She smoked in silence for a moment and her dark eyes studied each of our faces in turn. When she spoke again there was a quality in her voice that made my skin creep, made murder a living, breathing thing, poised, and waiting there among us. Waiting in dread of discovery, but on guard and ready to strike again.
“Someone here in this room knows what happened in that interval,” Sondo said. “Someone here among us now. I mean to know which one.”
The look in her eyes wasn’t quite sane. It was fanatic and revengeful.
“Will you tell me?” she went on with a sweetness in her voice that was terrible because of its mockery. “Or must I hunt you out?”
Owen Gardner’s voice was harsh. “Stop your playacting, Sondo, and get to the point.”
His words released us from the unnatural tension. Bill offered Carla a cigarette and lit it for her, and the rest of us shifted our positions and tried to relax. I noticed that Carla and Owen seemed to be ignoring each other.
“Do you mind if I ask a question, Sondo?” Bill said, and went on without waiting for permission. “What did you do with the stone to that ring?”
I caught my breath and leaned forward. So that idea had struck Bill too? Sondo drew lazily at her cigarette and gave him her curious, twisted smile.
“What stone to what ring?”
“You know well enough,” Bill said, curtly. “But for the benefit of the others I’ll do a little reconstructing myself. Either Monty, or the person who went to see him in the window had a ring in his possession. There must have been a disagreement about it, even a struggle. The stone must have been loose. It broke and the pieces flew out of the setting. But isn’t it a little odd that the larger piece of the stone has never been found?”
Sondo shrugged and Bill went on.
“You don’t suppose that stone could have dropped into the phonograph, do you? It wouldn’t be possible that you suspected as much, and when Tony wanted to send the machine out to Universal, you allowed Keith to take the wrong one so that you could tinker with the other at your leisure? It wouldn’t be possible that you have the stone to that ring?”
Sondo’s expression was inscrutable. Her thick dark lashes shielded eyes that glanced lazily about the room. She was like some wild little jungle cat, moving gracefully, but filled with deadly power that could lash out and demolish when she chose to release it.
“Any other questions?” she asked.
No one spoke for a moment and then I burst out impulsively.
“Yes, I’d like to ask one.” I opened the purse in my lap, took out the paper signed “E”, and read them the note with its last sentence, ‘There is still the ring.’ “Does anyone know who wrote this?”
No one said anything, so I plunged again.
“All right then, does anyone know a woman named Lotta Montez?”
Again there was silence, but this time I could feel a certain tenseness. Not a movement, not a sound, nothing which had direction. I was sure that name had met with recognition, and possibly from several quarters. Certainly not from Helena alone.
But I could read nothing in the faces about me. Sondo’s eyes were bright and watchful. Susan and Keith looked frightened. There was still more resentment than anything else in Owen Gardner’s face, while Chris looked as if she were about to burst into tears. Helena was white and tired and Bill had an air that said, “What have you been into now?” and was addressed to me alone. As for Carla, except for her habitual melancholy, she was beautifully blank.
“What’s this all about?” Bill asked.
I could be as mysterious as Sondo when I chose. I shook my head and put the letter back in my purse. Sondo’s dramatic methods weren’t getting us anywhere. Those who knew anything weren’t telling and I resolved that the letter should go into McPhail’s hands the next day.
Sondo, too, had evidently concluded that matters weren’t moving ahead, and took charge again.
“We’ve wasted enough time,” she said. “There was one other person in that window. I’ve suspected it all along. But now I know.”
She walked over and stood threateningly above Chris Montgomery, and though she was small, and Chris much bigger, it was Sondo who dominated.
“You loved your husband very much, didn’t you?” she demanded with venom in her tone. “But it might be that your love turned to hate when you married him and found he cared nothing for you at all. Isn’t that true? Isn’t it true that you hated him enough to kill him?”
Chris looked up at her wildly. “It’s not true! I still love him! I always have!”
Her hands would have gone to her face, but Sondo reached out and caught her wrists with sinewy fingers, held them down with a strength Chris was helpless to struggle against.
“Then what were you doing in that window when Monty was murdered?” Sondo asked in a low, cutting voice. “And don’t try to lie. Bill heard the phone ring that time in the display department. He heard me answer it. It was you on that telephone, Chris. Remember?”
Chris tried feebly to pull her hands from Sondo’s grasp, but the effort was useless.
“Shall I tell them what you wanted, Chris. Shall I tell them you asked where you could find Monty? And that when I told you, you said you’d go right down and look for him? Are you going to deny that you went to that window? Do you dare deny it?”
Chris went limp as Sondo released her. She turned her head helplessly from side to side, but the gesture was one of an animal trapped, not a motion of denial.
The thing had happened so quickly that not one of us had made a move. Now Susan Gardner flung a comforting arm about the girl’s shoulders and faced Sondo defiantly.
“It’s not true, any of it! You’re a wicked person, Sondo Norgaard!”
Strangely, the life and animation seemed to die out of Sondo. There was a burning ember of purpose left at the core of her, but all the rest was cold ash.
“No,” she said dully. “I’m not wicked. I want to see justice done. I want to find the person who killed Monty and make him pay, whoever it is. That’s all I want and it’s the thing I mean to do. None of you can stop me. Do you want to talk, Chris?”
I happened to glance at Owen Gardner and was shocked at what I saw. I’ve never seen such rage and hate in a human face. I almost cried out to Sondo to be careful, for his fingers moved convulsively as if he longed to close them about her thin neck. He was evidently too infuriated to speak, for no words came from his white lips.
“It’s easy to reconstruct what happened,” Sondo said, almost listlessly. “Chris went down to the window and found Monty there alone. She picked up that broken golf club Tony had left, and because Monty had hurt her so badly, she killed him with it.”
This time Gardner came out of his chair, his face apoplectic.
“You’re crazy!” he shouted at Sondo. “I’ve always known you were crazy! If you try to harm my girl I’ll—”
Chris ran across and flung her arms about his neck.
“No, father! She’s not crazy. She’s telling the truth. I was in that window. I was there when Monty was killed!”
There was a long, hushed moment while we stared unbelievingly at Chris. And once more I was aware of little things—of the curling smoke from Sondo’s cigarette, of the shine of Carla’s hair, of Bill’s right hand forming a soundless chord on the piano keys.
Then Owen Gardner put his hands on Chris’s shoulders, patting them with awkward gentleness. “Of course you weren’t in the window, Chris honey. You couldn’t have been.”
She pulled away from him and faced us. “Yes, I was. Sondo knows, so I might as well tell you what happened.”
She went quietly back to her place beside Susan and it was as if she had gone through so much terror in the last two days that now it was a relief to tell the thing. Her voice was a monotone, expressionless, as if all emotion had been drained from her.
She stopped blankly and Sondo prodded her on.
“It all happened so much more quickly than I can tell it. I didn’t see who was in the window with Monty. The other person didn’t speak at all so I didn’t even hear a second voice. Monty stamped around to the switch box and I squeezed back as far as I could into the corner so I wouldn’t be found. I’d never heard him as angry as that and I was frightened. And then the other person went around after him and I heard the most awful sounds.”
She broke off and put her hands over her ears, as if to shut out the memory of those blows.
“Then the—the person left the window and I—” her voice trailed off and suddenly she crumpled into a limp heap on the floor.
Bill picked her up and laid her on the couch. Sondo hung over her with a vulture look, until Helena and I pulled her away.
“You’ve done enough damage for one evening.” I told her angrily. “Chris is hardly more than a child and she’s been through all the horrors there are. Can’t you let her alone?”
I doubt if Sondo heard me. She jerked herself free and dropped down on her knees beside Chris.
“What happened after that? Who was in the window with him, Chris? Who?”
The girl’s eyelids fluttered and her lips moved in a whisper. “I don’t know.”
“You’re lying! Monty must have said something that told you who the person was. You do know!”
Owen pulled Sondo away from the couch and pushed her roughly into a chair. I’m not sure but what we might have had another murder on our hands right then, if it hadn’t been for Carla.
She had been sitting dreamily on the piano bench, apparently undisturbed, looking at nothing. Suddenly she got up and crossed the room with incredible swiftness. Her slender hands rested lightly on Owen’s arm, scarcely more than a touch. It was the first time she’d appeared to see him.
“This isn’t the way,” she said in her throaty whisper. “It doesn’t matter now. He’s dead. We all know Chris is innocent.”
Her voice seemed to quiet him. His anger died out and to my surprise he went over to Susan and touched her arm.
“We must take her home,” he said. “We must take her home right away.”
Sondo made no effort to interfere. But she had one more little speech to make. It was apparently directed at no one of us, but it reached us all.
“There’s just one thing,” she said. “One thing that will make Chris’s story all a lie. That’s the stone of the ring. Bill was right. I have it. If it stands for what I think—but I shan’t try to guess any longer. When McPhail comes to the store tomorrow I’ll give him the stone and see what he can make of it.”
If that meant anything to one of us, no sign was given. Chris, looking weak and shaken, was led out by Owen and Susan. She paused in the doorway and looked over her shoulder at me.
“I was in the window when you were there, Linell. I—I was afraid to leave right away. I didn’t know what to do about Monty. And then in a little while you came and I had to wait till you left.”
So there had been someone in the window watching me. Chris!
15
When the door had closed, Sondo turned back to the rest of us.
“You mustn’t go till you’ve had coffee,” she said as pleasantly as though she’d been playing hostess at an ordinary party.
So we stayed and drank her bitter coffee. At least Bill did, and one or two of the others. I felt too sick over what had happened to swallow anything. To my surprise, Keith perked up a little and stopped looking as if he were afraid of his shadow. Not that he became the life of the party but, with the departure of the Gardners, one layer of fear left him.
When we were all served, Sondo settled into a winged-back chair and regarded us in cynical amusement.
“So you believed her? All that nonsense about hiding while someone else murdered Monty!”
“I think it’s true,” I said flatly.
Sondo didn’t even glance at me. “Am I the only one who sees the discrepancies? Chris was supposed to be in love with Monty. If that was true, don’t you think that no matter how frightened she was, she’d have rushed out of that window to give the alarm, to try to help him? Loving him, how could she possibly stay there waiting her chance to escape unseen? How could she go off and leave him lying there?”
Her small hands were like talons gripping the edge of the chair as she waited for our denial. We made none.
“If I’d been in that window, do you think I’d have crouched there like a coward? Do you think I’d have left him?”
“Not you,” Bill said, “You’d have been in the thick of things yourself. But your temperament is scarcely Chris’s.”
“One woman in love is very much like another.” Sondo was defiant.
Keith, somewhat to my surprise, entered the discussion for the first time. “But what if she loved someone else besides Monty? What if raising the alarm meant she’d injure another person? If Monty was already beyond her help, maybe she’d behave just as she did behave.”
Sondo threw him a speculative look and he flushed to the ears, already regretting his words.
Bill set his cup down and said, “There’s one thing I want to know. Sondo, just how do you happen to know so much about what went on in the window?”
Her grin was impudent. “I wasn’t there, if that’s what you mean. But the fact that Chris was going to the window, coupled with the evidence of the ring, made me pretty sure. I’m more sure than ever now.”
“Well,” Bill said, “It’s your party. But if I were you I’d get the stone from that ring off my hands as quickly as possible. Why don’t you come along with me tonight to see McPhail?”
“Why don’t you mind your own business?” Sondo told him. “I’ll do things my way, or I won’t do them at all.”
Carla broke in unexpectedly. “Would you mind if I stayed with you tonight, Sondo? I live so far away.”
Sondo looked surprised, and then interested. “You can stay if you want to, Carla. If you’re not—afraid?”
Carla shook her head gently. “Only those who have something to lose are afraid. I have nothing at all.”
“Well, I like that!” Bill said. “And here I thought this was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
Carla gave him a slow sad smile that might have meant anything. I couldn’t figure her out at all. But I must admit that I was glad Bill wouldn’t be driving her home. I was beginning to think he had a dizzy head on his shoulders.
In the end that was how it was arranged. Carla stayed with Sondo and Bill offered to drive Helena and me back to our apartment, and to drop Keith off at his bus stop on the way. Sondo stood in the doorway at the foot of the stairs, dramatic in her black, gold-embroidered pajamas, with Carla at her shoulder, tall and cool and lovely. Behind them lay dying firelight, flickering on the walls and shining on the red lacquer screen.
Somehow, little as I cared for Sondo, I was reluctant to leave her there alone with Carla. Not because there was any suspicion in my mind concerning Carla. It would have been the same no matter who had stayed with her. Two women alone, and one of them possessed of dangerous knowledge. Even though Sondo was often such a strange, disagreeable person, still there was something fearless about her I could not help admiring. And I knew only too well that the person who had killed Monty was ruthless and ready to stop at nothing.
I wanted to talk to Bill alone, but what with having Keith with us part way, and Helena all the way
, I had no chance. I wanted to ask a few pointed questions about Carla, but I didn’t want to ask them before Helena. However, when we’d dropped Keith, I told Bill a little of our adventure—that Chris and I had gone to Monty’s apartment. I left Helena out of it, not only because she was right at my elbow, but because it didn’t seem fair to bring her in until I’d a chance to talk to her.
I told him about the Lotta Montez letter without betraying what had happened to it, and he asked to have a look at the “E” note.
I opened my purse and fumbled about inside. Bill made a crack or two about filing systems for women’s pocketbooks, and then I got a little frantic and dumped everything out in my lap right there in the car.
The note was gone.
“But, Bill!” I wailed. “It was right here. I had it at Sondo’s. You saw me take it out and read it.”
“Where did you leave your purse?” Helena asked.
“I didn’t leave it,” I told her. “It was right in my lap all the time. I know it was.”
“Even when you jumped up to make room for Chris?” Bill asked.
I thought back in chagrin. No, I hadn’t had my purse in my lap all the time. When all that excitement had started about Chris, I’d jumped up without regard for my belongings. I couldn’t remember anything about my purse during that interval. I could recall vaguely that later I’d seen it lying on the couch or a chair—I wasn’t even sure which—and had picked it up. But who had been near it during that time, I hadn’t the faintest idea. Everyone in the room had seen me put the note away. Except possibly Chris. Though I couldn’t even be sure about her.
“Nice going,” Bill said dryly. “Between you and Sondo, McPhail is losing a lot of evidence. I think maybe you’d better have a little talk with him tomorrow and tell him all about what has happened.
I agreed meekly and Bill said that anyway it was a good thing I’d lost the letter. At least nobody would be murdering me to get it.
The Red Carnelian Page 15