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.
It was late when we got home and I felt so tired and upset that I didn’t invite Bill up. He hadn’t said anything about Carla Drake and it seemed to me that omission was very peculiar indeed.
He had a funny quirk to his smile when he said good night, and told me pointedly that I’d be hearing from him soon. I hoped my manner indicated to him how little I cared.
The moment Helena and I stepped into our living room, I could sense the uneasiness between us. She said nothing, and I said nothing and the silence grew into a chasm. We went about our usual preparations for bed as if nothing extraordinary had happened, but each was intensely aware of the other. I was waiting for her to speak, to explain, and she knew I was waiting. But she said nothing at all. She went off to the bathroom, came back with her face carefully creamed for the night and got calmly and silently into bed.
That was too much for me. I went over and sat on the edge of her bed, pulling my pajama-clad knees up to my chin. Helena had switched off the light and the room was dim except for moonlight at the window over by my bed. I didn’t mind. Sometimes it’s easier to talk in the dark.
“You’d better tell me,” I said. “I have to know.”
She lay with one arm thrown across her eyes and in the gloom I couldn’t see her face at all.
“What if I don’t tell you?” she asked.
“Then—then I’ll have to go to McPhail,” I said reluctantly. “How can the police work when all these under-the-surface things are kept out of their hands?”
“Such, for instance,” Helena said quietly, “as the fact that you were the one who found Monty’s body?”
Her words startled me. That was an attitude I’d never expected her to take. And she certainly had me. I knew that the part I’d played was perfectly innocent, and of no value to the police, but who else knew it? As Hering had pointed out, I had a strong motive and McPhail was already treating me with suspicion. I’d be in for a siege if he found out.
“Helena,” I said, “sooner or later I think everything is going to come out and that we’ll both have to tell McPhail the truth. But in the meantime—”
Her voice was hard, unfriendly. “In the meantime let well enough alone.”
But I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t go over to the other bed and go to sleep, wondering and guessing and suspecting. When it came right down to it, I didn’t know an awful lot about Helena. I’d become acquainted with her when she’d first come to the store about a year before. I’d had to do a series of jewelry signs for the windows and Helena had helped me. She’d seemed very interested in what went on upstairs in the window display and advertising departments, and we’d struck up a friendship. When she’d suggested that we take a larger apartment together and split expenses, it had been a nice break for me. But in the months we’d lived there, I’d learned very little about her. Though, until now, that fact hadn’t seemed important.
“Helena,” I said, “did you know Michael Montgomery? I mean did you know him at all well?”
“I knew him well enough to dislike him,” she said. “But I’m scarcely his type.”
I followed up my thread of an idea. “Did you ever know him—in the past?”
“Of course I didn’t know him.” She said it a little too sharply and I had the same feeling that she was holding something back that I’d had when I’d asked her about Carla.
“All right then,” I went on, “there’s just one other thing, and I think you’d better tell me this. Who is Lotta Montez?”
She sat straight up in bed. “Linell, I’m very fond of you, and I know you mean well about all this. But you simply must let the questions go unanswered. If you don’t, you may get some innocent people badly involved. One of them, at least, has suffered enough at Monty’s hands. To turn that person over to McPhail now would do no good, and it might do irreparable harm.”
She dropped back on her pillow and closed her eyes. Moonlight touched her face and her mouth looked bitter and twisted.
“Then you know who murdered Michael Montgomery?” I said in a low voice. “You do know, don’t you?”
She turned her face toward the shadows. “I don’t know anything. I don’t know anything at all. Go to bed. Go to sleep.”
I got helplessly off her bed, slid my feet into mules. It was no use. I had an idea that even if McPhail put her through the third degree, she still wouldn’t tell what she knew.
The phone rang and I flew to answer it, with thoughts of disaster flooding my mind. Who on earth could be calling at this hour? Had something happened at Sondo’s?
My hand was shaking when I lifted the receiver. It was Bill’s voice and there was only impudence in it.
“Hello, baby,” he said. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to sleep until you hear how I fared with My Lady of the Silver Hair.”
I wanted to slam the receiver down, but curiosity got the better of me.
“I suppose she confessed that she murdered Monty and threw herself on your mercy?” I inquired.
“Nothing of the kind,” he said, and I didn’t like his laugh. “We didn’t talk about sordid things like murder. Too busy discovering common interests. Carla likes to rhumba and so do I. I think we’re going to make quite a team.”
“Look,” I said, “I’m a working girl and it’s way past midnight. Didn’t you even find out what time she went down to exchange that pin?”
“Well, no,” he admitted. “It seems she doesn’t remember either.”
“But how did she look when you asked her?”
“Beautiful. That’s the only way she ever looks.”
“Oh, well,” I said, “if you want to run around with old women it’s no concern of mine.”
“Jealous, baby?”
“I am not jealous,” I said. And then I did hang up. Right in his ear.
When I went back to the bedroom Helena looked as if she’d gone to sleep, so I didn’t bother her. I crawled into bed thinking murderous thoughts about the entire male sex and one member of the female in particular. But I suspect that I was rather enjoying myself. So long as it was Bill who pulled my pigtails, I’d just as soon have them pulled.