The Secret Life and Curious Death of Miss Jean Milne

Thanks are due to the staff of Dundee Central Library for their assistance with the files on the Elmgrove Murder. Newspaper cuttings and the diagram of the murder scene come from their files of the
Weekly News
, published by D.C. Thomson & Co. Ltd.

IT WAS THE first winter of the war and we had no idea how many other winters there would be before we settled with the Kaiser, how much mourning, how many dead.

I went through the pend under our rooms, and up the wooden stair that twisted back on itself like a high gallows, up to the door and the painting of the Pile Light on the wall beside it. It is a very fine painting. I have often admired it, both on nights when I attend to do our work and, from time to time, as I pass in the street. Look out from the pier or along the beach and the Pile Light is there, a mile off. The artist has captured it well, sturdy on its thick, square legs, buttressed against the tide and the surge of the sea wave. It is a worthy symbol of our lodge, embellished and adorned only by the addition of the square and compasses and the all-seeing eye. It is unsigned of course. None may know the name of the artist, as he gave his work in a generous outpouring of charity and the right hand may not know what the left hand is doing. It was Brother Petrie. He is the only signwriter amongst our brotherhood.

I went inside and along the wooden-walled passage to the robing room. I remember the steamy taste of cold rain in my mouth and the warm, burnt toffee of scorched timber from behind the gas lamps.

I laid my case on the table. Brother Cameron’s case was already there. My case is made of wood and covered in leather. It has brass locks and my initials stamped in gold leaf. I regard that as fitting and appropriate, as it contains so much that is of value to me: my cuffs and my apron, other materials of which it is not fitting to speak. Brother Cameron’s case is made of that thick, red, glossy cardboard they call “whale skin” – which has never been near a whale – all scored and bent into shape and held together with dull lead rivets. I’m sure it serves.

Brother Cameron said to me: “I see your Lieutenant Trench has landed himself in trouble again.”

I do not like Brother Cameron. I know he is a brother of the Craft and worthy of all my affection and loyalty, but I am not affectionate to him. I enjoy the fellowship of the Lodge, of course, but in moderation and after we have worked. Always after. Brother Cameron is in the habit of stepping into the Royal Arch to refresh himself even before we meet in Temple. I do not approve of such things. Ours is a solemn rite and it must be entered into with sobriety. I do not like him, though we must rub along.

When I did not answer, he said: “I read it in the
Courier
so it must be right. He’s spoken up for that Jew-boy in Glasgow. Trying to say he never murdered that old woman when anybody in his right mind could see he’s as guilty as sin.”

“He is not ‘my’ Lieutenant Trench.”

“You took a notion to him, as I recall. He made a midden of it when he was here, what now, three year ago?”

“Two.”

“Is that all it is? I’d have said longer.” Brother Cameron was standing before the glass, fiddling with his tie. “At any rate it’s long enough to catch the bugger, if you and Lieutenant Trench were ever going to catch him. He’s clean away in Valparaíso, damn this!” He began again with his tie. “Valparaíso or Constantinople or Timbuktu or some such far away place. Kirriemuir, maybe. I hear it’s wild enough to harbour any number of desperate men. And there’s your Lieutenant Trench making up stories to get a murderer off.”

“What stories?” I could have bitten my tongue. I had no interest in hearing what Brother Cameron had to say, but I was interested in Lieutenant Trench. He was right about that much.

“Man, do you never read a paper? Read the
Courier
. It’s a fine paper. He’s been carrying stories to the investigators that MP hired, telling them there’s been a grave miscarriage of justice and claiming there was all sorts of evidence covered up by the police, this thing and that thing that would prove the Jew-boy could never possibly have killed that poor old widow woman and cut her throat or stoved her head in and well they knew it but they conspired together to cover it all up. It’ll cost him his job. In fact he’ll be lucky not to get the jail for it, buttons pulled off in the public square and publicly disgraced, more than likely. You should be outraged that he could dare to say such things about your colleagues.”

“He’s with the Glasgow force.”

“They are still officers of the law, constables sworn to uphold justice.”

“And so is he.”

“I might have guessed you’d be the one to stand up for him. Do you not see that makes it all the worse? He has turned against his own. It’s a betrayal, a black betrayal. He should have his throat cut across, his tongue torn out by the roots and his body buried in the rough sands of the sea at low-water mark. Do you know what he says? He says the identity parade, where the murdering Jew-boy was picked out from dozens, was all a sham. Can you credit it? It’s in the paper!”

The identity parade. The identity parade. We had an identity parade. Two years before, we had an identity parade, one the Chief Constable had organised. I remembered the identity parade. I shouldered Brother Cameron out of the way and took my turn at the glass. “If one says ‘black’ and the other ‘white’ only one can have the truth of it. I don’t have to judge, thank God, but it sounds to me that Lieutenant Trench is speaking from his conscience. What has he to gain by his accusations? Nothing. And everything to lose. He is a man of great courage.”

“Or a Jew-lover. Or in debt to the Jew. Or corrupted by him.”

And then the door to the dressing room opened and I saw in the glass behind me Brother Slidders, Postie Slidders, and he looked at me and said: “Hello, John,” just the way he had that terrible morning.

I AM NOT one of those who likes to say that he can remember when there was nothing to see here but the beach. I suppose it’s true, but I don’t dwell on it. Things have changed a great deal since I was a boy. The castle is still here, where it’s stood these four hundred years, guarding the little harbour, with its roof put back on and all the damage that Cromwell did undone and the batteries manned by smart volunteers with silver buttons. The fisher cottages stand in their rows with the little boats dragged up in front and lines of washing flapping and dancing in the breeze, but where once there were only rough links and bounding hummocks of marram grass with wild, twisted trees appearing here and there amongst them, now we have an esplanade with grand villas along it and a yacht club, granted its own charter by the old Queen herself, and great, towering mansions along the ridge of the hill, each trying to outdo the other in grandeur and the beauty of its parks and policies.

They say (and who am I to dispute it?) that Broughty Ferry has more millionaires in it than any other square mile of soil on God’s green earth. They fled here from Dundee, that sink of iniquity and depravity, to breathe deep of our clean sea breezes well away from the clattering mills that made them wealthy and out of sight of the stinking tenements where they stack their workers like firewood for their furnaces.

We have every amenity in Broughty Ferry: fine public parks and bowling greens for recreation; well-supported churches with excellent preachers in both the established tradition and the Free Kirk, and also an English chapel where persons of fashion attend – and public houses just as well supported; a tramcar serving many parts of the burgh, and our own railway station, of which more presently. We have donkey rides and Pierrots on the beach for the summer visitors. We have an excellent Post Office with the royal cypher in stone on the wall, and many of the more substantial houses are connected to the telephone. There is every type of shop supplying every need, grocers, butchers and bakers of quality, fishmongers, fruiterers, ladies’ and gents’ outfitters, ironmongery, everything is at hand.

And we have our own police station. At one time, not too long ago, we had our own police force too, ten upright men and our own Chief Constable to command them, and our own Provost and baillies and our own court in our own handsome Burgh Chambers, but Dundee looked at us with envious eyes and sent spies to our little railway station and noted down the number of those who travelled daily up the line to work. Then they used that as evidence to justify an Act of Parliament to swallow our little burgh whole.

But, at the time I have in mind, all of that was still to come.

It was November, at the end of a short, bright day that came as a kind of gift before the winter fell on us. I was walking with Constable Brown in Duntrune Terrace, one of those fine broad streets that began to grace the burgh at the end of the last century with cobbled roadways and walks of finely hammered earth to separate foot passengers from the traffic and villas on either side that must cost, God knows, many hundreds of pounds. We walk slowly. That is the expected way of things. We must be seen to pass. We must be recognised, for it is our duty first to deter crime and we must be available so that any, from the highest to the lowest, may request assistance.

As we came down the hill, towards the Claypotts Pond, we met the postman Slidders, with his bag on his back and a grieved expression on his face. He came up and took me by the arm and called me by my name. As a sergeant of Broughty Ferry Constabulary I would not encourage such a thing in the usual course of affairs, but Postie Slidders and I started at the parish school on the same day and we are brethren of the Lodge, so I cannot stand too much on my dignity.

“John Fraser,” he said. “I fear there is something sorely amiss with Miss Milne up at Elmgrove.”

I took his hand off my sleeve and said to him: “Why would you say that?”

“Because every day I go three or four times through her gate and down the stairs to her back court and there she has an iron box fixed to the wall where I’m to put the letters. It’s not been emptied these three weeks. That box is brimful. I doubt I could get another sheet of paper into it.

“And I can say this as God’s my judge, that door has never once opened for days. There’s a pamphlet from the Kirk that’s been left hanging off the handle and it’s never moved since last week. She’s a queer-like body and I never ring at her bell unless I’ve a registered parcel, the kind she has to sign for and, even at that she’s loathe to answer her door, but there’s something far wrong up at that house. I’m not the man to tell the police their business but, if it was me, I’d have that door in.”

Constable Brown and I knew Elmgrove well – and Miss Milne, the owner. Her father had made his money as a tobacconist and, like so many others, he came away from Dundee to settle with his family in the Ferry.

But he died and the rest of the family died or moved away and, after a while, Miss Milne was alone in the big house.

I suppose you would say she declined and the house declined with her. Elmgrove was a mansion of twenty-three rooms with all the additional offices that are to be expected in a house of that size and character. It stands at the head of Grove Road, not many yards from the car stop on Strathern Road, and that whole corner is given over to its two acres of gardens, trees and shrubs in beautiful pleasure grounds, vegetable plots, orchards. Or it was. For, as Miss Milne withdrew from the upkeep of her house and retreated to a few small apartments on the ground floor, she abandoned the garden also until there was not much more than a mossy lawn shaded out by trees and some straggly rose bushes. The rest was a shameful wildness. There was a sermon in it.

I sent Postie Slidders on his way and walked back up the hill to Strathern Road and from there to Elmgrove. The house is hard to see from the road and it was November, mind you, and early dark, but we knew our way, Brown and I. Miss Milne had the money to indulge her whims and fancies and she was forever going away on little trips, but if the house was to be empty for any length of time she would come to the station and let us know so we might keep a special eye out.

There’s a high wall around the property – it must be over seven foot tall – a double gate for carriages and, at the side of that, another, narrow door set between pillars for visitors who arrive on foot. They were both shut, but there was nothing unusual in that and Postie Slidders said he had been using the small gate for weeks.

It opened at a touch and Constable Brown and I, we lit our lamps and uncovered them, for it was a November evening and gloomy under Miss Milne’s neglected trees. The house was dark. I went boldly to the front door and pulled on the bell. I could hear it jangling in the hall but in a kind of empty, lonely way. The house sounded hollow. I looked at Brown and he looked at me.

“C’mon we’ll away round the back,” I said, so we shone our lamps at our feet and found our way to the steps that lead down to the back door. All was exactly as John Slidders described: an iron box on the back wall, rammed to bursting with letters and papers, and that pamphlet opened at the middle and folded open over the door handle. A breath of wind might have knocked it off.

We tried to see through the glass, but it was black as Hell inside and we could see nothing but the light of our own lamps shining back at us.

Brown hammered on the door with his fist and he cried out: “Miss Milne, are you in there at all? It’s Constable Broon, Miss Milne. Are y’in?”

I left him at it. A man who had passed his sergeant’s exams might very well see what Constable Brown could not: that if she had not opened the door to collect her post these last three weeks, the poor woman was not likely to rise and answer at his knock.

But I’ll say this for the man, he was dogged, for he was still there, hammering at the door when I came back from walking round the whole of the outside of the house. “Come away, Broon,” I said. “There’s nothing to be seen here.”

“What if she’s fallen? Or she’s in her bed and no weel?”

“Has she cried out?”

“How could I tell that? I’ve been hammerin’ on this door for ten minutes.”

“Wheesht then an’ listen.”

We stood together in the dark and all the dark and silence of the place seemed to come and make a rushing at our ears and we looked at one another until Broon called out again: “Miss Milne, is that you?” but there was nothing there. Only the sighing of the wind in the trees and the sound of a few dry leaves scuttering along like rats about our feet.

Broon made to take out his truncheon. “I’ll knock this glass in,” he said.

But I forbade it. “We’ve had no report of a crime. The house is in good order. We’ve no business.”

He stood looking at me, like a bull looking through a gate, with that half daft expression on his face, as empty as the moon, waiting for me to tell him what to do, which was appropriate and respectful but still, in spite of that, disappointing. Broon will never make sergeant.

I said to him: “Mr Swan across at Westlea has had the telephone put in. We’ll away and ask him for the use of it.”

And that was what we did.

Now, Westlea is a handsome house. In many ways not so grand as Elmgrove, but it has not suffered those years of neglect. It has a gable end looking out towards Miss Milne’s gates and a high window, with coloured glasses, where I could see a light burning. There’s no fancy drive and carriage entrance at Westlea, just a pleasant, homely gate between two good, solid pillars of stone, with carved balls on the top, all smartly plastered and painted white.

By that time I suppose it was getting on for nine o’clock in the evening, not the time for calling, but I was a sergeant of Broughty Ferry Constabulary and about my lawful occasion so I had no hesitation. I went through the gate and up the gravel path and rang at the bell – an electric bell I might add. Mr Swan was not one to stint on conveniences for himself or his family. But this time, when it rang, it rang with the warm sound of a house that was full of folk and life and light and warmth and joy.

Mr Swan’s lassie came to the door in her peenie and her wee lace cap, and when she saw me and Constable Broon her face fell and she turned pale as the wall, whether from a guilty conscience or from fear of hearing bad news I couldn’t say. I can never say, but it’s a look I have seen often in my line. A police sergeant is rarely a welcome visitor.

I was about to state my business, but before I could open my mouth I heard a door opening and a voice calling out: “Who is it, Maggie? At this hour!”

Poor Maggie stood gawping and clapping her lips together and it seemed clear to me that she had no more brains in her head than Constable Broon. I very much doubted that the two of them together could have passed the sergeant’s exam, and while she stood there, saying nothing, I called out: “It’s Sergeant Fraser of the police, sir, come to beg the favour of the use of your telephone.”

At once Mr Swan came bustling out, in his shirtsleeves and his waistcoat with his collar off, as well he was entitled to be in his own house at that hour of the evening: “The police? Well come away in, Sergeant, come away. Maggie, get out of the door and let the man in,” and then, because he was no more than ordinarily curious, he naturally enquired, “Is there some trouble?”

Constable Broon had enough sense to stay quiet, a respectful couple of paces in the rear as we entered the house, and I said: “There’s no reason for alarm, sir, but I would be grateful if you could permit me the use of your telephone until I consult with the Chief Constable.”

“Of course, of course,” and Mr Swan busied and bustled again and led the way to the kitchen passage, where the telephone instrument hung on the wall in its polished oak box. “There you are, Sergeant.”

I looked at him and I looked at the box and Mr Swan said: “Allow me.” He lifted the earpiece and clattered on the hook and, after a moment, he shouted into the trumpet in a careful, clear voice: “Give me the police station of Broughty Ferry,” and then he stepped back in the narrow passage and held the earpiece out to me. “You are being connected,” he said in the same careful, clear voice.

We stood waiting, the three of us in the passage, me and Broon and Mr Swan, with Mrs Swan looking round the edge of the door frame and the lassie Maggie no doubt listening close by, but, in a queer way, I was no longer there as part of the company because I was engaged with the telephone, so Mr Swan turned to Broon and said, very quietly: “But you’re sure there’s nothing to worry about.”

Broon shook his big bull head and mouthed a silent: “No.”

“Hello,” I said. “This is Sergeant Fraser. Let me have a word with Chief Constable Sempill.” And then there was another moment or two of quiet before the Chief Constable came on the line.

“We had a report,” I said, and I told him the whole story.

“And you’re sure there’s no sign of any wrongdoing.”

“The whole place is secure.”

“You’ve checked thoroughly?”

“All round the premises, round the gardens, and, as well as I can in the dark, I’ve examined the upper windows.”

“I don’t see what else we can do at this time of night,” said Mr Sempill. “Leave it for now and take a joiner up in the morning in case we need to force an entry.”

“Very good, sir,” I said. “Constable Brown and I will resume our patrol and I will engage the man Coullie in the morning.”

“Right you are.” And he broke off with a loud click.

I handed the telephone instrument to Mr Swan, who put it back on its hook. “Miss Milne?” he said, curiously.

“Miss Milne?” said Mrs Swan.

“And I thought . . .” said Maggie.

But before I could ask her what she thought, Mrs Swan had wheesht her and threatened her with her character and warned her to “be sure those fires are well lit by half past six of the parlour clock” and chased her off to bed.

There were no further occurrences that evening.