The Arsenal Stadium Mystery

by Leonard Gribble

  “Well, take good care of my tie-pin,” smiled Allison. “I’m rather partial to it. You want me to arrange anything else for you, Inspector?” he asked, glancing at Slade.

  “Not just now, thanks. I’ll ’phone through for the ambulance, see the body taken away, and then we’ll be moving off. I’m very grateful for your co-operation, Mr Allison.”

  For a moment Allison did not speak. His face was grave.

  “I want to be of whatever assistance to the police I can, Inspector. But there’s bound to be a lot of publicity about this affair—”

  He hesitated.

  Slade said, “I’ll try to save you as much annoyance as I can, in the circumstances. I quite understand how you are placed, Mr Allison.”

  “Thanks, Inspector. That lets me breathe a little easier. In return, anything I can do, you know—”

  They left it unexpressed, but both men had a very clear idea of just how he could expect future co-operation from the other. Slade had to make progress on a case that would be filling the national Press. Allison had to keep a large sports organization running as though nothing had happened, and as though the police were not interested in every person in the building.

  There would have to be tact on both sides, and perhaps more give and take than either man realized at the moment. But each man’s instinctive liking of the other boded well for harmony of working.

  “I don’t envy Allison his job just now,” grunted Clinton as the Yard men walked down the staircase together after Slade had put through his call for the ambulance.

  Apparently choosing a thought at random, Slade said, “How would you like to sniff some sea air to-morrow?”

  Clinton’s eyes narrowed.

  “Where?”

  “On the Downs near Brighton.”

  “Suits me,” said the sergeant, “as long as we don’t have to wear out our legs.”

  “No, I don’t think we’ll do that. But we may have to come back to London in a hurry.”

  Clinton threw his superior a quick glance. He recognized that drawled, reflexive note in Slade’s voice. After working with Slade for a number of years he had come to know the other man’s personal reactions to a case. He knew what that reflexive tone meant. Slade was already fitting together several of the loose pieces they had found, and expecting to find something else, as a result.

  “That’ll suit me,” said Clinton.

  The ambulance arrived. The Yard men watched the white-coated stretcher-bearers carry Doyce’s body from the Arsenal Stadium. A group of curious people clustered round the entrance, kept back by a couple of policemen. The rear door of the ambulance slammed. It moved off, and at the corner of Avenell Road they heard its bell pealing shrilly.

  “And now?” asked Clinton, without looking at Slade’s frowning face.

  “I’ll put through another call to the Yard, Clinton. I’m anxious to lose no time in tracing a girl who employs purple lipstick and a peroxide bottle.”

  If Clinton found the reason more than a trifle obscure, he gave no sign.

  “Then we’ll visit Baker Street,” Slade added.

  V

  Belloge Court

  Belloge Court is one of those new blocks of flats set well back from the footwalk of the main thoroughfare that seem to be the hallmark of domestic architecture of the nineteen-thirties. That Belloge Court chanced to be in Baker Street had nothing to do with its design; there had been no attempt to capture the spirit of the neighbourhood in the garish pile of fancy brick and over-bright tile.

  It had achieved the forecourt of its kind, with sundry beds of wilting daffodils, apologetically nodding over clumps of dusty aubrietia. Gilt paint flaked on its railings, and low-slung cars were parked on its oil-stained concrete.

  The police car in which Slade and Clinton had driven from Highbury turned in at the left-hand gilt gate. The two detectives approached the entrance hall, a blaze of light. In the midst of this brilliance, like some prisoner moth, a porter stood reading an evening paper. He looked inquiringly at the newcomers, as though he would note their faces. He was a tall man in blue uniform with brass buttons, and the peaked cap on his head was perched at a jaunty angle.

  “We’re from Scotland Yard,” Slade announced. “I want to be shown the flat of Mr John Doyce.”

  For just an instant the line of the porter’s jaw slackened. Then it tightened again. He folded the paper slowly.

  “I saw he got crocked at the match, but—” He paused, searching the detectives’ faces. He did not seem in the least perturbed by their presence. “What’s wrong?” he demanded. “Don’t tell me—”

  “I won’t,” snapped Slade quickly. “Now, then, which is his flat?”

  The man looked nettled for a moment. But apparently he was a philosopher of parts. He shrugged, lifting his eyebrows.

  “I’ll show you his flat,” he said mildly. “Funny, though, his young lady didn’t say something serious had happened, when she came in.”

  The words brought Slade facing round again.

  “What’s that? Who came in?”

  The porter’s mildness became excessive. “Why, Mr Doyce’s young lady. Very pretty girl. Haven’t seen her about long, but then none of them last with him—really last, I mean.”

  Slade perceived the faint twinkle deep in the man’s blue eyes, and realized that he had assessed him too quickly.

  “Is she here now?” he asked.

  “No. She came down after about half an hour.”

  “Anything with her?”

  “A small suitcase.”

  “She said nothing, I suppose?”

  “Not a word.”

  “All right—er—”

  “Milligan’s the name, sir.”

  “Well, Milligan, can you describe her?”

  The porter pursed his mouth. “About five foot five, I should say. Blonde—nice hair—really nice, I mean. Done in a page-boy bob.”

  “You use your eyes. Anything else?”

  Milligan’s teeth showed in a grin. “Plenty. She walks with a trip, if you know what I mean. Light on her feet, like a boxer. And she wears smart clothes. Little fussy hats—”

  “Fussy hats?”

  “Yes, fussy,” repeated the millinery expert firmly. “With veils and bobbing things. In fact, she looks like a drawing in a woman’s fashion magazine.”

  “You read women’s fashion magazines?” said Slade sceptically.

  “I get about one a day somebody or other leaves lying around the place,” was the urbane reply. “Don’t know that I read them, but I certainly look through them. I like looking at pretty women.”

  Behind him Slade heard Clinton clear his throat with a sound like a rasp biting into soft iron.

  “In that case,” said Slade, “you may be able to tell me the colour lipstick this young lady uses.”

  “Sure I can,” was the ready response. “Cyclamen. New shade out. Oh, I tell you, she’s an up-to-the-minute article. Chic is the word they use in the fashion books.”

  “I don’t doubt it. What is her name?”

  “Ah, that’s something I can’t tell you—”

  “Can’t?”

  “Because I don’t know it. I’ve only seen her around”—his mouth pursed again—“oh, a week I should say. Not more.”

  “Was she here yesterday?”

  The porter grinned. “Yes, when that trainer laddie turned up—Raille, that’s his name. He and I had a chat earlier in the week. Shouldn’t like his job, hopping round seeing his players are fit.”

  “What time was this?”

  “About half-past ten.”

  “In the evening?”

  “Sure, Doyce doesn’t have callers in the morning.”

  “He won’t now,” said Slade brusquely. “He’s dead.”

  But if he expected some enlightenin
g reaction on the part of the porter at this startling announcement he was disappointed. Milligan contented himself with a sage nod of the head.

  “You can’t burn the candle both ends and still live to blow it out,” he said.

  Slade did not query the essential truth of this declamation.

  “I’d like to see the flat now,” he told the man.

  A lift shot them up to the fourth floor, and the porter escorted them along a green-distempered corridor.

  “Number 17,” he announced. “Here we are.”

  He stood back, perfectly willing to see Scotland Yard go into action.

  “Key,” Slade suggested.

  “Oh.”

  A large bunch of pass-keys was produced, one selected and fitted into the lock. The door swung in.

  “I’ll probably want another word with you, Milligan, before I leave. That’ll be all now.”

  With obvious reluctance the porter withdrew. Clinton closed the door with more force than was mechanically necessary.

  “Nice place,” he gave his verdict, glancing round at the airy rooms and light-coloured walls. “Hallo. Here’s the harem.”

  On top of a walnut bureau was a pile of photographs. They were all of women. Most of them were displaying teeth that were depressingly faultless. All of them had signed her likeness. Tina and Pearl and Lottie had without stint given their love to John darling, or John dearest, or darlingest John.

  “Quite a little worker,” grunted Clinton, considering the implication of that group of photographs from the detached standpoint of a comfortably married man with a family.

  “Looks as though the lady with the royal hue in lipsticks was anxious to leave no clue to her recent visits,” said Slade. “All right, let’s get to work.”

  The two Yard men went through the flat with a fine-toothed comb. They unlocked drawers and found letters. All were extravagantly affectionate.

  “He certainly had a way with him,” said Clinton.

  Slade took from his pocket the pasted-up Press cutting he had found in the dead man’s clothes.

  “You know, Clinton,” he said, “it begins to look as though a woman’s behind Doyce’s death. This cutting means a good deal more now we’ve come here. And Morring told me Doyce played a nimble game with female hearts.”

  “Had Doyce poached on his preserves?”

  “What I thought. He said Doyce and he made it a rule to keep out of each other’s social life.”

  Clinton snorted. “So they ended up in the same football team. Sounds likely.”

  “Morring admitted he didn’t want Doyce in the team.”

  “He may be smart.”

  Slade was going through a well-stocked wardrobe. “True. You’re remembering the ten thousand pounds I told you about in the car.”

  “It fits together.”

  Clinton was one of those people who believe in direct action and clear-cut opinions. He preferred to empty his mind of extraneous irrelevancies and examine what was left. It was a sound method of investigation. It kept the thinker’s feet where they should be, on the ground. Slade well knew the value to himself of Clinton’s downright tactics and forthright arguing.

  “And this blonde. Where does she fit in?” he asked the sergeant.

  Clinton lifted his head from the depths of a travelling-trunk, the contents of which appeared to be old pyjama suits, tattered paper-bound novels, and an assortment of discarded top clothes.

  “She doesn’t—yet.”

  “She was at the match,” Slade pointed out.

  “Not unusual. Doyce probably paraded his physical fitness and prowess. Women fall for that line. Besides, that cutting isn’t recent.”

  The last point was one that had been troubling Slade since he had searched the dead man’s clothes.

  “If I’m not wrong it’s older than any of those photos, Clinton.”

  The sergeant squatted on his haunches, turned over an old pair of flannel trousers and felt in the pockets.

  “Does that tell us anything?” he inquired.

  “Perhaps not now—but I’m hoping. Among the pins you collected and Irvin took back to the Yard, did you have anything out of the ordinary?”

  “No. Tie-pins, drawing-pins, a needle or two—nothing much. Not all of it would fit into that small envelope we found, but I thought we might as well have the lot tested. Be a bit of a jolt if he died of heart failure, after all.”

  Slade found a book of cuttings. They were all descriptions of matches in which Doyce had played. The references to Doyce were underlined in green ink. Judging by the critics of soccer, the dead man had been one of the best half-backs in the country. “A brilliant, stylistic player,” said one writer, “John Doyce was easily the most accomplished half-back on the field. He held the Rovers like a keystone holds an arch. Again and again the crowd cheered his efforts. Times without number after attacking he fell back to extricate the Rovers’ defence from the folds of a clever opposing forward line.”

  Slade glanced at the date.

  It was four years before. He could not find the name of the newspaper.

  “Clinton, got that programme of this afternoon’s match?”

  The sergeant took the red-covered Arsenal v. Trojans programme from his pocket and gave it to Slade, who opened it at the column headed “Our Visitors.” In black type were the names of the Trojan players. After each name were some details of the player’s career.

  Slade found that three of the players—namely, Setchley, Doyce, and Morring—had all at one time been members of a team called the Saxon Rovers.

  “Look, Clinton,” he pointed out. “This is interesting. These three players were each in the same team to-day. Some time ago they were in another team together. Two of them are business partners, the other is a research chemist. One of the business partners is dead, poisoned by a very deadly—and I believe unusual—poison. How does that begin to look to you?”

  “Something’s rotten in the State of Denmark,” said Clinton heavily. “But you haven’t worked the mysterious blonde into it,” he added, with a sly dig.

  Slade grinned wryly.

  “I haven’t, have I?” He gave his attention again to the programme. “You know, Clinton, I think we’re going to find ourselves up against a rather subtle plot.”

  Clinton grunted and looked dour.

  “Book-writers to the contrary, I don’t think there’s anything subtle in poisoning a man. And with ten thousand pounds ready to slip across the table—”

  He turned away without completing the words.

  “You think it’s as open-and-shut as that,” said Slade.

  Clinton turned.

  “No. I don’t think that,” he said slowly. “But I do think Morring will have a lot more to tell us—later.”

  “How do you mean—later?”

  “Just that,” replied the sergeant doggedly. “A man who doesn’t want his business partner in the same team as himself has a very special reason for keeping away from him. Especially when they have played in another team together.”

  Slade realized that behind Clinton’s words lay the vague outline of an idea which the sergeant was turning over in his mind. Clinton believed strongly in visual and first-hand evidence. It was his stock argument that nine murderers out of ten were hanged solely because a detective found the obvious and read it aright.

  “We’ll have a further chance with Morring to-morrow, at the Dyke Golf Club,” Slade reminded him. “Hallo—nearly time for the news,” he broke off, glancing at his watch.

  He crossed to a radio in the sitting-room and switched it on. They waited some moments before the time signal sounded, and then the announcer said, “There is a police message before the news. The police are anxious to get in touch with a young woman who called at the Arsenal Stadium this afternoon after the match and asked to see Mr John Doy
ce. Will the person concerned please call at any police station or communicate with Scotland Yard, telephone number Whitehall 1212? We regret to announce that John Doyce has since died. An account of the match will be given in the late sports bulletin—”

  Slade switched off. The voice faded.

  Twenty minutes later the two Yard men had completed their search. They had found little. Clinton stood in the middle of the living-room, looking glumly about him.

  “I reckon that’s the lot. Whoever the girl is she’s covered her tracks damned well. Maybe she was a Girl Guide.”

  They went down to the brightly lit entrance hall. The porter saw them and came out of a glass-enclosed cage.

  “Well?” he said, as though he expected an explanation.

  “Listen, Milligan,” said Slade. “If that girl shows up again ring the Yard, and do your best to keep her here.”

  The porter’s eyes kindled.

  “You want her, eh?”

  “I want to talk to her,” Slade amended cautiously.

  “I get it,” nodded Milligan sagely. “You can trust me.”

  The two Yard men went back to their waiting car, and were sped through the evening traffic to the grey-stone, soot-smeared pile that is Scotland Yard. Slade spent a testing half-hour with the A.C., answering questions and generally outlining the case as far as he had progressed. He went back to his own office, to find Clinton with his nose buried in a newspaper.

  “Any news?” asked the sergeant, folding the paper and putting it on one side.

  “No. The District Messenger angle has been covered and it gives us no lead,” said Slade.

  “How’s that?”

  “The package was handed in at an office near Victoria Station this morning, some time about ten-thirty. All we can get from the man who took the package was that the person who brought it was a man wearing a light-coloured overcoat and he remembers that the man wore a hat.”

  “Well, that’s a help,” said Clinton sarcastically. “We needn’t bother with a man who doesn’t own a hat—unless he borrowed one.”

  “Frankly, I wasn’t expecting much from that lead,” Slade admitted.