The Arsenal Stadium Mystery

by Leonard Gribble

  “Good God!” muttered Jill.

  Pat flashed her a glance, half savage, half elated.

  “They did,” she snapped. “He had only to lift his finger and women fell on his neck—”

  “Pat!” It was Morring who was protesting this time. He was on his feet, angry, roused. “Do you know what you’re saying? Do you know what—”

  She rounded on him. “I know exactly what I’m saying.” There was venom in the words. “You didn’t like him, Phil. Jill here didn’t like him. But I did, and I’m not ashamed to admit it.”

  Morring fell back before this onslaught. Slade, watching closely, wondered what the girl was trying to put over. Something, some impression, he was sure. She was acting, and for a very good reason, but he couldn’t find it, and he felt frustrated.

  “You visited him Friday night, didn’t you?” he said easily.

  The question caught her unprepared. She went down like a pricked balloon. The eagerness died from her face, the animation left her limbs. She sat slumped in the chair. Numbed was the word that flashed into Slade’s mind.

  “You know that too,” she said quietly.

  “The truth is always simpler,” said Slade.

  She looked at him, and her gaze was hard.

  “That still doesn’t make me change what I said. I wasn’t in his flat yesterday evening. You heard what Jill said.”

  She was very angry with the detective. Her effort to conceal her anger was only partially successful. She knew, and all in the room knew, that the Yard man had subtly forced her into revealing a lie.

  She had lied when she said she wasn’t in Doyce’s flat the previous evening. The curtain of the lie had been rent. And she had implicated Jill Howard, who had been forced reluctantly into supporting her.

  “Of course you weren’t,” said Slade. He rose. “I think we’ll be moving along, Clinton. Well, thank you, every one, for your co-operation—and the coffee. I’ll be seeing you later, Mr Morring.”

  The two Yard men walked to the door. Jill Howard sprang forward and opened it. She followed them on to the landing outside the flat and drew the door to.

  “You mustn’t take much notice of Pat, Inspector,” she said. “Pat’s rather given to dramatizing things. You mustn’t—er—expect too much from her.”

  “I don’t,” smiled Slade, and his smile vanished. “But I don’t like to see a silly woman make trouble for others by demanding their loyalty—which she knows she’ll get.”

  The dark-haired girl pressed her hands together in a quick, nervous movement.

  “We understand her, Inspector.”

  “I don’t think anyone understands a liar,” said Slade uncompromisingly.

  Jill’s glance was pleading. “But even if she were at the flat, Inspector, it wouldn’t mean anything—it couldn’t. She’s in love with—”

  In time she caught herself from making a bad slip. Slade patted her shoulder.

  “Your friend’s very lucky, Miss Howard,” he said, and turned away.

  Clinton followed him out to the car.

  “They say birds of a feather are drawn together,” said the sergeant. “I reckon those two are the exception that proves the rule. That blonde would lie just to be different, and expect the other to back her up.”

  Slade set the car in motion. They joined the stream of traffic moving south towards the Marble Arch.

  “She’s very afraid of something, Clinton. Her job, Morring, us—I don’t know. She put on a good act, and gave herself away at the end.”

  “She hasn’t made things look better for Morring—on paper,” Clinton pointed out. “He rushes there, and they have an obvious fight before we arrive. Then they stall, and the little dark one looks as unhappy as hell. She makes good coffee.”

  “If I’m not far wrong, Clinton, our golden-haired Pat has been playing the old game of matching the two ends against the middle. She denied being engaged to Morring because she doesn’t know how much we have found out about her relationship with Doyce, and she’s smart enough to think of appearances. Oh, she’s fly, that girl. Unless Morring’s careful she’ll set his wandering feet on a long walk up the garden path.”

  “And the time may be eight o’clock in the morning,” said Clinton ominously.

  He looked at Slade, expecting a response.

  For once he was disappointed.

  VIII

  Like Yeast Working

  It occurred to Clinton as Slade drove down the Edgware Road that there were a number of questions his chief had not asked Morring before they left the girls’ flat. Like a chess-player testing a risky move, he said casually, “Why did we leave when we did?”

  “You think we could have got some more out of them, eh?”

  “There was plenty of heat under the kettle,” said the sergeant. “It might have boiled over.”

  Slade smiled.

  “I think it has,” he said.

  Clinton looked at him, understanding lighting his eyes.

  “I get it. You started some trouble, left it to simmer. You think they’ll have a row, and then begin shouting. You left them with a lot of doubts.” The sergeant nodded. “Doubts that’ll work like yeast.”

  Clinton’s literary style was rarely impeccable. More often than not his metaphors were inextricably mixed. But despite blemishes which might cause a pedant to frown he had a happy knack of stating graphically what was in his mind. He was never ambiguous. He was never misunderstood.

  “Exactly,” said Slade, in the same conversational vein. “I thought it was time for seconds out of the ring.”

  Had the Yard man been an unobserved witness to the scene at that moment taking place in the flat he had recently left he would have found ample confirmation of his opinion.

  With the departure of the detectives Morring loosed the restraint he had been keeping on himself. He swung furiously on Pat.

  “Why did you lie? What is the truth?”

  The vehemence of the words and the gesture accompanying them told the blonde girl that she could only recapture his sympathy by a show of confession. Phil Morring was in a dangerous mood, a mood utterly foreign to her. She had to be cautious.

  She did not want to lose him. He was an asset, as she viewed life. He had a good income, as she believed, and would be able to support a wife adequately, and she had always handled him easily.

  She did not love him. She never had. But in the matter of her affection she made it a rule to be honest only with herself. In her code of social behaviour that was being smart, and smartness counted for a great deal with Patricia Laruce. The daughter of a chorus girl who had married a publican after burning her fingers with a scion of the aristocracy, she had imbibed her mother’s warped outlook on life. Her sense of values was the product of a strange admixture of safety first and an insistent demand that life surrender to her those things that gave her pleasure. She played handmaid to opportunity. There was no need for opportunity to knock once. She was waiting with the door open.

  “Jill,” she said to the other girl, “I’ve a feeling that Phil is going to be unpleasant. Will you let us do our rag-picking alone?”

  The dark-haired girl looked at Morring. She wanted to stay with a longing that surprised herself, but she said, “Of course, Pat. But don’t be unkind—please.”

  Pat laughed.

  “That’s rich. I’m not about to put on a show. You’d better pass your request numbers on to Phil. He’s taking the floor.”

  With a shrug Jill left it at that and went into the other room.

  As the door closed Morring said, “I’m waiting to hear what you’ve got to say, Pat. I think you’ve been pretty despicable.”

  The make-up on her cheeks suddenly looked like daubs of colour on the face of a doll.

  “And just why?” she asked, very calm.

  “Those lies—dragging J
ill into it—making me appear a fool, and—”

  “Oh, that’s where the shoe pinches, is it? Your pride’s been chipped.”

  He eyed her steadily. “You made out to Slade that we weren’t engaged—”

  “For your sake. And this is what I get.”

  “My sake?”

  “Of course. That detective was ready to build up a fine motive against you. He had the money. I didn’t let him add me to it. You should be grateful.”

  He was disgusted. After what had taken place earlier her artifice was transparent.

  “Can’t you be honest with anyone?” he said bitterly. “You were thinking of yourself. That detective knows you went to Doyce’s flat after the match, despite the way you made Jill back up your lie. And why did you go? Why was it so necessary?”

  The only colour in her face now was artificial. She knew she had been brought to the edge of a crisis.

  “Suppose you tell me. You seem to have developed a sudden vivid imagination.”

  “I’ll tell you,” he said, coming nearer. “You heard that the police were being called in. Doyce was dead. They would go to his flat and search the place, and there were things there you didn’t want them to find, things that would require an explanation. I believe you deliberately broke your promise not to see Doyce again. I believe you and Doyce, both of you, thought I was a blind fool, and would never find out what was going on between you. I believe you went to his flat and brought away some of your personal things, because you had been his—”

  “Stop!”

  She was standing up. Emotion rode her like a storm. The crisis had broken. Foolishly she had thought she could avoid it, dance out of its swift path.

  “All right, I loved John. But I wasn’t deceitful. I intended telling you. I couldn’t help falling for him. It was just luck—Fate—call it what you like.”

  “If I called it anything,” he said coldly, “it would be a much less pleasant term.”

  She stood up to his contempt. She had to. She wasn’t losing everything without a struggle. That was not her way. She was like her mother in that.

  “I can’t expect you to understand that I didn’t want to cause you hurt, Phil. I can’t expect you to realize that I was grateful for you and the times we had had, for what you had meant to me—”

  “For God’s sake stop play-acting!” He was weary, sick of the whole mess. His weariness crept into his voice. “You took my ring off when you thought it would serve you better that way—”

  “That’s not true!” she cried, fearful of what she saw in his face.

  “You’d better leave it off,” he finished relentlessly. “It’ll suit me that way.”

  This brusque inversion of values stunned her. She was the one who could leave off his ring. She had done so when she pleased. His breaking with her—that was wrong. It wasn’t what she wanted. She could throw him over if she wanted to; that was the game as she played it. He could not throw her over.

  Panic swept her with the blinding force of a sirocco. She was being cut adrift. She was being turned down. The security to which she had clung was suddenly remote. She knew now that that was what Phil Morring had stood for in her life—security. Her mother had had a publican. She had found Phil Morring. And now—

  The hysterical laugh that rose from her lips frightened her. She did not recognize it any more than she recognized the bewildering sensations sweeping through her mind, paralysing thought.

  “You’re jilting me. My God, that’s too perfect! You sneered at John Doyce for playing fast and loose, and now you find the same game convenient. Just because you think the police will put their heads together and make me into a sweet little motive that might put a rope round your neck—”

  The words were out, uttered with a trembling vindictiveness that appalled the man standing before her. She saw him shrink as though from a physical blow.

  “You—you mean that!” he gasped.

  She went on blindly, wanting to hurt him, to break what she mistakenly thought was his complacency.

  “I don’t have to,” she said cruelly. “It was written all over those two detectives. They think you murdered John Doyce. They’re trying to convict you. Even the papers are hinting at murder without actually putting the word into print. I’m the girl in the case now,” she went on, spreading her hands in a defiant gesture. “They know I lied about John, but I was smarter than you gave me credit for. I knew they’d think I was lying for your sake—”

  “My sake!”

  “Yes—yours. The same way they’d find out I lied about not being engaged to you. That would fit in neatly. All for your sake—they’d get there eventually. And why should I do it for your sake? Because, they would argue, I am really in love with you. It was my way of trying to protect you. And from there they’d get to the fact that you couldn’t have murdered John Doyce—because with my loving you the way I had shown there was no cause—on my part. But you”—her voice rose, pitched to a trembling falsetto—“you throw me over. You can’t trust me. You’re not prepared to accept me as myself. You never loved me, or you couldn’t doubt me so easily. You’d never throw me over just to protect yourself.”

  She stood back from him, eyes blazing. She had surprised herself with this sudden sweeping attack, which had broken his new defence reared against her. Instinctively she had carried the battle forward at the crucial moment, when she thought everything lost.

  He was staggered, bewildered, left utterly unsure of himself, of her, of anything.

  “But, Pat—”

  She pressed her advantage. She was one of those women who instinctively know how to handle men. Instinct was saving her now.

  “No, Phil, it’s too late. I’m not a toy. I’m glad you’ve shown me how little real faith you have in me.”

  The one thing she did not know—could not know—was that Phil Morring couldn’t be trampled on, even by a conquering female. He had a pride that crushing merely stiffened.

  “Then that settles everything, Pat. I’ll be going.”

  She was momentarily at a loss to know how she had blundered. Had she overplayed her hand? She couldn’t see how. The tactics she had employed had invariably been successful in her previous high-handed dealings with the other sex.

  But now… In the very moment when she thought she had snatched victory out of defeat the tables were again turned on her. It didn’t seem fair. It was against all the rules by which she played the complicated game of her life. She was near to tears when she said, “Then you’ve made up your mind—”

  “No. I’ve to thank you for making it up for me.”

  “But—”

  “You told me I never loved you. I think now you’re right. I was infatuated, Pat. Your good looks, your high spirits, and the glamour you possess—they’re what attracted me. Not you. Do you think anything could be the same after—this?”

  Swiftly she summoned her last resources for a final despairing effort.

  “You’re hurt because I said I loved John Doyce. But I had to tell you the truth. Strangely, now that seems all far in the past. Only a few hours, yet years might have passed since yesterday. I—”

  He was shaking his head.

  “I’m not hurt because you loved Doyce instead of me. I’m just—enlightened. We made a great mistake, both of us. I’m prepared to admit it now.”

  The last effort had failed. Hot, searing anger that was near to hate filled her heart. But she kept this truth to herself. She must hold to dignity. She mustn’t let him see. There would be a way of evening the count. But how remained her secret.

  She said, “I always speed my parting lovers with a drink. What’s yours, Phil?”

  She could not understand why the colour left his face. He did not speak. He picked up his hat and went out without a last word.

  She sat down, fists knotted. From a box on a side-table she t
ook a cigarette and lit it. Jill came in.

  “Phil gone?”

  “This time for good. But he hasn’t finished with me.”

  Her tone was a threat.

  Jill crossed to her. “Pat, what are you saying? You don’t mean—”

  “Never mind what I mean.” The blonde girl smoked quickly. “I can tell the police plenty that will interest them.”

  “You wouldn’t be so mean!”

  The alarm in the dark-haired girl’s voice brought a bitter smile to the other’s red mouth.

  “You’ve always had a soft spot for Phil Morring, haven’t you, Jill? You hated to think he wasn’t properly appreciated—by yourself. How long have you been in love with him?”

  Jill paled.

  “You’re—beastly!” she muttered.

  “Because I can face the truth? Listen, darling, I’ve kept your secret a long while. Well, you’re welcome to him. What’s left when I’m through.”

  Jill fell back, as though struck.

  “You wouldn’t dare!” She was scared at this stranger she saw seated in front of her, this woman filled with hatred whose mouth was twisted in a sneer. “You couldn’t go to the police with lies—”

  “They won’t be lies, pet. There was quite a quarrel not so long ago, and Phil Morring said some threatening words to his partner that couldn’t possibly be misconstrued. Even such a soul of honour as yourself would have to tell the truth about that.”

  Pat rose, walked to the other door, which led to their bedroom.

  “It looks as though everything’s washed up. That suits me. Just remember that I can take care of myself. I always have, and I shall continue to. No man can wipe his feet on me and expect me to go on being the willing carpet.”

  Jill ran forward, caught the other girl’s arm.

  “Just a minute. You’ve had a lot to say. Before you leave there’s something I want to tell you. I won’t let you harm Phil. I stood by and saw you making a fool of him. And I said nothing—”