The Secret Life and Curious Death of Miss Jean Milne Read online

  Poor Maggie stood gawping and clapping her lips together and it seemed clear to me that she had no more brains in her head than Constable Broon. I very much doubted that the two of them together could have passed the sergeant’s exam, and while she stood there, saying nothing, I called out: “It’s Sergeant Fraser of the police, sir, come to beg the favour of the use of your telephone.”

  At once Mr Swan came bustling out, in his shirtsleeves and his waistcoat with his collar off, as well he was entitled to be in his own house at that hour of the evening: “The police? Well come away in, Sergeant, come away. Maggie, get out of the door and let the man in,” and then, because he was no more than ordinarily curious, he naturally enquired, “Is there some trouble?”

  Constable Broon had enough sense to stay quiet, a respectful couple of paces in the rear as we entered the house, and I said: “There’s no reason for alarm, sir, but I would be grateful if you could permit me the use of your telephone until I consult with the Chief Constable.”

  “Of course, of course,” and Mr Swan busied and bustled again and led the way to the kitchen passage, where the telephone instrument hung on the wall in its polished oak box. “There you are, Sergeant.”

  I looked at him and I looked at the box and Mr Swan said: “Allow me.” He lifted the earpiece and clattered on the hook and, after a moment, he shouted into the trumpet in a careful, clear voice: “Give me the police station of Broughty Ferry,” and then he stepped back in the narrow passage and held the earpiece out to me. “You are being connected,” he said in the same careful, clear voice.

  We stood waiting, the three of us in the passage, me and Broon and Mr Swan, with Mrs Swan looking round the edge of the door frame and the lassie Maggie no doubt listening close by, but, in a queer way, I was no longer there as part of the company because I was engaged with the telephone, so Mr Swan turned to Broon and said, very quietly: “But you’re sure there’s nothing to worry about.”

  Broon shook his big bull head and mouthed a silent: “No.”

  “Hello,” I said. “This is Sergeant Fraser. Let me have a word with Chief Constable Sempill.” And then there was another moment or two of quiet before the Chief Constable came on the line.

  “We had a report,” I said, and I told him the whole story.

  “And you’re sure there’s no sign of any wrongdoing.”

  “The whole place is secure.”

  “You’ve checked thoroughly?”

  “All round the premises, round the gardens, and, as well as I can in the dark, I’ve examined the upper windows.”

  “I don’t see what else we can do at this time of night,” said Mr Sempill. “Leave it for now and take a joiner up in the morning in case we need to force an entry.”

  “Very good, sir,” I said. “Constable Brown and I will resume our patrol and I will engage the man Coullie in the morning.”

  “Right you are.” And he broke off with a loud click.

  I handed the telephone instrument to Mr Swan, who put it back on its hook. “Miss Milne?” he said, curiously.

  “Miss Milne?” said Mrs Swan.

  “And I thought . . .” said Maggie.

  But before I could ask her what she thought, Mrs Swan had wheesht her and threatened her with her character and warned her to “be sure those fires are well lit by half past six of the parlour clock” and chased her off to bed.

  There were no further occurrences that evening.

  3

  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 dea
ling 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.”

  4

  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.