The Red Carnelian Read online

  The Red Carnelian

  Phyllis A. Whitney

  1

  Cunningham’s department store is quiet again now. Sylvester Hering still puts his head in the door of my office whenever he goes by, to call out, “Hi, Linell!” and perhaps to linger and study the pictures on my walls, to speak briefly of the past. But his days are given over to the humdrum of catching shoplifters and petty thieves, instead of trailing a murderer.

  He never mentions that one picture we hunted down together, or the tragic denouement to which it led. But now and then we cock an eyebrow at each other because we are conspirators and know it.

  Not that the law was in any way defeated. Payment in full was made for all those terrible things that happened. But still, Hering and I know what we know and the case as it broke in the papers told only half the story.

  There are still things about Cunningham’s that make me shiver. I can never cross that narrow passageway that leads past the freight elevators into the display department without a feeling of uneasiness. I cannot bear the mannequin room at all, and I will go to any length to avoid setting foot in it. But most of all I am haunted by the symbols that came into being during the case.

  The color red, for instance. I never wear it any more, because it was the theme of those dreadful days. It ran beneath the surface of our lives like a bright network of veins, spilling out into the open now and then to accent with horror. And there are the owls. Sometimes in my dreams that eerie moment returns when I stood there in the gloom with all those plaster creatures crowding about me, cutting off my escape.

  Nor will I ever again breathe the scent of pine without remembering the way the light went out and those groping hands came toward me. Strange to have your life saved by the odor of Christmas trees.

  But the worst thing of all is when I imagine I hear the strains of Sondo’s phonograph. For me, those rooms will never be free of ghostly music and I break into cold chills in broad daylight whenever a radio plays Begin the Beguine.

  Yet, before that Tuesday afternoon in late March, I’d never thought of myself as a particularly jittery young woman. That was the day it began—the day Michael Montgomery came back to Cunningham’s.

  I sat at the desk in my little eighth floor office and stared helplessly at the sign copy before me. I’d been under a strain since early morning and it was beginning to tell.

  I didn’t want to watch the door. I’d been assuring myself all day that it wouldn’t matter in the least when the inevitable moment came and Monty walked into my office. Why should it matter? I wasn’t in love with him. All my feeling for him had died and left only a faint bitterness. Even though this was his first day back from a honeymoon with another girl, still it didn’t matter to me.

  But my eyes strayed to the door and my nerves were keyed to a tense pitch of waiting.

  I wasn’t alone in the office. Across the room—no more than three paces—Keith Irwin sat at his smaller desk shuffling papers and watching me with moody dark eyes whenever he thought I wasn’t noticing. Keith was my office force, often embarrassingly loyal to my interests, but at that particular moment he was getting on my nerves.

  Helena Farnham stood at the single small window, staring down through drizzling rain at the strip of alley that ran back of the store. She wore black, as always, but with that big-boned frame of hers she wore it with distinction.

  Helena and I had shared an apartment for several months and I was fond of her. But I could tell by the set of her dark, gray-streaked head that she was in a disapproving mood, and the fact left me a little defiant.

  I forced myself to scribble industriously for a moment and then tossed down my pencil.

  “Listen to this, you two,” I said. “Bold is the word for new spring colors. Taunt windy March in a green hat. Laugh at April showers in a suit of yellow or rust.”

  Keith’s eyes flicked my way and then off toward the window where a sickly yellow sun was trying to break through the drizzle. Helena didn’t even turn around.

  I tore the sheet of paper across with a sharp nervous gesture and dropped the pieces in the wastebasket beside my desk.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I agree with you. Corn, pure unadulterated corn.”

  I pushed back dark hair that had a tendency to tumble into my eyes and leaned my head on my hands. The small office was intensely quiet for a few moments and then Keith coughed and rustled his papers, and Helena turned away from the window where that curious sulphur glow hung over Chicago’s Loop.

  “You shouldn’t have come down today, Linell,” she said. “I told you this morning it would be a hard day to get through.”

  That was the trouble with sharing an apartment with an older woman, I thought rebelliously. Sooner or later she tried to mother you. Helena should have had a comfortable husband, a suburban bungalowful of children. But somewhere in the past there had been a divorce, and unhappiness had left its stamp on a face that was still handsome in a faded way, but must once have been lovely.

  “I have to go through with it sooner or later,” I protested. “Michael Montgomery means to go on being window display manager of this store, and I mean to go on writing sign copy. Since we’ll have to meet, talk to each other, work together, I don’t see why we can’t do it impersonally and ignore the fact that we were engaged until—until—”

  “Until Monty ran out on you and married Chris Gardner,” Helena said. “But you’re well out of it. It’s Chris I’m sorry for. She’ll break her heart over him before she’s his wife a year. Your heart’s still in one piece.”

  What she said was true, I hoped. Maybe my heart was a little frayed around the edges, but that was all. Since Monty had come from an eastern store some eight months before, life had been a gradual disillusionment for me. A slow falling out of what I knew had been a foolish infatuation. So the worst hurt was over and done with.

  Why, then, had the gray drip of rain on the window sill set my teeth on edge the moment I’d entered the office that morning? Why did the queer yellow glow against the window pane seem so depressing?

  But I knew why. I sat at my desk, aware of the defiantly bright splash of color I made in my red and white striped blouse—no sackcloth and ashes for me—pretending I could work. And all the while I waited for the sound of Monty’s step, for the moment when I’d meet him face to face.

  I hadn’t told Helena or anyone else, but I’d already seen him earlier in the day. I’d come upon him by accident, and the shock of that brief glimpse had left me disturbed and a little sick.

  It had happened when I’d gone on an errand to the sign-lettering­ department that morning. The corridor takes a turn and forms an alcove that is shielded from view unless one is right upon it. The man and woman who stood there were so engrossed in each other that they didn’t hear my approach. He had his back to me and his hands were on the shoulders of the woman, but I recognized them both at a glance.

  The man was Michael Montgomery and the woman who stood so intimately close to him was Carla Drake, our most exotic dress model from the fourth floor.

  They were talking in low, tense voices, but I didn’t stop to listen. I turned and hurried back to my office, more disturbed than I cared to admit. Even if what Monty did no longer concerned me, there was still Chris to consider. I hated to think he might already be carrying on a flirtation with someone new.

  All this contributed to the tenseness of my nerves, so that by now I was keyed to a dangerous pitch, where only some explosive action would relieve the tension. And I knew there mustn’t be an explosion. There must not be.

  I liked my job. I wanted to keep it.

  The letters on the door of
my office read: LINELL WYNN, SIGN PROMOTION—which meant that I wrote copy for advertising posters used throughout Cunningham’s and for what I modestly considered the most cleverly sophisticated window signs on the street.

  When I came to Cunningham’s two years before, my office had been a cubbyhole of a place, and about as inspiring to the eye as a cell. But Keith and I had worked evenings for a week hiding those blank walls beneath pages torn from Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. We picked all the striking color photographs and the most interesting black-and-whites and the change worked wonders with the room, brought it to life, turned it gay with color.

  Now, ordinarily, when my mind had a tendency to go blank and ideas wouldn’t come, I had only to search those colorful walls for inspiration and a new start.

  But today was different. Today was deadly.

  “It’s being on a spot I hate,” I explained to Helena. “I was downstairs talking to the handkerchief buyer this morning and every clerk at the counter was watching to see how I was going to take it with Monty back from his honeymoon today. And I don’t want to take it, or not take it. I just want to go about my work and not be stared at and pitied.”

  Keith’s somber eyes seemed to darken. “I’d like to fix that Montgomery the way you’d wipe out a rat.”

  I glanced at him, startled by his intensity.

  “Never mind fixing anybody,” I told him. “I’ll do my own suffering, thank you, and fight my own battles. Here, these signs are ready for lingerie. Take them down and don’t hurry back.”

  I watched him go and Helena shook her head.

  “Be careful with that boy,” she warned. “He’s crazy about you and he knows it’s hopeless. At nineteen that’s dangerous.”

  I tried to dismiss her words with a laugh, but the look I’d glimpsed in Keith’s eyes was disturbing. I changed the subject hastily.

  “I wish Monty would walk in and get it over with. It will be much worse if he feels guilty and tries to avoid me.”

  “I don’t imagine a guilty conscience has any part in our display manager’s make-up,” Helena said drily and glanced at her watch. “I suppose I’d better get back on the floor. That plastic jewelry ad Chris made the drawings for has been pulling crowds all day. I just wanted to stop in for a minute and see how things were going with you.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “If I could get some decent work done I’d be better off.”

  But I was glad she was going and it made me feel jumpy when she turned back at the door as if she wanted to say something more. I didn’t want to be like Helena when I grew older—a lonely woman working in a small, department store job. That was why Monty’s action had frightened me a little.

  It had been an open secret for months that young Chris Gardner, over in advertising, had a crush on Michael Montgomery, but as far as I knew, he’d never paid much attention to her until that day two weeks before when he’d run off and married her without any warning at all. I kept wondering if it was something in me that had made him do that. Even though we’d been moving toward a break-up, he needn’t have humiliated me so. He needn’t have—

  “Don’t!” Helena said. “He isn’t worth it.”

  I’m afraid the smile I gave her wasn’t a very happy one. I hadn’t known my face was giving me away and I didn’t want her to think I really cared. Perhaps I’d have tried to explain, if there hadn’t been an interruption just then. Quick footsteps came down the corridor and a girl slipped past Helena into the office.

  She stood for a moment with her back to the door and her chin up defiantly. Her gray yellow print frock was jaunty, but her eyes were swollen from crying.

  “Hello, Chris,” I said. “Won’t you sit down?”

  Chris Gardner—she was Chris Montgomery now—went to the chair opposite me. But she didn’t sit down, she crumpled into it, her mouth trembling childishly.

  “You’ve always been so good to me, Linell!” she wailed. “You’ve helped me more than anyone else in this store. And now I—I’ve treated you like this. I’ve ruined your life and—”

  “Stop it!” I said, to check her rising hysteria. “You haven’t ruined anything. The fault was Monty’s. I think I know.”

  Helena gave us both a dark look of pity and slipped away from the door. Chris pulled off her hat and her head went down on my desk in the curve of her arm. I suppose, considering everything, I should have been angry and resentful, but I couldn’t be angry with Chris.

  She was a big, sturdily built blond girl, with wide shoulders that should have borne trouble more capably, but she always crumpled at the first sign of storm. That was her father’s fault, the way he had spoiled her.

  “You oughtn’t to talk to me!” Chris’s voice came muffled from the crook of her arm. “You ought to just throw me out for playing you such a rotten trick.”

  “If you don’t stop crying,” I said, “I will throw you out. Sit up and blow your nose and remember that you’re a happy bride.”

  She sat up, mopping futilely at her eyes with a scrap of handkerchief. “That’s just it! I’m not a happy b-b-bride at all. I’ve got to talk to you, Linell. I’ve got to tell you.”

  “It ought to be a pretty story,” said a voice from the corridor. “Mind if I listen, Mrs. Montgomery?”

  I looked around at the girl in the doorway.

  “Hello, Sondo,” I said, not very cordially. “Come in and join the party. We’re having open house this afternoon.”

  Sondo Norgaard was Monty’s right hand over in window display and the very sight of her gave me an uneasy feeling. The girl was odd, with her olive skin, tangled black hair, and thin, clever fingers. But put a paint brush or a pair of scissors in her hands and a lovely, whimsical fairyland would result.

  She painted backgrounds for the Cunningham windows. She added designs to signs. She created fantastic paper creatures with shaving curl manes and flirtatious eyes. In her way she was a genius, sharp of temper and bitter of tongue. Her presence in my office at that moment probably meant just one thing. That Monty had sent her.

  But at least the sight of Sondo had stopped Chris’s tears. The girl took out her compact and made a feeble effort to cover the streakings left by her outburst.

  Sondo regarded her efforts scornfully, addressing herself to me. “Monty wants to see you. Now. Do you think you could manage to be alone if he comes over?”

  I didn’t care for her tone or manner. “Since he’s waited this long, perhaps he might as well wait till tomorrow.”

  Sondo became a shade less bitter. She stood there in the doorway, looking like a sexless gnome in her straight, paint-smeared green smock, her feet set well apart in sturdy brogues. The big dark eyes that were her one good feature held no particular enmity as she looked at me, but they held no open liking either.

  “Better see him,” she urged. “He didn’t want to just barge over without warning. That’s why he sent me. But you’d better get rid of his—” her dark eyes moved to Chris, turned vindictive again “—his charming little wife.”

  Chris pulled on her hat without regard for appearance, her hands trembling.

  “I’m going now, Linell,” she said. “I—I’ll talk to you some other time.”

  She moved past Sondo as if she were a little afraid of her, and then gathered momentary courage. “I know you’ve never liked me, Sondo. But be kind this once. Don’t tell Monty I was here. Please don’t tell him.”

  I looked at Sondo and saw the gleam in her eyes. That was no way to deal with her, I knew. She had too strong a sadistic streak, and Chris was too soft and helpless and open to hurt. Sondo was the kind who could indulge in a particularly refined type of torture and I knew I’d have to warn Chris never to ask for quarter from her.

  But I said, “I’ll see you later, Chris. Run along. There’s no need for Sondo to tell Monty you were here.”

  Chris gave me a grateful, beaten glanc
e and scurried down the hall toward the elevators. Sondo stared after her for a moment, her wide, scarlet mouth twisted derisively.

  “I hate mice,” she said. “Nasty, furry, frightened little beasts. God knows why he wanted her. In fact, I don’t think he did. But there she is married to him and dissolving in misery.”

  There was something odd about her manner. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on which left me uneasy. I’d always been puzzled by the relationship between Monty and Sondo. He treated her more like a man than a woman, yet he seemed to trust and rely upon her more than on anyone else.

  Before I could speak, she went on.

  “You’re the one who ought to be miserable and you’ve been flying banners of courage ever since it happened. I know. I’ve watched you.”

  “Wouldn’t it be nice,” I said, “if we’d all stop watching one another and just tend to our own affairs? Suppose you go back and tell Monty I’ll give him five minutes if he comes right away.”

  Sondo grinned.

  “Okay,” she said, “I’m put in my place. Trouble is, I never remember to stay there.” She waved one small hand and scampered off down the hall.

  I shivered. The girl was sometimes more animal than human. I wondered how Monty could stand to have her around. Tony Salvador, Monty’s assistant, hated her like poison and since Monty had been away the two had been snapping at each other and indulging in temperamental clashes that echoed clear across the floor.

  I sighed and rubbed my fingers wearily against my temples. A department store is too full of temperament Especially at the merchandising end. Down in the selling sections only buyers can afford the luxury, but upstairs there’s always enough talent and creativeness to drive any innocent bystander crazy.

  Not that I was an innocent bystander, by any means. I had a job I liked to do. Ordinarily. And I tried to do it with a minimum expenditure of temperament on my own part. The trouble was everybody knew I was a good peacemaker and I was always having to play buffer when matters became too charged with dynamite.