The Secret Life and Curious Death of Miss Jean Milne Read Free Page B

“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