant Cosgrove just half a pace behind. He did not offer his hand. He barely even looked up. He simply slid across the bench a little and said: “Have a seat, son.”

  The young man sat down. He kept his two hands on the knees of his polished trousers, rubbing away nervously, as if he had been ready to spring up and dash away but there was no chance of that. Sergeant Cosgrove was standing over him like the Rock of Gibraltar with its hands in its coat pockets.

  “Name?” Mr Sempill said.

  “Bert Aubrey.”

  “Age?”

  “I am twenty-seven.”

  “So young,” said Mr Sempill. “And so pretty.” He took the photograph from his jacket pocket and showed it. “Do you know this man?”

  Aubrey said nothing for a moment, chewing his lip as he looked frantically from the picture to Sergeant Cosgrove, to the side of Mr Sempill’s head, calculating the distance to the gates on the far side of the platform.

  “Do you know this man? Come on, it’s a simple-enough question.”

  Aubrey’s two hands fluttered up from his knees to his mouth as he stifled a squeal, and Mr Sempill turned to Cosgrove with a knowing look. “What did I say?”

  “So you do know him.”

  Aubrey nodded. His eyes were brimming with tears and he squirmed on the bench.

  “Read this.”

  Mr Sempill handed him a folded sheet of paper, a copy of the letter Warner had written from his cell, pleading for help.

  It was too much for Aubrey, who began dabbing at his eyes and, at last, hid his face in his handkerchief and wailed, rocking back and forward in his seat with many cries of “Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! ”

  “Make a note of that, Cosgrove,” said the Chief Constable. “Now then, Aubrey, is any of this true?”

  The young man was snivelling like a child and choked with sobs. “Non! Non! Non! Not true,” he said. “No word is true. Charles is a kind man. A gentle man. He is not a murderer. This is all lies. I think you are a very bad man and a very bad policeman.”

  “I have no concern for your opinion, sonny. Now get a grip of yourself and think. Is there anything in Warner’s statement that is true? Is he telling the truth about you and when he met you? Think, boy, this is important.”

  Aubrey rubbed at his eyes again and blew his nose with a fanfare. He was composed. He set his lips and jutted his chin with a martyr’s grimness.

  “Never will I condemn him,” he said. It would have made a cat laugh, but Sergeant Cosgrove was patient with him.

  He said: “Nobody’s asking you to condemn him. Just tell us the truth. He says you’re a French Canadian. Is that true?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now, that wasn’t so hard. What about the rest of it?”

  Aubrey looked down at the letter again. “It is so. We met here, right here. I was meeting the trains.”

  “When?” said Cosgrove. “The date. Dates are important.”

  “I don’t know. I can check in the hotel register. Near the beginning of October. A Tuesday. He came forward to me and asked me if I could recommend a cheap hotel to him. I recommended my own hotel, Hotel d’Alsace, and told him that if he stayed a week it would cost him five francs per day.

  “We went to the hotel and he entered his name in the register as Charles Warren. He told me he had no money but expected a remittance from America every day.”

  Mr Sempill almost spat his pipe out. “He told you he had no money and yet you allowed your master to take him in? For God’s sake, why?”

  “I liked him. Has that ever happened to you, sir? Somebody likes you?”

  Sergeant Cosgrove stepped in. “Get on with it,” he said.

  “He was always in good spirits. He told me he was an American from Detroit. He did not say what his occupation was, but it was clear he was a man used to command money. Always very well dressed. I lent him money on different occasions—”

  “You lent him money? Cosgrove, what did I tell you? What did I tell you? Why in God’s name is a hotel porter like you lending money to a guest? Why would a guest even ask?”

  Aubrey took out his handkerchief and began dabbing at his eyes again. “I told you! I liked him. We were friends. See, here, look on this letter, he writes ‘Friend Aubrey’. I see, Mr Policeman, nobody likes you and you have never had a friend. Charles was my friend. He borrowed money from me while he was here, and I know he borrowed money from different visitors staying in the hotel. But, after a few days had passed and his remittance did not come, I suggested he should look out for a job, and if he liked I would see to one for him. He said, no, he did not want to work. Then one day – yes, the date! October 16, I remember. October 16, you can check the book, but I know I am right because it was Gustave’s birthday—”

  “Who is Gustave?”

  “Another friend, Mr Policeman. You have no friends, but I have many. That morning he simply walked out of the hotel and did not come back again. The following day in the afternoon he came to me here at the Central Railway station and showed me an order from the British Consul for his passage to England. I was afraid he would sell it and try to remain on in Antwerp, so I told him a lie. I said the boss at the hotel had a warrant for his arrest over his unpaid bill. There and then I took him down to the Harwich boat and saw him onto it. I paid his tram fare to the boat, and I bought him some sandwiches for the journey and I gave him all the money in my pocket.”

  “You gave him all the money in your pocket.” Mr Sempill shook his head in disgust. “What did I tell you, Cosgrove? Am I right?”

  Sergeant Cosgrove stood aside to let Aubrey leave. “We found you once, we can find you again if we need you. Don’t try to run.” And then, because he was kind, he took two francs from his pocket and pressed them on Aubrey. “No. There. Take it. And, for God’s sake, stop crying. Be on your way.”

  Aubrey left, shoulders heaving but trying not to cry, and Mr Sempill, who was not kind, looked after him, not knowing what to say. Sergeant Cosgrove sat down on the bench and waited in silence. A train left and a porter went by rolling a leather trunk on a trolley.

  Mr Sempill said: “I’m going home.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “My work here is done. I will have to report that Warner appears to be telling the truth.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Still, my time has not been entirely wasted. I can tell you this for sure and certain: that Nancy Jones is either his accomplice or his mistress. That may explain why, amongst all those pages telling us where he passed his time, he completely neglected to make any mention of her. There’s undoubtedly some reason he was carrying her address round with him and making preparations to wire her.”

  “Quite obviously, sir,” said Sergeant Cosgrove. “Unless . . .”

  “Undoubtedly. A criminal harlot. A co-conspirator. She has probably acted to ingratiate herself with his victims and paved the way for him to step in. Either that or he is not, after all, an invert and they are lovers.”

  “There’s another possibility, sir, if I may.”

  “Damnation, man, you’re right. She may actually be his employer. We would be mad to rule it out simply because she is a woman. Warner may be her pawn – a helpless dupe caught in her web.”

  “Or she could be another victim. That might explain why he has failed to mention her, sir. You are – we are – assuming this Jones woman is, well, what I’m saying is she may be as old as Miss Milne. For all we know she may be as dead as Miss Milne.”

  “Why would he keep her address? Why incriminate himself when he has been so careful to cover his tracks at Elmgrove? Still, I suppose I should look into it. On my way home. I suppose.”

  He knocked his pipe out on the edge of the bench. “Who is this Petro Paulo chap, anyway?”

  “Sir?”

  “The statue in the square?”

  “Oh, him, sir. That’s Rubens, sir. Peter Paul Rubens. Famous artist, sir, of years gone
by, as you might tell by his outlandish dress. Famous for his ladies, sir. Liked ’em meaty.”

  “Rubens? Well, of course I know who Rubens was. It was the name that confused me. They all talk of ‘Petro Paulo’ when that wasn’t his name at all. Why would they do that, Cosgrove? What possible pleasure can it give them?”

  “I told you, sir – ’eathens. Every one of ’em. ’Eathen savages. It’s no explanation at all, but it’s all the explanation that makes any sense and it explains everything, sir.”

  47

  OUR MR SEMPILL took quite some days to return to Broughty Ferry, stopping off, as he did, on the way to interview Warner’s landlady in Seacombe and an unfortunate young woman Warner appeared to have cruelly deceived in a place called New Brighton. Both of these places are near Liverpool, I believe, and the people living there probably know as little of our lives in the Ferry as we do of theirs.

  However, while Mr Sempill was away there was an interesting event, in the form of an unusual envelope of very good quality which arrived for his notice, bearing striking stamps from the colony of Bermuda and with the postmark of Hamilton. I consulted the almanac and learned that Hamilton is the capital of Bermuda.

  Almost all the mail was opened and dealt with in the usual way, but this was marked as “strictly private and personal. If undelivered, return to Chief Constable and Provost Marshal General, Hamilton, Bermuda.” Naturally I did not open the letter, but when I went into Mr Sempill’s office – which Mr Trench was still using as his own – I made a great show of laying the envelope down in the middle of Mr Sempill’s desk and I gave it a meaningful tap with my finger before I left again.

  It was not long after that before Mr Trench came into the main office and made a telephone call. Naturally, I overheard nothing, but it was not many minutes later before the telephone rang again. Mr Trench hurried to answer it, and when he had finished his conversation he beckoned me over.

  He leaned in close and muttered: “It’s right enough. They are looking for a Chief of Police in Bermuda. Bermuda! That’s quite a step up for the old boy.”

  I took the view – and it is a view I maintain – that Broughty Ferry could hold its head up with any part of His Majesty’s dominions and that Bermuda would be more like an exile than a promotion, but I did not disagree with Mr Trench, although something of my opinion must have shown in my face.

  He said: “Well, what I mean is you might have thought he would have tried his wings in someplace a little less exotic. Edinburgh, maybe, rather than taking on an entire colony. It is a very small colony.”

  We speculated together throughout the day as to why Mr Sempill should have carried out his correspondence with Bermuda through the police office and not from his home address in the park. There were only two possible reasons: either he did not wish Mrs Sempill to know of his plans for some reason, or it was because he wished the letter to be seen so that we would all realise what an important individual he was and how much in demand from police forces throughout the Empire. We decided it was the latter.

  The envelope gathered dust on Mr Sempill’s desk for another day and a half before the Chief Constable finally returned to Broughty Ferry.

  This time he did not bring souvenirs for us because, as he explained, Antwerp has no places of interest and, in any event, it is foreign. I think the truth is that Mr Sempill had become a little jaded by travel.

  He was very jolly when he arrived, praising himself for his detective work on the Continent and full of stories about “that daft old maid in New Brighton” and how completely Warner had taken her in. “Were I not a respectable and upstanding member of society, that would be my hobby – whispering sweet nothings to on-the-shelf spinsters and picking their pockets as I went. Still, life has taken me down another path,” and he rubbed his hands together and went off, laughing. “See me when you have a moment, please, Trench. We need to prepare for our visit from the Fiscal.”

  I have to say, I am strongly of the view that Mr Sempill would have made a better policeman if he had been blessed with a little more kindness. He gave no thought at all to what that lady had suffered and it is a source of amazement to me that men who have no understanding of human failings and care nothing for mortal weakness, the loves and hates and fears and hopes that drive us all, can make a career in the police, where such things are the mainspring of every crime. How much more easily might crime be detected by men with a little more kindness and a broader understanding of human nature?

  Still, I must acknowledge that when Mr Procurator Fiscal Mackintosh arrived for his appointment that afternoon, the Chief Constable was good enough to invite me to join the meeting.

  Such was the success of his mission to Flanders that he, no doubt, wished as many as possible to see it and applaud, and it was, undoubtedly, a thorough piece of work. He did not read through every witness statement, but even to rehearse the burden of their evidence took the better part of half an hour, and when he turned the last page in the file, Mr Sempill looked up in expectation of well-deserved congratulations. “I think that proves it,” he said. “I need hardly point out that the prisoner’s second statement differs very materially from the statement made at Maidstone jail. It will also be noted that in this second statement Warner gave us a very comprehensive narrative of his movements,” Mr Sempill looked at his notes, “dating from 10th August till 4th November. Very comprehensive. Almost encyclopaedic.

  “It will be noted too, that he was able to give the exact day of the month, with the corresponding day of that week, on which he said he was at all the different places he said he visited. He dictated all this from memory, and it is an impossible feat for any man to do unless he had purposely, with the object in view, mentally noted the different dates in his mind on which he was at all the different places he mentions.

  “On his own account and on that of the witnesses which I took in Antwerp, Brussels and London, he was living a most irregular life, at times drinking heavily and living by his wits, flitting between Antwerp and London, London and Liverpool, Liverpool and London, London and Southampton, Liverpool and Seacombe, Seacombe and Antwerp, Antwerp and Rotterdam, Rotterdam and Antwerp, Antwerp and Brussels, Brussels and Antwerp, and Antwerp back to London.”

  Mr Mackintosh the Fiscal clasped his hands carefully over his waistcoat together before he spoke. “Oh yes, you’ve proved it all right. You’ve followed him all round Europe, back and fore, England to Holland, across to Belgium, back to England, and every place you went you found things exactly as Warner described, met people exactly as he said and they all testify to the truth of what he says. So, congratulations, Chief Constable, you have proven beyond all shadow of a doubt that he could not have been even in the same country when Miss Milne was murdered, far less the same street.”

  “No, no, no, you don’t understand.” Mr Sempill was licking his thumb and rifling through his piles of papers. “You see there’s a gap. Here, look, here.”

  I looked to Mr Trench, but he was looking down at the floor.

  “Look, we know that Warner obtained a travel warrant from the authorities in Antwerp on October 17 and by his own account – out of his own mouth, mind you – he says he got to London on, here, here it is, on the 18th, when he wasted the day hanging round the docks. The next day, he obtained money under false pretences at the Canadian High Commission and they told him to come back again on the 21st. The 21st. Don’t you see, that’s a two-day gap. That’s more than enough time to get to Broughty Ferry, do the deed and return to London, where he could be seen by a respectable figure like the Canadian High Commissioner.”

  “But how could he pay for the ticket? He was strapped. That’s why he asked the Canadians for money.”

  “I’ve already through of that,” said Mr Sempill. “That was part of his plan. If he could establish that he had no money for the rail fare, that would rule him out as a suspect. But he did have money. Or perhaps he swindled somebody out of the fare, or begged assistance. He has very strong Masonic connect
ions.”

  “That’s true,” said Mr Trench. “A couple of constables in London helped him out on the strength of it.” He was trying to be helpful.

  Mr Mackintosh flicked through Warner’s statement. “According to this he stayed in cheap lodgings for those two nights.”

  Mr Trench said: “Nobody remembers him and there are no records. We did look.”

  “So, according to you, he swindled the Canadian High Commission out of cash he did not require, or stole some money, or begged some money, and came to the Ferry to murder a woman he had never met and fled again. In the name of God, why?”

  Mr Sempill was becoming exasperated, and he spoke to the Fiscal as he would to a stupid child struggling over his multiplication tables. “Because it’s the perfect crime of course. If I murder somebody I know, I will be caught because there’s a connection – there’s a reason. If I murder somebody at random, somebody totally unconnected, there’s no reason to trace the killing back to me.”

  “But why? You still haven’t told me why.”

  “Miss Milne was well known in London, splashing her money about the place like a drunken sailor. Obviously he heard of her or met her – at the Bonnington Hotel, for example—”

  “Nobody there recognised him.”

  “There was some dubiety, but set that aside. He knew she had money, he got on the train, dashed her brains out, ransacked the place, got back on the train and sealed his alibi with a visit to the Canadian High Commission. The perfect crime.”

  The Fiscal went back to his notes again. “And you say that he murdered her on the night of the 19th or the 20th?”