The Red Carnelian

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  Bill said, “Call me out at Universal tomorrow, Linell, if anything new comes up at the store.”

  There was a moment in which Bill and I looked at each other and I knew that we were friends. Allies. He didn’t want to suspect me, any more than I wanted to suspect him. The realization was comforting.

  I don’t know why my mind chose that particular instant to fly off at a tangent and recover a memory that had slipped from me entirely. But without any warning at all, the picture was there, sharp and clear. The picture of myself in the window, going through certain motions.

  “The golf stick!” I gasped. “Oh, Bill, the golf stick!”

  “What about it?” he asked.

  “The other half—the part they didn’t find. I had it in my hands. My fingerprints are on it!”

  And I told them about trying to clean up the window; about picking up the upper half of that stick and thrusting it into the golf bag just to get it out of sight. A hiding place that would be discovered sooner or later. And if they checked my fingerprints—!

  Bill shook his head at me despairingly. “That makes it all a bit worse. Maybe instead of trying to put what’s happened out of our minds—which isn’t possible anyway—we’d all better turn our wits to the business of discovering the real murderer, before someone innocent is blamed.”

  Helena had put an arm about me because I’d started to shake again and I leaned against her.

  “There’s something else too!” I cried. “Something I’d forgotten all about. You know that ring McPhail was so puzzled over? I think I must have found the stone to that. Or a piece of it anyway. I picked a fragment of something from the carpet in the window, but I thought it was a broken bit of costume jewelry. If it was the stone from that ring, perhaps it’s important.”

  “What did you do with it?” Bill asked.

  I could remember the very feel of the thing in my fingers. It had been smooth, but jagged on one side from the break. I could remember the careless movement of my hand as I put it away.

  “It’s in my smock pocket,” I said. “I left the smock hanging over the chair in my office.”

  “Good,” Bill said. “Get it the first thing in the morning and take it to McPhail. It’s likely it does mean something. And try to get some rest tonight.”

  Then Helena closed the door and we had the apartment to ourselves. I walked around restlessly, desperately, for all my weariness.

  “Helena,” I said, “who could possibly have—”

  She cut me off at once. “No more supposing tonight. Let the police do the worrying. You’ve had a terrible day and I’m a bit limp myself. To bed we go.”

  Later, in the bedroom I shared with Helena, all the awful pictures began to return, and the pounding of all those unanswered questions. I lay there for a long while, with my eyes closed against the soft darkness, listening to the rain against the windows.

  Monty’s death must have been the climax of some secret story the rest of us had yet to read. But it wasn’t an ending in itself. It was the beginning of a new story in which all of us who had been close to him in any way must now play our unwilling parts. A story filled with terror and uncertainty and despair. These things followed murder as surely as night followed day. Tomorrow the new chapter would begin. What would be my place in it? When would the part I’d already played come to light?

  I tossed for a long while on my pillow before I dropped off into a dream-haunted sleep.

  7

  The next morning I overslept and Helena was considerate enough not to wake me. She was gone when I got out of bed, but she’d left a newspaper on the dresser for me to see. The murder of Michael Montgomery had hit Chicago’s front pages.

  It had hit Cunningham’s, too. Hit it hard. The minute I walked in the store that Wednesday morning, I sensed the nervous excitement. I was aware of it as the chatter hushed when I stepped into the elevator. The few good mornings which greeted me were packed with unspoken questions. I responded when necessary and tried to ignore the eyes I was sure were boring into my back.

  How many of these people, I wondered, were connecting me with Monty’s murder? How many were saying to each other, “Well, he threw her over, didn’t he? A woman scorned, you know!” And if they were wondering about me now, how would it be if they ever learned what I was hiding?

  But the thing uppermost in my mind at the moment was that bit of something I’d picked up in the window and which might be part of the stone missing from the ring Monty had held clutched in his hand. I meant to get it from the pocket of my smock at once and I walked quickly as I left the elevator.

  The door of my office stood open, as always. There was nothing of value there and I never bothered to lock it at night. Keith hadn’t come in yet and I walked straight to my chair.

  The smock was gone.

  My first thought was that I must have hung it somewhere else. The hook behind the door perhaps. Another instant and I would have turned, but in that instant some faint sound reached me and I knew I was not alone in the room. Knew, with horror running like ice water through my veins, that something waited for me behind the door.

  And then, before I could recover the power of movement, there came a rush from behind me. Something caught me a heavy awkward blow behind the ear and I pitched forward across my desk, stunned and groggy.

  I wasn’t out cold. The blow, though struck with desperate intent, had glanced off the thick padding of my hair. I could hear the thud of footsteps down the corridor, yet I couldn’t summon the will to move or scream. I seemed to be swimming through space without being able to make the effort to return to a more solid world.

  Then heavy hands were pulling me up from the desk, shaking me. I started frantically to struggle, thinking that my assailant had come back. But the hands held me firmly and squeezed me back to consciousness. As the red mist cleared from before my eyes, I realized that the hands belonged to Sylvester Hering and that he was muttering over me in concern.

  I stood on my feet for an instant and then collapsed in a chair.

  Hering bent over me anxiously. “You all right now, Miss Wynn? What happened? You faint?”

  “No,” I told him “No!” The throbbing lump behind my ear didn’t help to clarify my thoughts.

  “Somebody hit me,” I said. “Somebody hit me and ran away!”

  Hering took one look at the lump and then rushed off down the corridor in the direction I’d indicated. I felt that search would be useless. Whoever it was would have had time to make the stairway by now and lose himself in the store. I looked about my small office, trying to force my mind to function.

  It was the sight of my flowered smock on the floor behind the door that whipped me back to full consciousness. I leaned over dizzily and picked it up, searched the pockets with trembling fingers.

  The stone from the ring was gone.

  Hering came back, shaking his head. “Couldn’t find nobody. Don’t you know who it was?”

  “No,” I said. “But I think I know what he wanted.”

  I told him about the stone I’d dropped into the pocket of my smock, and he picked up the phone on my desk to try to get in touch with McPhail. But the detective was off on some hunt of his own. Hering reported what had happened and left word for McPhail to call the store.

  When he hung up, I pointed to the floor. “Look. That must have been what hit me.”

  There was a shelf halfway up the wall and on it had stood a pair of small onyx book ends from Mexico. One of them lay on its side on the floor. Hering picked it up carefully, using a handkerchief.

  “Looks like it all right. Let’s see that bump.” He examined my bruises. “That’ll hurt for a while. But you got off easy. Skin’s not even broken. Your hair’s thick and a book end ain’t the handiest slugger in the world. How you feel now?”

  “My head hurts,” I said. “But I’ll be all right.”
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br />   “Then maybe it’s a good thing it happened,” he told me solemnly.

  “What do you mean?”

  He shrugged heavy shoulders. “Look, Miss Wynn, I’m your friend.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “That’s why I want to tip you off. You watch your step. There’s a lot of people in this store who’ve been plenty mad at Montgomery at one time or another. But you got the motive. A better one than anybody else. McPhail could make things pretty hot if he got anything on you. Maybe this attack kind of lets you out. So maybe it’s a good thing.”

  I pressed my fingers against throbbing temples.

  “Look, Miss Wynn,” Hering went on, “if you think you can stay on the job today, it might be better to keep still about this. Not go blabbing it around right away. Watch how people act. See if anybody looks surprised to see you okay, or gives himself away.”

  I nodded. I was willing to keep still about the affair. The news would bring half the floor around me in sympathy and I felt I wanted most of all to be let alone.

  “Well,” Hering said, folding his handkerchief tenderly about the book end, “guess I’ll take this over to the fingerprint boys. Oh—that’s what I was coming to tell you. That you’re supposed to go get fingerprinted.”

  “Fingerprinted?” Sickness flashed through me as I remembered that golf club.

  “Yeah. Over in window display. Mr. Cunningham’s got a few pals among the higherups and he put up an awful yowl about pulling a flock of people off their jobs and taking ’em over to headquarters to get fingerprinted. What with the publicity and all. So to keep him quiet they’re doing it over here.”

  “When’s the inquest to be?” I asked.

  “They were going to hold it today,” Hering explained, “but McPhail asked for a continuance, so the Coroner’s set it for Monday. This is a screwy case. Too many witnesses. McPhail wants to get ’em all rounded up before the inquest. Well, I gotta run along. You think you’ll be okay now?”

  I gave him a stiff smile. “I think so. Whoever it was got what he wanted. I don’t think he’ll come back.”

  “Mm,” said Hering. “Unless he thinks you might have seen him. Then he might want to finish off the job.”

  And with that cheerful thought, he left.

  Nothing seemed real or solid any more. I wasn’t even very frightened as yet. Too many things that simply couldn’t happen had happened, and my mind hadn’t gotten used to accepting them.

  Someone had killed Monty. Someone had hidden in my office and struck me down. And a fragment of stone was gone from my smock. There—there lay the clue. Who had known where I’d put the stone?

  There were just three people. Helena, Bill, Chris.

  Helena had left before I had this morning. She would have had plenty of time to slip upstairs to my office before I arrived to get the stone from my smock. But Helena was my friend.

  As for Bill and Chris—I’d come down after the store opened. Anyone at all could have walked in among the customers and come upstairs unchecked ahead of me. But it couldn’t be Bill. It couldn’t be! I wasn’t going to think again those ridiculous thoughts that had tormented me the night before.

  Yet it couldn’t have been Chris either. She was big enough and strong enough. But she had seemed to worry about what she had done, so anxious to make her peace with me.

  Bill and Chris were my friends, too. Still—even a friend who was desperate, trapped, might strike out against discovery. Against any person who meant discovery.

  Or had one of these three told others? In that, there was a thread of hope. I’d check on it later when I could see each one alone.

  The whole thing was so baffling. What had that ring meant in Monty’s hand? And if it had been part of the stone from the ring I had found, why should such a fragment be of importance to the murderer?

  The questions were endless, impossible to answer. And on every hand there were threats to me, dangers I might be unaware of even now. I wished Keith would arrive so I needn’t be alone. In a few moments I’d have to go over to be fingerprinted, but first I wanted to collect myself a bit. Perhaps work might help.

  I searched my desk and found the copy I’d been working on the day before, with its bold words: “Red is the Color of the Year.” But that was no way to settle my mind. “Red for blood,” Keith had said. But now I could go him one better. In my mind red would forever stand for “murder.” I thrust the paper out of sight just as Keith came in.

  The boy looked ghastly. His naturally muddy complexion had yellowed and his hands were shaking so that he could hardly hang up his hat.

  “What’s the matter with you?” I demanded.

  “I—I didn’t know till this morning,” he stammered. “About Mr. Montgomery, I mean. It’s awful.”

  “You’d better straighten up,” I said. “We’re both supposed to go over to the display department and get fingerprinted.”

  “Fingerprinted!” The word came out shrilly. “But I didn’t have anything to do with this. Oh, Miss Wynn, I’ve got to stay out of it!”

  He looked so green that I turned mercifully away. It wouldn’t do to take the boy over to the police in such a state of jitters.

  “I’m going ahead,” I said over my shoulder. “As soon as you can, follow me.”

  I went out without looking at him again. I was still a little wobbly, I discovered, but I felt lucky to be alive at all.

  Bill had been doubly right last night when he’d said we’d better all put our wits to work and try to clear this thing up. Not only to save some innocent from arrest. To save our own lives. I thought of that last remark of Hering’s about the murderer coming back to finish the job, and shivered as I stepped into the empty corridor.

  The fingerprint expert had grumblingly set up his materials in Monty’s office. He didn’t care for the irregularity of the procedure and was letting everyone know just how he felt. I could hear him the moment I stepped into the department. Another detective plodded systematically through Monty’s papers and files, pausing now and then to ask questions of Tony Salvador.

  I tried to notice if anyone watched me warily, or seemed surprised to find me walking about in good health. But I saw nothing suspicious.

  Sondo came out of the office, wearing her usual green smock and a yellow kerchief tied about her tangle of black hair. She waved inky fingers at me and motioned with her thumb.

  “A lot of work we can get done with that crowd of flatfeet trampling all over the scenery! I tried to explain that a department store is like the theater. Come hell, high water, or murder, the show goes on. But it didn’t register.”

  Her words were flippant and callous, but there were smudges beneath her big dark eyes and the hollows under her cheek bones were more marked than ever. Sondo hadn’t been sleeping well either.

  But as I stepped to the door of Monty’s office, I forgot her.

  This room was Monty’s own and very familiar to me. In the months he had worked here, he had stamped it with the imprint of his vital personality. Last night in Tony’s office it had not been like this. Then death had been too horrifyingly new to be accepted. I could make no real connection in my mind with that crumpled body down in the window and the Monty I knew.

  But now it was real. There were reminders of him everywhere. Things he had touched and left his mark upon. Rough drawings he had sketched for window plans. Pictures he had chosen for the walls. It seemed as though at any moment his vibrant voice might echo through the department, his footstep sound upon its floor. A voice that would never echo again, a step that would never fall.

  That knowledge made him really dead. And the thought that the same murderous hand which had struck him down had been raised against me, made reality all the more keen.

  I became aware that Sondo was still at my elbow, her dark penetrating gaze upon me.

  �
�Stop in to see me when you’re through here,” she whispered. “I think we could do a little note comparing.” And, with that enigmatic remark she went off toward her workroom.

  Two of the girls from the perfume counters came past me out of the office, whispering together, and as I stepped through the door, I saw that Helena Farnham was just pressing her fingers to a card. Behind her, Owen Gardner awaited his turn, looking completely outraged at the thought of this indignity.

  Helena quirked a sympathetic eyebrow at me as she went out and whispered, “I’ll wait for you.”

  Tony nodded as I approached and then switched his gaze speculatively to Owen.

  “Say!” He spoke abruptly. “How about getting Carla Drake up here to be printed?”

  Gardner looked up from wiping his fingers. “What for? She hasn’t any possible connection with the case.”

  “Who’s Carla Drake?” a detective demanded.

  “She models dresses down on my floor,” Gardner said. “I doubt if she’s spoken to Montgomery more than twice in the three months she’s been in the store.”

  Tony shrugged. “Maybe so. But she’s always sneaking in and out of the display department and she’s been pretty darned thick with Sondo Norgaard.”

  The detective nodded. “Call the fourth floor and get her up here.”

  Gardner glared at Tony and strode out of the office.

  The fingerprinting didn’t take long, but I was barely conscious of what was going on. Tony’s words had recalled to my mind that moment so long ago—yesterday morning!—when I’d come upon Monty and Carla in the corridor. If what Owen said was true and Monty scarcely knew Carla, then that was a strangely intimate scene I’d happened to witness.

  Helena was waiting for me when I left the office and we walked over to Sondo’s workroom together. The phonograph was playing as usual, but this time it was Cole Porter, instead of Ravel. Begin the Beguine. The effect, however, was just as melancholy.