The Secret Life and Curious Death of Miss Jean Milne (22 page)

ON THE 1st, 2nd and 3rd of October I stopped at the Hotel Transvaal in Antwerp, paying one franc, 50 centimes per night. I stayed there three nights. On 4th and 5th October 1912 I was in Brussels, returning to Antwerp on 6th October. I slept at the Hotel Transvaal, Antwerp, again on October 6th, which was Sunday. On Monday, the 7th October 1912, I met Bert Aubrey, porter of the Hotel d’Alsace, 13 Rue Loos, right close to the Central Station. Aubrey is a French Canadian.

    He took me to the Hotel d’Alsace and I remained there till Tuesday, 15th October 1912. I was unable to pay my bill, and the proprietor told me I could not stay there longer. On the 16th October I again returned to the Hotel Transvaal and slept there Wednesday night, 16th October. Next day, Thursday, 17th October, I met my friend Aubrey, and he advised me to go to the British Consulate and get to an English-speaking country. I told him I did not care for any report or that kind to get to Canada, but he told me to do so under an assumed name. I went to the British Consulate and met Mr Cox, Vice Consul, and told him my circumstances under the name of C. S. Ware. He issued transportation to London so that I could call the Commissioner of Canada. I arrived at Liverpool Street Station, Friday 18th October 1912. I remained at the docks all day and took a night’s lodging at a small house near Canning Station, the exact address I do not know.

WHEN MR SEMPILL was sitting opposite Mr Cox, on the other side of his desk, with a tea tray between them, he had recognised, upside down of course, but quite distinct, the signature of C. S. Ware. Had he asked to do so, he might have examined the signature in more detail. Mr Cox would undoubtedly have consented and the Chief Constable might easily have compared that signature with the two specimens: C. S. Ware, C. S. Ware, neatly, clearly, casually, one above the other, which the prisoner Warner had so thoughtfully provided in the bottom corner of his sketch map. For reasons he could not explain, least of all to himself, Mr Sempill chose not to do that, but when he arrived, after a short walk, side by side with Sergeant Cosgrove, at Place Verte, he knew there was no need. Hope shrivelled in Mr Sempill’s breast and he felt the broad flagstones of the square shift under his feet like the greasy deck of that vile ferry. “The great thing is to try to forget that one has the return journey to look forward to,” Mr Cox had said. Mr Sempill could not forget.

Here was Place Verte exactly as Warner suggested in his drawing; here the cathedral with its strange little onion dome and its lopsided towers, one short and square, the other rising in jagged pinnacles which Mr Sempill found reminiscent of Edinburgh’s own magnificent Scott Monument – except for the rather gaudy clock, of course – all the trees in their two-by-two avenues, the statue of Petro Paulo Rubens behind his iron railings.

Mr Sempill held the map open between his two hands and turned on the spot. The Europa Hotel, the San Antonio Hotel, both exactly where Warner said they should be. In the opposite corner of the square, beyond the flower stalls, the Flanders Hotel and, between there and the cathedral, the street which, according to Warner’s map, would lead to Hotel Reuters and the proof that he was in Antwerp when Miss Milne died.

Mr Sempill turned his back and walked away.

“Through the square and just down the road to the left, sir,” Sergeant Cosgrove said cheerily.

“Thank you, no, Cosgrove. This way, I think. The Hotel Rheinland. Warner claims he stayed there. Let’s see.”

Mr Sempill began to walk. “Plaine Falcon? Down here, I think? I’m right, am I not?” and he kept walking, no longer at Cosgrove’s side but leading the way, stepping out in long, loping strides with his coat flapping behind like crow wings as Cosgrove struggled to keep up, winding away from the flower stalls and the tourist postcards towards a place where the streets grew narrower and darker and filled with shadows.

“Have a care, sir,” said Cosgrove.

“I’m a police officer, man. I have nothing to fear.”

But when the street opened out again into a great, fish-shaped marketplace with high tenements on either side and women standing, waiting on the corners, and men standing, watching in the doorways, and it felt that, suddenly, all eyes turned to look at him, then Mr Sempill slowed his pace and waited for Cosgrove to catch up.

“Hotel Rheinland, sir. No. 23 is just there.”

There were three dirty steps going up to a double door where nobody had bothered to polish the handles for a long, long time and, inside, surrounded by the smell of stale carpets, an old man dozing in a booth, with his elbow on the desk and his chin in his hand. He had a thick sandwich wrapped in newspaper sitting on the desk beside him.

Cosgrove said: “
Veut voir le patron
,” and the man went away slowly, saying nothing. They heard him shuffling down the corridor and, when he was out of sight, the sound of a door creaking.

“That was French, I take it,” said Mr Sempill.

“Yes, sir.”

“Is it completely necessary? “

Cosgrove said nothing.

“I think a little less of that kind of thing might be in order.”

“Sir, they speak French.”

“Surely not all of them.”

“French and Dutch, sir.”

“I understand that. I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about you. Is there any need for that damnable accent? It’s as if you were encouraging it. I realise you must talk to them, but try to be a little less enthusiastic about it, if you would.”

Cosgrove said nothing and chewed on his moustache.

“Is that clear?”

“Sir.”

They waited awkwardly for a few moments until they heard the sound of the creaking door again and a quick step approaching down the corridor, and a short man in a checked waistcoat appeared in the lobby. “
Politie
?
” he said.

Sergeant Cosgrove said: “Yes.”

“English?”

“Yes.”

The man laughed and said something in Dutch. He pointed to the door with his cigarette and said it again.

Mr Sempill said: “He wants us out.”

“He says your writ doesn’t run here, sir.”

“Or words to that effect. Tell him we’re not going.” Mr Sempill took out the photograph and held it up. The man stopped laughing. He reached out and took the picture.

“You know him?” said Mr Sempill.

“This bastard? You should have said.” He held out his hand. “Leon Mirbach. I am the proprietor, Hotel Rheinland. Please come.” Mirbach leaned over the counter to where the old man had been sitting. His watch chain rattled against the counter as he stretched to pick up the hotel ledger. “What has he done? A very bad thing I hope.”

“Murder.”

“Good. He runs away from me without to pay. Now you will, I hope, hang him.”

“He stayed here?”

“Two times.” Mirbach looked in his ledger. “More than one year. Last September. He one week stays. See. Look here.”

He pointed with a broken fingernail to an entry bearing the name of C. S. Walker. “See? Look. You see.”

Mr Sempill took the book and examined the entry. C. S. Walker, age forty, occupation promoter, born St Louis, America. Domicile, Jefferson Hotel.

“Look at that, Sergeant. Last year he was forty, this year he was thirty-eight.”

Mirbach said: “He was very well dressed and rich. Every day he eats breakfast and goes. Every night he comes back. After one week he pays and goes on SS
Menominee
and to Boston goes.”

“But you said he left without paying.”

“The next time. The next time I saw this man – look again in the book – one year later, this year 20th September, when he again came to my hotel. This time he left without paying. Twenty-eight francs. I have not seen him again.” He smiled. “But I have his good leather bag.”

Mr Sempill smiled under his walrus whiskers. It seemed like the first time he had smiled since the day Sergeant Fraser brought the news from Elmgrove. “That old trick?” he said. “What was in the bag?”

“The bag is locked. I never inside it have looked.”

“Get the bag, man! For God’s sake, get the bag. Cosgrove, tell him! Tell him to get the bag.”

Sergeant Cosgrove said something that sounded like a man loudly clearing his throat and Mirbach went hurrying away into some dark place beyond the porter’s booth. He was gone only moments before returning, dragging a long leather kit bag, closed at one end with brass fittings and shut with a padlock. Mr Sempill thought he had never been so happy. It was all he could do to stop himself from laughing out loud. “Break it. Break it,” he said.

Sergeant Cosgrove produced a clasp knife – he was the kind of man who could be relied upon to carry such a thing – and he wrestled with the bag, right there on the floor of the hotel lobby. But the lock would not give until, at last, the elderly porter came shuffling up with a dancing, hopping step, carrying a hammer. It took six blows to burst the lock. Sergeant Cosgrove pushed his hat back on his head. “There you go, sir,” he said.

The Chief Constable knelt down on the filthy carpet and opened the bag. “Make a note,” he said. “One white shirt, one striped shirt, shirt collars,” he counted, “two, four, six, one dozen collars marked C. S. Warren, one brown bowler hat, one pair blue trousers, and one undervest. And there’s this. A telegram form. Unused. Addressed Miss Nancy Myfanwy Jones, 102 Magazine Lane, New Brighton.”

HENRY BRUST. “40”. Proprietor of Hotel Rubens. Pearl Street. Antwerp says: I recognise the photograph shown me as that of a man who first came to my hotel two years ago. He stayed at my hotel at that time one night. I cannot remember the name he was under.

    He said he was a dealer in jewellery. I next saw him in 1911, when he came into my cafe for coffee on two occasions. He next came to my hotel about the beginning of October 1912. I was working in the kitchen when he called. He asked to see me personally, and he was shown through to the kitchen. He asked me to loan him some money for a few days, as he was very hard up and waiting for money from America. I suggested that he should pawn his watch or ring, but he said he did not care to do this. Ultimately, he persuaded me to loan him F.15 on his rainproof, which he left with me. He returned about 10 days afterwards - 16th October, about 3 p.m., when he came to settle about the overcoat. I arranged to give him F.2.50 more, on the understanding that the rainproof would become my property. I asked him to make out a receipt for the coat (produced), which he signed. I am positive it was the 16th October 1912 because, when he handed me the receipt, I compared the date on it with the date on the calendar. My waiter, Ormond, who has since left my service, was present when the receipt was made out, and can speak to the date.

ANTWERP, 4th DECEMBER, 1912

ARMEND DEDERICH, “35”, Waiter, Rue de l’Aquidue 7, Antwerp, says:- I entered the service of the proprietor of Hotel Rubens here about 9 months ago and 1eft on 29th November 1912. I remember the man whose photograph you show me, coming to the hotel some time in September. He came as a customer, and seemed to be friendly with the proprieter. I know the proprietor advanced him some money on a waterproof coat. I was present on 16th October 1912 - I think between 5 and 6 p.m. - when he made out a receipt making over the overcoat to my master. I am positive it was the l6th October, because one of my duties in the hotel every morning was to adjust the calendar in the bar to date, and I distinctly remember the date put on the receipt corresponded with that on the calendar.

WALKING HURRIEDLY, BENT over, through the Place Verte, his coat buttoned up this time, one hand on his hat, one hand pinching his collar shut against the cold, Mr Sempill looked up from the pavement just at the very moment the chill December wind stripped the last three leaves from the trees of the square and sent them whirling into Petro Paulo’s stiff bronze beard with a lover’s outraged slap.

He was on his way to the Central station, pretending he knew how to get there, turning left and right – “Down here, sir” – as Sergeant Cosgrove – “I think this way, sir” – offered directions.

“Why the station, sir? If you don’t mind my asking.”

“Because it’s where we will find him.”

“Who, sir?”

“Who, sir? Aubrey, sir! That’s who, sir. Warner’s little French Canadian friend.”

“Can’t we just go to the hotel, sir?”

But Mr Sempill did not even trouble to reply. He simply strode out, knowing the way now, recognising the signs, the converging tramlines, the thickening crowds, the hurrying travellers with their suitcases banging against their knees, the cabs jostling for business and there, up ahead, a great broad arch, a cast-iron rainbow spread across the horizon, a half a sky of glass to let the light shine through and all of it blackened and dimmed with soot and dust and dirty raindrops and chilly disappointment.

Despite the gale blowing at his back, Mr Sempill felt his heart beating warm in his chest. He was happy still. Happy for the first time in weeks, and he carried in his coat, folded into his pocket book, that telegram form with the name of Miss Nancy Jones, clearly, unmistakably, in Warner’s hand.

What would Miss Nancy Jones have thought if someone had told her that, far across the sea from No. 102 Magazine Lane, New Brighton, in a foreign country, on a piece of paper in Warner’s bag, her name was waiting? Perhaps she would have taken it for a sign that she had not been entirely deceived, that, after all, he cared, he had repented, he was on the verge of summoning her to his side if some other, entirely understandable, wholly excusable circumstance had not intervened. Again. Perhaps it would have been a comfort to her. She would have understood.

Certainly that little note was a comfort to Mr Sempill. He held it close to his heart like a glowing cinder. Miss Nancy Myfanwy Jones was a clue – a veritable clue – and he had uncovered her, not Trench, not the bloody Procurator Fiscal, but J. Howard Sempill, Chief Constable of Broughty Ferry. Mr Sempill was unable to contain his delight. This would prove that he was a policeman in the truest sense of the word. “They’ll know. They will see,” he muttered.

“Yes, sir?”

“Oh, shut up, Cosgrove.”

He ran up the station steps, crossed the booking hall in half a dozen strides and came out in front of the ticket barrier a full four seconds before Cosgrove joined him. “Go away,” he said.

“Sir?”

“You look like a policeman. Go and buy a paper. Join me over there.”

Mr Sempill went to sit on a bench at the back of the platform and he took out his pipe, watching the crowds.

He ignored the people hurrying towards the trains. He discounted anybody leaving the station. In a few seconds, he had found his man.

“That one,” he said when Cosgrove returned with the newspaper. Mr Sempill pointed quietly with the stem of his pipe at a young man patrolling the ticket barriers like a lost puppy. “The pretty one.”

“What makes you think that’s Aubrey, sir?”

“Because he’s so pretty.”

“Pretty? You mean you think Warner is an invert? But the victim was a woman, sir.”

“I don’t know if Warner is an invert or not. Nothing would surprise me. Such types have an infinite capacity for deception, in my experience. They wheedle and ingratiate and that’s exactly Warner’s method. For my money, I’d say, no, there is nothing unnatural about Warner, but he undoubtedly preys on men of that type at least as much as he does on women. Look at what you discovered in Rotterdam. He meets a man in the port and that man takes him back to his room, feeds him and shelters him for a week from his own pocket. Why? Why would he do that?”

“There was a curtain down the room, sir.”

“Oh, well, since you put it that way, that makes all the difference. There could be no opportunity for impropriety in a room with a curtain down the middle!”

Mr Sempill took a couple of slow draws on his pipe and let the smoke out through his nose. “Our Mr Warner has an uncommon gift for making friends and I’m willing to bet that waiter you discovered in Rotterdam – what was his name, again?”

“Stanfield, sir.”

“Stanfield, yes. I’m betting he was pretty too. Was he?”

Sergeant Cosgrove looked at his boots. “I’m not much of a judge in matters of that nature, sir.”

“Well I am, Sergeant. I am. I can smell them, and that pretty boy over there stinks of it. Go and get him for me.”

Mr Sempill watched as Sergeant Cosgrove rose from the bench and approached the young man through the crowd. He jumped like a kitten when Sergeant Cosgrove put a hand on his shoulder and his face turned grey when he heard the word “police”. He might have tried to run for it except Sergeant Cosgrove pointed over to the bench by the entrance, perhaps to tell him where to go, perhaps to tell him there was no chance of escape. Mr Sempill raised his hand in a fatherly greeting and sucked on his pipe. That young man had met the police before.

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.”