“A suicide covered up as accidental death, Clinton, because her fiancé didn’t come forward at the inquest and wash some private linen in public.”
“But this letter from Kindilett?”
“Ah! That’s a pointer. Her father suspected something, even if he didn’t know the truth. He suspected Doyce’s hand in the affair, and told him so. There must have been something pretty grim in that letter.”
“Think we’ll find it?”
“If the wife is right, he wouldn’t have destroyed it. Imagine the position. Doyce joining Kindilett’s new team, the Trojans, a team with a national reputation, and he had that letter hidden away. Of course, we don’t know what’s in it—yet. But the situation, as I see it, would appeal to Doyce’s imagination. That letter might be a hold over Kindilett.”
“That’s rather changing things round, isn’t it?”
“Yes. But we have Kindilett’s official attitude towards Doyce to remember. He didn’t bar him from the team. He just wasn’t enthusiastic.”
“But I don’t see the point,” said the sergeant. “How do you make anything out of that? What could Doyce have done?”
“It isn’t what he could have done, Clinton, so much as what he knew.”
Clinton grunted. “I don’t want to become a blasted echo,” he said, “but knew what?”
Slade swept round a bus and straightened the car.
“Every one we’ve questioned so far has told us he or she never knew the name of Mary Kindilett’s fiancé. Even Kindilett falls into that line. He may be lying. I don’t know. But if Doyce broke up that engagement, then obviously he knew who the girl’s fiancé was. He could point to him, and he could talk. He could start gossip afresh about the girl’s suicide. He could make Kindilett’s life a fresh hell. Don’t you see?”
“Yes, I missed that, I confess,” said the sergeant. “But what satisfaction would it get him?”
Slade shrugged.
“Who can answer that now? We know Doyce made a mistake in marrying. Probably he has been cursing himself for that mistake ever since. It left him trammelled. He couldn’t get a divorce. If he ever fell in love—if he could genuinely—he could do nothing about it. Mary Kindilett and her death would be, in his mind, directly responsible. Imagine the effect on him after four years of mulling it over. It could leave him mentally warped. I think it did. We saw the letters he had from women, and we know he kicked his heels up. It must have given him a very personal satisfaction at being back in Kindilett’s life, knowing Kindilett resented him, as shown by that letter, and knowing further that he had the power—intangible, but nonetheless actual—of giving Kindilett pain.”
“You’re making him out to be a bit of a sadist.”
“A man who plays about with women the way he did, stealing his partner’s girl, probably for the fun of the thing, isn’t he a sadist?”
Clinton grunted again. He saw the force of Slade’s reasoning. It was psychological, rather than factual, but it added up. It produced a result. And that result was disturbingly far from the one Clinton himself had obtained earlier by linking facts to circumstances.
“All this builds up a stronger case not against Morring,” he pointed out, “or even the unknown fiancé—but against Kindilett.”
“That’s the devil of it,” said Slade. “It does. If we find that letter, and if its contents are what I think they are, and what Mrs Doyce knows they are, but wouldn’t tell us, then Kindilett is in a spot.”
“Hell! I shall want some aspirin if we keep this up,” moaned Clinton.
Slade parked the car in a court near Mallin’s House, a large, grey-stone building with massive bronze doors. The marble hall and staircase was taken over by an army of charwomen when the detectives arrived. They were bandying talk of the day as they swabbed and swept.
Slade and Clinton climbed to the second floor. Morring was waiting for them, standing inside an inner office, reading an evening paper. The windows were all closed, and there was a damp smell to the place that proclaimed the cleaners had done their work and passed on.
“Well, what is it you want here, Inspector?” asked the footballer.
“I want to go through Doyce’s desk. I take it that it has been left untouched?”
“Yes. My time has been taken up with trying to straighten out his side of the business.”
“Did it need—straightening?”
“Oh, don’t misunderstand me, Inspector,” said Morring quickly. “I merely meant that clients have been furiously ringing up wondering what is happening now they haven’t him to look after their affairs. Apparently he left most of his people with the impression that no one else could look after them. That was rather in character, I’m afraid.”
He showed the way into another office, small, compact, but comfortably furnished, with shelves containing files, and one or two water-colours on the walls.
“This was his office,” Morring announced, switching on a desk-lamp.
“Was he married, do you know?”
The question was asked abruptly, and took the other completely by surprise.
“Married? Doyce? Good Lord, he’d be the last to get led to the altar! No, I can’t see John Doyce in that meek role.”
“Would it surprise you very much if I told you I have reason to believe he was married, nevertheless?”
Morring stared, and a slow smile, ironic, a trifle grim, twisted his mouth.
“Surprise me? It would amaze me, Inspector. If some one told you that they’ve been pulling your leg—hard.”
“Think so?” Slade smiled back.
“Certain of it.”
There remained no doubt in the other’s mind; that much was patent.
“Did you come to find something in particular?” Morring inquired after a pause.
“Yes, a letter.” Slade gestured to Clinton, who started searching the desk, making a thorough job of it. “A letter,” he enlarged, “that Doyce received shortly after Mary Kindilett’s death.”
“Oh. Know what was in it?”
“No. But I believe I know who wrote it.”
Morring’s smile, which had receded, returned in full. “You’d have difficulty recognizing it if you didn’t know who wrote it, wouldn’t you?” he asked dryly.
“Depends. Some letters aren’t signed,” Slade reminded him. “Some letter-writers deem it safer not to add their name.”
“I see. One of that sort.”
“I don’t know. Possibly. That’s all.”
Slade joined the sergeant in his search. Morring stood by, smoking, and occasionally dropping a conversational word. But neither Yard man appeared willing to divert his attention from the work in hand.
The desk produced nothing save a mass of business and personal correspondence of no interest to the detectives. Clinton turned to the shelves as Slade tidied the desk and put the loose sheets away in their several drawers. The files on the shelves, however, produced nothing after twenty minutes’ careful scrutiny and thorough sifting. Morring was smoking his third cigarette and had desisted from trying to make conversation by the time the sergeant came to the end of the last shelf and announced a negative result.
“Nothing here. Maybe,” he hinted darkly, “our leg was being pulled.”
Slade did not rise to the bait. He was going through a file cabinet standing in one corner of the office. It had been locked, but a key on the bunch he carried with him had opened it. The lowest tray of the cabinet had been at some time removed, leaving a deep well in the bottom. In the well was a black japanned box. Slade took out the box and stood it on the desk. It had the white initials “J.D.” painted on the lid.
“Hallo,” said Morring, with new interest, “I haven’t seen that box before. It’s a new one on me.”
Slade’s bunch produced another key, which unlocked the box. Inside was an assortment of papers,
most of them secured with rubber bands.
The first pile were personal insurance policies.
Morring frowned. “These weren’t put through the office,” he complained, as though he had discovered an irregularity in procedure.
Slade had thrown the bundle of policies on to the desk, and was fingering the next pile. The papers appeared to be, for the most part, figures detailing a betting system, but whether it had ever been tried out, and whether, if tried out, it had been successful or a failure, he had no means of telling.
“H’m. Close secrets. He probably thought they were safer here than at his flat.”
“Fewer females to pry here,” said Morring sardonically.
Clinton strolled over, and watched them. He saw Slade pick up a folded sheet of paper from the black box and open it out, and he saw Slade’s face light as he read the first words.
“Got it?” he asked.
“Yes. This is it, Clinton.”
There was a quiet triumph in Slade’s tone, but he said no more as his eyes ran down the page of neat, compact writing. The light vanished from his face. When he had finished reading he passed the letter to Clinton. Morring, looking from one man to the other, moved to the sergeant’s side and peered over his shoulder.
The letter ran:
“I think you know, from what I said to you after the inquest on Friday last, that I hold you morally responsible for Mary’s death. The truth did not come out at the inquiry. You and I know that. I believe you deliberately wrecked my daughter’s life, and for that I shall never be able to forgive you. I believe you will have this on your conscience for the rest of your life. May it weigh heavily. For myself, I can only say I consider you a blackguard, and were I a younger man I should ask nothing more than an opportunity to break your neck. It would be better for both of us if we did not meet again.”
Beneath this was a small, neat signature, “Francis J. Kindilett.”
“Well, this sticks a label on the can,” said Clinton, handing the letter back to Slade.
Morring was a man stunned.
“How did you know such a letter existed?” he asked. “It is news to me. I never—”
“Did you expect Doyce to show it to you?” said Slade.
“No, but—” Morring shook his head. “This—I mean it is awful. After what has happened…”
“Exactly,” said Slade grimly. “After what has happened it reads very interestingly.”
“But good God, man! You can’t imagine for a moment that Kindilett murdered Doyce.”
Slade studied the other. Morring’s face was in half-shadow, the light from the desk-lamp only touching one side of it.
“He left Ryechester soon after his daughter’s death. So far as I can find out, he and Doyce did not meet again until your partner joined the Trojans. Right?”
“Yes, I suppose so,” Morring admitted reluctantly. He looked troubled, and made no attempt to hide his disturbed feelings.
“And that was only a matter of a few days ago. Doyce is murdered during his first match with the team. It would seem to make a piece.”
“But it’s preposterous, unthinkable—”
“Preposterous?” Slade shrugged. “Read the evidence of most murder trials which result in a verdict of guilty. Most of it is preposterous. Because a great deal of human behaviour is preposterous, but we rarely confess the fact. But unthinkable? No. Read the letter through again. I should say that, four years ago, Kindilett thought very much along these lines. He cleared out of Ryechester—”
“Because of gossip, because the situation was intolerable, and because—well, he couldn’t live there—”
“True enough. But are you sure it was entirely on account of gossip that he cleared out?” Slade persisted. “He is a man with very strong powers of endurance. He is dogged. Best testimony to those qualities is the team you belong to. He fought hard, against considerable odds, to make that team. He wasn’t easily put off.”
Morring’s clenched fist smote the desk.
“What are you driving at?” he demanded.
Slade held up the letter.
“Mind if I keep this?”
“No,” snapped Morring.
“Right.” The letter disappeared into the detective’s wallet. He answered the question that had been put to him. “I’m not driving at anything. I’m just trying to show that this letter would be considered as vital evidence by a prosecution counsel.”
“What was written four years ago in a moment of heat can’t rightly be considered as applicable to-day, after all this time.”
Morring seemed determined to defend the absent man. His very determination interested Slade.
“Taken by itself, no, I agree,” said the detective slowly. “But circumstances give it point. The circumstances of Doyce’s entry into the team—an entry you yourself contended—”
“But that was not so much on personal grounds.”
“Are you sure?”
“Well—”
“You obviously aren’t sure. You feel that personal feelings might have weighed with you. That’s only natural. All right. How about Kindilett? Couldn’t personal feelings have weighed with him too? And more strongly than in your case? After all—”
“Oh, don’t go on with it!” Morring cried, turning away from the desk. “The more one chews it over the—the more nauseating it is. I can’t believe Kindilett murdered him. But I see now what was meant by the coroner this morning. This is what you expected to find.”
Slade did not correct him. He glanced at Clinton. There was a sardonic grin on the sergeant’s face. The situation, with its peculiar dramatic values, its protestations and personal comparisons, appealed to his sanely cynical mind. As he had told Slade more than once in the past, a murderer who doesn’t lie and deceive to cover up his guilt is a fool. A man’s neck is worth a string of lies. Slade wondered just what Clinton was making of things now. His case against Morring, the latter’s defence of Kindilett in view of this letter, which, as a piece of possible court-room evidence, was a bombshell.
A charwoman’s voice rang through the offices.
“Hey, Doris, what did you do with my other brush?”
“Well,” said Slade, “I think we’ve finished here now. There’s nothing else we want.”
A mocking smile touched Morring’s lips.
“You seem suddenly sure, Inspector.”
Slade was putting the rubber-banded bundles back in the japanned box.
“Later,” he said, ignoring the other’s comment, “I shall want your partner’s pass-book. He didn’t happen to mention a Mrs Edwards to you, did he?”
“Edwards? No, I don’t recall the name. Was she a client, do you think?”
“Well, not in the customary sense.”
A grunt came from Clinton. Morring glanced at the sergeant.
“I see,” he said. “Like that. No, I don’t know the name at all. Is that everything, Inspector?”
His tone was somewhat more distant, reserved.
“I think so, for the time being,” said Slade easily. “Oh, you might tell me if you knew a pub in Ryechester called the Fox and Ferret.”
“Yes. Best place for a drink of beer in the town.”
“You patronized it?”
“I’m not what might be called a drinking man. But I went into the Fox and Ferret occasionally. Why?”
“Don’t happen to remember a barmaid there called Lily, do you?”
“I don’t see the point of all this,” said Morring, “but as it happens I do remember her. She stuck out a mile above the other barmaids. To forestall your next question, Inspector, I’ll tell you at once, she was a very superior girl, and I believe the laddie who used to take group photos of the team was stuck on her.”
“Prines?”
“That might have been his name. I don’t
remember. I was never interested in him. And now, what the devil does this all mean?”
“It means,” said Slade, with a smile, “that you’ve been most helpful. Sorry if I can’t be more explicit in return. And now we won’t keep you any longer.”
XVI
Highbury Nocturne
It was after eight o’clock when Slade left the A.C.’s room at Scotland Yard and returned to the office of Department X2. Clinton had gone. Taking out his pipe, the detective filled and lit it, and for a quarter of an hour smoked reflectively. He had had a long day following previous long days, but he was not tired. He felt intensely alive, as a matter of fact. Things were clearing themselves in his mind. The A.C. had gone over the case with the Commissioner, and both were convinced that the strongest case was against Morring. There had been a sharp reminder from the A.C. that a result was expected very shortly. Slade had been granted his extension of time to complete his search for evidence, the inquest had been adjourned, and now the Press was waiting for something that would show the Yard knew their business. To-morrow was Wednesday. A move—a definite move—was expected.
Slade had received the intimation that it was now up to him.
Going over what the day had produced, assessing it in the light of what he had previously uncovered, Slade found himself in two minds. The case against Morring remained strong, although he personally was still convinced that the footballer was innocent. The case he had constructed against Kindilett was not so strong at first viewing, but it was fundamentally sound theory, built up from a wide, firm base of fact. Yet Slade was not content. Out of the evidence he had procured there should be something that would clarify the issue in his mind.
He had yet to produce the murder “weapon,” which he was convinced was a solitaire engagement ring that had once been on Mary Kindilett’s left hand. Could he use that object to precipitate his solution? Could he combine it with the effect produced at the inquest that morning to force the murderer’s hand? Bring him into the open?
Possibilities, suggestions, the vague outline of new theories passed through his mind, a progressive array of phantoms that somehow eluded his mental grasp.
The Arsenal Stadium Mystery Page 18