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and said they didn’t want any more.
    Next morning, Saturday, at their usual time—between half-past seven and a quarter to eight—the cart drew up almost exactly opposite No. 17, the last house but one in the row. M’Quarrie ran up the front steps with his can and rang the bell.
    After only a small delay he heard the rattle of the chain coming off the inside of the door, and the door opened and old Mr Fleming appeared. He was fully dressed, Donald was to say later—in black coat and trousers: better dressed than M’Quarrie had ever seen him before (the inference would be that he usually wore up his old black suit in the house). He said briefly that ‘he was for nae milk’ and shut the door again.
    M’Quarrie was surprised and so was George Paton. No. 17 never took ‘nae milk’. Paton had been serving other customers but keeping an eye on his boys, and he had observed that the door of No. 17 was opened with very little delay, though only a ‘small bit’, so that he had not seen who was inside it. (A milkman’s ‘very little delay’ would allow for a minute or two—the customer would not commonly be crouching in the hall ready to spring out for milk: most of the maids on his round would have to make their way up from the basement). He asked M’Quarrie who it was that had answered the door and refused milk. M’Quarrie said it was old Mr Fleming.
    They had now finished in Sandyford Place and were ready to move on. George Paton looked at his watch and saw that it was just twenty to eight.
    And at 182 Broomielaw Street, Mrs. Campbell also was taking in the milk. The mistress of the house had not yet come home.
    1 See p. 31

CHAPTER THREE
    At nine o’clock, Mrs M’Lachlan knocked at the door of her ‘house’ in the Broomielaw. Mrs Campbell opened to her and, with only a murmured greeting she passed straight on down the corridor to her own room. She was wearing her brown bonnet and the grey cloak; and under the cloak she carried a very large bundle.
    She reappeared shortly afterwards, carrying a clothes basket, and went downstairs to the cellar where she was in the habit of keeping some of her things—no doubt those displaced when she let her two rooms; and now Mrs Campbell saw that she was wearing a dress she had not been seen wearing before, a dress of reddish merino, trimmed with blue velvet, pleated at the back. She returned to her own room and later called out to Mrs Campbell asking her to kindle a fire in her room for her. She then went out, taking her little boy. It was hardly an hour since she had come home.
    She was back some time between one and two and Mrs Campbell followed her down to her room and asked for the return of the little black basket she had borrowed the night before. She was now wearing a dress of her own which Mrs Campbell recognised; a dress of blue and black shaded poplin.
    Poor Jessie had had a very active morning. She had been first to an ironmonger’s and there asked to see a bonnet-box, with a lock to it. She was shown several and chose one of them, a black japanned box, of a popular model. She was carrying a bundle and she put the bundle into the box and locked the padlock and kept the key. The assistant serving her was a young man named Nish who at the time of the trial was in Antigua; but the proprietor recognised their private mark on the bottom of the box and his son had overheard the whole transaction. She asked Nish to put an Edinburgh address on the box: the witness understood her to say that she would be taking it to Edinburgh or at any rate taking it to the Edinburgh station. Meantime, she said, she wouldleave it and come back for it later: before four o’clock—they closed at four on Saturdays. But she did not, in fact, come back for it that day.
    Mary Adams lodged with a Mrs Rainny. Mrs Adams was the woman who did Mrs M’Lachlan’s washing, who had pawned the looking-glass for