The Secret Life and Curious Death of Miss Jean Milne (8 page)

He thanked Mr Smeaton and his staff, and asked them to come into the station at their convenience to make signed statements, and we went out again into the weather. Mr Trench turned his collar up against the wind and he said: “Had you some special fondness for Miss Milne?”

“She was well known to me,” I said, “and to many folk in the Ferry.”

“But had you some special fondness for her?”

“I like to think I have a special fondness for everybody who is entrusted to my care. I am a policeman, as Mr Smeaton said, a servant, a friend and a protector.”

He said once more: “Right you are, Sergeant Fraser,” and we left it at that, as I did not care to explain myself further.

But we had not gone more than a few yards before Mr Trench spoke again. “Is that one also in your special care?”

He looked me full in the face, but with his eyes he was indicating a rough and shabby old man on the far side of Queen Street with a large, square pack on his back.

“He is also of my flock,” I said. “That’s Andy Hay the pedlar.”

“Well, he seems awful keen to get your attention.”

And, true enough, though he was standing in the one place and making no attempt to cross the street, by a strange system of jerks and winks and twitches he was trying to attract my attention.

“I’ll wait here,” Mr Trench said, and as soon as Andy saw me coming towards him, he stopped his twitching and turned and looked deep into the hedge at his back.

“Dinna look at me, dinna speak,” he said. “Ahm no here. Yiv no seen me.”

I made an effort to look the other way.

“Ah canna be seen talkin wi you, Mister Fraser, but it’s the lady. It’s the lady. The lady that was murdered.”

I stood quietly, not looking at him, listening to Andy’s story, about how he walks the same route, regularly, never calling at any house more than once in three weeks, never wearing out his welcome. That was how he knew he was on Grove Road on Wednesday three weeks before. And he was fond of Miss Milne.

“She never bought a thing aff me, but she was very good at giving me a thrupenny piece. Ah was just goin in by the wee gate when Ah met a gentleman comin on his way oot. He didna speak.

“Ah went on up tae the hoose and rung the bell but got no answer. When Ah went back tae the gate – are yi lookin at me, Mr Fraser?”

“No, Andy, I’m not looking at you.”

“Ah went back tae the gate and, when I was at the ootside o the gate the same man Ah met comin was ten or fifteen yards up Grove Read, comin doon towards me. Ah got oot his way an crossed the street, but the man went in by the gate.

“Ah went along Albany Road to the junction wi Ellieslea an I sat on mah pack tae hae a smoke, waitin so as to allow the servants at Miltonbank time tae get their dinner before Ah should go up tae them. While sittin smokin, the same man come back doon Albany Road again, tae whaur Ah wis an he says tae me: ‘You are taking it very easy,’ he says, ‘You are taking it very easy.’

“Ah answert him sayin, ‘The servants in the big hoose are aw at their dinners an they widnae look at me the noo.’

“The man stood at the roadside for twa, three minutes, but he didna speak again tae me. Then he went up Ellieslea Road towards the car route. He returned back again to whaur Ah wis, lookin backwards and forwards but he didna speak. Then he ran up tae the car route again. Ah heard the bell but Ah couldna say if he got on.”

I said: “What like a man was he, Andy?”

“He was past thirty but he wisna forty, the ordinary height, a wee, thin fair moustache, stout wi a braw, heavy gold double Albert watch chain across his breast, wi a jewel hingin aff it.”

“And you’re quite certain of the date? That would be Wednesday the 16th.”

“The very day Ah sold a comb tae the maid at Miltonbank.”

And then a strange thing happened. Andy looked at me and he gripped me by the wrist. “Yir askin aa the wrang fowk,’’ he said. “Yir askin aa the grand ladies and gentlemen. They never see us but we see them. Ask the wee fowk like masel.”

I LOOK BACK on that time now as one of impossible strangeness. We were not idle in Broughty Ferry, never idle, and the men always had enough to do. I made sure of that. But in those days after the murder was discovered, we learned what work was. We rose early and sometimes we left so late for our beds that we met ourselves coming in. There was no time to waste rising from our desks in the morning to turn down the gas in the lamps since we would still be there, working, when it was time to light them again. There was never a minute of peace. The reporters were constantly at the front counter, and even when we told them there was nothing to say, as we always did, they would linger at the door for an hour and then come back to ask again. The police telegraph was constantly chattering, the Fiscal telephoned for information morning, noon and night, there were all the usual duties of the Burgh Police, which never slackened, a lost dog, a broken window, a day’s washing stolen from the line, drunkenness and wife beating, everything as much deserving of all our care and attention as before, but now suddenly silly and small and pointless. There was no rest, a shortness of sleep, we were stretched like fiddle strings and sometimes I recall those days through a cloudy, milky glass of exhaustion.

Mr Sempill very well knew, as did we all, that if the papers could not deliver a story of detection and arrest they would provide a story of baffled, clueless, incompetent police officers, and the pain and disgrace of that would only be sharpened by the ill-disguised delight of the City of Dundee Police.

The magistrates and councillors of the burgh were every bit as insistent as the press in their demands for some sign of progress and poor Mr Sempill had nothing to offer them. I know he felt the weight of that terribly, for the responsibility fell on his shoulders, but he was not alone, as we of lower rank lived among the ordinary folk of the burgh and every tradesman, every shopkeeper, every neighbour, if they did not dare to speak it aloud, looked at us with burning, questioning looks.

None of us was spared. The Chief Constable looked to Mr Trench for results, insight, clues, some definite line of inquiry which might be pursued, and every hour that passed, every hour when we had to tell the crowds of reporters that “You will be kept informed of developments,” was another blow.

But, all unknown to us, the dreadful burden of the murder was bearing down on others too. Mr Trench and I had not long returned from our meeting at the Post Office when I heard the voice of Dr Sturrock at the front counter, asking for the Chief Constable, and Broon, as calm and quiet as an ox, as he always was, saying: “I’ll just see if he’s in, sir.”

Broon had no sooner turned away from the bar to make his way to Mr Sempill’s office than Dr Sturrock lifted the latch and came bustling through, saying: “Enough of your nonsense, man, you know very well he’s in,” and on he rushed to the Chief Constable’s room, bursting in with barely a skim of his knuckles on the door.

Mr Trench rose to follow after and I, ever the loyal hound, came a step or two behind. “That’ll be all, Broon,” I said, “go about your duties.”

Standing in the doorway, I could see Mr Sempill at his desk looking startled and Dr Sturrock, grey in the face and his eyes all rimmed red like a man who has wasted his nights pursuing sleep. Mr Trench took him by the elbow and pressed him to a chair and the doctor spoke in a great sob.

“Sempill, I’ve been up for days. I cannot get sleep. I’m troubled in my conscience.”

At that, Mr Trench looked at me and I looked at him, and for a moment he and I were thinking the same thing: that perhaps Dr Sturrock had come to confess to the killing. Trench was a stranger. I could not blame him for feeling that washing wave of relief and delight, as of a weight lifting, but I knew Dr Sturrock, I had known him for years, I knew his wife and his children, and the thought that he might soon hang revolted and terrified me.

The Chief Constable said: “Speak your mind, Doctor, speak your mind,” and then, to me, “Close that door, Sergeant.”

When we were all inside and quiet together, Dr Sturrock began to talk in a quiet, tired way. He said: “Have you removed the productions from Elmgrove?”

“Everything material has been brought down from the house. The men have been working on cataloguing every last item.”

“And what about her clothes?”

“They are still at Elmgrove.”

“The clothes she was murdered in? The clothes she was wearing? The ones they took off her at the post-mortem?”

“Oh, those. No, those are here.”

“Then I need to see them. There’s something I want to show you. I’m tormented with the most awful notion.”

The Chief Constable looked at me with a raised eyebrow.

“Everything is secured in the cells, sir. In boxes.”

“Then let’s take a look, Fraser, let’s take a look.”

So we all trooped out of Mr Sempill’s office and down the back corridor to the cells, every eye on us as we passed. “Get on with your work,” I said and I was careful to close the door at our backs against prying eyes.

Dr Sturrock seemed more like himself now, a little restored, as if the fever had broken. “John Fraser, let me see your list of labels.”

I handed him my ledger and he began running his finger down the long list of labels. “Where are her clothes?”

“Here, sir.”

“Roll out that mattress.”

The mattress in a police cell is none too thick and none too clean, but I did as I was bid and and spread it over the iron-framed bed, and the doctor started to lay out Miss Milne’s bloodied clothing: her blue serge skirt, her linen blouse with its lace collar and then, on top of those, her corsets, her camisole, her linen chemise until there was the shape of a small woman lying there on that filthy bed.

When he was finished, Dr Sturrock said: “You remember the night of the post-mortem – you were there, Fraser.”

Mr Sempill and I agreed.

“That was the night before you got here, Mr Trench. During the examination I drew attention to holes in the flesh of the deceased lady.”

“Yes, I recall,” said Mr Sempill. “Maggots.”

“Maggots. Exactly. Maggots. Sergeant Fraser, would you be so good as to hand me Label 31?”

That was easily done. I gave the doctor the big, bone-handled fork from the carving set, the one that was lying on the floor of the hall by Miss Milne’s body when we broke in. It had a paper luggage label tied round the handle with brown string and my signature and Broon’s and a large “31” written in ink.

“This has been rattling round in my head for days, gentleman. Observe.” Dr Sturrock took the fork and held it against two small holes in Miss Milne’s blouse. The prongs of the fork matched exactly. “There,” he said, “and there. And there. And there. And there.”

I heard Mr Trench saying: “Dear God. Dear God,” and Mr Sempill said nothing at all.

Suddenly we could see that her clothing was full of holes – riddled with holes. The more we looked, the more we found, holes in the shoulder, holes in the breast, holes in the back, through her blouse, through her underwear, through her corsets right through to her flesh. We counted twenty holes in the back of her clothing; on the right breast, eight punctured holes; on the right wrist, two more; and on the left breast, just over the heart, two more. Where they pierced her undergarments, the cloth was stained with blood and not one of the holes was placed over her corsets, which, as the villain well knew, would have resisted his blows.

“Maggots,” said Dr Sturrock. “There’s your maggots. Thirty-four separate wounds. He stabbed her with this fork seventeen times. Seventeen times front and back. Seventeen times! And to think I bowed down and worshipped in front of the professor and his damned maggots.”

The doctor flung open the cell door and went staggering out with Mr Trench and the Chief Constable on his coat-tails and so it was left to me to pack everything away.

Afterwards I washed my hands under the tap in the back yard.

And when I came into the building again, bolting the door at my back, Dr Sturrock and Lieutenant Trench were once more gathered in the Chief Constable’s office, where Mr Sempill had opened a restorative bottle of sherry.

Dr Sturrock was sipping from a glass held in trembling fingers and the Chief was talking to Dundee on the telephone, demanding “an urgent meeting with Mr Procurator Fiscal Mackintosh, most urgent. In fact, immediate.”

They made an odd picture sitting there together: the doctor who was well known to us all as one who cared for the weak and the infirm of our community, himself being tenderly cared for, and Mr Trench, with his great hedge of a moustache, a hand on the doctor’s shoulder, playing the nursemaid.

Like an eavesdropper I found myself lingering aimlessly on the threshold of Mr Sempill’s office, where I had no business to be and, certainly, I had work of my own to be going on with, but the gentlemen were taken up with their own matters, and if they noticed me at all they made no sign.

They seemed somehow set apart there together, the Chief Constable, the respected professional man and the lieutenant of detectives, and although I had handled all her clothing, although I had unpacked it from its boxes, although I packed everything away again, I was not offered a glass from the Chief Constable’s bottle.

In very truth, I suppose I remained there only a moment and I was about to return to sit down at my own desk when Constable Suttie came hurrying up with a message from the police telegraph. He wanted to take it in to Mr Sempill, but I prevented him. “Give it to me,” I said.

Suttie handed me the slip of paper. It was a message for the Chief Constable from the detective branch of Scotland Yard reporting that one Clarence Herberto Wray was in residence at the Bonnington Hotel, London.

“They are busy with important matters,” I said. “I will hand it over in a moment. When they are free.”

A NUMBER OF events then transpired of which I have no direct knowledge and of which I learned only later, at second hand by way of conversation or through police reports which I have read with very close attention.

Mr Sempill and Mr Trench were somehow flung together of a sudden and came to rely on one another in a friendly and familiar way, which, I suppose, was only right and proper for two gentlemen in that position.

I was not required to accompany them when they went to Dundee for the interview arranged with Mr Fiscal Mackintosh, but I was informed that Dr Templeman, the police surgeon of Dundee, was also in attendance. Professor Sutherland was detained by his duties at the Royal Infirmary and unable to attend.

I have no desire to attribute petty or ungenerous attitudes of mind to the Chief Constable, but it would have taken a man of more than ordinary flesh and blood not to gloat. After all that he had suffered at the hands of Mr Fiscal Mackintosh, after the days of ceaseless demands and, above all, the clear imputation that we of the Broughty Ferry Burgh Police were not up to our jobs, he must have relished the moment when he was able to produce unanswerable reasoning from our own Dr Sturrock proving that important evidence had been blithely overlooked. But, as I say, I was not present at that interview.

However, I do know that the telegram message from the Metropolitan Police was discussed at the meeting and it was agreed that Mr Sempill should proceed at once to London to meet Mr Clarence Herberto Wray and carry out further inquiries.

We also managed to confirm, by simple, straightforward routine policing methods, the date of Miss Milne’s death, almost to a certainty.

We traced – that is to say I traced – the van driver of the Dundee Steam Laundry Company who made a regular weekly call at Elmgrove. His name was James Macrae, and he called at the house every Thursday without fail.

On October 10th he brought a parcel of clean laundry and took a parcel of washing away to be done. He tarried long enough to help Miss Milne clear some leaves from the gutter of the back kitchen, and, no doubt, he benefitted from a generous tip, but he made no mention of that in his statement to me.

“On Thursday, 17th October 1912, about 1.15 p.m., I called at Elmgrove with a parcel from the laundry,” he said.

“The small entrance gate was open, and on going to the front door I rang the bell twice, but got no answer. Miss Milne had previously arranged with me that, should I be later than 1 p.m. in calling, she would leave the kitchen window unsnibbed and the parcel inside, so that I would open the window, and take the one and leave the other.

“On going to the window I found it snibbed. I looked all round the house and saw all the windows shut except one upstairs, the centre one, looking south. I then noticed that the flap of the Chubb lock on the front door was up, and thinking Miss Milne had gone out for the afternoon, I took the parcel back with me.

“On Thursday, 24th October, about 12.45 I again called at Elmgrove and rang the front doorbell twice but got no answer. Then I noticed the flap of the Chubb lock exactly the same as it was when I called the previous week. I then thought Miss Milne had left on holiday and had forgotten to inform the laundry. But she wasn’t on her holidays, was she? She was lying dead at the back of that door.”

I regarded that as an excellent piece of police work, but when Mr Sempill returned from the town he was far too busy to take any notice of the van man’s evidence and nearly mad with excitement over his coming visit to London. He ran about the office, snatching up notebooks and arranging pocketfuls of business cards and babbling about his “mission” to the capital. Broon and Suttie were out on the beat, so they were spared it. I stuck close to my work and tried not to look up.

“Would it be wrong,” he wondered, “to take a few small presents for senior officers in the Metropolitan Police? I favour those tins of shortbread they sell at Goodfellow’s along in Gray Street, the ones with the view of the castle at sunset printed on them. It would be something definitely of Broughty Ferry.”

Poor Mr Sempill was greatly torn between the possibilities of arriving empty-handed in front of his hosts and running the risk of appearing mean-spirited and tight-fisted or, on the other hand, looking like a country bumpkin, bedazzled by the capital.

“I think it’s important to remember,” he told Mr Trench, “that I am a Chief Constable in my own right. Yes, admittedly, Chief Constable of a small force – when considered alongside the Metropolitan Police – but a Chief Constable nonetheless. My responsibilities to this small burgh are not less than those faced by the Commissioner in the largest city of the Empire.”

Mr Trench said: “Indeed.”

“I think I’m right in saying, Trench, that the Commissioner himself may be the only officer of the Met who can officially outrank me.”

“I could not say.”

“Well I can. I can say it with confidence. So, the shortbread. What’s your view?”

“I would say not,” Mr Trench said gently. “Best to keep things on a purely professional footing.”

“Professional. Damn it, Trench, you’re right.”

“Friendly, but not familiar.”

“No. No. Familiarity breeds contempt. Don’t want that.”

“You are, after all, the Chief Constable of Broughty Ferry.”

“Indeed, and if the plain, unvarnished Chief Constable of Broughty Ferry is not to their liking, then damn the lot of them.”

Mr Sempill hurried into his office and came out again a moment later with his dress uniform on a hanger over his arm. “How will I find Scotland Yard?”

“Take a cab, sir. From the railway station.”

“Yes. A cab.”

All Mr Sempill’s self-doubt was rolled up in those two words. He was flabbergasted by the possibility of getting in a cab, not knowing where it might go or how much it might cost. The extravagance of the notion appalled him – which was entirely to his credit since he knew he would have to be accountable to the burgh treasurer for every penny and, through him, to the ratepayers of Broughty Ferry themselves.

“It’s the best thing,” said Mr Trench. “You are the Chief Constable.”

Mr Sempill was persuaded, and after not much more fussing he was ready to quit the office for his turreted house amongst the Scots pines of Orchar Park and finish filling a bag for the journey that evening.

“I want to make it quite clear,” he said, as I held the door for him, “that Lieutenant Trench takes on full responsibility for the Elmgrove inquiry in my absence – at least as far as it pertains to Broughty Ferry. Obey him in all things as you would me.”

“Yes, sir. Are you sure you won’t be requiring assistance with your bags?”

“Thank you, Fraser, I can manage. I will be in touch daily. At least daily.” And away he went, with a long thread of reporters trailing after him, all shouting questions. “Lieutenant Trench will assist you, gentlemen. Speak to Lieutenant Trench!” So they all came in to the front counter, waiting for a word from the lieutenant like dogs waiting for a biscuit, and it fell to him to explain that, in light of recent developments which he was not at liberty to disclose, our Chief Constable was away to London, following up definite lines of inquiry regarding the murder and working hand in glove – that’s what he said, “hand in glove” – with Scotland Yard. He made no mention whatever of the business with the meat fork and said nothing at all about shortbread, which I regarded as very wise.

When the reporters had gone and the office was filled again by nothing more than the sharp ticking of the clock on the wall, Mr Trench went off towards the Chief Constable’s office, where he had set up a table and which he could now count as his own for a few days.

“Will you be needing me this afternoon?” I asked him.

“I don’t think so, John. Is there something you need to do? The murder inquiry must take the first importance in everything, you know.”

“A few private inquiries of my own, sir.”

“I don’t think I quite approve of private inquiries. This is not a private inquiry agency. This is a police force.”

“Oh I understand that, sir, but, with respect, you are a stranger here and some of these people, well, they might . . .”

“You think they’d be more willing to talk to one of their own, like the pedlar?”

“Aye, sir. Something like that.”

“You might be right, John.” And then, as if to underline his newfound authority, he said: “But I expect a full report. You must keep nothing from me.”

He went into the Chief Constable’s office and, from behind the door, he called out. “And be sure to wait until Suttie comes back. We can’t leave the office unmanned.”

Luckily that wasn’t long.

I was lying. I had no reasons of my own for wanting to leave. At least none that were connected to the inquiry. Or perhaps all my reasons were connected to the murder. I was simply sick of the sight of the place and tired of listening to people who had no idea what to do or how to begin to do it. I wanted to walk and feel the wind chill me and have the cold rain wash my face, someplace away from the hiss and glare of gas lamps. I tramped the beach, eastwards, away from the police office and away from Elmgrove, along Beach Crescent, with its fine ornamental lamp posts, all cast-iron curls and twists, past the old Provost’s house, under the shadow of the castle on its rock, sharp and black against the rolling, marbled blackness of the clouds, past the stalls and the beach huts, shut up now for the winter, away to where the fine houses of the Esplanade ran out and then on, through the dunes to the mouth of the Dighty Water, which marks the boundary of our little burgh, where I stopped to look at a flotilla of swans, appearing and disappearing like ghosts among the waves. The wind carried sprays of fine sand along with it. I could feel it gently rattling against the cloth of my trousers in tiny, harmless volleys as I stood there, little pieces of rock that might once have been mountains, ground as fine as dust by water and wind and time. How long must it have taken? How many millions of years? And yet, if some cataclysm saw it all pounded together again into rock and worn again into dust, even that would not be an eternity. I thought on poor, dead Jean Milne and I thought on myself, who must soon follow her. I was put in mind of the 139th Psalm: “If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.” But the darkness had covered me and I thought again on poor Jean Milne and I turned my back to the weather and went away, grateful.

Andy Hay the packman was right. The great and the good had shown themselves to know nothing. It was the little people I had to ask. I had to find out what they knew.