The Arsenal Stadium Mystery

by Leonard Gribble

  “I’m not bothering about his finger-prints, Clinton,” Slade told him.

  Clinton gaped, recovered himself, and said with a frown, “But how the devil can you expect to nail him if you don’t get his finger-prints?”

  “I’m hoping he’ll give himself away.”

  For Clinton, it was like trying to see through a brick wall. He desisted. He was inherently suspicious of walls of any kind.

  “Well, it’s nice to be out in the sunshine, anyway,” he said archly. “That’s something I can understand.”

  Slade smiled.

  “Sorry, Clinton, but if it doesn’t work out—”

  The sergeant flashed him a quick glance, and was surprised by the sudden look of strain and anxiety he discovered on Slade’s face. It was as though for a brief instant the detective had lowered a shutter, and the sergeant could see inside this imperturbable man with his strong conviction and his iron purpose.

  Only then did Clinton realize to the full just what the passing minutes meant to Slade.

  “It’ll work out,” he said gruffly. “It’ll have to work out. Law of averages,” he added, wondering who had mentioned the term to him recently.

  Slade smiled at the implied compliment, and the shutters were up again.

  “Nice of you, Clinton. Thanks. Well, the half-hour’s up. Let’s go back and pick up our man.”

  Confidence rang again in the speaker’s voice. It was the old Slade once more, sure of himself.

  “Right. This bit of sun isn’t fooling me that it’s summer,” Clinton rejoined, and turned on his heel.

  Most of the Arsenal players were in their dressing-room by this time, while the majority of the Trojans were in the treatment room. Kindilett and Raille were a little apart, talking. Morring and Setchley stood surrounded by other players.

  Slade and Clinton went into the treatment room.

  “Here we are, Inspector,” said Kindilett, in a voice vibrant with strain.

  The door opened. Two more Trojans entered.

  “That’s the lot,” said Clinton.

  Every one watched Slade, as though he were a conjuror about to produce a rabbit from a hat.

  “I’ll be frank with you,” said the Yard man, glancing round at his watchful audience. “I’ve brought you here because I think I can now place my hand on the murderer of your team-mate, John Doyce.”

  No one spoke. Glances narrowed, shuttlecocked, a few feet fidgeted.

  Clinton felt the intangible pressure of that moment perhaps as much as anyone in that room save the murderer.

  Could Slade be wrong? If he was wrong…

  Suddenly, it seemed to the sergeant, his chief had taken too large a gamble. Distrusting the intrinsic value of purely circumstantial evidence, Slade had decided to procure something that was irrefutable. But what? How?

  Slade said quietly, “I want you all to hold out your hands, palms upwards.”

  There was a moment’s pause. Then a pair of hands was held out, and another, and a third.

  “All of you—every one here,” said Slade sharply.

  Clinton, throwing his chief a swift glance, saw that for a moment the shutters were once more down. This was Slade’s great moment of doubt.

  The sergeant glanced at the semicircle of men standing with hands outstretched. He caught his breath. One pair of hands was different from the others. The fingers and palms were tinted with a pale blue deposit.

  Slade jumped forward as the blue-stained hands moved. There was a quick, brief struggle, and before the startled gathering were aware of what was happening a pair of handcuffs clicked.

  “My God!” murmured Francis Kindilett, staring at the handcuffs.

  They were round the wrists of George Raille.

  XVIII

  Mystery No Longer

  Half an hour later, after Raille had left the Stadium in a police-car, Slade went up to George Allison’s room. The Arsenal manager was talking to Kindilett. Both men turned to the detective with looks of inquiry.

  “Clinton’s taken him,” said Slade.

  Allison said, “And now a glass of sherry, eh, Inspector?”

  The sherry tasted good. Slade filled and lit his pipe, conscious that the eyes of Francis Kindilett did not leave his face.

  “Did you know he was engaged to your daughter? Really know, Mr Kindilett?”

  The Trojan manager shook his head.

  “No. I told the truth when I said I didn’t know, Inspector.”

  “But you suspected he might be?”

  “I didn’t feel free to talk about my suspicions.”

  Slade leaned back in his chair.

  “Of course not. Perfectly reasonable. But did you have an idea he killed Doyce?”

  Kindilett’s face was troubled. “I didn’t know what to think,” he confessed. “The whole thing, it was a nightmare, and I felt afraid, not so much for myself, but for the team. I could see this horrible business ending everything. And now, without Raille, it’s going to be hard. He was a remarkable man in many ways.”

  “Told me he wanted to be a dentist.”

  Kindilett looked up.

  “He did? I thought he kept that a secret. Yes, I know he had great hopes of being a dental surgeon. He was studying when he was a member of the Saxon Amateurs’ regular team. I never knew what made him give it up.”

  “I should say it was because he lost the girl he loved.”

  Kindilett’s grey head nodded.

  “You got a statement from him, didn’t you, Inspector?”

  “Yes. I gave him the customary warning, as you heard. When we got alone he wanted to talk. Seemed glad to get it off his chest. For years he’s been hating Doyce, but he had got over the worst of it when he stumbled on the Doyce and Morring business. I’m referring to Doyce’s playing around with Morring’s fiancée. He could see a repetition of what happened in Ryechester four years ago. And thought of another man’s happiness being ruined made him savage, and he determined to do something about it. All the old hatred for Doyce came back. And although he didn’t tell me, I believe Doyce was difficult to handle. Doyce knew he had been engaged to your daughter, and he soon found out that Raille had never told you. For some reason he’s shy when talking about you. I don’t know why it is. Perhaps after four years he feels he wants to let the past remain buried. But I did notice that he kept from mentioning you whenever he could.”

  “Rather strange, isn’t it?” asked Allison, leaning across his desk.

  “No, I don’t think so,” said Slade. “Raille is a sensitive type. He hides it well, but he is all the same. Your daughter, Mr Kindilett, did not mention his name to you, and then the engagement was broken off. He felt, as I understand him, as though he didn’t want you to know. If your daughter hadn’t told you, then he wasn’t going to. Do you follow what I mean?”

  “Yes, I do,” said Kindilett sadly. “Poor fellow! And did he explain to you just how Doyce managed to break up the engagement?”

  “No. Again he seemed shy. And I didn’t press him. He was volunteering this information, clearing his mind of a cloud, as it were. I let him tell me what he wanted to. I didn’t think it the time to question him closely. He has all that to face later. But he did make it plain that what Doyce did four years ago he did wantonly, deliberately. And he did tell me to tell you that he is determined to keep your daughter’s name out of the trial. He isn’t afraid. He’s rather the reverse. Glad it’s all over.”

  Kindilett rose and stood looking out of the window. Slade recalled how he had stood in a similar attitude that night he had called at the hotel in Bloomsbury.

  “I can hardly believe it’s all happened, even now,” said the Trojan manager.

  “Tell me one thing,” said Slade. “Was Doyce troubling you, Mr Kindilett? Making trouble, I mean, about a letter you wrote him after your daughter’s death
?”

  Kindilett spun round, a flush in his cheeks.

  “How did you know?” he asked hoarsely.

  “I thought so,” nodded Slade. “I’ve got the letter, as it happens, and I suspected that Doyce would have made himself a nuisance about it. Was his attitude vindictive?”

  “Yes, that would describe it. He threatened to show it to the F.A., and say he was being victimized on account of a personal grudge if I didn’t see that he was made captain in place of Chulley. I was in a difficult position.”

  Allison grunted. “The swine! Anything to capture the limelight for himself.”

  Kindilett nodded.

  “Did Raille know anything about that?” asked Slade.

  “I can’t say. I didn’t tell him. Why?”

  “Oh, something he dropped rather gave me the impression that he had some other reason for disliking Doyce intensely, something to do with the team.”

  “It may have been that,” Kindilett frowned. “It’s quite possible that Doyce, knowing Raille was engaged to Mary, may have referred to the past. He could be very unpleasant—”

  “Why on earth didn’t you pitch him out on his ear?” said Allison indignantly. “Why stand for it?”

  Kindilett smiled.

  “Setchley was making quite a fuss, George. And Setchley has the backing of several people who make the Trojans possible as a financial enterprise. You know my difficulties. My hand was forced. Morring of course offered firm objection. But Setchley carried the day. Now you know.” He turned to Slade again. “But why the Press cutting?”

  “It was his way of telling Doyce the end had been reached. As he told me, everything seemed to happen at once to make him kill Doyce. He came across your daughter’s ring, he went with you to the laboratory, and was left staring at a poison cabinet. He had to visit Doyce, and he saw the Laruce girl’s handbag there. He knew it was hers—”

  “We all knew her quite well,” said Kindilett.

  “And he left Doyce’s flat on the Friday night determined to go through with it.”

  “But if he had taken the poison several days before,” said Allison, “surely his mind didn’t want making up. It was made up.”

  “Well, that’s the whole point,” said Slade. “From what he told me I gathered that he ’phoned Doyce and told him to leave the Laruce girl alone. Gave him a warning.”

  “Anonymously?” asked Kindilett.

  “That was the impression I got,” went on the Yard man.

  “As if Doyce would have taken any notice!”

  “Perhaps not,” said Slade. “But Raille wanted to find out. So he fixed the call for Friday night. He took Doyce by surprise, and saw the handbag. That settled everything. He went through with it. Made up the parcel, pasted together the cutting, and the next morning took the package to the District Messenger’s office at Victoria. After Doyce was dead he hid the ring in the bowl of horsehair. He knew where to look for it, of course. It was his plan to get the ring away later, when it wasn’t dangerous, and leave the whole thing a complete mystery. He never thought it would ever be worked out. It unnerved him when he saw the possibility of Morring or yourself, Mr Kindilett, being arrested. Only then did he realize that he had something else to do. He had to make sure no one was mistakenly arrested.”

  “But what could he do?”

  “He didn’t say. I gathered that he was prepared to give himself up if the worst came to the worst.”

  “Well, it has,” said Allison bluntly.

  Kindilett sat down, lit a fresh cigarette.

  “Tell me, Inspector,” he requested, “when you first thought it might be Raille.”

  “After the inquest. I asked him to come along to the Yard. I had one or two things to ask him about the team. His manner was evasive, although he did his best to act natural. I rather stressed the case we had made out against Morring. He reacted to that immediately. In fact, the interview was a series of sharp reactions on his part.”

  “And that was your first suspicion?” said Allison.

  “It was the first time I considered Raille seriously as a possibility. You yourself made it a certainty.”

  “How?” Allison was puzzled. “I remember you said something to that effect last night, but I thought you were just putting me off.”

  “No, I meant it,” said Slade. “You brought me an album of soccer photos to look over.”

  Allison glanced at Kindilett. “Your album, Francis. I’ve got it at home, and Slade came round last night. I showed it to him.”

  Kindilett nodded and turned to the detective.

  “You found a clue in it?”

  “I did. A very valuable clue. It made the issue clear-cut.”

  “Is it something you can tell us at this stage?” asked the Arsenal manager.

  “Oh, yes,” Slade said. “Don’t you remember I took out a photo of the Saxon Amateurs, or, rather, some of them. There was a note in Mr Kindilett’s writing on the back.”

  “You mean you saw Raille in the group?”

  “I saw a man with a moustache who could have been Raille four years before. I wasn’t sure. I asked you if you recognized anyone there. You said no.”

  “True,” said Allison, “I didn’t recognize Raille.”

  “But how did you, Inspector?” asked Kindilett. “And, if I may be obtuse, how did that point to Doyce’s murderer?”

  “You see,” Slade resumed, “I had the photo I brought back from Ryechester. That showed the same man as the Saxon Amateurs player who wore a moustache. But in the Ryechester photo he was in civvies. It wasn’t difficult to link the two. And Raille was the only member of the Saxon Amateurs with the Trojans. It was a direct lead.”

  “Well, I missed it,” Allison confessed, “and I saw both photos.”

  “I was wondering,” said Slade, “if there wasn’t some comment at the time the first photo was published in the Ryechester Chronicle. People four years ago would have recognized Raille, and being shown in the photo with your daughter, while the other men in the picture were members of the Rovers—well, I should have thought it would have produced some comment.”

  “Gossip, Inspector, gossip,” said Kindilett, pulling a wry face. “The town was full of talk. Mary was engaged in turn to half the population of the borough. Then it died down.”

  Slade nodded. “I see. I was wondering if you hadn’t yourself got some vague idea, at least, about Raille from the photograph.”

  “Honestly I can’t say I had, Inspector. The whole thing was a great shock to me. I—I’m afraid that Raille, despite his good intentions, won’t be able to keep Mary’s name out of the trial when it comes on. I don’t see that it is possible. Do you?”

  He looked hopefully at the detective, but Slade, who had been troubled by the same doubt himself, shook his head.

  “I didn’t say so just now, but frankly I don’t see how he can. The Prosecution will build part of its case, the greater part in fact, on what happened back in Ryechester. Motive begins there.”

  Kindilett sighed.

  “As I thought, Inspector. It was too much to hope that he would be able to prevent the inevitable.”

  “Well, of course, it’s not the inevitable, exactly,” said Slade. “But it depends on how a defence counsel will advise him to plead, and how the defence is constructed. One can never tell, naturally.”

  Allison tried to turn the conversation into a less painful channel.

  “How were you so sure he would come for the ring?”

  “I told Clinton the way to catch our man was to mix self-preservation, curiosity, and sentiment. Self-preservation—well, we don’t need to look hard at that. It wouldn’t be human not to try to kill Doyce without at the same time hoping to go free. Curiosity. There again Raille reacted as I expected. He wanted to know what the police had found, and that rumour of a ring would have told h
im something was discovered. He wouldn’t know how much, but the urge to find out would grow. It became allied with self-preservation.”

  “Yes, I can see that,” nodded the Arsenal manager.

  “Then sentiment.” Slade paused. “He used his engagement ring because it was symbolic of—oh, poetic justice, if you like. The ring returned to him, the ring he had kept as a tragic memento. You see how it could have seemed to him. But he also cherished that ring for what it had originally stood for. He would want it back. Thought of the police finding it and probably throwing it in a drawer or file—well, that irked him. Sentiment.”

  Slade wasn’t sure whether or not Kindilett was listening. His gaze was far-away. But Allison was following the detective’s words closely.

  He had another question ready, one he had been saving since he had heard of Raille’s arrest.

  “Just how did you trick him, Inspector? What did you use?”

  Slade smiled. “Bromophenol,” he said. “It’s a yellowish substance which when mixed with the perspiration on one’s hands turns blue. I knew it wouldn’t be any good waiting to get finger-prints. Our man would be too fly to leave any. He’d wipe the glass after touching the bowl and the lid. But by that time the powder would be on his hands. He wouldn’t notice it, and his hands would be moist. A fairly safe assumption, for he was bound to be worked up, excited. Especially when he discovered that the ring wasn’t there. He’d know then that the trick was seen through.”

  “That’s what I don’t understand,” said Allison, “why he hid it just where he did.”

  “I think that’s clear now,” said Slade. “When the treatment room was left open he could come in any time and no one would object or even notice him if he took a piece of horsehair from the jar. Would seem the natural thing for him to do. He was the Trojan trainer, after all. So that, basically, his choice of hiding-place was sound.”

  Allison nodded.

  “Yes, I see the point now, Inspector. Ingenious fellow, really.”

  Slade glanced at Kindilett, and made no rejoinder.