The Secret Life and Curious Death of Miss Jean Milne (19 page)

MR TRENCH KNEW almost nothing about lawyers, but he understood policemen very well. When he took his breakfast in the station canteen – Mr Sempill had long ago left for the dining room of the Queen’s Hotel – he found a chair next to two of the local plain-clothes men and, between mouthfuls of ham and eggs, asked for their advice.

“I’m looking for an honest lawyer,” he said – and they all laughed.

“Would you settle for a virgin hoor?”

Mr Trench said: “Well, as honest as you can think of.”

They looked at each other and thought for a minute. One said to the other: “Blackadder?”

“Not as bad as some.”

They agreed. “Try Blackadder. He’s got a good name and he’s not one of those that tries to make us look like fools in the witness box – you know the way some of them are.”

“Oh, I know,” said Mr Trench. “I know. Where will I find him?”

“He’ll be next door, at the Sheriff Court early on. More than likely he’ll be queuing up waiting for the doors to open.”

But when Mr Trench finished his breakfast and walked round the corner to the court, the pavement ringing under his heavy tread, the doors were already flung open. He was not challenged when he walked in, nobody asked what he wanted, what he was doing there, if he knew where he was going, what his business was, nobody even asked: “Can I help you, sir?” People looked at John Trench and they knew he was a policeman.

The courts were not yet in session. The corridors alongside, where solicitors would linger between cases bantering with their colleagues and with policemen waiting to give their statements, were empty, so Mr Trench followed a sign that pointed towards the library, knocked as gently as he could and went in.

As he entered, a man in a tweed suit looked up from the big desk in the middle of the room. He had the spectacles of a man who has spent too long looking at books and the physique to match, but he smiled when Trench came in and said: “Hello,” kindly.

“Are you Mr Blackadder?”

The man took off his spectacles and laid them on the open book in front of him. “Yes, Mr Trench.”

“Have we met?”

“No, but I read the papers. What can I do for you?”

Trench pulled out a chair and sat down. “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing for me. But you have been recommended to me as an honest man.”

“High praise indeed. But if you have no need of an honest man, why have you sought me out?”

“If you read the papers, then you know why I’m here.”

“Of course. The Elmgrove business.”

“We’ve just brought a man from London – well, from Kent actually – a suspect in the case. He’s going into an identity parade shortly and then he appears before the Sheriff accused of murder. He needs a lawyer.”

Mr Blackadder picked up his spectacles, put them back on his nose and opened his notebook. “You’d better tell me everything.”

“Don’t you want to talk about money?”

He put down his pencil. “Mr Trench, you’ve gone to a great deal of trouble to arrest this man. You’ve hunted him from one end of the country to the other and dragged him back here in chains to hang him and yet you,” he jabbed a skinny finger into Trench’s chest, “you, sir, tell me he needs a lawyer. That tells me two things: first, you think he’s innocent and second, he really needs a lawyer. Some things are more important than money, Mr Trench.”

A quarter of an hour later, Mr Blackadder was sitting in Warner’s cell, and at three o’clock that afternoon he was standing in the courtyard of Dundee town jail overseeing the identity parade.

Mr Robertson, the head warder, had no difficulty in assembling the necessary number of men – in fact he excelled himself. When Mr Blackadder came through the gate and into the courtyard, there were fourteen men already lined up and waiting. To the trained eye, a couple of them were quite obviously policemen, with the look of policemen, but for the most part they were just ordinary-looking men, none of them remarkably short or stout, none extravagantly tall.

“Where should I stand?” Warner said.

“It doesn’t matter. They will let you pick your own spot and you can change it between witnesses, as often as you like, or remain where you are. It’s your right and I am here to ensure your rights.”

“But I was wondering if you might not have some advice. You know, about a good place to stand.”

“One is as good as another,” said Mr Blackadder, “if you are innocent.” He waited until Warner had taken his place in the line, third from the left, and then he went back into the building to see the first of the witnesses.

There were fifteen in all: respectable matrons from Broughty Ferry, neighbours of Miss Milne and their maids, workmen who had seen a man on a tram, businessmen who had had an unexpected and suspicious caller, the staff of Broughty Ferry Post Office, taxi drivers, a barber, waitresses, men and women who rode the tramcars along Strathern Road and, of course, the three little boys who had been “playing at Boy Scouts” one evening in the leafy shadows around Elmgrove. They were all gathered in the warders’ mess hall waiting their turn, including the Boy Scouts, who had come with their mothers, hair brushed, faces rubbed – “Spit on this hankie” – necks washed. Mrs Potter had even dressed her laddie in his Sunday kilt, so he could be nicely turned out for meeting a murderer in the flesh.

Mr Blackadder followed the first of them out into the yard: James Delaney, the telegraph clerk from the Post Office who saw the strange tramp in the tile hat come in and ask for directions. Delaney went up and down the row.

He called out: “I think I might know him if I saw him in profile.”

“All right, you men,” Mr Robertson said, “face to your left.”

The men shuffled round, complaining.

Delaney went to have another look. He stopped twice, once in the middle of the line and once at the right-hand side, but he stepped past Warner with never a second glance.

“Do you see the man?” said Mr Robertson, the warder.

“No. I do not.”

“Very well, you can go. Thank you for your trouble.”

“What about,” he dropped his voice to a whisper and leaned in close, “Miss Liddell and Mr Smeaton?”

“Wait on the other side of that door. They will be along presently.”

A policeman opened a door on the other side of the courtyard and Delaney hurried out.

“Do you wish to change your position?” Mr Robertson said.

“No.”

“Mr Blackadder?”

“If he is content, I am content.”

“Then let’s get on before we lose the light.”

Mr Robertson knocked on the door behind him and Annie Liddell came out. She put her toe down on the courtyard as if she had been walking to a firing squad, but she steeled herself to look every man in the parade right in the face and she recognised nobody. Mr Blackadder made some notes in his pocketbook.

And that was how it went on for almost the next half-hour, witness after witness coming into the courtyard, walking up the line, walking down the line, examining faces, leaving without a word. Warner changed his position in the line twice, but, for the most part, he stood his ground. He was winning. It would be foolish to break his luck.

But then Alexander Potter came in.

“Now then, young chap,” Mr Robertson was making an effort at being friendly and reassuring, “you’re no to be feart at these men.”

“I’m not, sir.”

“They cannot touch you.”

“No, sir.”

“And if any dares say ‘peep’ at you, these officers will fall on him like a ton of bricks.”

“Yes, sir.”

Up and down the line he went, head up, shoulders back, kilt swinging just as his mother had told him. He made a show of looking at every face, but it was clear from the moment he came through the door that his mind was made up.

On his second pass down the line, he stopped in front of Warner and put his hand on his shoulder.

“This is the man I saw,” he said.

“You never saw me in your life. When did you see me?”

“I saw you one night in Grove Road,” and then his courage failed him and he ran for the door.

“Not that way, laddie,” said Mr Robertson. “Other side.”

The boy hurried away, skirting round two sides of the courtyard to reach the far door rather than dare the line of men again.

“Will you change your position?” Mr Robertson asked.

“Damned right I will.” Warner walked three places along the line and took up a new spot. He had schooled himself to stand idly and easily. He made his living by making an impression and striking a pose, so he was doing his utmost to take on the role of a man who just happened to be standing in an identity parade. He fought every impulse. A man was coming toward him down the line. Should he look that man in the eye? Should he stare straight ahead no matter what, even when that man was standing looking right at his chin or minutely examining the pores of his nose? It was dignified, sure, but was it normal? Was it what was expected from a man in that position or should he crack a smile, comment on the weather? He wanted to be outstandingly ordinary, so when those women came down the line, he looked straight ahead. He did not lean forward to watch them come, and when they passed he did not lean forward to watch them go. He took enormous trouble to breathe normally.

And he was breathing normally when the next witness came down the line. It was James Urquhart, who saw the man with badly polished shoes on the early morning tramcar. He walked by without a word, he examined every face without a word and he left without a word. Warner relaxed and let his breath come as it pleased.

John Malcolm was the next through the door, a foundry labourer who looked like a foundry labourer, a man who, every morning, walked into the heat and fire and clamour of Hell and sweated there all day, a man who said he saw the killer carrying a doctor’s bag on the same early morning car, two days later. Malcolm did not walk the line. He stepped boldly up to Warner and touched his shoulder. “That’s the man,” he said. “Him.”

“That’s a damned lie. Where did you ever see me before?”

“I saw you on the car coming from Broughty Ferry at half past five a.m. on Wednesday the 16th of October.”

Warner clamped his golden teeth shut at that. There was plenty he could have said and plenty he wanted to say, but none of it fitted with the role he was playing. He stayed silent.

“That’s the last of them,” said Mr Robertson. “Escort the prisoner back to his cell.”

When everyone had dispersed and Mr Robertson took the lawyer Blackadder back into the building, they found Mr Trench was waiting in the corridor with Chief Constable Sempill and Fiscal Mackintosh. “I will submit my report in writing,” said Mr Robertson.

But the Chief Constable could not wait. “Never mind that! Was he identified?”

Mr Robertson pretended to consult his notes. “He was, yes. He was conclusively identified by two of the witnesses, the boy Potter and witness Malcolm.”

Mr Sempill clapped his hands in glee. “That’ll do me!” he said. “Mr Fiscal, are you prepared to issue the indictment?”

“Indeed I am. We have our man. It is, formally, a matter for the Crown Office in Edinburgh, but, all other things being equal, I am confident we can bring this villain to trial.”

Trench said nothing, but there was a look of fear in his eyes as he glanced at Mr Blackadder.

“You’re not serious,” the lawyer said.

“Do you accuse me of being flippant? In a capital trial? A trial for murder? When a man will hang? Mr Blackadder, this is a matter of utmost gravity. Of course I am serious. We have our man. He has been identified.”

“Identified by two witnesses and utterly disregarded by thirteen others.”

“You forget the witnesses who travelled to London – five of them.”

“Four of them. Only four. One of them has withdrawn her testimony. And you ignore the others, the hotel clerkess and the man,” he consulted his notes, “the witness Wray. They also failed to identify.”

“There are at least six people willing to go into the box and swear that man was seen by them acting suspiciously in or around Elmgrove at the time of the killing. That’s what counts. The thirteen who failed to identify in Dundee and the two who failed to identify in London have simply failed to identify, that is all. Their testimony neither condemns nor exonerates. You’re a lawyer, Blackadder, you don’t need me to tell you this.”

“But their testimony contradicts. Young Alexander Potter – alone of the three playmates – identifies Warner as being the man he saw, a man wearing a top hat, a man whose face he says he did not see but which he now recognises. How can he identify a face he did not see? The man Malcolm says my client is the same man he saw on the tram carrying a doctor’s bag and wearing a bowler hat. So where’s your top hat, Mr Fiscal? It’s not in the house and it won’t fit in a doctor’s bag.”

“Pray do not address me in these terms, sir. Save your speeches for the jury. The fact is that your client has been conclusively identified. He was, undoubtedly, in the area at the time of the offence and he refuses to give an account of himself.”

“That is not sufficient, sir!”

“I am content to leave that to a jury of the electors of this burgh. Good day.”

The Fiscal and Mr Sempill pushed their way past and swept down the corridor. Mr Robertson the warder was not far behind, but Trench lingered with the lawyer, heads together, whispering like conspirators for a moment until: “Mr Robertson.” Blackadder went hurrying down the passage. “Mr Robertson, I’m sorry to trouble you. I’d like a word with my client, if you please.”

“Of course. This man will assist you.” He indicated one of the turnkeys, who led the way back to Warner’s cell, opened the door and stood aside to let the lawyer in.

“Close it, please,” said Mr Blackadder, “and stand well back from the door. Confidential matters.”

Inside the cell he leaned close over the scrubbed table and explained the situation to Warner in hushed whispers. “They intend to hang you,” he said.

Warner put his hands flat on the worn wood of the tabletop, pale and grey with the grain all raised and polished by constant rubbing and the slow friction of passing time. He folded his fingers together and peaked them into a steeple. “Can you bring me some more cigarettes?” he said.