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

recovered and recorded.”
    And then he turned to me. “Sergeant Fraser,” he said, “I’ll have to away and inform Mr Mackintosh the Fiscal.”
    I told him about the telephone at the Swans’.
    “No. This is police business. I’m relying on you to take charge here. Search the place – get the constables to help you if you need them. Be thorough but gentle. Thorough. I want the floors swept and the sweepings kept. Record everything. Modern methods, thoroughness, that’s what this needs. I’m relying on you.”
    So I flung my chest out and saluted and got on with it.
    And this is what I found. There was part of a gold earring lying on the floor within twelve inches of her feet and a small brooch lying within arm’s length of the body to the south near the door, a pair of spectacles lying on the floor close beside her back and another gold brooch lying on her clothing at her back.
    Going round that room, observing, noting, measuring – none too exactly, as I knew Mr Roddan would perform that task far more efficiently – I began to see, as if for the first time. The little bits of wreckage alone meant nothing, but together their whole story was laid out there for anybody who wanted to read it.
    There was an upper set of false teeth lying on the right-hand corner of the doormat at the entrance to the drawing room. What a blow must have done that. And there was the lower set flung right across to the other side of the hall lying on the third step of the stair. Two blows in quick succession, back and fore, east and west, her face spinning, her neck snapping round – just to look at it and I could see it happening again as if before my eyes.
    There was a shaped pad of sponge, wrapped in silk threads, the kind of thing ladies use to pile their hair around to give a false and deceitful impression that their own is rather thicker and richer than in reality, lying at her back and partly covered by her clothing. Close by that was a lorgnette with its chain attached, the proof of her failing eyesight. A glass vase lay on the floor, unbroken, not a chip or a crack, where it had fallen from the hall table and close to the front door.
    The gasolier that hung from the ceiling just where the vestibule enters the hall was missing one of its glass globes. How could that have happened? A wild swinging blow that smashed it to bits? Was it dislodged somehow in the struggle and shattered in the fall? In any event, it lay there, broken but carefully set aside, on a brass plate lying in the middle of the doorway to Miss Milne’s drawing room.
    Nearby there was a tangle of cut bay twigs, evidently intended for decoration – there was another bunch artistically arranged on another brass plate on the hall table, and on top of the twigs there was a lady’s hat. It was full of blood. The hatpin was in it and it was bent and curved to the shape of her head. The hat trimming was torn off. You could see it lying under her body and trailing out behind her. It was practically covered in blood.
    There was blood all over the carpet, four separate pools of it, one where the blood had poured from her head and face, and we found others when we got her body lifted and all round the hall there were the signs of ransack; two travelling cases, opened, one a Saratoga trunk – one of those things that looks like the pirate’s treasure chest in adventure stories – and the other a tin cabin trunk hinged in two parts with one side for hanging garments and the other fitted with drawers. There were two handbags, a wine glass – unbroken – lay on the floor along with a cardboard box with bits of lace spilling out from it, and a broken poker. A broken poker with blood and hair sticking to it, the knob glinting out from those twigs on the floor, and the iron rod set aside on a little round table at the bottom of the stair. There was blood all over it, but, truth be told, a lot more of it on the brass knob. He held it the wrong way up and he hit her with the