The Secret Life and Curious Death of Miss Jean Milne (2 page)

AT THE STATION in the morning I went in to the big drawer under the front counter and took out the bunch of keys. God alone knows how we had acquired them, but little by little, slowly but surely keys of all shapes and sizes begin to accumulate in a police office. Somebody would find a key, hand it in and it would lie unclaimed in the big drawer. Two or three others would join it until, after a few months, somebody would get sick of them rattling around, taking up room and getting in the way. Then they went on the big steel ring and were forgotten.

But a key is a handy thing and, from time to time, when somebody found themselves locked out, we would help with our selection of keys. From time to time it worked and I decided I would take them up to Elmgrove with me.

First I had to walk the length of the street, fully half a mile to Coullie’s. He had a place – he has it still – a fine joiner’s shop behind his house along at the far end of Brook Street, opposite St Aidan’s Church with a neat white sign hanging on the fence advertising, “Carpenters and Joiners” and, on another line, in a sloping hand, “Funerals Undertaken.”

There was no answer at the house so I went up the lane at the side to the big tin shed where the business is carried on, and at first he didn’t hear me knocking and calling for the noise of the saw, which I thought inappropriate since it was a Sabbath morning and early. When, at last, he looked up from his work, I jingled my ring of keys at him and said: “We’re needing a house opened up.”

“Whereabouts?”

“Elmgrove, up Grove Road.”

“It’s a fair step.”

“The usual rates.” I took my watch from my pocket. “You’re on the clock, Mr Coullie.”

“In that case, Sergeant, I’m more than happy to do my duty. I’ll just get my coat.”

Coullie was right, it was a fair step. We walked along together side by side, through the deserted streets, quite convivial, two respectable citizens engaged in their lawful duty, me with my ring of keys, jangling at every step, Coullie with his tools held in a sack contraption, a big, folded blanket of jute with handles on each side that bounced off his knee as he strode along. We walked together back along Brook Street to the police station and then nearly as far again along the Dundee Road to the railway bridge, then on a bit again to the West Ferry railway station and up the hill a step to the bottom of Grove Road. But Elmgrove is at the top of Grove Road and, I may as well admit, my hot breath was hanging in the cold November air long before we reached the gate, and by that time I had told Coullie as much of the story as was his business to know.

Constable Broon was waiting at the gate like a faithful hound and he turned the handle and stood aside to let us in, making his respectful “Good mornings”.

Coullie walked up to the front door and he saw at once in the morning light what I had not noticed in the dark. “You needn’t bother trying your keys here, Sergeant.” He pointed through the glass of the fancy front door. “There’s a key left in that lock on the inside. It won’t accept another.”

Broon said: “There’s another door down here,” and he began to lead the way to Miss Milne’s back stair.

That pamphlet was still hanging from the door handle, though sadly limp and crumpled after a night of chill mist. Coullie took it off and held it between two fingers – which he should never have done – saying: “Would you have me break the lock?”

“Don’t you be so hasty,” I said. “You are here for emergencies only.” And, with that, I produced my ring of keys and began to try them at the door, but some were too large and some too small, some had a solid shank when Miss Milne’s lock required such a key with a hole in the shank to receive a pin in the lock mechanism and, to make a long story short, in the whole store of keys of Broughty Ferry Constabulary, there was not a single example that would suffice for the task.

“I’ll break the lock,” said Coullie.

“You’ll open the window,” I told him.

Coullie looked disappointed, not because he was cheated of the chance to do wanton destruction but because the bill for the repairs would be that much less. Still, he dutifully took off his cap, held it against the top pane of glass and hit it with a hammer he took from his sack. A few tiny, icy broken bits were stuck to the cloth of his cap and he shook them off at his feet, put his cap back on his head and knocked the loose pieces of glass out of the window with his hammer.

“What if it’s painted shut?” he said.

“Then you can break the lock.”

But it was not painted shut. Coullie reached through the gap, turned the little brass snib, and the window slid up on its runners with barely a sigh.

“What now?” said Coullie.

“Climb through and touch nothing – nothing mind you. We will be at the front door. Come and let us in. Broon, help him.”

Constable Brown put his hands together to make a stirrup and lifted Coullie up to the stone windowsill. From there it was a simple job to enter the house. A child might have accomplished it.

We had barely arrived at the front door – Broon and I – before we heard Coullie crying out. “She’s lying here in the lobby. Oh the poor soul. God preserve and defend us.” And then, through the glass of the front door we saw the inner door flung open and there was Coullie, with his muffler pulled up out of his shirt front and held across his face like a robber’s mask, a look of horror in his eyes and his free hand waving about in front of himself, like a man blinded, clutching at the air until his palm collided with the glass of the door and slid down it and he waved about insanely from side to side until he found the handle and the key and he turned it and he jerked the door open and threw himself outside with the gasp of a drowning man.

And how little could I blame him, for, when the door opened and Coullie came out, there came with him the stench of a dead thing, the sweet, sulphurous, warm, rotten chicken smell that only ever comes from unburied flesh. I took a deep breath, pushed the door aside and crossed the little entrance hall to the inner door.

That too I pushed aside, gently, with my elbow pressing in the middle of the door so as not to disturb any fingerprints that Coullie had not already destroyed in his stampede.

I will not pretend to you that I noted every detail in those few moments, but I damn well noted every detail afterwards and they remain with me now, clearer than any notebook. There is the front hall where we came in, with a cloakroom to the left, then a pace or two will take you to the glass door that leads to the vestibule. Beyond that there is no door to the lobby of the house, but there is a heavy curtain of green velvet on the right-hand side and a lace curtain on the left. Somebody had taken the trouble to tie them together with a bit of cord, about waist height; it seemed deliberately to obscure the view through the window.

I took out my watch and noted the time. It was 9.20. Jean Milne was lying there, full out on the carpet, her feet away from me and what was left of her head pointing directly towards me. Anybody could have seen at once the poor soul was beyond all earthly help.

The top of her skull was dented out of shape, just a mass of matted hair and black blood, and her face bruised and swollen and grey-green and yellow, fishy coloured. She had been lying for a good while.

Miss Milne was on her right side, her two arms stretched out, as if she had been reaching for the door, her left arm over her right. There was a cloth, like a half sheet, doubled over and covering the base of her skull, but the blood was astonishing – all her clothes were caked and clotted with it and there was more up the walls and in the carpet. Carefully I edged past her body. Her feet were tied together with a green curtain sash and there was a small travelling case opened on the floor beside her filled with ladies’ garments, including underclothing and a couple of ladies’ handbags, and odd rubbish here and there and a great number of burnt matches. There was a telephone on the wall with its wires cut and hanging loose and beneath it, on the floor, a pair of garden secateurs.

To his great credit, Broon had followed me into the house. He was looking a bit green and nobody could fault him for that. The smell would have choked a horse. “Touch nothing,” I told him, “In fact, put your hands in your pockets.”

I did likewise, for, sometimes, the temptation to reach out and set something straight or pick something up the better to examine it can be nearly overwhelming. Together we went from room to room, Broon at my back, like a pair of wandering idiots with our hands in our trousers, and I know he did as I did and kept a grip on his truncheon as if, at any minute, we might find the killer sitting amidst the wreck of his work and waiting to leap out and frighten us.

The place seemed in surprisingly good order. The sideboard in the dining room had its three drawers pulled out, but aside from that, and that horrible butcher’s yard in the lobby, there was no sign that the house had been ransacked or robbed. Most of the place looked as if it had been deserted for years. There were a few sparse bits of furniture in odd rooms, but most of them were emptied down to the bare boards. The place echoed under our boots with the same, sad, hollow sound the bell had made the night before.

From what we could see it seemed that Miss Milne had retreated to just two rooms on the ground floor: her bedroom and the dining room, which served as her sitting room also. There was a half-eaten pie on the table and, beside it, a scone and a bit of brown loaf. They were all sitting on a copy of the
Evening
Telegraph
that looked as if it had never been opened.

Broon read the date: “Monday, October 14.”

“Near three weeks. Well, that tells us something. We can check it with the postmarks on her letters.”

Carefully, and without saying another word, we went back the way we had come and out into the light and the fresh, clean air.

Coullie was there making a great show of rubbing his eyes red and snorting and clearing his throat and spitting, repeatedly, at a stunted rose bush opposite the door as if he hoped the ratepayers of Broughty Ferry might increase his wages on account of his distress, but I paid him no heed.

“Stand on that step,” I said to Broon, and I gripped him by the shoulders until he was exactly where I wanted him but with his nose pointed well away from the half-opened door. “Do not move from that spot, not for your life. I’ll away to Mrs Swan and ask for the use of her telephone again. Coullie, you are a witness. I forbid you to shift.”

The truth is, by the time I was through the gate I had thought better of troubling Mrs Swan again. I imagined she would be distressed to overhear the news of Jean Milne’s murder, so distressed, in fact, that she would probably have to pick up the telephone as soon as I had put it down and share her distress with a few, trusted friends. Naturally, they would also be distressed and quite possibly the lassie working the telephone connector in the Post Office would be distressed and, ere long, needless distress would be flying through every street in the Ferry and perhaps as far as Dundee. I had confidence in Broon’s ability to stand still in one place and I trusted that he could keep that up until I returned, so I resolved to hurry to the station and alert Chief Constable Sempill in person.

Naturally, I could not run. A police officer does not run unless in response to an urgent emergency. But I could walk as swiftly as dignity would allow and it was all downhill so ten minutes was all it took to arrive back. For some reason, Mr Sempill was not in his office when I came in but simply standing, collecting some papers from the public counter.

I said: “You’d better come up to Elmgrove with me, sir.”

“Of course, Fraser, if you think so. Is there some trouble?”

“Miss Milne’s been murdered.”

“You mean she’s died, surely. The poor soul. Not a good end, alone in that wreck of a house with nobody to hold her hand at the last, but that’s the way of it sometimes.”

I made no reply and Chief Constable Sempill looked at me and turned pale. “You mean murdered. What’s happened, man?”

“She’s lying in the lobby with her head bashed in. It’s not bonny.”

“Damnation! Is the place secured?”

“I left John Brown there and Coullie the joiner.”

“What’s he doing there? He’s a civilian. Is he a suspect?”

“Sir, you instructed me to engage him to effect entry.”

“Yes, of course. I remember.” He stood for a moment, one hand on his hip and the other pushing through his hair. “Was she subjected to . . . was there any unpleasantness?”

“Somebody tied her up and cracked her head open, sir.”

“Yes but, you know what I mean, man. I’m trying to determine what we’re dealing with here.”

“Should I telephone the doctor, sir?”

“Yes, Fraser, I was just about to say that. Call Dr Sturrock and ask him to attend. And . . .” he leaned forward and yelled down the passage towards the cells: “Constable Suttie! Who have we with us this morning?”

“George Watson, sir, drunk and incapable – again.”

“Is he still incapable?”

“No, sir.”

“Then kick him out the back door and lock it up after you. Come with me, I need you. Sergeant Fraser, I want you to telephone to Mr Rodger the photographer and tell him we require his services. I want all this most perfectly recorded – in fact, no,” Constable Suttie appeared in the passage, wiping his hands on a rag, “let Suttie do it. Got that, man? We need the doctor, the photographer, and go round to see Mr Roddan, the burgh surveyor, and present my compliments. Tell him we need his assistance with recording the scene.”

Suttie looked at me with a raised eyebrow.

“Murder,” I said. “Miss Milne at Elmgrove.”

Suttie formed his lips into a silent whistle.

Mr Sempill put his hat on and straightened it. “Do you perfectly understand your instructions, Constable?”

Suttie snapped to attention and said: “Sir!”

“Very well, let’s away.”

IT IS MY inclination to tend towards quietness and I think especially so when confronted with our own human frailty. A minister sees people in the depths of their despair, but at least he meets them also at times of joy. A policeman is a minister of misery. We rarely meet folk in happiness. We are never welcome guests. If a man is glad to see us, it is only because he thinks we are his rescuers from some time of trouble or because we have come as avenging angels to right the wrongs done against him, but he would far rather never have had the trouble in the first place, far rather never have suffered the wrong. Indeed, he might be in his rights to blame us for having failed in our duty, which is, first and above all, to prevent crime and to keep the peace.

Those who commit crime and breach the peace hate us because we are the agents of their punishment and shame. Mostly they are ashamed. Men and women brought low by circumstance or drink or poverty, they are ashamed and that is why they hate us. We look at each other and we know that, if the cards had fallen differently, we each might be standing in the other’s shoes.

There are some men of my calling who are afraid of that, and it makes them bullies. They like to crow over the vanquished. They think to make themselves big by making others small. Every profession, I suppose, has its share of them, the loudmouths and the blowhards but, as I said, I tend towards quietness and that did not prevent me from reaching the rank of sergeant in the Broughty Ferry Constabulary.

I was quiet when I arrived back at Elmgrove with Mr Sempill. Mr Sempill, on the other hand, was quite strikingly profane. There was profanity from the moment he saw the body. Profanity as he raised his handkerchief to his mouth and profanity as he stepped carefully around the lobby. Profanity muttered from behind his hand as he examined the scene, and then, when he passed out into the other rooms, he spoke in hushed whispers which, to my mind, he might have been better to save for when he was in the presence of that poor lady.

“That newspaper is an indication of the timing,” he said. “A fifth edition. Find out when that’s printed, what time of the day. Find out if she had it delivered or if it might have been purchased here or up in Dundee.”

“It wasn’t delivered,” I said. “If it was delivered, there would be more of them at her back door.”

“Quite right, quite right. So she must have been out on that day. But three weeks ago! Who would remember?”

Mr Sempill covered his mouth again, left the room, crossed the hall and went down the passage to the kitchen. There was a pantry, but it was almost bare of food, a tin of tea, some sugar, a small store of apples from her own trees and a paper bag with a scone in it, turned rock hard. In the scullery Mr Sempill pointed to a piece of towel flung on the draining board by the sink. It showed signs of having been used; there was a damp sort of discolouration in it and some dark spots that looked like blood.

“Here,” he said, “he stood here and he washed off the blood. He was bloodied. And no wonder after that business out there.”

We had not been long in the house when Broon called from the door to tell us that Suttie had arrived.

“Stay out there!” Mr Sempill said, and we traipsed through the hall again, past the poor dead woman and outside to where the others were waiting.

The joiner Coullie was sitting on the step looking unhappy and the Chief Constable said: “Mr Coullie, your services are no longer required here – for the moment. You may return home, but I am placing you under a solemn instruction to discuss nothing of what you have seen here, lest you prejudice a future prosecution. And I am instructing you to return here as soon as possible with a coffin and a decent conveyance for the transfer of the remains to the morgue in Dundee.”

Coullie knuckled his cap insolently and went on his way, but before he reached the gate to the street, it opened and we could see the photographer Mr Rodger and the surveyor Mr Roddan arriving, each encumbered with the tools of his trade and, beyond them, a little knot of passers-by who had stopped to watch the show on their way to Divine Services.

Mr Sempill gave a nod to Constable Suttie and told him: “Secure that gate!” and Suttie went off like a rabbit, crunching down the gravel path in his big boots.

The Chief Constable welcomed the two gentlemen and thanked them for their service. He said: “You must steel yourselves. It’s a Hellish scene, but I am convinced that, if we apply the most modern methods of investigation, we will be able, very shortly, to bring the culprit to book and have him face the awful penalty of the law.

“Mr Roddan, you would oblige me with a full and exact diagram of the hall where the victim is lying and you, Mr Rodger, a photographic record: an exact photographic record is essential. The body of that woman must by examined. She is the only witness to her own murder and we need whatever clue that she can offer us, but that work cannot begin until every scrap of evidence from the scene has been recovered and recorded.”

And then he turned to me. “Sergeant Fraser,” he said, “I’ll have to away and inform Mr Mackintosh the Fiscal.”

I told him about the telephone at the Swans’.

“No. This is police business. I’m relying on you to take charge here. Search the place – get the constables to help you if you need them. Be thorough but gentle. Thorough. I want the floors swept and the sweepings kept. Record everything. Modern methods, thoroughness, that’s what this needs. I’m relying on you.”

So I flung my chest out and saluted and got on with it.

And this is what I found. There was part of a gold earring lying on the floor within twelve inches of her feet and a small brooch lying within arm’s length of the body to the south near the door, a pair of spectacles lying on the floor close beside her back and another gold brooch lying on her clothing at her back.

Going round that room, observing, noting, measuring – none too exactly, as I knew Mr Roddan would perform that task far more efficiently – I began to see, as if for the first time. The little bits of wreckage alone meant nothing, but together their whole story was laid out there for anybody who wanted to read it.

There was an upper set of false teeth lying on the right-hand corner of the doormat at the entrance to the drawing room. What a blow must have done that. And there was the lower set flung right across to the other side of the hall lying on the third step of the stair. Two blows in quick succession, back and fore, east and west, her face spinning, her neck snapping round – just to look at it and I could see it happening again as if before my eyes.

There was a shaped pad of sponge, wrapped in silk threads, the kind of thing ladies use to pile their hair around to give a false and deceitful impression that their own is rather thicker and richer than in reality, lying at her back and partly covered by her clothing. Close by that was a lorgnette with its chain attached, the proof of her failing eyesight. A glass vase lay on the floor, unbroken, not a chip or a crack, where it had fallen from the hall table and close to the front door.

The gasolier that hung from the ceiling just where the vestibule enters the hall was missing one of its glass globes. How could that have happened? A wild swinging blow that smashed it to bits? Was it dislodged somehow in the struggle and shattered in the fall? In any event, it lay there, broken but carefully set aside, on a brass plate lying in the middle of the doorway to Miss Milne’s drawing room.

Nearby there was a tangle of cut bay twigs, evidently intended for decoration – there was another bunch artistically arranged on another brass plate on the hall table, and on top of the twigs there was a lady’s hat. It was full of blood. The hatpin was in it and it was bent and curved to the shape of her head. The hat trimming was torn off. You could see it lying under her body and trailing out behind her. It was practically covered in blood.

There was blood all over the carpet, four separate pools of it, one where the blood had poured from her head and face, and we found others when we got her body lifted and all round the hall there were the signs of ransack; two travelling cases, opened, one a Saratoga trunk – one of those things that looks like the pirate’s treasure chest in adventure stories – and the other a tin cabin trunk hinged in two parts with one side for hanging garments and the other fitted with drawers. There were two handbags, a wine glass – unbroken – lay on the floor along with a cardboard box with bits of lace spilling out from it, and a broken poker. A broken poker with blood and hair sticking to it, the knob glinting out from those twigs on the floor, and the iron rod set aside on a little round table at the bottom of the stair. There was blood all over it, but, truth be told, a lot more of it on the brass knob. He held it the wrong way up and he hit her with the knob end until the knob flew off and then he stopped and he put it down there on the table. It was plain as day. Anybody could see it. The carving fork from the sideboard was lying on the floor, the sort of thing that comes in a case with a big knife and a sharpening steel. We found them later, a matched set of them, with horn handles.

The blood went up the stair. There was more of it on the carpet on the third step of the stair, and further up, on a broad landing, another bit of green curtain cord, like the bit that was tied round her ankles. Everywhere you looked, everywhere, the whole floor was bestrewn with spent matches – dozens of them.

And there was one other thing. At the turning of the stair, in the corner, there was a tall brass vase. It was full of piss and starting to stink. I emptied it down the sink, rinsed it out and put it back just exactly as I found it.