The Secret Life and Curious Death of Miss Jean Milne (17 page)

The North British Railway Company

General Enquiry Office

Waverley Station

Edinburgh

Broughty Ferry Murder Case

    I am in charge of the Enquiry Office here, and having read the statement made by scavenger Don I think you should know the following and judge for yourself whether it is worth your attention. On Tuesday or Wednesday, 15th or 16th October (I cannot be sure of the exact date) about 9-50 a.m., a man answering the description given hurriedly entered my office and asked which was the quickest way in which he could reach the Continent.

    I gave him the times via Harwich and Hook of Holland, also Antwerp and, latterly via London and Dover but, apparently he favoured the Queensboro’ and Flushing route and, although he did not tell me his destination, I had the impression that he wished to get to either Rotterdam or Amsterdam.

    I told him to get away by the 10-0 a.m. train to King’s Cross, and he seemingly left to do so. He was labouring under a great deal of excitement, and had a nervous haunted expression. About 30 minutes later I was very much surprised to receive another visit from him, and without giving any explanation as to his sudden change of mind, he made enquiries about the night trains to London and the morning service from there to the Continent. On his first appearance he had the haggard look of a man who had not slept, but he had washed before returning, and his manner was much calmer. He had a decided foreign accent. It is possible that he came off the train due here at 9-45 a.m. from Dundee, and should that be the case the circumstances are certainly suspicious.

    Yours faithfully.

        (Signed) Andrew Brown.

Officer in charge

Criminal Investigation Department

Central Police Office

Edinburgh

PRISON IS A shaming thing for everybody involved. It is embarrassing for a man to be sent to prison.

To be a prisoner, to have nothing to think about and nothing to do, to be helpless, at the mercy of others, with no control over your life, where you go, what you do, when you eat, when you sleep, when you keep silent, when you may speak, all of that diminishes a man. He may try to carry it off with swagger and braggadocio, but in his soul, he shrivels a little. And it is only a little less terrible for his jailers. They know they have done this awful thing to a man and a brother. They know that, like him, they are prisoners too. They spend their lives behind those walls. They serve longer sentences than most, willingly passing their lives away inside a jail and, most galling of all, they count themselves as volunteers. They are not, of course. They have wives to keep and children to feed and rents to pay and shoes to buy. Circumstance forces the jailers into jail as much as it does the prisoners, merely circumstance. Such knowledge is embarrassing and never more so than on the day of a prisoner’s release, when he stands at the gate in his own clothes and the warders are in their uniforms, still in character, still playing their parts, still not set free. They try to make light of it, of course, as if by recollecting some little kindness they might be excused for this great cruelty, as if the whole business has been no more than a little social awkwardness, like using the wrong fork at dinner. That is why prisoners are released very early in the morning. It’s so that nobody sees.

But when Charles Warner came out of the prison gate, Mr Sempill was there to see it and so was Mr Trench, standing a little apart and a little behind, his coat open, leaning on his umbrella as he always did, whatever the weather.

When Mr Sempill stepped forward, despite his best efforts there was a look of grey shock on Warner’s face. He had expected to walk away a free man, a shilling or two in his pocket, a breakfast in his belly, ready to start again, but when he saw Mr Sempill, he understood. He stood still. There was no point in running.

The Chief Constable put a hand on his shoulder – it was a purely formal gesture – and he said: “Charles Warner, you are under arrest . . .”

“What for? What’s the charge?”

“. . . for the murder of Miss Jean Milne in the house known as Elmgrove, Grove Road, Broughty Ferry, in the county of Angus, at a time and a date unknown between October 14, 1912 and November 4, 1912. Come along with me.”

Two large constables, supplied by Superintendent Neaves – Warner had not noticed them when he came through the gate – appeared at his sides and took his arms. Together they marched him to the horse van on the other side of the road, forced him up the steps and inside, onto a hard wooden bench. Warner was furious. His gold teeth showed as he pulled his mouth into a snarl. “You’re bloody mad! You’re all mad! I’ve never been to Scotland in my life. I couldn’t find your shitty little town with a troop of Indian guides to help me.” The door of the van banged shut and the driver whipped up his horses.

Mr Neaves shook the Chief Constable by the hand. “Well done,” he said warmly. “Well done.”

Mr Sempill said: “Thank you. Thank you for all your kind assistance. But for your vigilance, we would never have caught him. Thank you.”

Mr Neaves offered his hand to Mr Trench also. “Well done,” he said again.

“I can’t take the credit,” said Trench. “The Chief Constable is the driving force behind this inquiry.”

Mr Sempill offered his hand too and Trench shook it. “Congratulations,” he said flatly.

“Thank you, Trench. That means a great deal.”

The police van went on to the railway station, where Warner was made to stand on the platform, wrists chained together in front of him, until the train came. Mr Neaves’ two constables stood at his side. They waited there like statues. Mr Trench went and stood in front of Warner, right in front of him, and yet the prisoner somehow contrived not to see him. He was standing looking across the tracks to where the low hills far away were appearing through the dawn in the colours of a Chinese scroll. The morning sky had faded to an ashy grey, the hills were standing out, a little darker grey against them with a low cloud, white and blushed pink, just kissing their tops and the morning mist running up like a river between them, folding over on itself and vanishing.

“You’re in my way,” Warner said. “I haven’t seen much sky recently and you’re spoiling it for me. A bit of sky is good for the soul.”

“You believe in the soul?”

“I believe in mine. I don’t make any claims for yours.”

Mr Trench felt a terrible need to apologise, but he could not bring himself to do it. He said: “Is there anything I can do for you? Something you need?”

Warner made no reply. He simply held up his two hands, chained together.

“You know I can’t do that.”

Warner put down his hands again and went back to looking at the clouds. They were vanishing more quickly now as the sun grew a little stronger.

“Nothing?” Mr Trench waited for an answer, perhaps a heartbeat longer than was dignified, and then the Chief Constable called from the other end of the platform, where he was standing with Superintendent Neaves. “Trench, a word please.”

He obeyed and the Chief Constable said: “Best to avoid familiarity or fraternisation. In my experience.”

“Yes, sir.”

“It would be like naming the pig,” said Mr Neaves. “We always had a pig in the back yard, but Father never let us name it. Mustn’t get fond, you know.”

Mr Trench did some hard smoking until the train came and then Warner was loaded into the guard’s van with the milk churns and the parcels and his two policemen, and there was more handshaking with Mr Neaves, who was thanked profusely for all his efforts and his vigilance and assured that if ever there was anything that he needed from Broughty Ferry Burgh Police, he had only to ask.

“And you won’t forget my invitation to the hanging?”

“We certainly won’t forget that! Will we, Trench?”

“Sir.”

Trench was relieved to find that the train was packed and their carriage for the journey to London was full all the way to St Pancras. If they had been alone, or even if the train had been a little less crowded, conversation would have been expected, but, jammed in between two well-fed citizens, with the luggage racks full to bursting and the whole place a tangle of elbows and open newspapers, he was at least spared that. He passed the journey looking over his neighbour’s shoulder and spotting mistakes the man had made in the crossword, but he was, of course, far too polite to put him right.

Mr Neaves had called ahead to Scotland Yard, and at the railway station another enclosed black horse van was waiting to take them on. Trench and the Chief Constable collected Warner from the two police constables and loaded him into the van.

“No fuss now,” Mr Sempill cautioned. “Easier all round if there’s no fuss.”

Warner curled his lip and gave a disgusted little laugh, but he sat down quietly and made no comment.

The van rolled on through the streets of London, carts and cabs and tramcars jostling by on every side.

“I always say that a ride in one if these vehicles is a kind of commentary on life,” said Mr Sempill.

Lieutenant Trench had no wish to hear Mr Sempill’s commentary on life, so he said nothing.

“Don’t you want to know why?”

Before he could answer, Warner winked at him from the bench on the opposite side of the van and said: “I know I do.”

“I wasn’t asking you, Warner, although, I must say, it’s an observation from which you might benefit.” Mr Sempill took a deep breath as if to steady himself before delivering his party piece recitation at one of Mrs Sempill’s soirées. “I always say that a ride in one of these vehicles is like a commentary on life because our destination is a mystery out of our own control. We none of us know where we are going, or how we are to get there, but, while the future is a mystery to us, the view behind – as it were to the past – is perfectly clear, although closed off behind iron bars, unreachable, untouchable and unalterable.”

“That really is remarkable,” said Warner.

“Thank you.”

“Did you never think of going into the Church, Chief? Talking horseshit like that they’d make you Archbishop of Canterbury inside a month.”

“You impertinent oaf! How dare you? Do you not realise the peril in which you stand?”

“I’m sitting, Chiefy.”

“You’ll be hanging soon enough.”

“So you say – and you’re to be my judge, jury and executioner. This is your famed British justice, is it? Every man innocent until proved guilty. I could laugh until I throw up.”

Warner turned his head away and looked through the barred window in the van door, back the way they had come, back towards the past. Nobody knew what he saw there. Nobody but him. And, since there was nothing else inside the van for anybody to look at, soon all three of them were gazing backwards out of the bars in silence, two of them watching the mad jostling jumble of the London streets, one of them looking up into the gaps between the great, tangled buildings, looking for a glimpse of sky.

THEY LEFT CANNING Street police station in the windy dark of a late November evening, making for the overnight train to Scotland. Mr Sempill had arranged with the railway company that they should have the carriage to themselves. In the circumstances, they were very accommodating.

Standing on the platform, Mr Trench read the
Weekly News
. There was a photograph taking up more than half the page inside, a studio portrait of the witnesses, taken on their return to Dundee, with Mr Wood the gardener and Don the bin man standing at the back and the two McIntosh sisters sitting at a velvet-draped table in front. The girls looked exhausted, as if they had just been jolted up and down the country on a train with nothing to look forward to but rising early for another day of hard work, but they were trying to look their best. No doubt the reporter who met them at the Tay Bridge station had wheedled and ingratiated and begged. No doubt he had promised them each copies of the picture. No doubt the girls had been tempted by such unaffordable luxury, and if those two old men with their walrus moustaches had to be in the picture, a pair of scissors and a frame could take care of that. But there was no Maggie Campbell. Where was Maggie?

The fifth witness, Miss Margaret Campbell, declined to be photographed, saying: “There’s been far too much of that kind of nonsense.”

Trench laughed out loud at that. He could picture her saying it, scowling at the reporter, seeing through him and the great favour he was offering. He could see her picking up her bag and striding up the station steps for the tram stop. “If you’re that keen on getting your pictures in the paper, help yourselves. I’m away to my bed!” Good for Maggie. But he felt for her. She must be troubled in her conscience. A girl like Maggie would feel that sorely.

“Must I be handcuffed all night long?” Warner said, as the train pulled out of the station.

Mr Trench stood up and took his bag from the luggage rack. He brought from it another set of handcuffs and about four feet of chain. “I came prepared,” he said. He fixed one of the manacles through the chain and the other to the steel leg of the bench where Warner was sitting. Then he unlocked one of Warner’s cuffs and attached it to the chain. “It’s the best I can do,” he said.

“You should be grateful,” said Mr Sempill.

Warner looked at him with scorn. “Oh I’m so grateful. More grateful than you can imagine. Deeply, deeply grateful.” He turned to Mr Trench and said: “Thank you.”

Mr Sempill began to fill his pipe. “You may smoke if you wish,” he said.

“I seem to have left my cigarette case in my other jacket.”

“Take one of mine,” Trench said.

“I can’t return the favour. I seem to be temporarily strapped for cash, as you Britishers say.”

“It’s all right. A money order came for you. I cashed it at Maidstone.”

“You don’t say! How much for?”

Trench looked over at the Chief Constable. “I think it was ten pounds one and fourpence.”

Mr Sempill nodded agreement.

“Hellfire and damnation. Don’t that beat all? I knew my folks wouldn’t let me down. If that had arrived a couple of days earlier, none of this would ever have happened.”

Mr Sempill was quick. “Warner, I have to remind you that you have been properly charged and cautioned. That’s why there are two of us here, to corroborate anything you may choose to say, and anything you do say may be taken down and used in evidence.”

“Oh, don’t get your bloomers in a knot. I was only going to say . . . Oh forget it. I’m not going to confess to anything. I told you before, I didn’t do it and you can give me the third degree all you like, you won’t make me say it.”

“The third degree?”

Trench said: “It’s American interrogation techniques, sir.”

“It sure is. They know what they’re doing there. That’s a modern country, with some modern ideas. Not like this old place. The jolly old Empire is dying flat on its ass. All your best and your brightest have crossed the pond. All your young men, the ones with some get-up-and-go. They’ve all got up and gone and what’s left? Small-town cops like you, that’s what.”

“And you,” Mr Sempill said.

“Me? I’m just passing through. I’m making my way back to the New World the long way round.”

“You’re just a remittance man. You ruined some girl or, more likely, dipped the till somewhere. You brought disgrace upon your people and they paid you to get out of town and they pay you to stay away.”

“I’m an adventurer. I’ve been and seen and done.”

“Well,” said Mr Sempill, “it’s going to be a long night. Why not tell us? Keep us entertained? Where have you been, what have you seen?”

Warner gave a sneering laugh. “You boys have never seen past the ends of your own noses. Now, me, I was with Roosevelt on the charge up San Juan Hill. I was right there beside him with the Rough Riders – damnation, do I dare to say ‘with’ the rough riders? I was a Rough Rider. Just about the roughest of all of them. Not that we did much riding. We went on foot all the way up the hill with Colonel Roosevelt leading the way on his horse. That’s where I got this here bee-yoo-tee-ful smile,” he opened his lips in a shark grin to show off his golden teeth, “from a Spanish gun butt in the hand-to-hand stuff at the top of the hill. That’s living, boys, let me tell you. A drop of rum, a señorita, a hammock in the shade and, the very next day, the bullets popping all around as hot as Hell. Yee-haw.”

“Fascinating,” Mr Sempill said, though he sounded less than fascinated.

“I liked the war in Cuba so much I joined up for your little tea party in South Africa. That’s the kind of war you British are good at – herding a lot of terrified women and kids behind barbed wire and watching them starve. That’s the British way. You ever been in a war, Trench?”

Mr Trench retreated a little further into the corner of the carriage and tipped his hat over his eyes. “It’s a long way to Dundee. I’d like to get some sleep.”

“The way you gents are going about things, I’m going to have plenty of time for sleep. Once you get that rope round my neck and . . .” The train gave a jolt as they crossed over some points so they were almost shaken from their seats. Warner laughed “Yes, sir, just like that. I just about broke my neck right there.”

“If you want to avoid it, the remedy is in your own hands,” Trench said. “You say you didn’t do it. You say you’ve never been any place near Broughty Ferry in your life. Then help us. Give us an account of your movements.”

“What for? So you can pick holes in it and trip me up? No, sir. I know how these things go. I make one tiny mistake and you’ll pass a noose through it. I know I didn’t kill the old coot and that means you can’t prove I did it. Not that I want to teach my grandmother how to suck eggs, but that’s still how it works, I presume. Innocent until proven guilty under the laws of jolly old England.”

“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.”