The Secret Life and Curious Death of Miss Jean Milne by Andrew Nicoll Read Free Book Online

had been in it too?”
    “Hiding here amongst the mothballs for weeks while she rotted away in the lobby? I don’t think that’s likely.”
    “Something might have been removed.”
    “In which case, my men are unlikely to stumble upon it.”
    We heard the sound of a drawer sliding open and a few moments of muffled movement. “A purse,” said Mr Mackintosh “and . . . seventeen gold sovereigns. Seventeen! A desperate man might think it worth risking the rope for seventeen pounds in good gold.”
    “Except the gold is still here,” said Mr Sempill.
    “But we cannot know how much more he took on his escape.”
    “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,” said Mr Sempill. Returning to the lobby, he handed me the purse. “Seventeen gold sovereigns,” he said. “Make sure they are recorded and numbered.”
    “They also are evidentiary,” Mr Mackintosh said. “I suggest you begin again with a thorough and complete search of the premises as the next stage of your investigation.”
    But Mr Sempill said that would have to wait since, to him at any rate, the next step in the investigation was clear and that was to take the body of poor Miss Milne for proper examination in Dundee.
    We got it on our shoulders, Suttie, Broon, Coullie and I, and we made our way down the short path to the gate, the light from the lanterns throwing up wild shadows everywhere, the wind sighing in the branches just as it had been the night before, the last leaves of autumn flying past our faces. We must have made a mournful sight. But then things became a little awkward, for the carriage gate was still locked and we had not yet found a key and the gate for foot passengers was not so broad as to admit two men walking side by side with a coffin between them, so we were obliged to ship her between us, as if she had been no more than an awkward parcel, and into the back of Coullie’s cart, where the coffin could be decently covered with a tarpaulin.
    Constable Suttie and I went in the cart to Dundee, he in the back with the coffin, sitting with his knees drawn up and his hands drawn in, careful not to touch it with even the toe of his boot though it had rested on his shoulder only a moment before, and I sat on the bench at the front alongside Coullie.
    The Fiscal and the other gentlemen went ahead together in a conveyance of their own and we followed, going by Strathern Road, which is mostly flat, so as not to trouble the horse with going over the brae at the Harecraigs. All around us were the ordinary signs of a Sabbath evening, lights in houses, the sound of a piano from a distant parlour, folk going about on their way to evening observances or to visit friends. Everything was peaceable and respectable, all as it should be, and behind us, under that sheet of sailcloth, we carried the body of Jean Milne with its head cracked open and its jaws all agape.
    Coullie’s cart rolled quietly over the hammered roads of Broughty Ferry, but before long we were in Dundee, with its black mill chimneys, its public houses on every corner – roaring even on the Sabbath – and its stinking courts and vennels and tenements packed to the gunnels, rattling and bumping over the granite cobbles all way through the town to Bell Street. You know it well enough, I’m sure, with the fine court building in the square at the west end and, next to that, the jail and the police offices and, a little further along, the new burial ground. That was where Coullie stopped the cart.
    “We’ll be needing the key.” It was the first thing he’d said to me all the journey.
    I suppose, as the senior man, I could have sent Suttie, but on the other hand, as the senior man, it was fitting and appropriate that I should go to the Dundee Police offices and sign for the key, and when the choice was walk a few yards or sit under the flaring gas lamps with that tragic cargo, I was not sorry to leave my place in that cart.
    When I returned with the key, the gentlemen were