The Red Carnelian

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  I put an arm about the girl’s shoulders. “You mustn’t. It doesn’t help. They’ll be wanting to question you pretty soon, and you’ve got to be ready to answer sensibly.”

  Chris jerked her head up and there was very evident terror mingled with the grief in her face. “But I don’t know anything! I haven’t anything to tell. Oh, Linell, make them let me go home. Don’t they understand that I’ve just lost my husband? Don’t they—”

  “Hush!” I tightened my grip on her shoulder, glad to have this task of quieting her. It helped me get myself in hand and keep a rein on my own emotions. “This isn’t an ordinary death. That’s a terrible thing to face, but we all have to face it and do what we can to help the police.”

  This only brought on a fresh attack of sobbing, so I gave up and sat patting her shoulder.

  Another bench had been pulled up and Sondo, still smoking, had plumped down on it between Bill and Tony, her scrawny legs crossed and the green smock hitched carelessly above her knees. It was impossible for Sondo to fall into a position remotely resembling feminine grace.

  Tony looked dazed and he was still not entirely sober. He had slumped down on the end of his spine, his long legs thrust inconveniently into the aisle, where everyone who passed had to step over them.

  Bill was the only one who looked unconcerned and natural, and I didn’t like that a lot. This wasn’t any time to look unconcerned and natural. He must have felt my eyes upon him for he held my gaze for just a moment. Not by so much as a flicker did his expression change, but somehow there was meaning in his look.

  It said, “Don’t worry. You’ll get through all right.” But it said something else too, as plainly as words. It said, “Be careful”

  I gave him a faint nod that meant I understood and then glanced at Mrs. Gardner over Chris’s bowed head.

  “Who found him?” I whispered.

  She didn’t have to ask whom I meant, but her lips trembled and she tried twice before she managed to form the words.

  “Owen,” she said. “Owen found him.”

  That was a bit dismaying. It would have been better if it had been someone wholly unconcerned. Now the detectives would trace the enmity between Gardner and Monty, and the tie-up with Chris. In which case I couldn’t throw Owen to the wolves—I’d have to tell the truth, explain that he couldn’t have had anything to do with it because Monty had been dead before Owen Gardner had ever gone to the window. I had reason to know. It would look pretty bad for me, considering that I’d rushed off upstairs without giving the alarm. Bill’s well-intended efforts would land us in hot water yet.

  Just then Gardner stepped down out of the window, followed by a detective, and McPhail beckoned to him. The whispering of the sales girls on the other bench hushed as all attention focused on McPhail and our fourth floor merchandise manager.

  I gathered that McPhail felt this was an inside job. Even though the store had been filled with customers, it was unlikely that one of them had stepped into the window and murdered Monty. Nothing had been stolen from his wallet. While the customer angle wasn’t being overlooked, probability pointed toward some more revengeful and personal motive than theft.

  Gardner told briefly about coming down to the window, looking for Montgomery, and described finding the body.

  “Why did you want to see him?” McPhail asked.

  Gardner was holding himself in check, but a muscle in his cheek twitched. “Why shouldn’t I? There’s a decided tie-up between my department and window display.”

  For the first time I noticed that Sylvester Hering had taken up a stand across the aisle at the perfume counter. His huge arms leaned alarmingly on the fragile glass of a showcase, and his attention seemed concentrated lovingly on the glittering display of bottles and vials. But his ears were missing nothing of what went on, for without shifting his rapt gaze, he spoke to McPhail.

  “There ain’t no tie-up with that golf window and Mr. Gardner’s department. He don’t handle sport stuff.”

  “Nevertheless,” said Gardner, “I had business to discuss with Mr. Montgomery. I was not at all satisfied with the evening gown display he gave me in the corner window. That was a botched-up job, if ever I saw one.”

  “So you didn’t like Montgomery?” McPhail caught him up.

  “Certainly I didn’t like him. But I’d scarcely murder a man because I disapproved of the way he displayed my goods. If that’s what you mean to imply.”

  “I’m not implying anything,” McPhail snapped. “I’m just trying to get the set-up here.”

  There was a movement beside me and I realized that Chris was sitting up now, her attention wholly concentrated on her father. Gardner looked her way and his face softened.

  “My daughter was married to Michael Montgomery two weeks ago,” he said. “I was ready on that account to let our difference be bygones.”

  McPhail called to a detective who was taking everything down. “Got it all?”

  The man nodded and McPhail went to stand before the line of nervous sales girls. My thoughts were busy elsewhere and I didn’t listen. Owen hadn’t been entirely honest with McPhail. When I’d talked to him in the afternoon he hadn’t been so strong for this burying of differences. I could recall much too clearly how angry he’d looked, I could remember the threatening violence in his manner and tone.

  When I began to follow McPhail’s progress again I saw that he was questioning the group of girls from the perfume and costume jewelry counters. They worked nearest to window five. Had they observed who went in and out of the window?

  He wasn’t getting anywhere. The perfume girls had been busy on the far side of the counter and had noticed nothing out of the ordinary. The sale in costume jewelry had taken the energy and attention of the jewelry girls, so that they’d had time for nothing else. Besides, as one girl explained, the comings and goings of the window decorators were routine and easily went unnoticed.

  I held my breath when Helena was questioned, but she said nothing of those lapel pins or the fact that I’d gone into the window, and she carefully avoided any glance in my direction. I was only slightly relieved. Sooner or later I was going to be dragged into this and the fact that I’d been in the window would come out. There was that borrow sheet with my name signed to it, for one thing. It might be better for Helena if she told the truth.

  Tony Salvador came up for questioning next and my uneasiness and suspense increased. For once Tony was moving cautiously. Some realization of his own peril must have made its way through the fog, because he carefully avoided all mention of his quarrel with Monty.

  Sure he’d worked in the window that afternoon. That was his job. But he’d left before Monty did and had gone back upstairs. He’d been up in window display ever since. I glanced at Sondo and saw that she was intently watching the whole procedure. She knew about that quarrel and she had no love for Tony Salvador, but evidently she meant to bide her time.

  During Tony’s recital one of the fingerprint men came out of the window and spoke to McPhail.

  “We’ve covered the ground pretty thoroughly. Not much to go on. There’s dozens of assorted prints all over everything except the one thing that counts. Somebody wiped off the shaft of that broken golf club.”

  Tony forgot his caution. “What golf club?” he asked suddenly.

  Immediately suspicious, McPhail said, “I suppose you don’t know how it was done?”

  “You mean—” Tony was sober enough now and plainly shocked. “You mean they—whoever it was—used a broken golf stick?”

  “That’s right,” snapped McPhail. “What do you know about it? What do you know about that club?”

  Tony’s finger tugged at his collar. “Me? I don’t know anything about it. Just that there were golf clubs in the window. I put ’em there myself. Linell—Miss Wynn knows about that. I phoned her right after I left the window and told her to finish up with
the accessories. She’s been doing that a lot lately.” He turned and looked at me. “You did take care of that job, didn’t you? Say—!”

  He stopped short and I could almost read his thoughts. Not until that moment had he recalled that I had told him Monty was murdered, or wondered how I’d known. But he’d made that dangerous connection now and if he betrayed the fact to McPhail, I was in for it.

  “That’s all I know about it,” he said. “Montgomery was alive when I left the window.”

  Sondo snorted, but when McPhail glanced her way, she pretended to be blowing her nose.

  The detective wasn’t satisfied with Tony, but after all this was merely a preliminary investigation.

  He said, “I’ll come back to you later. Which one is Miss Wynn?”

  I took my arm from about Chris’s shoulders and braced myself for what was ahead.

  “I’m Miss Wynn,” I said.

  McPhail’s eyes were cold and hard. The letter of the law might read that a man was innocent until proved guilty, but this man saw guilt wherever he looked. It was difficult not to feel guilty with his suspicion probing into my soul. I blinked in spite of myself and shifted my gaze, and I could sense McPhail’s satisfaction in beating me down in even this small way.

  There was a moment of silence in which I was sharply aware of the minute details of my surroundings. Aware of a jumble of sounds and voices from the window, aware of the bright lights, the scent of perfume from across the aisle, of McPhail waiting, playing cat and mouse.

  Then it began.

  As simply and quickly as I could I told of coming down to the window. Yes, it was my job to look over accessories, to make selections and last minute touches. I told about choosing the lapel pins—without mentioning Helena—of going through my routine work in the window. I even remembered that queer sense of being watched and told him about that.

  He pounced on it right away, but when I couldn’t produce anything substantial concerning the experience, he dismissed it impatiently.

  I said I’d gone right back upstairs when I was through and that I hadn’t seen Monty at all. I left Bill out entirely.

  McPhail looked as if he hadn’t believed a single word I’d told him, but that seemed to be his attitude toward all witnesses anyway. He did check on whether it was possible to enter and leave the window without discovering Monty’s body, found that it could have happened, and was about to let me go.

  But right then Hering chose to lift his unhappy gaze from the array of perfume bottles and turn it my way.

  “You got to know it sometime,” he said despondently. “Up to a couple of weeks or so ago, Miss Wynn was engaged to Montgomery.”

  He looked so unhappy that I felt sorry for him. He hadn’t wanted to give me away. Not that it mattered. I was relieved, really, to have the whole thing out. Hering went back to regarding the perfume bottles with an air of tragedy.

  This time I was in for it. McPhail’s questions were like machine-gun fire. Why had the engagement been broken? Had we quarreled? Had I known Monty was interested in the Gardner girl? Then back over the window routine again in an effort to trip me, followed by a new barrage of questions.

  It was pretty unpleasant and after a while it got so monotonous it was almost numbing. I was terribly afraid my mind would just go off to sleep and I’d begin to give all the wrong answers. I didn’t dare so much as glance at Bill. I had to stand on my own feet and get through as best I could.

  McPhail left me, finally, unsatisfied, but unable to wring any incriminating evidence from me.

  There was a break now in the questioning. The photographers were through in the window, the Coroner had made his examination and stated that Montgomery had been dead no more than an hour.

  Two men carried a stretcher past us and Chris screamed hysterically and clutched at me. I tightened my arm about her and hid my face against her hair. That was a bad moment for me too. No matter what Monty had done or been, he had paid for everything now, more than even he deserved.

  I didn’t look up again until one of the detectives came out of the window and held something out to McPhail.

  “What do you make of this?” he asked. “Montgomery had it clutched tight in his right fist.”

  McPhail took the small circlet of gold and examined it curiously. Then he came over and held it out on his palm before Chris and me.

  “Ever see this before, either of you? Did it belong to Montgomery?”

  I looked closely at the ring. It was of yellow gold, with worn, antique carving on the wide band. The prongs of the setting were bent, the stone was missing, and there was no way to tell whether it had been lost long before, or broken off recently. It must have been an unusually large stone. The ring might have been a woman’s, or a man’s little finger ring.

  “If it was Monty’s I never saw it before,” I told McPhail, and Chris, between whimpers, disclaimed all knowledge of it too.

  McPhail passed it about the entire circle, but no one admitted to recognizing it. All of which annoyed him extremely. He gave orders that the window be carefully searched to see if the stone could be found. And then he turned his attention to Chris.

  The girl promptly went to pieces again and for a few minutes nothing could be got out of her at all. It was Bill Thorne who brought order out of the emotional chaos. Probably he had learned by practicing on me.

  He went over, put his hands on her shoulders, and shook her. There is something decidedly startling about being suddenly shaken or slapped by a nice young man you’ve always considered quite mild-tempered. Chris reacted just as I had. Her mouth dropped open in shocked surprise. But Bill’s eyes were kind.

  “We all know how you feel, Chris,” he said. “But you’re a big girl now. You’ve got to sit up here and answer all Mr. McPhail’s questions. He doesn’t want to hurt you. He only wants to get at the truth.”

  The soothing voice stopped her hiccoughing sobs. She actually sat up and faced McPhail with an effort at self-control.

  He repeated the questions he had asked and she answered them in a voice so low that sometimes it was difficult to catch her words. But the picture she was giving wasn’t exactly true to the character of Michael Montgomery as I had known him.

  I felt a little sick. It was dismaying to realize that one human being could so trick and fool another. But Chris held firmly to her idealizing and it wasn’t until McPhail brought her to an accounting of her actions that day, that she began to falter. It was a stubborn faltering, however, as if she were trying to evade something which terrified her.

  “My reason for going to Miss Wynn’s office hasn’t anything to do with what has happened,” she said. “I won’t talk about it. You can’t make me.”

  He saw the signs of returning hysteria and left the subject hastily. “All right, go on. We just want to know what you did next.”

  “I went down to the fourth floor to see father,” Chris continued. “I talked to him for a few moments and then I went down the escalator to the waiting room on third to meet mother. We were all going to have dinner together.”

  “And then?” McPhail prompted.

  Chris waved her hands vaguely. “Why—why that’s all. We went downstairs. We—were just looking around at things, and all of a sudden somebody came running up to tell us about Monty and—” she broke off and her head went down on my shoulder.

  Hering interrupted again, gently, sorrowfully.

  “I was up in the waiting room,” he explained. “I had to get some stamps for a letter and I had to stick around a while before the girl at the desk could wait on me. I guess I’ve got a kind of photographic memory. I mean, I see a thing and it sticks.”

  “Okay, okay,” McPhail broke in impatiently. “What did you see that stuck?”

  “Mrs. Gardner was up there all right,” Hering said. “But she was alone. She was alone all the time I was there. She kept looking
at her watch, and then after a while she got up and went off. Miss Gard—Mrs. Montgomery never came to meet her at all.”

  There was a faint sound from one of the opposite benches and I looked across to see Sondo leaning forward, her eyes upon Chris. There was a burning intensity in them that startled me. Then she became aware of my regard and relaxed, with her usual wry smile.

  McPhail appeared anything but pleased with Hering’s contribution. Nobody would let this thing go through to a smooth, logical finish. Somebody always had to gum up the works. But there was no help for it. He had to follow the new tack.

  “Well?” he demanded of Chris. “What have you got to say to that?”

  But Chris was having hysterics again—on my shoulder.

  6

  McPhail was ready to give up. “You’d better take her home and put her to bed. I’ll talk to her tomorrow when she’s feeling better. Then maybe she can explain why her story doesn’t match our friend Hering’s. Or maybe you can explain it, Mrs. Gardner?”

  There was heavy sarcasm in his voice and Susan started. But she showed more presence of mind than one would have expected.

  “I—I think I can,” she faltered. “The reason Mr. Hering didn’t see Chris come up to me in the waiting room, was because we didn’t meet till I reached the escalator and found her coming down. That would have been out of even Mr. Hering’s photographic range, I’m afraid.”

  I looked at her in surprise. Susan Gardner had returned the detective’s sarcasm with a gentle variety of her own. McPhail wasn’t noticing, however. The look he gave Hering was anything but complimentary and the store detective’s gloom deepened by another degree.

  Bill, next in the questioning, was disposed of quickly enough. He explained that he’d come to see Montgomery about some special figures he’d wanted for a window. The display manager was out of the department and he’d waited in his office. No, he couldn’t say much about who had come and gone in the department while he’d been there. He’d talked to Sondo Norgaard briefly. Once the phone in the connecting office had rung and he’d heard Sondo answer it. But for the most part he couldn’t say who’d been on the premises. Later he’d given up waiting for Monty and had come over to my office just for something to do.