The Red Carnelian

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  “Well, I’ll try,” I said, feeling more inadequate by the moment.

  Her kind, plump little face took on a surprisingly grim expression. “Michael Montgomery was a very wicked man. I’m glad he’s dead. I hope they never catch the person who did it.” Then she added, “So there!” like a reckless child.

  But her indignation died out almost at once and she stood up, her own amiable self again. At the door she paused.

  “There’s one thing, Miss Wynn. I know I can trust you. Mr. Hering was right. Chris never came to the waiting room to meet me. I made it up about meeting her on the stairs. I found her wandering around down on the main floor in a dazed sort of state, but what she was doing there I don’t know.”

  That was rather startling information. But before I could comment, she went still further.

  “Did you find the stone from that ring in your smock?” she asked. “And did it mean anything?”

  I couldn’t suppress a start. “How did you know about that?”

  “Why—why Chris mentioned it to Owen and me when she came home last night. Wasn’t she supposed to tell?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Not now. The stone was gone when I got to the office.”

  I watched her for any reaction, but she so often looked disturbed that it was difficult to gauge her state of mind. She fluttered out of the office shortly after.

  So Chris had talked. Which brought both Owen and Susan into the thing, and left me no closer to a solution, or even an opinion. Knowing Owen and Susan, I couldn’t imagine either of them in the murderous role that had been played in this very office. But as far as that went, I couldn’t imagine anyone I knew killing Monty.

  Later on I’d get Bill Thorne and we’d go over the whole thing together. When he heard what a close call I’d had that morning, perhaps he’d change his tune. And when he knew that Chris had never really gone to the waiting room to meet Susan, he might not be so gallant about listing her as a non-suspect. As for the suspects, there were a couple of others we hadn’t included on our list last night.

  Susan Gardner, for one, with her unexpected bitterness against Monty and her strongly protective mother love for a girl who wasn’t her own daughter. And Helena, who had something on her mind about that scratch. And the model, Carla Drake, though her connection was obscure.

  The next three-quarters of an hour ran along on a more normal schedule. I had no further time for making wild deductions for the phone rang repeatedly, people rushed in and out of the office, buyers issued orders no one had any intention of obeying and had to be quieted and placated. It was a relief to throw myself into the whirlpool of my ordinary life.

  On top of everything else, the newspaper reporters suddenly discovered the eighth floor and were in our hair, until Mr. Cunningham furiously pulled strings and got them called off.

  Once, when the telephone rang, it was Hering, to tell me he’d talked to McPhail and that the detective wanted to come over that afternoon to question me and to get an idea of the set-up of my office.

  The hour for my appointment with Chris seemed to arrive in no time at all. I left the store with a sense of release from unbearable surroundings and hurried to the Polka Dot.

  Chris was already there, holding a place for me in one of the small booths. There were dark circles under her eyes and her lips had a tendency to quiver.

  “Oh, Linell!” she cried. “I was so afraid you wouldn’t come!”

  I slipped into the seat opposite her. “Of course I’d come. Have you ordered yet?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t want any food. I just came here to have a chance to talk. Everywhere else there are always people around you.”

  I couldn’t urge food upon her. I felt so little like eating myself. We ordered soup and I settled back against the wall of the booth.

  “Now then—what’s troubling you?”

  “It’s Sondo. Linell, she frightens me. She’s an awful person. I’ve always known she had no use for me, but now she hates me. She hates me because I married Monty and she wants to hurt me.”

  “But there’s no way in which she can hurt you,” I said, “other than using her sharp tongue when she gets a chance. And you have to accept that with Sondo.”

  “But why should she want to hurt me?”

  I reached out and patted Chris’s hand. She had large hands, long-fingered and broad across the back, but somehow useless, helpless. Not tough, sinewy little paws like Sondo’s.

  “It’s not hard to see,” I told her. “You’re young and very pretty, and you married Monty. Probably if I’d married him, she’d have wanted to hurt me too. I’ve never realized it before, but I think Monty has been something of an idol to her and his death has hit her pretty hard.”

  Quick tears came in Chris’s eyes and she was silent, remembering. The waitress brought our orders and I waited till she’d gone before I spoke.

  “Was that all you had to tell me?” I asked at length.

  “No, there’s something else,” she said, blinking back the tears. “The thing I’ve really been wanting to say. Monty had some reason for marrying me, Linell. Something that hadn’t anything to do with me personally. He even threw it up to me while we were away. He said the only thing I meant to him was protection, that I was a weapon in his hands. A weapon to keep him safe.”

  “What did he mean by that?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know at all. Perhaps I couldn’t keep him safe after all from whatever it was he feared. So if we could just find out what it was, then we’d know why he died and who killed him.”

  “Have you any ideas as to how to go about it?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Yes. That’s where you come in. I want you to help me. I want to go up to his apartment and go through his things.”

  “The police have already done that,” I said.

  “I know a place to look they might have missed. A place he told me about. He said if anything ever—happened, to look there.”

  “Then why don’t you tell McPhail and have him help you?”

  Chris’s lips began to quiver and I thought she might break into tears again. But she made an effort and quickly recovered.

  “No, Linell! I just want you to go with me. What I find might be something I wouldn’t want the police to see.”

  “Well,” I said, “I don’t know why you shouldn’t go in and out of the apartment as you please, even though there’s probably a guard stationed outside for the time being.”

  Chris looked dismayed. “A guard? Oh, dear! I never thought of that. I don’t want them to know. Anyway I’ve lost the key to the apartment,”

  I glanced at her sharply. “Lost the key?”

  “Well, I can’t find it. And Monty gave me one, you know, when we came back to town—though I spent just one night there and haven’t been back since.”

  Somehow I didn’t like the idea of that lost key. Particularly if there was evidence hidden in the apartment which might incriminate someone. That made another puzzler.

  Suddenly, as I watched her, Chris’s face seemed to crumple into confusion, doubt, fear.

  “What is it?” I demanded. “What’s the matter?”

  In frozen silence, she was looking toward the front of the restaurant.

  I reached out, clasped her shoulder and shook it. Chris jerked away, shrank far back in the booth.

  “We’ve got to get out,” she whispered. “Quickly.”

  “But why?” I asked. “Stop acting like a baby, Chris.”

  The jibe had no effect. She was up, pulling at my arm. We paid our checks and went hurriedly out of the restaurant. But not so hurriedly that I missed the two in the front booth.

  Owen Gardner was leaning forward, his interest wholly absorbed in the woman who sat opposite him. In passing the booth, I had a glimpse of powder blue, of the fall of silvery hair beneat
h a smart little hat. The woman was Carla Drake.

  9

  Chicago’s loop was aroar with the noon hour rush, and elevated trains rumbled above our heads as we turned down Wabash Avenue. The lights changed at the shrill of a policeman’s whistle. I slipped my arm through Chris’s and marched her along briskly.

  “Do you think they saw us?” she asked, without turning to look at me.

  “I doubt it,” I assured her. “But why didn’t you want to be seen? What’s up?”

  Her voice was so low that I had difficulty catching the words above the din of traffic. “I’ve been afraid he was meeting her, Linell. But I haven’t been sure till now. Oh, how can he? How can he hurt poor Susan like that?”

  I tightened my grip on her arms. “Don’t leap to conclusions. The world hasn’t come to an end just because your father is taking one of the store models to lunch. It’s been done before without any dynasties collapsing. Don’t be an infant!”

  Somehow I couldn’t pack a great deal of reassurance into my words. I remembered only too clearly that moment, yesterday, when I’d gone to Gardner’s office and there’d been something almost guilty about the way he’d ushered me in and dismissed Carla. However, Gardner’s peccadillos, unpleasant as they might be for his wife and daughter, had nothing to do with the more immediate matter of Monty’s death. Chris had enough concern without this added distress.

  “You mustn’t worry,” I told her, managing to put some conviction into my voice. “I’m sure it can all be explained quite harmlessly and that you’ll feel foolish and ashamed of your suspicions. After all, Carla’s no young girl. She must be close to forty, if not more.”

  But I doubt if Chris listened to a word I was saying. We said good-bye at the foot of the elevated steps and I stood looking after her for a moment, before cutting over to State Street to get back to Cunningham’s.

  I knew what I was going to do before I turned my attention to anything else.

  Keith looked up as I walked into the office. “Tony wants to see you right away. He says never mind the crime wave—his windows have to go in and you’re to hurry over.”

  I picked up the phone, called a number.

  “I’ll go see him in a minute,” I told Keith and then spoke into the phone. “Hello, Mr. Thorne? . . . Oh, Bill, I’m glad to talk to you! Bill, when can I see you?”

  His voice was cheerful. “How about tonight? I have to finish up some work here, but it won’t take too long. Suppose you come out to the shop when you’re through work and we’ll have dinner together.”

  “Wonderful!” I cried, feeling that several tons of worry had slipped from my shoulders. “I’ll be out around six.”

  “Anything wrong?” Bill asked.

  My fingers felt the lump behind my ear. His voice had such a sympathetic ring, I had to make a real effort to keep from blurting out what had happened to me.

  “No—well, I suppose there is in a way,” I told him. “A lot of ways. But I can’t tell you now. See you later.”

  I felt considerably better when I hung up. Bill was that kind of person. He had a level head on his shoulders and he’d help me to see everything clearly. Until then, I’d simply stop puzzling and worrying.

  That’s what I thought.

  Keith was watching me. He spoke as soon as I hung up the receiver.

  “Tony said I was to take that phonograph out to Universal Arts this afternoon. But if you’re going out there—”

  He looked unhappy and I knew how badly he must want to get away from Cunningham’s.

  “You can take it out,” I told him. “It will be heavy, I expect, and I don’t want to juggle it on a crowded street car.”

  He cheered up right away and I went off to the display department.

  I could hear Sondo and Tony wrangling long before I reached Sondo’s workroom. The girl was up on her ladder, working on a background for Tony’s red windows.

  She had painted two or three figures coming down a corridor of big red and white checks. The checked floor of the painted corridor would continue into the window itself and mannequins would be set upon it.

  The two of them were behaving as if nothing had happened to disturb their show-window world, and their manner jarred me. I couldn’t immediately look beneath the casual surface of their flippancy for the tension that must have existed.

  “How do you like it?” Tony asked, “We’ll be putting the red series in Friday, so you’d better count on working late that night.”

  “Maybe they’ll go in,” Sondo snapped. “I’ve still got the navy blue background to do and the decorations for the window signs. And now you’re howling for screens.”

  Tony ignored her. “You get the set-up, Linell? The golf window, then the red series in the middle. And next week we’re putting gray in the corner window. Babcock says they’ll be showing a lot of gray this spring and she wants all gray dresses in the display. That’s why I want to put in some folding screens for background. Something to liven up the color scheme.”

  I suppressed a desire to call them back to the reality of horror. Too much that was dreadful hung over our heads. If we snatched at a familiar routine, perhaps we could for a little while avoid the quicksands. I made an effort to join the discussion.

  “I saw a hat down in millinery a couple of days ago that was a honey,” I told Tony. “Flame color. If it hasn’t been sold it would give you your color keynote.”

  That was the way the decorators worked. One striking note of color gave them their key and they built around it, repeating it in background and accessories.

  Sondo came down from the ladder. Fresh smears of red brightened the already stained smock, and her black hair escaped in careless tendrils from beneath the yellow kerchief. She pulled a wallpaper book from a shelf and began to ruffle through its pages.

  “Here you are, Tony!” she cried, shoving the book toward him. “There’s flame for you in those flower clusters. If they match the hat, we can use wallpaper to cover the screens. And I can copy the flower motif on the window signs in flame, too.”

  “Good girl!” Tony said, and they beamed at each other amiably.

  Then Sondo climbed back up the ladder and returned to work, and Tony sent one of his helpers to millinery to pick up the hat.

  “That’s a start,” he said. “Now if you’ll get going on the window signs, Linell.”

  I closed my eyes and attempted half-heartedly to play the game the others were playing. It wasn’t as easy for me as for them. There was nothing hanging over Sondo’s head, or Tony’s. No one had made an attack on their lives. Even though I didn’t want what had happened to me publicized, still I felt a twinge of resentment that these two could be so casual and matter-of-fact in their ignorance of how close I’d come to death.

  “Shimmering gray for spring,” I chanted. “The gray gleam of April rain, accented by all the hues in your garden.”

  Sondo Bronx cheered lustily. “Talk about tripe! I’m glad I only have to paint signs, not write ’em.”

  “Don’t pay any attention to her,” Tony assured me. “She’s a frustrated sign writer herself. Anyway, these new windows are going to be something. Better than anything Michael Montgomery ever put in.” The name carried a spell with it that hushed our forced cheerfulness.

  “You’re glad Monty’s gone, aren’t you?” Sondo said bitterly.

  Tony glared up at her. “What do you expect me to say? I never wasted any love on him while he was alive, why should I pretend to now that he’s dead? I’m running this department and I can’t be sorry because Monty’s not around to interfere.”

  “What if they put in another display manager over your head?” Sondo asked. “Will you get rid of him too?”

  “Oh, stop it!” I broke in. “We’re all in this together and it doesn’t do any of us much good to go flinging ridiculous accusations around.”

 
“How can you be so sure it’s a ridiculous accusation?” Sondo demanded. “There’s just one thing I’d like to know, Tony. Why did you get that peculiar look on your face and shut up so fast when McPhail told you Monty was killed with a golf club?”

  “You know what you can do,” Tony said. “And if I get the job of running this department permanently, don’t think you’re going to stay in it.”

  Sondo tossed her kerchiefed head. “I’ll be here longer than you, Mister Salvador. Lay you odds on that.”

  I stopped listening to their squabble because I was thinking of that golf club and my own fingerprints upon it, prints the police now held in duplicate in their records. I had to tell McPhail about finding the club. I had to tell him before he discovered those prints.

  I started out of the room and Tony stopped quarreling with Sondo to call after me.

  “Hey, Linell! Will you go down and talk to Babcock? You know how to handle her. She’s just had another brain child. A perfectly stinko idea about having mannequins lined up in the window holding block letters in their hands spelling out GRAY FOR SPRING. Discourage it, will you?”

  “I’ll try,” I said wearily and went off toward the elevators.

  I didn’t care much about Babcock’s ideas, or the continual war that raged between some of the buyers and window display. I felt as if I walked a narrow ledge with an abyss on either side. On one hand waited the police. It was true that I, more than anyone else, had the motive for Monty’s murder. And too much circumstantial evidence, still unknown to McPhail, had piled up against me. I might have some nasty times ahead unless I moved carefully.

  But on the other hand lay a more terrifying danger. The very real attack on my life, and the unpleasant possibility Hering had suggested—that the murderer might watch for an opportunity to “finish off the job.”

  It was no wonder that I went down to see Miss Babcock in a most indifferent frame of mind.