Read The Secret Life and Curious Death of Miss Jean Milne for Free Online Page A

to the inquiry is asked to communicate same to Chief Constable Sempill of Broughty Ferry Burgh Police at the police office in Brook Street.”
    Scrymgeour looked up from his notebook and said: “It’s a damned shame. I saw her just the other day.”
    “You saw her? When did you see her? Think carefully, now, this could be vital.”
    “It’s simple enough. It was Trafalgar Day, the 21st of October. Easy enough to remember. It was the day before my birthday. I saw her at the top of Reform Street. She was crossing over Meadowside as if she was going to the Courier office, but I don’t know whether she went there or not.”
    “Are you sure it was her? How do you know her?”
    “Well, I don’t know her at all really. She’s just one of those folk you see about the place, what you might call an eccentric. They increase the gaiety of the nation. Harmless enough. She was wearing a light dust-cloth cloak and a hat with some feathers in it. I was staying in St Andrews, and that date was the day before my birthday. That’s what fixed the date in my mind, since I came to Dundee to get a few things for a celebration.”
    “A few things?”
    “Aye, a few things. For a celebration. And I said to my wife: ‘That’s Miss Milne that lives all by herself in that big house in the Ferry. Would you take a look at her?’ and she did and we had a wee laugh.”
    That offended me. “You laughed at her? And what was so amusing?”
    “She was just . . . She stood out, you know what I mean. She always, you know, she dressed far too young. And not for the season. Not for the season at all. Far too light-coloured. And girlish. Like a young lassie.”
    The Chief Constable said: “You’ll be required to swear a statement.”
    “Can we take a picture?”
    “As you well know, if you do it from the street I am powerless to prevent it.”
    “Thank you, Chief Constable.” He sounded a bit more humble now. “And will there be any further statement?”
    Mr Sempill said: “You’ll be kept informed.” He nodded at Suttie as if to tell him to shut the gate and keep it shut, and that was just exactly what he did.

7
    IT IS THE case – and I know this to be true because I have made enquiry at the public library – that the seasonal variations of every passing sunset will lengthen or shorten the day by three minutes. Three minutes. It seems so little, but those little amounts of minutes mount up. Half an hour every ten days. An hour every three weeks. In the summer the sky is barely darkened in the far north-west before it begins to glim again in the east, and in the winter it almost seems as if it’s never light. I feel that sorely and I am conscious of those three minutes, every day that passes after June. Ere long it is the equinox and then I give myself up to darkness.
    It was dark by five o’clock that Sunday afternoon and I was glad of that. When we carried her out of the house there was a decent blanket of darkness to cover our work.
    The joiner Coullie came back with his cart and a coffin – not a proper coffin, you understand, as might have been seen in public at a funeral, not the sort of thing befitting the dignity of a lady like Jean Milne but what they call a “shell”.
    And it was a grim business lifting her into it I may tell you. Mr Procurator Fiscal was there to see it done, as was proper since he would be directing the inquiry and the prosecution, and Dr Templeman, the police surgeon of Dundee, who had come at the invitation of our own Dr Sturrock, was present to give his opinion on anything that might require an opinion, but he had no part in the work of it. That was down to the joiner Coullie, who made a profession of putting the dead in boxes, but it was more than one man could manage. Suttie and Broon tossed a coin for it out on the front step and Suttie must have lost since it was Suttie who came in to do the lifting. Miss Milne’s head lay pointing to the front door, but Suttie was too wise for that and he made