Free The Secret Life and Curious Death of Miss Jean Milne by Andrew Nicoll Page A

and hair on the bannister rail, there was the dark mark on the stair carpet, the landing, the turn up the stair, the second piece of curtain cord, left exactly where it was found, exactly where it featured on Mr Roddan’s drawing, and then the upper landing and darkness.
    But the rooms were not empty. Not entirely empty and the darkness was not complete. There at the end of the corridor, the silent dance of candlelight and, in the glow of the candles, Miss Milne lying in her coffin.
    It was a scene I found greatly affecting: to think that she lay there now, on this last night, in the house where she had lived and died, where perhaps in that very room she had slept as a child, surrounded by the homely comforts of a loving family and where now she slept alone, as we all must do.
    I am sorry to have to report that the Chief Constable again gave way to profanity and blamed the joiner Coullie for having done his work too well and without informing the police of his actions.
    “She’s to go to Barnhill in the morning,” he told Mr Trench. “I’m afraid there was no possibility of delay.”
    “Then I should see her,” Mr Trench said.
    The Chief Constable looked at me and I looked at him and Mr Sempill said: “My best advice is not to bother. She’s been dead for weeks. For God’s sake, leave her alone. The doctors’ report will tell you all you need to know.”
    But Mr Trench insisted. “I don’t relish it, but it is my duty. I understand if you prefer to stand apart.”
    We did stand apart. Neither Mr Sempill nor I ventured over the threshold of that room, and if either of us had shown a shred of good sense, we would have waited out in the garden while Mr Trench got on with his work. But it did not seem right to abandon him entirely, so, instead, we stood in the shadows of the corridor, not talking, trying not to breath. We heard Mr Trench try to lift the coffin lid, but Coullie had already screwed it down.
    The click of his pocketknife opening. The long business of turning the screws. His breathing as he lifted the lid, the wooden sound as he propped it against the wall and then the stench, everything that had been trapped inside that box for a night and a day coming pouring out. It seemed to seep from the room in a gasp that dipped the candles as it passed and Mr Trench, poor Mr Trench, was in the middle of it.
    After a few moments we heard him replace the lid and begin to replace the screws and, before long, he came out of the room, wiping his fingers on his handkerchief. I was glad that we could not see his face in the shadows.
    “We may be not much closer to catching the man who did this,” he said, “but from all we have seen, from all you have told me and from all my experience, I can tell you this for a certainty: no sane Britisher did this. A murder of this cruelty and ferocity and brutality could have been committed only by a maniac or a foreigner.”

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    I DOUBT THAT you can properly imagine Mr Sempill’s relief and delight when he heard those words: “A maniac or a foreigner.”
    There were no maniacs in Broughty Ferry – or none that we knew of and, even if some poor soul had escaped from a shameful, private confinement, they would surely be held blameless on account of their madness. Better still, if they were blameless, then we of the Broughty Ferry Constabulary and, especially, its Chief Constable must be equally blameless.
    But a foreigner! A foreigner was a Heaven-sent blessing. A foreigner was beyond the control of anybody. The magistrates and ratepayers of Broughty Ferry could never hold the force responsible for the actions of a foreigner, and, best of all, he must have left the burgh as quickly as he came, unseen and unnoticed, and we could, all of us, sleep soundly in our beds.
    First thing in the morning, when I arrived at the police office, I found Constable Suttie sitting at the police telegraph with Mr Sempill standing over him dictating a warning that: “Following the murder of Miss