The Secret Life and Curious Death of Miss Jean Milne (6 page)

MR TRENCH WENT stepping out, back down the hill to Barnhill railway station, long legs going like a windmill and his umbrella over his shoulder like a gun. He kept up a pretty pace, but I am a man of above the average height and I matched him stride for stride easily enough.

A number of the ladies we had seen at the cemetery gates were still waiting there on the wooden platform and they whispered to each other behind their gloves. Mr Trench might have gone as far as touching the brim of his brown bowler hat, but beyond that I don’t think he gave them any acknowledgement whatever.

We rode together, without a ticket I may say, through Broughty Ferry station and on to the West Ferry station, where Mr Trench walked up the stair and past the ticket collector with hardly a glance, saying no more than “Police business.” I gave the man thruppence for his trouble.

Once out of the carriage, he felt more free to talk, and though he spoke to me on the walk up the hill to Elmgrove, I had the firm feeling he was really talking only to himself.

“We’ve got this all wrong, you know.”

I said nothing.

“I said: ‘We’ve got this all wrong.’ ”

“How so, sir?” I said.

“The dates. The dates. The dates.”

“The dates, sir?”

“The dates, Fraser. She couldn’t possibly have been seen alive on the 16th, as Dr Sturrock says, far less the 21st.”

“No, sir. That’s obvious.”

He stopped in his tracks. We were just at the place where Grove Road makes its sharp turn to the right and the brae flattens out. “Obvious? What do you mean, by that, Fraser?”

“Only that the evidence of the newspaper suggests she died much earlier, and her post, sir. Why would she have let the post lie unattended for days in that box in the back court? The earliest stamp on those letters is the 14th, the same day as the newspaper, and they continue to Saturday, the day Postie Slidders raised the alarm.”

Mr Trench looked at me with such a look. “You’ve known this all along?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And yet you allowed Mr Sempill to publish that damned stupid handbill.”

“The Chief Constable did not seek my opinion, sir.”

“So you did not offer it, I know. Fraser, from here on take it as a standing order that I am seeking your opinion. Anything that occurs to you, anything that you know, share it with me. I need all the brainpower I can muster on this case and it seems at least one officer of Broughty Ferry Constabulary has a brain.”

That pleased me very much.

“But,” he said, “it doesn’t explain away what the doctor saw.”

“Mrs McDougall, sir. Just up the road, at Caenlochan Villas on the other side of Strathern Road. And there’s also Miss Jane Miller of 176 King Street. They are both somewhat like Miss Milne in appearance and style of dress. They dress, well . . .”

“They dress younger than their years.”

“I suppose so, sir.”

“Let’s see if we might not introduce the doctor to these ladies. Get him to change his mind.”

We were nearly at the gates of Elmgrove and I was just reaching into my pocket for the keys when he said: “Have you looked at the lady’s letters?”

I told him I had.

“And what did you think?”

“I thought them odd, sir.”

“Some of them are downright queer. I sat up with them last night. She seems to be endlessly hinting to her women friends that she has some kind of intrigue going on with a man – at least one man or maybe more. It would not be respectable in a woman half her age. It’s half mad in an old lady.”

I told Mr Trench that I had always found Miss Milne respectable, never mad, and that she had not struck me as elderly.

“What age do you think she was?”

“She was a lady in her fifties,” I said.

“She admitted to sixty-five and I wouldn’t wager my pension on that either. Did you read the letter from Clarence Herberto Wray?”

I told him that I had and that I was surprised by it.

“On violet paper. What man writes his letters on violet paper – even letters of that nature?”

I said that I had never written a letter of that nature, on violet paper or on paper of any other colour.

“It’s not manly. We need to find this Wray character and account for his movements. And ‘Herberto’. That’s odd too. That’s not a British name. Herbert is a British name, but there’s something odd and foreign about ‘Herberto’, something Spanish or South American. Those are hot-blooded peoples, Fraser. They lack self-control.”

We were standing at the small gate for foot passengers that leads into Elmgrove and I was just about to turn the key in the lock when he said: “The house has nothing more to tell us. We need to talk to people. We need to find out more. And we need to find Wray.”

“Will you go to London?” I asked him.

“No, I’m needed here. Mr Sempill can go to London and gather some more pieces of the jigsaw, but somebody has to fit them together. Now, who have you got on your list of witnesses? Who’s handy?”

My notebook was almost full to bursting with lists of concerned citizens, gossips and busybodies, anybody who had the tiniest bit of information to offer and plenty of others who simply wanted the attention.

I said: “We might do worse than speak to Mrs Ritchie, up at Lindisfarne,” and, I suppose because he had no better idea, that was what we did.

The Ritchies lived up at Lindisfarne, in Edward Street, which is the name they used to give to Grove Road after it has crossed Strathern Road, but Dundee already has an Edward Street so they took ours away and now the whole thing is Grove Road. It was to avoid confusion, they said. In my view they simply wanted to remind us who is the master now.

Lindisfarne is exactly the sort of fine house you would expect to go with a fanciful name like that. There were well-kept hedges with a fine gravel walk through an entirely ornamental garden, which, although it spoke of idleness and frivolity, no doubt kept a man hard at work. The brass bell sheltered under a broad porch, and when the maid answered, Mr Trench handed in his card.

We had not long to wait. We both of us took off our hats as the lassie showed us in. Mr Ritchie was a figure in the jute trade of Dundee, a broker marrying cargoes with customers and customers with cargoes. He had a fine, comfortable house and the wife to match.

Mrs Ritchie received us in her downstairs sitting room, where she was taking her morning tea. She was one of those women, the sort who never trouble too much to be right in the fashion because they know very well their own quality. The fashion that season was to be thin, but Mrs Ritchie tended to the old style of things.

She did not get up when we entered the room but she offered her hand, indicated where we were to sit, and told the girl: “Effie, bring some more cups on a tray for the gentlemen.”

Mr Trench had not given up his umbrella at the door. It seemed to go everywhere with him and he sat now with it planted in front of him and his bowler hat dangling from the top of it. It made a comic picture and left him without any hands for taking notes, so that fell to me, as usual.

“I understand, Mrs Ritchie, that you might have some information about the terrible tragedy that happened over the road,” he said.

Mrs Ritchie expressed her deep shock and distress as she poured out the tea and handed us our cups. The saucers sang and tinkled in her plump fingers. I left my tea sitting on the arm of the chair and began taking notes.

“It’s a terrible thing,” she said. “We’ve known – that’s Mr Ritchie and I – have known Miss Milne seven years, since Mr Ritchie took this house, and we always spoke if we met in the street.”

“Did you know her well?” Mr Trench said.

“I don’t know that anybody could say that. For my own experience, I could not describe Miss Milne as anything but a hard, greedy woman.”

Mr Trench’s eyebrows rose a little.

“Yes, I know you think that harsh, but there’s no point in anything but directness now. That won’t do you any good at all. Cake?”

Mr Trench declined.

“She was absolutely money-obsessed. I recall once I was in a shop in the town and there was Miss Milne and she said to me, ‘What would you like to buy?’ and I said how many lovely things there were to choose from but one must consider the expense, and then she held up a shabby little purse and said: ‘There’s £90 in there.’ Can you imagine? Look at that.” She pointed at an advertisement on the front page of the paper. “A three-piece suit for ten shillings and a coat for ten shillings more. She was carrying clothing for a hundred and eighty men in that one little bag.”

“What did you say to her?”

“I advised her to get to the bank as fast as she could.”

“Very wise.”

There was a lull in the conversation as Mr Trench cast his eye round the room. “You have a lovely home,” Mr Trench said.

“Thank you.” She sparkled a little at that. “A biscuit? They’re awfully good. Well, we overlook Elmgrove from our . . . from the upper floor and I always had, well, I don’t know what you’d call it, but, let’s say a certain fear about Miss Milne staying all alone in there.”

“Did you ever visit? Did you ever go into Elmgrove?”

“No. Oh no. It wasn’t quite that kind of an acquaintance. Anyway, we, that is, my husband and I, we quite remonstrated with her for so doing – for living all by herself with not even a lassie. Miss Milne assuredly did not know what fear was, living alone in that big house without even a dog for company – that would have tried anyone with the best of nerves. I don’t believe a maid would have stayed even one night there.

“I remember, oh, some time ago now, of Miss Milne telling me of an incident which showed how plucky she was. Mr Trench, for many years she had been in the habit of sitting alone, writing or reading. The blinds were never drawn and she sat in full view of anyone in the garden. On this particular evening, as she sat reading, she became conscious of being watched. She looked up and saw a man’s face at the glass.”

“My stars!” said Mr Trench.

“My stars indeed. But Miss Milne was in no way alarmed. She simply walked to the window and boldly ordered the man to ‘Clear out!’ I told her anything might happen and, well, see for yourself, it has. That poor soul lying in there dead for days – weeks even.”

Mr Trench looked at me. “Any report?” he said.

“We never had any such report, sir.”

Mr Trench put his cup down in his saucer. “How long is it since you last saw Miss Milne?”

“I only saw light in Miss Milne’s house twice since she came home from London in the beginning of August last, and that was in the early part of September. I have always made it a point to look out of our . . . from the upper-floor window, each night before going to bed, to see if there was light in her house. I have done that for years. Faithfully.”

“And is that what you wanted to tell us about, Mrs Ritchie? That you’ve not seen Miss Milne.”

“Indeed not. You’d think me a very silly woman if that was all I had to say.” She had a small bag beside her on the settee and she reached in and took out a little pocket diary. “It was this. On September the 20th during the forenoon I joined the tramcar at Grove Road, for Dundee, and Miss Milne joined the car at Ellieslea Road. Now she might easily have got on at Grove Road and I can only think that she did not because it saves a penny on the fare.

“She got on and I said to Miss Milne: ‘I have not seen you since you came home from London,’ and at once she began to speak about a nice gentleman she had met while in London, and oh, but he was a very nice gentleman and that he had been travelling for months before that.”

“Did she mention a name?”

“She did not. No names. Only that he was a charming man, that she had a letter from him a day or two before and that he was coming to see her at Elmgrove. She mentioned no names.

“She was then on her way to Glasgow that very day and thence to Inverness – on that day.”

“I see.” Mr Trench went back to sipping his tea, so it was left to me to say: “Is there anything else you can tell us?”

But Mrs Ritchie only snapped off a bit of biscuit in her saucer and said: “I would have thought that information of that nature, that she had some strange man, a world traveller, coming up from London to be entertained in her very home, would have been sufficient for anybody!”

We were out the door and back in the garden before Mrs Ritchie had finished her next mouthful of shortbread.

And that was what our life became. The whole of that day and every day after that for days and days we spent tramping the streets of Broughty Ferry or riding the cars up to Dundee, knocking on doors, ringing bells, talking to folk who knew Miss Milne well, folk who knew Miss Milne slightly and folk who didn’t really know Miss Milne at all but who might once have seen her from afar.

From early in the morning until late in the evening, we made our house calls and everybody who knew nothing – or next to nothing – was mad keen to tell us about a neighbour who swore she knew something. From one to the other we trudged, Mr Trench stepping along with me on one side and his umbrella swinging on the other.

And little by little, slowly but surely, we began to see something of the picture, because wherever we went and whoever we spoke to, there was always one part of the story linking them all together. A man. There was a man. A man she had spoken of. A man she had boasted of. A man she was seen with. A man who was seen in the overgrown shadows of Elmgrove.

Look in my notebooks. I have them with me still. David Nicoll, merchant of 22 Panmure Street, Monifieth. “One day about five or six weeks before the news of her death broke out, I chanced to meet her in Dundee in front of D. M. Brown’s department store. We stood chatting together a few minutes and I remarked that as I would be visiting some friends in West Ferry one day soon I might then pay her a visit.

“She made a reply to the effect that she did not receive gentleman visitors, but added that she had received a letter the other day and was expecting a gentleman visitor from the south. By way of a joke, I remarked that in that case there was no chance for me then.”

A man.

Marjory Cassady, the wife of the dentist in Brook Street. “One day, shortly before 7th October 1912, I went up by a tramcar about noon to Dundee. When at Ellieslea Road in Strathern Road, Miss Milne and a gentleman joined the car. I was the only one sitting inside.