The Red Carnelian

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  “The pine spray!” I gasped. “I used it to get away. Shot it all over the person who came at me . . . over her shoulders and face and hair. She’ll smell of it. If she tries to leave the store you can stop her.”

  “You keep saying ‘she’,” Bill said. “Have you any idea who it was?”

  I hadn’t. I was only using the ‘she’ because of Carla and Susan. I couldn’t be absolutely positive it was one of them. It might just as easily have been a man.

  “You take Miss Wynn upstairs to her office and keep her there,” McPhail told Bill. “I’m going to round up everybody who’s had any connection with this affair and we’re going to have a showdown right now.”

  I didn’t want to go back to the eighth floor again, but with Bill on one side, and Keith on the other, muttering I-told-you-so’s, I was marched to an elevator and taken upstairs. Thank goodness, at least, that my two rescuers had no odor of pine needles about them.

  Keith told me that shortly after I’d left the office, he had gone to get someone to stop me. He would never have been in time, but I was grateful just the same.

  Sylvester Hering sat on my desk waiting for me. It was just closing time—I heard the jangle of the bell as we walked in.

  “I’m on the trail!” Hering announced. “I got the Nail Luster people looking up the name of the gal who posed for that hand picture. They’re gonna call me the minute they find out who she was. I told the operator I’d wait here.” Then he paused and took in my distraught condition. “Say—what goes on?”

  I could make a little more sense by that time and I blurted out the whole story. About the picture and Carla and Susan—everything. Hering had a look at the snapshot and shook his head in bewilderment. Then he passed it over to Bill, who sat down to study it.

  “How is Owen getting along?” I asked, just to keep talking and stop my teeth from their nervous chattering.

  Hering shrugged. “He still claims he wasn’t the Gardner Montgomery was talking to in the window. They haven’t been able to shake him from that. I guess McPhail is going to take him and Chris over to headquarters for a real going over.”

  Bill was still studying the picture, but didn’t seem to come to any conclusions.

  He said, without taking his eyes from it, “You know, I turned up something funny about Gardner on that trip I took.”

  “What?” I demanded.

  Bill tilted the picture sideways and examined it from a fresh angle. “I told you about Monty working in a store down in a small Missouri city. And running off to Mexico with a woman who worked there. Well, Owen Gardner worked in that same store at the same time.”

  “Then—then Owen and Monty knew each other long ago, before they ever worked together here?” I asked.

  “That’s right,” Bill said, as calmly as if he weren’t throwing a bombshell into our midst. “You know something? I don’t think the girl in this picture is Chris.”

  “Oh, don’t be sil—” I began, but he looked so positive that I stopped and went to look over his shoulder. Then I said, “I think you’re crazy. Of course it’s Chris!”

  He shook his head. “It can’t be. Because of the man.”

  Even Hering craned his neck. “You mean you know who the man is?”

  “I think so,” Bill said. “And if I’m right, then this picture was taken years ago. So it couldn’t be Chris.”

  The phone rang with startling shrillness and I could have tossed it impatiently out the window. But Hering picked up the receiver and it was his call. We all tensed to anxious listening.

  “Yeah?” Hering said slowly. “You got her name? That’s swell. Sure, I’ll write it down. Give.”

  Oddly enough, he didn’t write. He stood there with his mouth open. Then he said, “Hey, come again! What was that name?” The name must have been repeated, for he listened blankly. “That’s what I thought you said,” he muttered and put the phone back on my desk.

  When he looked around at us, it was with the stunned air of a man on whom a great light was beginning to break.

  “I think Gardner’s telling the truth,” he said. “He wasn’t in the window. It was a woman who killed Montgomery. The woman that ring belonged to. The same one who wrote that note signed ‘E’ and posed for the polish ad. And who killed Sondo because she wanted to get that picture back.”

  “But who is it?” I cried. “Tell us!”

  Hering leaned over and tapped the picture Bill held. “The jane we’re looking for is the one in that picture.”

  “You mean—you mean Chris?” I demanded.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t mean Chris. Bill’s right. That ain’t no picture of Chris. It’s a picture of the murderer. Her name’s Eileen Gardner.”

  22

  I repeated the name stupidly after him.

  Bill whistled. “So! Then I’m right about the man. It’s the only way it fits.”

  I shook him. “What do you mean? Who is the man? What fits?”

  “Calm down, toots. The man’s Michael Montgomery, of course. That picture was taken when he was young, and it’s pretty blurred. But that’s who it is. The girl’s the one he ran away with to Mexico. Eileen Gardner. Owen’s wife. Chris’s mother. Chris is fair-haired and she told us her mother was dark. But the mantilla hides the girl’s hair in the picture.”

  I could remember something else. That night at our place when Chris had mentioned an old picture she’d found of her mother, mentioned how much it looked like Chris the way she looked today. I was still confused. I knew no one who looked like Chris Montgomery. I was trying to understand, trying to get the fog out of my brain, when McPhail put his head in the door.

  “Come along,” he said. “All of you. I’ve got the witnesses lined up over in the display department. Nobody’s been acting funny. Nobody’s tried to leave the store except Mrs. Gardner and Tony Salvador and we stopped them. But if there’s a whiff of pine on one of the lot, you better locate it, Miss Wynn. We can’t.”

  I had only to use my nose. McPhail stationed me at the door to the display department and I stood there with my eyes closed while, one after another, the people he’d gathered there went past me. I sniffed each time and then opened my eyes, but it was no use.

  There was nobody missing. Tony, Owen, Chris, Helena, Susan, Carla. They even sent Bill and Keith past me. But on not one of them was there the faintest odor of pine. And there were no signs of clothes having been changed either. The women were all wearing the same dresses they’d worn earlier, and as far as I could tell, the men had on the same suits.

  McPhail collected us in Monty’s office and then turned to me in disgust.

  “Why does everything have to happen to you? And why does it always happen without you seeing anything? Couldn’t you just once get a useful idea that would give us a hint about who could have attacked you?”

  I looked about the room helplessly, as much at sea as ever. I had a feeling that it ought to be either Susan or Carla, but I hadn’t a clue in the world to go on.

  McPhail was just about to dismiss the lot of us when the idea hit me like a thunderclap in a clear sky.

  “Wait! I think I know what might have happened. Look—” I was so excited my words were tumbling out, “—what if the person who tried to kill me was wearing a smock, or a wrap, or something? What if her hair was covered? The spray would have gone on the outer garments, so that if she took them off and washed her face with soap, maybe the smell wouldn’t cling.”

  “Maybe you got something there,” McPhail admitted.

  “And here’s another idea!” I cried. “If that’s what happened, then she’d have to get rid of that smock, or whatever it was, quickly. She wouldn’t dare go out in the store that way. And if it was the person who killed Sondo, wouldn’t the first place she’d think of to hide anything be the mannequin room? Wouldn’t she—”

  Hering was already off
on a run to the mannequin room. We could hear cabinet doors banging for a moment while we waited in silence. A deathly silence in which not one of us dared look at his neighbor.

  Hering came back with a rolled bundle in his hands. He shook out a long black coat and held up a black turban.

  The reek of pine needles filled the room.

  Something seemed to twist inside me and I turned and leaned my forehead against Bill’s sleeve. I was too sick with shock to look at the woman to whom that coat belonged.

  I’d recognized it at once. It was Helena Farnham’s.

  It is hard to write of those moments immediately following. Even though she tried twice to kill me, I cannot hate Helena. Strangely enough, I think she was always rather fond of me. She was a woman with an obsession, a single purpose, and when I stood in her way, threatened the object of her love, I ceased to exist as Linell Wynn, her friend.

  She made a statement to McPhail then and there, in the presence of all of us, and she made it in a manner so cool and withdrawn that it was difficult to believe she was a woman with blood on her hands. I sat listening in disbelief and horror, trying to understand that this woman was Chris’s mother. She resembled the girl now only in her big-boned frame. All facial likeness had been lost with the years and the fading of Helena’s beauty.

  She told McPhail simply that she had known Michael Montgomery long ago and that she had gone away with him to Mexico. He had treated her cruelly, deserted her. Then, recently, she had met him again here at Cunningham’s, and all her grievances against him had eaten at her, until, when the opportunity had offered last Tuesday, she had killed him. And she had killed Sondo too, because Sondo had found her out.

  That was all. Nothing of Owen or Chris, or all that miserable tangle. Bill and Hering and I exchanged puzzled glances, but McPhail was happy. He had his confession and there would be no more murders at Cunningham’s. He asked her only one question—about the ring.

  “I’ll show you,” Helena said and went quietly over to a shelf of books behind Monty’s desk.

  What followed is something that will never be erased from my memory as long as I live. The book shelf was next to the closed window. Helena picked up a heavy volume, crashed it through the glass and hurled herself after it. She was through the window and gone—gone before even McPhail was aware of how she had caught him off guard.

  Carla screamed and I put my hands over my ears. There were shouts from below and McPhail leaned out the window. He looked a bit white when he stalked past us out of the office.

  The police stenographer and detectives hurried after him. Keith rushed off to be sick, and the rest of us sat there in the office, too stunned and horrified to move.

  Carla put her head down on Monty’s desk and began to cry softly. Owen Gardner put an arm about his daughter’s shoulders, patting her awkwardly, with a hand that trembled.

  “Come along, my dear,” he said. “Come along.”

  Susan followed them, whimpering and fluttering. But it is Chris’s words I will never forget.

  “The poor thing,” she said. “Another woman Monty hurt. I’m glad she won’t have to face a trial.”

  They went off and there were just four of us left in the office. Hering and Bill and Carla and I.

  “Chris doesn’t know,” I said. “She doesn’t know that it was her own mother who killed Monty.”

  Carla raised her head, wiped tear-stained cheeks. “That’s the way Helena wanted it to be. So Chris would never know.”

  It was Carla then who drew together the missing threads and gave us the story. Because Carla, through no desire of her own, had been nearest to the whole thing from the beginning. Not even Owen had known for sure who Monty’s murderer had been.

  “He thought it was either Helena or I,” Carla said. “He tried to get it out of me one day at lunch. But I knew how awful it would be for him to know that Chris’s mother was a murderer. The blow to Chris in her hysterical state, the effect it might have on her mind would have been too much for him to face. So I held off telling him and he was afraid to have the wrong one arrested.”

  “Why did you try to protect her?” Bill asked.

  Carla flung her head back. “Because Michael Montgomery caused the death of the one person I loved. I was glad when he died. I—I didn’t care if his murderer was caught or not.”

  There was a stormy pause and then Carla’s unusual spurt of defiance died.

  “I saw Helena when she came out of the window after she’d killed Monty. I was waiting to exchange that pin and no one else saw her come back to the counter. She was so nervous that she scratched herself. But I didn’t think about it till later. Then I knew. Helena and I had been thrown together to some extent because of our mutual hatred of Monty and I’d heard most of her story. So I let her know I wouldn’t talk.”

  The pieces began to fit into place. Eileen Gardner had lost track of her daughter for years. Then she had read about her in the newspapers when Chris had won a dress-designing contest. She had dropped her work as a model for hand ads, taken the name of Helena Farnham, and come to Cunningham’s to be near Chris.

  Owen no longer felt bitter against the wife he had divorced so long ago. When he saw how she had changed and aged, so that all her youthful resemblance to Chris had faded, he told her that he would not object to her remaining in the store where she could see Chris occasionally. But he warned her that she would have to keep her identity a secret.

  Helena promised. What emotion there was left in her was bound wholly in Chris. She struck up an acquaintance with me merely because Chris was something of a protegé of mine and she could see her more often by cultivating me.

  And then life played one of its scurvy tricks. Monty, anxious to leave the East, which was getting a little hot for him because of the fur coat affair, came to Cunningham’s as window display manager. The stage was set for tragedy.

  Helena and Owen were both frantic when they saw that Chris was becoming infatuated with Monty. Owen was just about to help Carla bring her evidence against Monty, when Monty played a bold counter hand and married Chris. That morning I’d seen Monty and Carla together, she had been threatening to give evidence against him anyway, but he’d caught her by the shoulders and shaken her roughly, warned her that he’d take her to jail with him if he went.

  Monty’s marriage to Chris had set Helena off. All she cared about in the world was Chris’s happiness and Monty was wrecking it. So she went into the window that day to threaten him with exposure. She had an old locket-ring he had given her with a picture of the two of them in it and she meant to show it to Chris in an attempt to get the girl to leave Monty. So that Owen could act against Chris’s husband. Helena herself had been that member of the “tribe of Gardners” Monty had shouted at in the window.

  There had been a struggle over the ring. The stone had been broken once before and it chipped into two pieces and flew out, the part containing the picture falling into the phonograph attachment. All Helena’s hatred of Monty must have spilled over. When she saw her chance, she picked up the heavy end of the golf club and killed him.

  Helena had been desperate about the loss of the stone from the ring. She’d gone to my office to get the smaller piece, fearing the picture might have adhered to it. And then she’d seen on my wall that old ad for which she’d posed. A picture that showed the very ring Monty had given her. She’d worked quickly to get it down and replace it with another picture. But she hadn’t been quick enough and I had nearly trapped her.

  If only Sondo hadn’t begun to suspect Chris! Sondo was already curious about Chris’s possible visit to the window, and when she got the stone with its picture out of the phonograph, she thought she had certain evidence against Chris. Helena, of course, had fallen into Sondo’s trap and gone to Universal to break into the wrong phonograph. Then she’d given us the slip and hurried home, to try to get Bill on the phone in an effort to
stop any suspicion on our part.

  Helena had not known about the Lotta Montez note, though she knew Carla’s story. She had gone to Monty’s apartment to try to recover the note signed “E,” which had mentioned the old set-up existing again—meaning Owen, Helena and Monty in the same store—and had mentioned the ring. When she saw the Montez note, she had chosen to destroy it in an effort to throw me off the real clue. Later, at Sondo’s in the confusion over Chris, she had taken the other note from my purse.

  And then Helena had walked again into a trap of Sondo’s. She had been frantic because Sondo was torturing Chris, trying to pin the murder on her. And she was afraid that if the old picture got into the hands of the police the truth would come out. Her fear now was not so much of discovery—she was past caring much about herself—as of desperation lest Chris learn that her mother was a murderer.

  So when she had walked into the little scene Sondo had arranged, she had done just what Sondo had anticipated. She had picked up the hammer and attacked the mannequin. But Sondo had been caught in her own trap. Instead of meeting Chris, whom she thought she could handle, she had met a woman obsessed by a single idea, and she had been no match for her. Helena had evidently worn gloves in handling the hammer and had left no prints, merely smudging over most of Bill’s.

  Helena’s disappointment at finding the picture gone from the part of the ring Sondo had so carefully laid out with her trap, must have been bitter. How she had dropped the stone later for me to find, we’d never know.

  Her next move had been to hide Sondo’s body in the mannequin room. Then she had returned to the workroom to pull the smock and handkerchief from the broken figure of Dolores. To have left them there would have been to make Sondo’s ruse too evident to the police. Perhaps she thought that if the smock were missing altogether, it would be taken for granted that Sondo had gone out of the department wearing it. And the hue and cry would not be immediately raised.

  The logical thing would have been to hide the smock with the body, but perhaps by that time Helena was too anxious to get out of the department. So she took it with her, saw my office empty and thrust it into a drawer. That was after the conversation I’d had with her when she’d vaguely threatened me. It was just possible that the gesture of hiding the smock in my office was one more scrap of evidence against me, and as such, might serve to keep me quiet. Bill’s note lay face up on my desk and she had taken that, since it suggested that Sondo was up to something.