The Secret Life and Curious Death of Miss Jean Milne (10 page)

THERE IS NO secret to the success of the Bonnington Hotel. Discretion, that’s all. Nothing flashy. Nothing grand. Nothing pretentious. The Bonnington is not the Ritz. The Bonnington is not the Savoy. At the Bonnington Hotel, they invariably offer a poached egg for breakfast, never
une oeuf poché
.

At the heart of fashionable Bloomsbury, a stone’s throw from the British Museum, the Bonnington is the last word in modernity: an elegant, fashionable hotel offering every facility expected by ladies and gentlemen of quality but all of it set within the facade of a much older building. The Bonnington offers everything to be expected in these first years of a new Georgian era, when flying machines now dart almost daily across the Channel and communications encircle the globe, quite literally, with lightning speed. The Bonnington is a jewel of modern design and convenience, but all within the setting of the elegance of a bygone age. Quality and service are the watchwords but with a proper restraint. Nothing Frenchified or foreign. Modesty. Discretion.

But there is nothing discreet about a policeman. Still less about two policemen, one of them all frogged and belted and braided, with his little pillbox kepi and his patent shoes, and the other a bull of a man in a dark-blue coat with silver buttons, a chain across his chest for his whistle and a tread that shook the china in the breakfast room.

The one with the frogging down his tunic walked up to the front counter and rang the brass bell, which was totally needless since Miss Minnie Gibbons was in her usual place at the desk dealing with a guest. The guest gave the police officer a look. Miss Minnie Gibbons felt she could spare him no more than an arched eyebrow. She moved the brass bell to one side. The police officer was suitably abashed.

When the guest had been satisfactorily dealt with, Miss Minnie Gibbons turned her gaze on the police officer with the frogging and the braid. “Good morning,” she said. “How may I help you?”

He cleared his throat. “Good morning. I am Chief Constable Sempill of Broughty Ferry Burgh Police. Here to see Mr Clarence Wray. He is expecting us.”

“Of course. Have you a card?”

He took one from his pocket and handed it over. Miss Minnie Gibbons considered it briefly, moved the brass bell back to the middle of the counter and gave it a sharp ‘ping ping’. “The dreadful business with Miss Milne, of course. Dreadful. Simply dreadful. She was quite a favourite at the Bonnington.”

A boy came running up in answer to the bell and Miss Minnie Gibbons said: “Jack, show these gentlemen into the large parlour and take this card,” she handed it to him by the corner, “to Mr Wray in 209.”

The boy, who was also wearing a kepi, though his was red and he kept it on his head at all times, said: “Yes, Miss Gibbons,” and “This way, please, gentlemen,” and he set off at a quick-smart pace down a brown corridor with a thick blue carpet.

By the time the two policemen had caught up, the boy was standing, holding open the door of the large parlour. “If you’d care to wait here a moment, sirs, I’ll just run up and enquire after our Mr 209.”

The two policemen, Chief Constable Sempill and the large sergeant whom Scotland Yard had assigned as a courtesy to be his guide and assistant, went into the room and waited. It was the hour when ladies and gentlemen went to attend to their letters, so, though the writing room was no doubt very busy, the large parlour was deserted.

There were two chairs together in a window looking down onto Southampton Row. It seemed to Mr Sempill that there were more people in that one street than in the whole of Broughty Ferry.

“Don’t sit down,” he told the sergeant. “Leave that place for Wray. Bring another chair when he comes and sit close enough to make a note and corroborate his statement.”

The sergeant said: “Sir.”

“Are you Scottish?”

“Sir.”

“I hadn’t realised. Not until you spoke. Just then.”

“Sir.”

Mr Sempill moved the net curtain aside with the tip of a finger and looked out into the street again.

“That way to the British Museum, is it?”

“The other way, sir.”

“The other way. I must pay a visit before I leave.”

“Sir.”

They seemed to have exhausted their conversation. The clock ticked. The coals settled in the hearth. And then the door handle gave a sharp click and a man came in.

He was pale and nervous-looking, thin with dark circles under his eyes, and Mr Sempill was pained to notice that he had no moustache. Still, he thought, that would be the work of a moment. On the other hand, Clarence Herberto Wray was quite obviously not a man in his thirties.

He held out his hand. “Mr Sempill. How do you do?”

Mr Sempill said: “How do you do?” and indicated the second chair in the window. “This is Sergeant . . . my sergeant. He will assist us in taking notes.”

“Of course.” They nodded at each other, in a not-unfriendly way.

Mr Sempill was the sort of man who believed in the pleasantries, but there seemed nothing to say. “I trust you are well,” he said.

Mr Wray gave a thin smile.

“Yes, well, we know why we are here. I should like to hear, from your own lips, how it was you came to know Miss Jean Milne.”

“She was a guest at this hotel. We were guests here together. There’s no secret. But so were many people. Why are you questioning me about this?”

Mr Sempill reached into his frogged and braided uniform jacket and came out with a lilac-coloured envelope. “You corresponded with Miss Milne.”

“I don’t think that’s any of your business.”

“In the circumstances.”

“The circumstances? The circumstances hardly alter the case for a gentleman.”

Mr Sempill took that hard. “Is this the letter of a gentleman? Written on lilac paper? As you very well know, this is not your only correspondence with Miss Milne. Indeed, you even stoop to poetry – of a sort. Am I right in thinking you are a foreign gentleman?”

“I was educated in America, yes.”

“And your mother?”

“She was a lady of Uruguay.” He made it sound like a confession.

“Make a note of that,” Mr Sempill told the sergeant. “Now, if you don’t mind, please set out – exactly – how you knew Miss Milne.”

He gave a little braying laugh then, as if it was all silliness and nothing could have mattered less. “The little Scotch canary.” And he tittered again. “That’s what we used to call her. She was always darting about the place like a little bird – packing up the fires and arranging the furniture. I thought that she was a shareholder in the hotel. It’s run by a Scotch syndicate, you know. She was just like a little bird.”

“And you took her under your wing,” said Mr Sempill.

“My wing is broken, Chief Constable. I came back to England for the sake of my health. I suffered a complete nervous breakdown when I was in Africa.”

“Mental troubles. I see. Note that also, Sergeant.”

“I am quite well now. I was never out of my wits. I came back here for the rest. Then, back in January I came upon poor Jean Milne weeping quietly to herself in the writing room. Well, naturally I tried to comfort her.”

“Naturally. The action of a gentleman. Do you know why she was weeping?”

“She had had a letter from the minister of her church back home offering her some advice and she was deeply touched. She said: ‘I had not known there was anyone in the world who had so much concern for me.’ ”

“And what was the substance of this advice?”

“Spiritualism. It’s all the fashion these days – table tapping and so on. He was advising her to have nothing to do with it. Apparently she had been trying to reach her dear departed brother ‘beyond the veil’ and she had informed her minister, who told her to have nothing to do with it.”

“And it was then that you began your flirtation.”

“I resent that! There was no flirtation. I am a married man. I must have bored her witless talking of my wife. Miss Milne interested me very much. She appeared to be a real good character, innocent and did a lot of philanthropic work. Her conversation was always of the highest possible order, and perfectly clean. We all liked her and thought she was a good little woman – well read, high-minded and in every respect a little lady. One of the happy faculties I have is in making friends; I get their confidence and I hold it. This is one of my most fortunate possessions.”

Mr Sempill gave him a look as he tucked the lilac envelope back into his jacket, but he said nothing. He waited for the thin man to speak again.

“She went to start loading the fire again and so I offered to put some coals on for her. She allowed me to do so, thanked me, and asked what I was reading. I told her I was reading Omar Khayyám in Edward Fitzgerald’s translation, and that lead up to other conversation. I was convalescent at the time . . . as I said. My nerves. As I said.”

“And the acquaintance continued.”

“Well, I suppose it did. I was almost always here in the evening and had a good many conversations with her. I recall, one evening, attending a lecture held in the hotel by a phrenological society. I think Miss Milne knew the speaker and she was good enough to invite me. After the meeting she began a discussion on phrenology, but as I had never read up on the subject I could not discuss the matter with her. We rubbed along together here for a month or so, and then in the last week of February I went to Cornwall on business. From there I travelled back to work in northern Nigeria. Six months.”

“So you were back in England in October.”

“A few days only. I stayed here until the 16th, then I went to Sardinia on business, and I have only just returned.”

“These things can all be checked, you know,” Mr Sempill said.

The thin man smiled again. “You mean the dates don’t fit with the murder. I’m sorry to disappoint you, Chief Constable. Feel free to check to your heart’s content.”

Mr Sempill was disappointed. There was no disguising it. A half-breed Latin, brought up in America, a man with self-confessed mental problems – Clarence Wray fitted the description exactly. A maniac or a foreigner, that was what Trench had said, and here was a man who was both. But, no, the dates would not fit. A man could not be running a mine in Sardinia and, at the same time, beating a woman’s brains out in Broughty Ferry.

He pressed on. “Did Miss Milne ever discuss her financial affairs with you?”

“She told me she had some shares in Broken Hill – those are silver and lead mines in New South Wales, the greatest in the world. She told me that she had paid £5 for £1 shares. That’s all I know. But I did try to advise her.

“While we were here at the Bonnington, some adventurer came from Canada and tried to get her to invest some money in his mines. In British Columbia, I believe. I advised her to have nothing to do with it. I told her to beware and that I did not think much of any man who would induce a woman to invest money in a mining operation that she could not see.”

“Did she mention a name?”

“I don’t think so. If she did, I can’t recall it. I did not speak to the man at all; in fact, I avoided him. I did not like the look of him one little bit and any time he was in conversation with Miss Milne, showing her the prospectus of his mines and the plans he had or something like that, then I went away to the little parlour to avoid an argument. My nerves, you see.”

“I see. And can you describe this man?”

“I’d say young. Younger than I am, under forty, I should say. Perhaps forty. Very well dressed. Excellent clothes. The look of a gentleman. Round face. Well fed and a slight, fair moustache.”

Superintendent Neaves,

Kent Count Constabulary,

Tonbridge,

We have a man in custody here on false pretences who will be before the Court tomorrow at 11-30 a.m.

He gives the name of Charles Warner, 210 Wi1ton Avenue, Toronto, Canada. His description is: Age 38, 5 feet 9 inches, hair dark brown, turning slightly grey, eyes grey, complexion pale or sallow, round feature clean shaven, tattooed Masonic and Oddfellows signs left forearm, gold stopping front teeth; dressed grey lounge suit, dark overcoat, cap, gentlemanly appearance. This man is a mystery to us, and we thought perhaps he might be connected with the Dundee murder. Will you interview him?

Chief Constable J. Howard Sempill

Broughty Ferry Burgh Police

C/o Scotland Yard

IT WAS IMPORTANT to remember, thought Miss Ann Myfanwy Jones, that Father was very disappointed too. Miss Ann Myfanwy tried to remember that every time she took her book and sat on one of the iron benches of the promenade and looked east across the great river estuary to Liverpool, pretending that she was looking west to Wales.

If she had been at the other side of the peninsula, she might have looked to Wales and seen its silent, far mountains. Instead, she had to look at Liverpool, with its docks and all the ships going back and forth in the river, where it was not silent, not green, not Wales. That was disappointing.

Miss Ann Myfanwy comforted herself with the thought that the river rushing by her feet was mingled with the sea, the same sea that washed the edge of Wales where the mountains came down to bathe their feet. But she could not see Wales. It was just a little way behind her, beyond the pleasant streets of New Brighton, but, no, she could not see Wales and that was disappointing.

Still, Miss Ann Myfanwy made the daily effort not to blame Father. As much as she was disappointed, Father was disappointed too. Father was not to be blamed. Disappointment was what came to those who set too much store by things. She realised that. She understood it and it would not do to be disappointed. There were many others far worse off than themselves, many others who would gladly change places and think themselves blessed.

Nobody could be disappointed to live in a house like No. 102 Magazine Lane, New Brighton.

No. 102 Magazine Lane was a very fine house indeed, a tall red-brick house or, at any rate, half of a tall red-brick house – what the estate agent had described as “a most prestigious, semi-detached villa” – but it was, really, only half a house and that was a little disappointing. Just a little.

Standing together, Nos. 100 and 102 had the look of a fairy-tale tower, soaring up on either side to half-timbered penthouses that overhung the entrances. They were like something from a child’s picture book, a suburban version of the Castle of Chillon, which was appropriate, because while Miss Ann Myfanwy had a fervent wish to be the Lady of Shallot, when she was inside No. 102 Magazine Lane she did feel rather more like the Prisoner of Chillon. Still, there was a kind of romance about the place, as if Magazine Lane would be forever incomplete without an armoured knight on a rearing black stallion, pawing at the pavement by the front gate and striking sparks with its hooves. From up there, Miss Ann Myfanwy could let down her hair and allow the knight to climb up to her on a long, silken rope or she might launch a hail of darts or a cascade of boiling oil on the heads of any who dared assault No. 102 Magazine Lane. But nobody ever did and, though she often looked from her window as she combed her hair in the evening, the knight never came.

Still, nobody could be disappointed by a house like No. 102 Magazine Lane. It was just across the street from the lovely public park – just across the street – and Father had been very generous and given her the topmost room so she could look out across the trees and down to the river. It was lovely. Anybody would have to agree that it was lovely, although her tower included the bathroom and the bathroom was back to back with the bathroom of No. 100 and the walls were, well, perhaps a little thin. All the same, the park was lovely. It was absolutely lovely. But it was public and it was across the street. It was not the park of No. 102 Magazine Lane as the park of Bodyngharad was the park of Bodyngharad House. It did not roll right up to the door, as did the parks of Bodyngharad. There was nothing but wild country at the door of Bodyngharad, but there was a street right outside the gate of No. 102 Magazine Row, which was disappointing.

The important thing, as Miss Ann Myfanwy always said, was to remember that Father had been greatly disappointed. Greatly disappointed in many ways. He had, after all, worked so hard in the business all his life. He had achieved so much. He had provided so liberally for the family, succeeded so brilliantly and then, by careful husbandry, at the close of his life, he had made sufficient provision to allow them to retire to the country – to Wales. How happy they had all been to turn their backs on Liverpool and to return to Wales and the beautiful estates of Bodyngharad. It was a new beginning, which was important for an unmarried woman of thirty-two.

“This is a new beginning,” said Miss Ann Myfanwy Jones, who was still a young woman in Bodyngharad and by no means regarded as an old maid or on the shelf. Father bought her a horse called Boxer and she wore a top hat set over at an angle with a spotted veil over her face for the sake of the mud and she had a gold pin in her scarf, with a pearl in the top of it, and she carried a crop with a horn handle and she caught the eye of Mr Pryce the corn merchant, who was a widower and almost fifty – but what of that?

Mr Pryce the corn merchant could be very tender, though he was a widower and almost fifty. He said: “Miss Ann Myfanwy, you are most lovely,” and they came to an understanding as they sat together on the terrace one evening, under a lead urn spilling with nasturtiums. No definite word was said. But they had an understanding.

That was three days before Father’s awful disappointment, when the shutters went up at Bodyngharad and Father went back to work in the rubber business and they all moved to No. 102 Magazine Lane to begin again. Not all of them, of course. Poor brother Arthur had no choice but to strike out alone for America and make his way in the Burroughs Advertising Company of Detroit, Michigan. Miss Ann Myfanwy missed him horribly, but, in truth, she missed Boxer rather more, and Arthur would always be her brother but Boxer was somebody else’s horse.

All of that was seven years ago and, the last she heard, Mr Pryce the corn merchant had married the headmistress of Bodyngharad school and had two ginger-headed daughters although he must be not far short of sixty now, which was rather ridiculous, so when she looked back on what might have been, she was not disappointed in the least.

Miss Ann Myfanwy Jones was always reassuring people that she wasn’t disappointed. Many a time she had sat down with a book on an iron bench on the promenade, and before long a nice lady would sit down beside her and they would strike up a conversation, which, it seemed almost invariably, would turn to the story of these past seven years, although Miss Ann Myfanwy disliked talking of herself and her troubles. Boxer would always feature in these conversations and sometimes Arthur too, although rather less so, and she always made a point of explaining that she was not at all disappointed at the way things had turned out.

Miss Ann Myfanwy never engaged gentlemen in conversation. She made a point of that too, but one morning in September a strange thing happened.

She had gone out after breakfast as usual, not through the park but towards the red sandstone turrets of the old artillery magazine and then down the lane to the water’s edge. It was a crisp, bright morning and summer’s last throw. She disliked the coming of autumn. It was a reminder of the passage of time. Seven years since she lost Boxer. Soon it would be eight.

She had her book in her coat pocket and she read for a while as usual, on her usual bench at the usual place on the esplanade when a man went past, coming from the direction of the Egremont Promenade. He stopped at the next bench, turned and looked at her, and she looked back at him – for only a moment and then looked back at her book. When she looked up again, the man was gone.

And then, after a while, because the clouds began to threaten, she put her book away and buttoned her coat and took a stroll up to Victoria Street, just to look in the shop windows, and there was the man again – that same man who had stopped to look at her on the promenade – and he was looking at her again. He was quite a handsome devil, very well dressed, with dark hair showing from under his cap and a pleasing tinge of silver at the temples.

He was coming towards her, looking her full in the face, and Miss Ann Myfanwy – it must be admitted – was the tiniest bit alarmed. What if he were a maniac or a garrotter? One heard such stories, but, no, the man stopped and raised his hat in the most courteous manner and said: “Pardon me for addressing you when we have not been introduced, but are you not Miss Nancy Jones?”

Only those of Miss Ann Myfanwy’s most intimate circle ever addressed her as ‘Nancy’. Mr Pryce the corn merchant had never dared, despite their understanding, and she could not think of the last time anybody had called her by that name. She forgot completely that her father had called to her from the front door only that morning to warn her that it looked like rain. Miss Ann Myfanwy was astonished to hear a stranger enquire after her as “Nancy”, but he did have a very beautiful coat and the silver in his hair showed him to be a mature and trustworthy individual. “What a lovely coat,” thought Miss Ann Myfanwy. “I do like your hair.” But she said: “I’m sorry, sir, you have the advantage of me.”

The stranger was politely apologetic: “Forgive me. You have a brother, Arthur, in America in the advertising line in Detroit, I believe. You are Miss Nancy Jones, are you not? I’m not mistaken, surely.”

“You know my brother?”

“I was sure I was right! I knew it. Permit me to introduce myself. My name is Charles Walker, of Detroit, Michigan.”

Miss Ann Myfanwy slipped off her glove – naturally she was never without gloves – and offered her hand. “How do you do, Mr Walker?”

He took hold of her fingers gently and said: “How do you do,” with a not unpleasant American twang.

“But how do you come to recognise me?” she said.

“Why, Miss Jones, your brother keeps your picture in a silver frame on the piano in his home – the one with . . .” He let his hand tumble down in an uncertain, cascading motion from his face to his chest.

“Oh the picture with the fur stole! That silly thing.”

“I don’t think it’s silly at all. I think it rather beautiful. I know Arthur is very fond of it and you may judge how closely I have made a study of it, Miss Jones, if I am able to recognise you by sight and ‘in the flesh’ as it were, weeks later and thousands of miles away. But, if I might say something . . .” He waited.

“Please, yes, go on.”

“That portrait does not do you justice, Miss Jones.”

She noticed he was still holding her hand and, a little reluctantly, she took it back.

“You know Arthur?”

“Why, of course, Miss Jones. We run across each other frequently. In fact, I saw him only a few weeks ago, just before I left the States.”

“Are you in the advertising business too?”

“No.” He gave a kind of throaty chuckle and she noticed, for the first time, he had three gold teeth at the front of his mouth. “No, I’m a horse trader. I couldn’t do Arthur’s job, stuck behind a desk in the city all day. I need to be out in the open air in all weathers, with my horses and . . .”

She was staring at him.

“Oh. You noticed my teeth.”

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to stare.”

“I understand. It’s peculiar, I know. The glue in the seat of my pants failed me one fine day, Miss Jones, and I came out of the saddle and broke my fall with my face.”

“Oh, you poor man. Poor, poor man.” She put a hand on his arm.

“It’s nothing to grieve over, Miss Jones. I came away with no real hurt and an extra-shiny smile, that’s all. You’ve got to expect something like that when you’re in my line, working with horses every day . . .” Horses. Horses every day. The thought of horses beguiled her. “. . . although I like to pretend it has something to do with my lack of success with the fair sex.”

“Oh, come now, Mr Walker. I find that hard to believe.”

“Well, believe it or not, Miss Jones, it’s true.”

“You’re not married?”

“No. I regret to say I’m not.”

He wasn’t married.

“It would mean a great deal to me to have someone to care for, Miss Jones, and it would mean a great deal to have someone who could care for me. I regard the married state as one of the most noble institutions of mankind and, speaking as a religious man . . .” Oh, a religious man. He was religious and he traded in horses and he was unmarried. “. . . one of Heaven’s most gentle blessings and an intimation of the bliss to come. But perhaps it is not meant for all of us.” He gave another of his little chuckles. “Anyway, I don’t think it’s very likely I could find a little lady who would put up with my feeling for horses, Miss Jones. No, I don’t think that’s likely at all.”

“Mr Walker, you’d be astonished. I for one have a perfect passion for horses.”

“No! You do? Well, don’t that beat all?”

“Arthur must have told you . . .”

“Yes, of course. You know, come to think of it, he did!”

“. . . about my dear old chum Boxer.”

“Boxer, yes of course. How could I have forgotten?”

“Well, as you know, we had to say ‘farewell’, we two, Boxer and I.”

“Yes, of course, after, after . . . You need say no more, Miss Jones.”

“I can see you are too delicate to mention Father’s business disappointment, Mr Walker, but I’m sure Arthur has spared you nothing of his opinions on the matter.”

“I wouldn’t go so far as that.”

“You are being very kind, but we both know that Arthur took it hard. I am only a woman. I was protected from the worst of it, but poor Arthur had to fly the nest and make his way in the world.”

“Miss Jones, I know very well that you suffered too.” And then he said just one word, softly and sadly. “Boxer.”

“Yes. Poor, dear Boxer.” She looked down at the pavement and noticed the first splash of a raindrop. “The weather is taking a turn for the worse, Mr Walker.”

“Indeed, Miss Jones. Indeed, it is. I wonder. I hardly dare to ask, but would you do me the great honour of joining me at the Royal Ferry Hotel? I believe it is a respectable establishment and suitable for ladies. I would be delighted if we might continue our conversation over a cup of tea.”

“Mr Walker, I should be delighted too.” So he offered her his arm and she took it and they walked off together.