The Red Carnelian

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  It was late when we got home and I felt so tired and upset that I didn’t invite Bill up. He hadn’t said anything about Carla Drake and it seemed to me that omission was very peculiar indeed.

  He had a funny quirk to his smile when he said good night, and told me pointedly that I’d be hearing from him soon. I hoped my manner indicated to him how little I cared.

  The moment Helena and I stepped into our living room, I could sense the uneasiness between us. She said nothing, and I said nothing and the silence grew into a chasm. We went about our usual preparations for bed as if nothing extraordinary had happened, but each was intensely aware of the other. I was waiting for her to speak, to explain, and she knew I was waiting. But she said nothing at all. She went off to the bathroom, came back with her face carefully creamed for the night and got calmly and silently into bed.

  That was too much for me. I went over and sat on the edge of her bed, pulling my pajama-clad knees up to my chin. Helena had switched off the light and the room was dim except for moonlight at the window over by my bed. I didn’t mind. Sometimes it’s easier to talk in the dark.

  “You’d better tell me,” I said. “I have to know.”

  She lay with one arm thrown across her eyes and in the gloom I couldn’t see her face at all.

  “What if I don’t tell you?” she asked.

  “Then—then I’ll have to go to McPhail,” I said reluctantly. “How can the police work when all these under-the-surface things are kept out of their hands?”

  “Such, for instance,” Helena said quietly, “as the fact that you were the one who found Monty’s body?”

  Her words startled me. That was an attitude I’d never expected her to take. And she certainly had me. I knew that the part I’d played was perfectly innocent, and of no value to the police, but who else knew it? As Hering had pointed out, I had a strong motive and McPhail was already treating me with suspicion. I’d be in for a siege if he found out.

  “Helena,” I said, “sooner or later I think everything is going to come out and that we’ll both have to tell McPhail the truth. But in the meantime—”

  Her voice was hard, unfriendly. “In the meantime let well enough alone.”

  But I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t go over to the other bed and go to sleep, wondering and guessing and suspecting. When it came right down to it, I didn’t know an awful lot about Helena. I’d become acquainted with her when she’d first come to the store about a year before. I’d had to do a series of jewelry signs for the windows and Helena had helped me. She’d seemed very interested in what went on upstairs in the window display and advertising departments, and we’d struck up a friendship. When she’d suggested that we take a larger apartment together and split expenses, it had been a nice break for me. But in the months we’d lived there, I’d learned very little about her. Though, until now, that fact hadn’t seemed important.

  “Helena,” I said, “did you know Michael Montgomery? I mean did you know him at all well?”

  “I knew him well enough to dislike him,” she said. “But I’m scarcely his type.”

  I followed up my thread of an idea. “Did you ever know him—in the past?”

  “Of course I didn’t know him.” She said it a little too sharply and I had the same feeling that she was holding something back that I’d had when I’d asked her about Carla.

  “All right then,” I went on, “there’s just one other thing, and I think you’d better tell me this. Who is Lotta Montez?”

  She sat straight up in bed. “Linell, I’m very fond of you, and I know you mean well about all this. But you simply must let the questions go unanswered. If you don’t, you may get some innocent people badly involved. One of them, at least, has suffered enough at Monty’s hands. To turn that person over to McPhail now would do no good, and it might do irreparable harm.”

  She dropped back on her pillow and closed her eyes. Moonlight touched her face and her mouth looked bitter and twisted.

  “Then you know who murdered Michael Montgomery?” I said in a low voice. “You do know, don’t you?”

  She turned her face toward the shadows. “I don’t know anything. I don’t know anything at all. Go to bed. Go to sleep.”

  I got helplessly off her bed, slid my feet into mules. It was no use. I had an idea that even if McPhail put her through the third degree, she still wouldn’t tell what she knew.

  The phone rang and I flew to answer it, with thoughts of disaster flooding my mind. Who on earth could be calling at this hour? Had something happened at Sondo’s?

  My hand was shaking when I lifted the receiver. It was Bill’s voice and there was only impudence in it.

  “Hello, baby,” he said. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to sleep until you hear how I fared with My Lady of the Silver Hair.”

  I wanted to slam the receiver down, but curiosity got the better of me.

  “I suppose she confessed that she murdered Monty and threw herself on your mercy?” I inquired.

  “Nothing of the kind,” he said, and I didn’t like his laugh. “We didn’t talk about sordid things like murder. Too busy discovering common interests. Carla likes to rhumba and so do I. I think we’re going to make quite a team.”

  “Look,” I said, “I’m a working girl and it’s way past midnight. Didn’t you even find out what time she went down to exchange that pin?”

  “Well, no,” he admitted. “It seems she doesn’t remember either.”

  “But how did she look when you asked her?”

  “Beautiful. That’s the only way she ever looks.”

  “Oh, well,” I said, “if you want to run around with old women it’s no concern of mine.”

  “Jealous, baby?”

  “I am not jealous,” I said. And then I did hang up. Right in his ear.

  When I went back to the bedroom Helena looked as if she’d gone to sleep, so I didn’t bother her. I crawled into bed thinking murderous thoughts about the entire male sex and one member of the female in particular. But I suspect that I was rather enjoying myself. So long as it was Bill who pulled my pigtails, I’d just as soon have them pulled.

  16

  Fortunately I didn’t have to get to work early Friday. Tony’s red windows were going in that night, and even with Tony in jail, the work had to go ahead. Lately Monty had had me stay to help him with the big State Street windows. On these occasions I came down late in the morning and worked late at night along with the rest of the department. That was my plan for the day, so it didn’t matter if I overslept.

  I awoke with a jolt and sat up in bed, feeling that it was going to be the worst possible sort of day. It wasn’t raining, but clouds hung low, and the air was heavily oppressive. Not a breath of wind stirred at my window, but dampness cut through to the bone.

  More than the weather disturbed me, however. My first waking thought was that something was about to happen. Something terrible that had to be stopped. It took me a minute or two to pull myself out of my deep sleep and figure out who I was and what I was concerned about.

  Then I thought of Sondo. Had she and Carla come through the night all right? I had to know at once. I got up quickly.

  Helena’s bed was empty and her breakfast dishes stacked in the sink. She’d left without waking me, since she had to get to work on time as usual.

  I looked up Sondo’s number and called it. I waited for a dozen rings, but there wasn’t any answer. That might, or might not be ominous. Sondo’s hours depended on the work she had to do, and if she had to go down early and stay late, she often took some time off in the afternoon. On the other hand—but I didn’t want to think about that.

  I ate a sketchy breakfast and hurried for the bus, knowing there’d be no peace-of-mind for me, until I reached the store.

  I’d told Keith he might help me in the windows, so he was working on the late shift, too, and hadn’t c
ome in when I reached the office.

  I called window display, but the operator could get no answer. Which still didn’t mean anything serious. I tried the fourth floor and got Carla easily.

  “Where’s Sondo?” I asked.

  “Sondo?” She sounded surprised at the urgency in my voice. “Why, we left her place together this morning. Isn’t she upstairs?”

  Relief swept through me. “It’s all right then,” I assured Carla. “She’s probably running around the store. Nothing—happened last night?”

  “Of course not,” Carla said in surprise. “Whatever would?”

  Now that I could breathe again, I couldn’t resist a dig. “Bill says you’re a wonderful rhumba dancer, Carla.”

  She gave a queer little gasp. “Why, how silly! I’ve never danced the rhumba in my life.” There was a blank pause and then she said, “Oh, there’s someone calling me. Sorry,” and rang off,

  I put down the telephone. What on earth was the matter with her? Had Bill just been teasing me? But even then, there was nothing in the word “rhumba” to startle anyone. She’d acted as if I’d accused her of something awful.

  I got up and moved about the office restlessly. So many things puzzled me. Chris hiding in the window at the very time when Monty was murdered. That was a terrible thought in itself. Helena stealing into Monty’s apartment, burning that note. Later refusing to explain. And always Carla somewhere in the picture.

  I felt as if I ought to do something. But I didn’t know what. The vacant spot on my wall, where that picture had been, caught my eye tantalizingly and I made a face at it.

  “Oh, you!” I said. “If I could just remember what you were!”

  Keith chose that moment to walk in and was evidently not too reassured to find me talking to myself. He gave me a sidelong glance and slunk toward his desk.

  “Well!” I said. “Good morning. How are you? I like people to speak to me when they come to work!”

  He said, “You’re feeling it again, too aren’t you?”

  I looked at him blankly.

  “I mean it was like this the other day. Our nerves all tied up and waiting for something. And then Mr. Montgomery—”

  “Oh, stop it,” I told him. “Of course our nerves are wound up. That affair at Sondo’s last night was enough to upset us all.”

  “It isn’t just that,” he said darkly. “Miss Wynn—maybe I talked too much last night.”

  “I can’t remember your talking at all.”

  “But I did,” he said. “And I shouldn’t have. If you happen to remember, please don’t mention it to anyone. Will you, Miss Wynn?”

  “Of course not,” I told him. I wasn’t trying to remember what he’d said. My thoughts were concerned with Sondo and I was uneasy because no one answered the phone in the display department. Sondo had come to work early. So where was she? I ought to talk to McPhail and tell him everything I knew, but somehow I hesitated. There was that queer threat Helena had made and which I had an idea she might carry out. But most of all I didn’t want to tie Chris up in a chain of circumstantial evidence.

  Keith looked up suddenly. “It couldn’t be, of course, but—that sounds like Tony Salvador.”

  It was Tony, all right, and he was furiously angry. As he approached my office I could hear Sylvester Hering attempting to calm him.

  “Now take it easy, Tony?” Hering was saying. “She only told the police what was her duty to tell them. You can’t blame—”

  “I know what she did!” Tony broke in. “She built up a whole pack of lies just to get me arrested. Wait till I get my hands on her!”

  They were coming down my corridor and I ran to the door.

  “Hello, Tony. We all knew they’d have to let you go, but we’ve been worried just the same. Thank goodness you’re back to work on the windows tonight.”

  He gave me a black look and went right on raging. “Nobody can stop me from what I’m going to do to Sondo Norgaard. Not if they have to take me right back to jail for it.”

  Hering said, “Take it easy, take it easy,” and trailed after Tony.

  “I’ll be right back,” I told Keith and followed Tony and Hering toward the display department.

  I wanted to see Sondo and assure myself that she was all right.

  The department was deserted. None of the window decorators had come down yet and there was no Sondo anywhere. We gathered for a council of war in her workroom. The green plant still wore its Easter bonnet and on a table was one of Sondo’s latest creations. A lamb made of rolled tubes of white paper. A fetching little creature with downcast, fringed paper eyelids. A screen to be used in the gray window was pulled out beside Sondo’s work table, and I looked around it out of idle curiosity. What I saw made me gasp and reach weakly for Hering.

  A woman’s body, clad only in a pink satin underslip, lay twisted awkwardly face down behind the screen.

  “She’s here!” I cried. “Here on the floor!”

  Hering pushed me aside and Tony crowded after him. They stood for an instant looking down in shocked silence. Then Hering turned back to me with a melancholy smile.

  “It’s okay, Miss Wynn. It ain’t what you thought.”

  It wasn’t Sondo. When I looked again I saw that the too-­awkward position of the legs and arms wasn’t due to death, but to the inanimate. Tony’s Dolores lay there on the floor.

  I started to laugh a little hysterically, but Tony knelt beside the mannequin’s figure and gave me a look that stopped me at once.

  “If Sondo did this,” he said, “there’s just one more score to square with her.”

  I believe that in some strange way Dolores was a real person to Tony. He turned her over quite gently and I gave a cry of dismay. The whole side of the mannequin’s head had been broken in. Not by a fall, but deliberately.

  We knew it had been deliberately because as Tony turned her we saw the hammer under her body. Tony reached for it, but Hering put a quick foot on his wrist.

  “Don’t touch it,” he said, “Fingerprints.”

  That was when I began to get the sinister aspect of the thing. The viciousness. It must have taken wild rage, or else a cold impulse toward destruction to have smashed the mannequin. And who would vent rage upon a thing of plaster and papier maché?

  Yet there was no other sign of vandalism in the room. Nothing else had been touched. Hering found the mannequin’s dress on a chair. A bright red dress she would have worn when they put her in the window that night.

  The hammer was a small one Sondo kept on hand for tacks and the light carpentry work she sometimes attempted. I’d seen it often on her shelves. But there was no Sondo in the department, though Hering and I went through every room of it.

  Tony stayed beside Dolores and I believe he was actually grieving. When we came back, he looked up at us.

  “There’s no use searching for her,” he said. “This is just something else she’s done to get even with me. But she’d have sense enough to get out of my sight after she did it. You needn’t expect her here today.”

  Hering looked around the room. “It don’t seem like the Norgaard girl would do a thing like this.”

  “A lot you know!” Tony told him. “It’s exactly the sort of thing she would do if the impulse struck her. Sondo’s a devil.”

  “Just the same,” Hering mused, “it don’t seem like anybody who wanted to work for the store would go smashing one of those mannequins. They cost a lot of money, don’t they?”

  “Dolores came to a hundred and fifty dollars,” Tony said.

  “And there’s another thing.” Hering went over and picked up the red dress. “Of course I don’t know much about the way you run things up here, but I’ve got a sort of picture in my head. I mean about these dresses you use in the windows. You don’t just go throwing them around on chairs, do you?”

  “Of cour
se not,” Tony said. “We get them fresh from the press room and then—”

  “And then they go right on the dummy, don’t they?”

  “Mannequin.” Tony corrected automatically.

  “But you carry ’em around on hangers, don’t you? And if you had to let a dress out of your hands, you’d hook the hanger over something. You wouldn’t just go throwing the dress over the back of the chair.”

  Tony and I both looked at him. He had something there. Not a hanger in sight in the room.

  “Of course I wouldn’t know,” Hering said, “but it looks like maybe that dum—mannequin was already dressed and somebody took the dress off her. Took it off in such a hurry that they didn’t bother to look for a hanger to hang it up properly, just tossed it over a chair.”

  We found out very shortly that he was right about the mannequin having been dressed. The rest of the department started to straggle in and one of the boys admitted that he’d dressed Dolores before he went home the previous day. The mannequins had to be carried downstairs in sections, and were usually dressed in the windows, but in this case Sondo had wanted to try out some effects and had asked that Dolores be dressed and left in her workroom.

  This careful deduction got us nowhere. Tony finally dragged himself away from the “body” and Hering went to phone McPhail about the latest developments. It wasn’t until much later in the day that Miss Babcock got into the affair and began to throw tantrums because the red belt that belonged with the dress was missing.

  Meanwhile, I went back to my office to find Chris waiting for me. By the sudden silence that fell when I walked in and the guilty expressions on the faces of both Chris and Keith, I could surmise that I’d interrupted a little heart-to-heart talk.

  “Oh, Linell!” Chris burst out when she had recovered from her momentary embarrassment. “I came to ask you not to say anything to the police about what came out at Sondo’s party. You don’t have to, do you? After all, it hasn’t anything to do with Monty’s death. I mean, since I don’t really know anything—” A flush crept up her throat and into her cheeks and she stopped helplessly.