No, when it was done and the bed gave its final victorious squeak and they collapsed together in a tangled knot of hot exhaustion, this is what she said: “They are so grateful.” She said that to him and she laughed.
I would be a liar if I pretended to know how I got through that night or why I stood there against the wall of Elmgrove hardly moving, for hour after hour, afraid to make a sound lest it should rouse the two sleepers on the other side of that thin pane of glass. I breathed yet more softly than the ticking clock. The stone of the wall was rough and gritty under my fingers. My tears were hot and salt.
When the clock struck four there was a movement from indoors, the sounds of someone dragging themselves up from sleep, and more warm and affectionate mutterings. Then the sounds of someone stumbling round in the dark.
“There are matches on the chest of drawers, dear.”
“No need. We left the lamp burning next door.”
The toilet flushed. The window next to me brightened as he trimmed the wick. In the bedroom I heard Jean rise. She was going to the hook on the back of the door where her dressing gown always hung. I knew that, though I could not see it. How many hundred, hundred times had I seen her do it in the past.
“Right. I must go if I’m to catch the early train.”
“Goodbye, my own dear one. I’ll be ready.”
“Tomorrow night.”
Around the corner, I heard the sound of the front door opening and closing and then his boots on the path as he walked towards the gate. Even if he had looked back, he could not have seen me standing there. I waited for a moment, thinking to follow and smash his brains out with my truncheon on some shadowy street corner – I had no better plan – but before I could move, the wheels of a cart came rumbling and grinding along the street and I heard the scrape of a shovel in the gutter. The gate banged shut. Footsteps went ringing off up the road. There was the noise of a shovel being flung into the cart, a squeak of harness, a slap of reins, hoofs and wheels in the other direction. I waited, listening until the only sound I could hear was the silence pressing against my ears, and then I quietly kicked my footprints out of the earth at the wall and left by the front gate. No one saw me go and the street was empty. Though I hunted for him along Strathern Road, the young man with the yellow moustache was gone. I heard the far metallic singing of the tram and I knew he had escaped me, so I turned back towards home. I needed sleep and there were only a few hours until my duty began for another day.
52
THAT DAY WAS long. I came on duty at seven o’clock and there was nothing in the night log and not a single prisoner in the cells. Nothing happened all day. It takes a long time for nothing to happen. I made a lot of tea and left it all undrunk. Mr Sempill hid in his office.
I spent the time dozing in my chair, dreaming fitfully about the night before and going round and round in my head about Jean, wondering how I might save her from herself. I had to make her see sense. I had to make her understand that there was still a way that she and I could be together, as we were intended to be. I could not allow her to make a fool of herself with that rogue, and I knew, if I could but speak to her, she would see reason.
But Jean was wandering up and down Strathern Road, frantically looking for the young man with the yellow moustache in every tramcar that passed.
I left the office at 7 p.m. My way lay to the east. Elmgrove was in the west. I went west along the Dundee Road. Grove Road is a respectable area. At that hour residents are in their homes with the doors bolted. No one saw me come.
I clearly recall how Mr Trench flitted round Elmgrove that first day he arrived in Broughty Ferry, like a bear in a bowler hat, making notes of one thing and another, observing, imagining. He called it “making up stories”. He was weighing the evidence and inventing little plays in his head, trying to imagine a set of circumstances which would leave behind the evidence he could see before his eyes. Poor Mr Trench. He exhausted his powers of invention with the final story. There was no sign of a forced entry, so Miss Milne must have gone into the garden for a moment, leaving the door open for an intruder. Rubbish. I simply walked in through the kitchen. She had left her keys often enough at the police office; it was a simple matter to have copies cut, and Jean’s keys jangled in my pocket alongside my own. I liked to have them. They were a comfort to me.
And when I came into the hall, there was Jean, hard at work. Mr Trench decided that the intruder must have dragged Jean’s luggage out into the hall to ransack it, but long experience has taught me that the simplest answer is usually the best. She was packing to go away.
Indeed, she was so busy that at first she did not notice me and then when she looked up from her work there was such a look on her face, a sudden startlement to see me there all unbidden, and then, what? Not quite disgust and not quite pity. A weariness, I suppose.
“You are going away with him,” I said.
She said nothing. She simply stayed, kneeling there in front of that trunk, with a pair of drawers in her hands, folding them and refolding aimlessly. The air stirred with the scent of lavender.
I reached out and stilled her hands, but she left them folded together there, inside that piece of linen. “Show me,” I said. I took her hand and drew her to her feet. “Show me your ring.”
She held out her hand, as women do, a little bent at the wrist, fingers together, presenting the ring, an affected look of supreme boredom on her face.
“So you are going to be married?”
“Yes. Yes, John.”
“To him?”
She looked at me, quizzically.
“The man who was here last night.”
Her hand flew to her lips in shock, as if she was horrified at such an accusation, despite all I knew of her. Still she said nothing.
“You might have married me.”
She said nothing.
“I asked you.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“But it’s not too late. It’s not too late. You are packing up to go. I understand why we cannot stay in the Ferry, but we can go now, together. America. Patagonia. They want men to farm there. I’m not on duty tomorrow. We can have a day’s start before we are missed.”
“John.” That was all she said, but the chill pity in her voice was like a razor.
“I have given you my whole life. There was never anyone but you. I might have had a wife. I might have had children, but you came and you twisted me into this. This.”
Miss Milne sighed a little sadly and considered for a moment before she began to speak. “There is no more to be said. And you needn’t think to threaten me or hold me to ransom—”
“I’d never do that.”
“You can forget about trying to blacken my name. I will be gone from this place before long. You can say what you like about me, it won’t matter. I think you’ve done very well out of our understanding, John, but you must see that I’m entitled to a little happiness. It’s my right with a man who—”
“He’s a swindler.”
“Now, John, I can’t have that. I can’t let you say such things about the man I am to marry.”
“He’s only after your money.”
“John, stop that! I will not have it. But, since you mention it, I think I have a little money in my bedroom. I’d like you to take it. Just as a parting gift. You might buy some small souvenir to remind you of happier times.”
“I don’t want your money.”
She was icy again. “Well in that case, I don’t think there is much to add. He will be here soon. You should be gone before he arrives. It’s for the best, John. You know it is.” She stood there for a moment or two, that tiny woman, her chin in the air, daring me, defying me. “It’s for the best. Say it, John. Say it.”
And I struck her across the face, all my weight behind a great, back-handed slap and I screamed: “NO, MISS MILNE!” Two blows in quick succession, back and fore, east and west, her face spinning, her neck snapping round. “NO, MISS MILNE! NO, MISS MI
LNE!”
There was an upper set of false teeth lying on the right-hand corner of the doormat at the entrance to the drawing room and there was the lower set flung right across to the other side of the hall, lying on the third step of the stair.
Miss Milne staggered and fell to her knees. Her face was half collapsed, her toothless mouth folded in on itself, her skin already blazing from my slaps, and she was suddenly ancient and withered. She tried to flee, gripped by sheer terror, but it was as if she were unravelling before my eyes. Her hair came unpinned and fell down and a great wad of it tumbled off her head and rolled away and what was left was thin and feeble and old. She made a terrified animal sound with one hand at her mouth, as if to hide its awful, gaping emptiness, and she lunged for the stair, not because there was safety on the upper floor but because it was the only way to escape me. She was quick, as quick as fear can drive a woman on, but I reached out to her with a shout of fury, my one great hand gripping her tiny ankle and I pulled her back to me and she went down, hard, on the edge of the step and there was a sound like wood splitting.
I didn’t know what to do and I did not care. I simply grabbed her by the ankles and dragged her back down the stair. My fury was inexhaustible. It had raged untended for thirty years, a great, boiling furnace of hurt, and now Jean Milne had opened the furnace door. Who could she blame if the flames engulfed her?
The curtains in the hall were tied back with cords. I took them off and used one to tie her ankles as she lay there on the carpet. Mr Trench surmised as to how the other landed halfway up the stair. It was there because I threw it there, that’s all. Still my fury was unabated. I set about to wreck the place. I swept my arms across her damned, stupid, pointless, dainty little tables. I scattered her ever-so-artistic floral arrangements from one side of the room to the other, I kicked her as I passed, hot tears streaming down my face, hot, gasping sobs burning my throat. A pair of garden secateurs left lying carelessly amongst the cut branches went flying and hit the wall, and I grabbed them and snipped through the cables of her fancy telephone device. Why? How would Mr Trench explain that? Viciousness, that’s all. What they call in the charge sheets “malicious mischief”. I did it because I could, and when that was done, I went reeling off looking for more to destroy.
There on the sideboard was a box of cigars, not quite full. His cigars. I took one out. I cast about for a match but I found none, so I opened the drawer. There were the matches. I took one out and split the end with my teeth and I used it as a spike to open the end of the cigar.
I called to Jean lying in the lobby. “That’s me smoking your fancy man’s cigars,” I said. I struck the match and lit the cigar. I took my time. “What do you think of that?”
She did not answer.
“I said: ‘What do you think of that?’ Miss Milne. When a young gentleman makes a remark, it is considered polite to answer.”
Still she said nothing, and all my rage returned again and boiled over, and there, in the drawer, I saw the carving set with its big bone-handled fork. With my cigar in one hand and the carving fork in the other, I went back to where Jean lay in the middle of the carpet and stood over her.
Mr Trench imagined a little piece of madness, where Jean was stabbed by an imaginary attacker, stabbed here and there as she fled, stabbed seventeen times in a matter of moments. Madness. My madness was greater. Seventeen times. “I said: That’s me smoking . . .”
In the soft, white flesh of her forearm.
“. . . your fancy man’s cigars . . .”
In her shoulder.
“. . . Miss Milne . . .”
In her breast.
“. . . What do you think . . .”
Pressing the points of the fork against her clothing, pressing, watching the cloth dent and pucker, pressing all my weight behind it until it pierced right through.
“. . . of that?”
Seventeen times. Not all at once. I took my time.
I sat on the bottom of the stairs watching her. It was obvious she was dying. Hitting her head on the stairs had been enough. She was dying, and I wanted to be with her as it happened. I wanted to see it and share it. I wondered if she knew.
I lost interest in the fork. I threw it away. But I went back for another cigar and the matches. It was dark. I struck a match. The light was beautiful. The shadows were beautiful. The places where the light met the shadows were the most beautiful of all. I looked at Jean lying there, tied up, bleeding gently, dying so softly. The match went out. I threw it at her. I struck another and I held that one in a different place, watching different shadows flaring on the walls. I threw that one at her too and watched the shadows leap as it flared on the carpet beside her and died away. I remember wondering if it failed in her last breath. I struck another match and got down on my hands and knees, holding it close to her mouth, watching it waver in her faint breathing. I blew cigar smoke into her mouth and laughed.
Mr Trench made no explanation for the matches that littered the floor of Elmgrove. The explanation was simple. I liked to strike matches. And Mr Trench ignored the brass vase filled with piss. He made no attempt to explain it, though I recorded it faithfully in my statement. It’s obvious. I could not leave Jean, even for a moment.
I wanted to be with Jean at the end, but it was dark and I was very tired. As my great love for her drained away, exhaustion seemed to flood in to take its place. I slept, there on the stairs, with my face pressed against the bannister rail, and I woke up weeping without knowing why. I struck another match and held it high and moved it from side to side. There were not many left.
I sat in the dark holding an unlit match in my fingers, promising myself that I would light this one after twenty minutes, counting the seconds up to sixty, counting the minutes on my fingers and starting again until it lasted half an hour, and then there was the grating crunch of the sandpaper and the tiny firework pop and the blinding flare of light and, for just moments, the light and Jean and the blood flooded my brain again. It was so lovely.
When the final match was gone I left my place on the stairs and went to lie down beside her. We slept together there on the floor for the last time. It was the first time we had ever passed a night together.
The noise of Postie Slidders dropping his letters into the big iron box at the kitchen door roused me in the morning. I was lying on my side, just as Jean was, my head resting on my arm, just as hers was. I woke up and looked into her ruined face. I had loved her for thirty years and it was almost all gone. This was grief.
I lay beside her for a while, touching her hair, crooning to her, comforting her, wishing she would die. Everything was so lovely, the light from behind the curtains over the door, the shine of those holly boughs scattered on the floor, the colours of the carpet. Everything so bright with the life of the world as Jean lay dying beside me. From where I lay on the floor I saw a dribble of blood on the wall by the stair, just where I had sat in the darkness. It caught my eye. I went to examine it. It was lovely too. A perfect crimson teardrop, dragging its way down the wall. I touched it. I had to touch it, and the skin on the surface broke like a bubble and the dribble of blood left inside ran away quickly over the wallpaper and stopped again. I’m not a fool. I pressed my finger in the mark and smeared it away.
It was then that Jean gave a long moan, and when I turned, her eyes were open and she was looking at me, looking right at me with recognition, moaning, and the tip of her tongue was working between her lips, like some hideous lizard.
I knew then that she might not die. She might live. So I had to kill her. There was the fork lying on the floor. I went to the drawing room looking for the knife. Jean’s moans were growing louder and wilder. There was no time. I came back to her, and when I came back, I had the poker. Jean was clawing weakly at the carpet, little twitching grabs, trying to crawl away like the wounded thing she was. I stood over her, one boot on either side of her body, and I laid the poker gently on her head, measuring, testing. I lifted the poker over my head.
She knew it was coming. She made a shrill noise, like a trapped rabbit, and I smashed the brass end of it down on her skull. But still she did not die. She howled. She howled. I hit her again. Harder and quickly again and again. I wanted it to be over. Again. Again. Again. Again. The poker broke. It was over.
I sat down on the stairs to recover myself. I threw the poker away.
What a fool Mr Sempill was with his damned stupid notions of the random killer. If some intruder had killed her in a sudden fury, what need to tie her up? And if he had tied her up, what need to kill her, unless she recognised him? It was so obvious, and yet he was the Chief Constable and I was the sergeant.
Sitting there on the step, looking down at Jean’s body, I saw the picture had changed. Where there had been darkness and shadows, there was morning light filling the room. There were beautiful patterns of blood on the walls, fern shapes, garlands, arching up to the roof. Everything was different. Everything had to be looked at again. It was necessary to look at everything and remember it, for Jean’s sake.
I don’t know how long that took. I watched the light moving round the room. I saw the shadows moving like the hands on a clock. By the middle of the afternoon, I was sick of it. I went to the kitchen and washed my hands under the running tap. When I came back to the lobby, I couldn’t bear to look at Jean any longer. I turned my eyes away and went straight to her bedroom. In the drawer of her wardrobe I found a folded sheet. I took it and spread it over her head to hide it. There was a bulging purse lying in the drawer. I left it where it was. The stump of my cigar was lying on the step where it fell from my fingers. I threw it in the dead fireplace for Mr Trench to discover, sat down with Jean and waited for the kindness of dark to cover us.
The Secret Life and Curious Death of Miss Jean Milne Page 29