Crayston ran a comb through his curly hair.
“Yes, Bernard, and I suppose you’re thinking he was an amateur, like yourself.”
Joy knotted his “lucky” tie.
“I don’t like the sound of it,” he said. “Tom knows something and won’t tell us. See how he’s been acting since he came in? Now look at his face.”
Whittaker had finished with the players, and was peeling off his clothes, preparing to take a stinging shower. Tom was more worried than he would have admitted. He towelled himself and dressed quietly. He was going over in his mind the play he had seen from the trainers’ glass-enclosed stand. He knew none of the Arsenal players was responsible for Doyce’s falling to the ground so mysteriously.
But that would not prevent a great deal of ugly publicity. He knew that too. There would be rumours and talk, and Arsenal would find themselves in a publicity glare stronger than they had ever received from the usual business of transfers. Tom Whittaker was an Arsenal man seven days a week, and he was worried because he could not see how Arsenal were going to come out of this. It was going to be unpleasant having Yard detectives taking a close interest in his personal routine.
The door opened again, and the commissionaire reappeared. “Inspector Slade, sir,” he said to George Allison, and added unnecessarily, “from Scotland Yard.”
Allison met Slade in the entrance hall. The Yard man had two companions.
“Mr Allison?” he asked, holding out his hand. “This is Dr Meadows and my assistant, Sergeant Clinton.” Allison nodded, shook hands, and looked from the grey-haired medico to the bullet-headed, dour-featured sergeant, and then to Slade, grey-eyed, with a square fighter’s jaw and an athlete’s body. There was something about the detective that told Allison no time would be wasted with the police investigation. Here was a man of action, who could make up his mind quickly and readily come to a decision with himself.
“The body is in the treatment room,” he told Slade.
“In that case,” Slade decided, “Dr Meadows had better make his examination now. I’ll join you later, doctor. If you’ll show the doctor, Mr Allison—”
“Of course. This way, Dr Meadows.”
In a minute the Arsenal manager had returned.
“Perhaps you would like to come up to my office, Inspector,” he invited. “The teams are finishing dressing, and meantime I’ve got the manager of the Trojans in my room.”
Slade nodded. Allison led the way. Francis Kindilett rose from a chair when the newcomers entered. Allison introduced them. Slade, watching the other man closely, saw that he was nervous and very distressed.
“Perhaps you would prefer to tell me, in your own words, just what happened,” he suggested.
Kindilett, who had been dreading the arrival of a Scotland Yard man, flashed him a grateful glance. Haltingly he told the little there was to tell. Slade listened attentively. Clinton, in the background, made some notes in a notebook.
When Kindilett stopped Slade said, “Doyce had a football reputation, then, Mr Kindilett?”
“Yes. He has been very well known in amateur football for some years,” said Kindilett. “Mr Allison here will agree.” Allison nodded. “One or two League clubs have been after him.”
“Common knowledge in soccer circles,” Allison added. “But he’s always been a bit independent, hasn’t he, Francis?”
“Yes, that’s so. Actually he’s a business partner of another Trojan player—Philip Morring, our right back.”
“I see. Did Morring have anything to do with Doyce joining your club?” asked Slade.
“No, nothing,” said Kindilett readily. “As a matter of fact, they are insurance brokers, and both of them played in public-school football.”
“You’ve known Doyce some while?”
Kindilett hesitated. “I knew him some years ago, but I’d lost touch with him until he signed with us some ten days or so ago. Setchley, our outside right, brought him to the notice of the committee.”
“Then this was his first match with the Trojans?”
“Yes.”
There was a tap on the door. Raille entered. Kindilett introduced him.
“This is our trainer, George Raille, Inspector. I think he might be able to tell you more about the package that came for Doyce during the match.”
“Package?”
“Yes,” Raille explained. “It came by District Messenger about quarter-past three. We came back into the dressing-room at half-time—that was about half-past three—and the commissionaire handed it over to me.”
“You gave it to Doyce?”
“Yes.”
“He opened it?”
“Yes, I saw him do that. But I haven’t any idea what was in it. I seem to remember him crossing to his clothes, though.”
“Where are his clothes?”
Raille glanced at Allison, who explained. “They’re in the treatment room, Inspector, with the body. I had them put there so that no one should tamper with them. Then I locked the doors. I unlocked them for Dr Meadows just a few minutes ago.”
“Very good, Mr Allison,” said the Yard man. He turned back to Raille. “Anything else you can tell me about Doyce? Did he get on well with the other players?”
“So far as I can tell,” said the trainer. “Though, come to think of it, he and Morring rather steered clear of each other, if I can put it that way.”
“You can put it any way you like, Raille,” said Slade meaningly, “so long as you’re telling me something and that something’s the truth. So there was some feeling between Doyce and Morring. That what you mean?”
“I don’t think I’d go so far as to say that,” Raille hedged.
Slade glanced across at Kindilett. The man looked more worried now.
“All right,” said the Yard detective, “I’ll see what Morring has to say himself. Meantime I’ll have a look at the body, if Dr Meadows is through.”
The treatment room at the Arsenal Stadium lies between the home team’s dressing-room and the dressing-room reserved for visiting teams. Between it and the visitors’ room is a small office reserved for Whittaker. This office has a door opening out into the main corridor and another door leading into the treatment room, which in turn has a door on the far side leading into the Arsenal dressing-room.
Locking both treatment room doors, therefore, had effectively sealed the room.
Slade walked in, to find the police surgeon rolling down his shirt-sleeves. Clinton followed him in and closed the door.
“Well, doctor?”
Dr Meadows looked up. “Ah, Inspector, a very interesting case—very. The post-mortem should certainly prove poisoning. Organic poisoning of some kind. He perspired very freely, the pupils of his eyes are dilated. Yet there is no mark on the tongue or teeth, and no odour. Looks like a subcutaneous injection. That would mean a skin puncture. And that”—the doctor slipped into his jacket—“is as far as I can go. The poison might be anything from—well”—his mouth pursed—“curare, which would be very unusual, to, say, atropine, which is an alkaloid derivative.”
“And just what does that make the case?” Slade asked bluntly.
The police surgeon fingered his chin thoughtfully.
“It could be suicide, though I doubt it—doubt it very much,” he added. “Why should any man kill himself in these surroundings? The idea’s fantastic. No, far more likely to be murder.”
Slade caught the glance levelled at him by Clinton. They moved towards the table covered by a large towel. Carefully the two men searched the dead footballer’s body for some tell-tale sign that would uphold what Dr Meadows had said.
They were still searching when the doctor picked up his bag and said, “Well, I’ll be getting along, Slade. I’ll let you have the report as soon as I can.”
“Thanks, doctor.”
The door clo
sed after the police surgeon.
Clinton straightened his back. “So we now have a football murder on our hands. This is going to be a sweet job. Scores of players to question, none of ’em remembering a damned thing.”
He made no attempt to conceal his disgust. Slade looked up, smiled grimly. He and Clinton had worked together for years, on a number of cases. Each entertained a very great respect for the other’s capacities.
“What’s troubling you, Clinton?”
The sergeant drew the towel up over the dead man’s legs.
“I’ve got a feeling that whoever pulled this job planned things so as to have no slip-up. What a time to kill a man—in the middle of a match!”
“Not very sporting,” said Slade dryly.
“Sporting!” grunted the sergeant. “I bet this bird never knew what was happening to him, though he looks the kind that might have asked for trouble. Dark hair, bit effeminate in features, well built. But mouth too thin, eyes a bit too close together—”
“Look, Clinton!”
The sergeant’s remarks were cut short by his superior’s exclamation. He moved to Slade’s side. The Inspector was holding the dead man’s left hand, examining the fleshy part of the thumb.
He pointed to a tiny blood clot, which looked, at first glance, like a speck of dried mud.
“What do you make of that?”
Clinton bent close. “Certainly might be a prick such as Dr Meadows referred to,” he agreed. “But how the devil—”
He glanced questioningly at Slade.
“There was that package, which arrived before half-time,” Slade reminded Clinton. “I don’t think we shall have to look much farther than that. Here, I see, is the wrapping paper. Evidently Allison or some one thought to put it in here with the clothes.”
From another table he picked up a sheet of brown wrapping paper. Doyce’s name and the address of the Arsenal Club were printed in inked capitals, clearly and neatly. With the paper was a cardboard box and a small square envelope. The envelope had a tiny hole in the middle of one side, as though something sharp, like a pin, had pierced it. The cardboard box was unmarked.
“This is interesting.” Slade pointed out the pricked hole in the envelope. “Make anything of it, Clinton?”
The sergeant nodded.
“Looks as though it might correspond with that prick on Doyce’s thumb.”
“True, Clinton, but there’s something else,” Slade remarked. “The left hand is the hand with which a right-handed person would hold an envelope while tearing open the flap with the right hand.”
“That’s so,” Clinton agreed. “Then there must have been something fairly flat and with a sharp point in the envelope, like a—”
“Drawing-pin?”
“Yes, that would fit it. He holds the envelope tight in the left hand and the pin pricks his thumb. The pin is poisoned, and the murder’s finished. Simple as that.”
“Yes. I’m afraid finding the real answer isn’t going to be quite so simple, Clinton. Let’s have a look through his clothes before we do anything else.”
They found the customary pen and wallet and loose change, a bunch of keys, a handkerchief, some folded bus tickets, and in one pocket a Press cutting.
The cutting read:
“A farm worker saw the blonde curls floating on the water. The body was taken from East Gate Fosse. She had been dead some hours. The jury returned a verdict of Death by Misadventure.”
The cutting was made up of separate sentences taken out of their context and pasted together.
“This may mean much or nothing,” said Slade, pocketing the cutting. “Meantime, Clinton, you’d better start collecting together all the pins you can find.”
“Pins?” queried the sergeant.
“Tie-pins. I noticed Allison wore an unusual one. And there’s a notice-board outside this room. It’s studded with drawing-pins. Take the lot—and handle them carefully.” Slade drew the towel over the dead man’s face. “Then let Irvin come in and get to work finger-printing this room, and we’ll have half a dozen shots taken of the room. I’m going to see the teams now. We can’t keep them any longer.”
IV
Morring Makes a Request
In the corridor outside the treatment room Slade found Allison and Kindilett smoking. Both managers looked at him inquiringly as he appeared.
“Well, Inspector?” asked the Arsenal manager.
“I’m afraid Dr Meadows doesn’t think it was an accident,” said the Yard detective.
Allison looked grave. Kindilett’s mouth sagged noticeably at the corners.
“There’s one thing I think you should know, Inspector,” said Allison. “When this match was planned I arranged with Mr Kindilett for the Trojan team to remain in London as guests of the Arsenal Club. As I saw it, they could then put in a spot of training here, at the Stadium. To-morrow has already been fixed for a round of golf at the Dyke course, near Brighton, where the Arsenal team often spend some time training during the season. I thought I’d mention this, before you speak to the boys, because in this case you may prefer to question some of them later, now you know they’ll be together.”
“Thank you, Mr Allison,” said the detective. “That does rather simplify things.” He turned to Kindilett. “The Trojans, I understand, are players in different social classes.”
“That’s so,” nodded their manager. “Torburn, our goalie, is a carpenter. He lives the other side of St Albans. Morring, on the other hand, as I believe I’ve already mentioned, is an insurance broker. The team has one thing in common—a desire to play good football. I’ve been four years building up the Trojans. But”—a note of pride crept into his low voice—“it’s been worth it.”
“I doubt, Francis,” put in Allison, “if any other man in England could have done the job.”
Slade realized that the words were meant. They were an honest tribute to the man who had built the Trojan team.
He stood back, and Allison opened the door of the Arsenal dressing-room. The floor had been swabbed down. Shirts and knickers and socks and boots had been collected and removed. The large white bath-towels with the embroidered red “Arsenal” in one corner had been taken away to the laundry in charge of veteran Punch McEwan. Arsenal and Trojan players stood conversing in low tones. The air was now cleared of steam and the tang of rubbing fluids, but faintly blue with the smoke from half a dozen cigarettes.
“Inspector Slade,” Allison announced, “has some questions to ask you.”
He stood back, and the Yard man moved forward.
“Mr Kindilett has described what happened on the field,” he said. “I understand Doyce scored a penalty goal. That meant you kicked off again for the Arsenal, Drake,” he added, turning to the well-known centre-forward.
Ted Drake folded his arms and frowned.
“Yes, that’s right,” he agreed. “I passed to Bryn.”
“And I put it over to Gordon,” said Bryn Jones.
Gordon Bremner nodded.
“I remember,” put in Whittaker, “the follow-through was a wing movement. The ball came right across from Kirchen to Bryn Jones, and Doyce was quite close to Bryn. He was anticipating very well.”
Slade turned to the Welshman. “Do you remember what happened next?”
Bryn Jones’s face wrinkled thoughtfully.
“Yes,” he said, “Tom’s right. I remember now. Doyce was coming in pretty fast—”
“Did you look at him?”
Bryn Jones glanced up, surprised. “Well, no, I can’t say I did—not to look at him closely, I mean.”
“That’s what I meant,” nodded Slade. “You didn’t note, for instance, how he seemed to shape?”
“No.”
“But you would have noticed anything unusual about him, I take it? Had he been breathing hard, sweating profusely—anything
like that?”
“I think I can help you there,” put in Cliff Bastin.
Slade turned to the speaker.
“You noticed something?”
“Yes,” said the outside left. “Bryn swung the ball to me when Doyce came across—”
“I remember,” nodded Whittaker. “Anticipating the movement, Doyce continued straight on to the wing. He tackled you, didn’t he, Cliff?”
Bastin ran a hand across his straight blond hair, and hunched his shoulders a little.
“Yes, Doyce came at me pretty fast, but I just had time to put the ball back.”
“I’ll say you did,” put in Leslie Jones. “Nearly over the line.”
“But what did you notice about Doyce?” Slade asked Bastin.
“His breath was coming fast, though that wasn’t anything unusual. But I did notice he was sweating freely. His hair was moist and tangled up, too. I wondered at the time if he was really in condition.”
“He was as fit as a carthorse when we ran the rule over him,” Raille avowed. “But, Bastin,” he added, turning to the Arsenal player, “wasn’t that just about when Doyce went down? I saw Leslie Jones dash up, save the ball from going off the island, and boot it well up to a forward. I think it was Drake. Anyway, Crieff got the ball, kicked it, and then every one was shouting.”
There were some moments while players sorted out their impressions. But Raille’s words apparently summarized the last piece of play before Doyce’s collapse.
Slade nodded to Bastin. “Then you were the last player to be tackled by Doyce?”
“Yes, I suppose so,” Bastin agreed.
The Yard man asked a number of further questions, and the assembly tried its best to provide answers that added to the sum total of the detective’s knowledge. But Slade made little further headway, for the simple reason that there was none to be made.
Doyce’s collapse had been as mysterious as it had been sudden. Not a player on the field at the time could offer any information that would begin to clear up the mystery.
The Arsenal Stadium Mystery Page 4
