Read Online The Simple Way of Poison by Leslie Ford - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Leslie Ford
Tags: Crime, OCR-Editing
Ads: Link
shirt.
It was then, I think, that we all became aware of Mac. He came forward, knelt down beside her and put his arm around her gently.
“Don’t, Lowell. Please don’t. Please, honey!”
He looked up helplessly as she shook passionately away from him. Colonel Primrose took a step forward. Suddenly Iris said, in a voice nearly as cool and detached as it had been two hours before, “You take her upstairs, Steve. Grace will show you the way.”
Which should, I suppose, have shown that Iris Nash had a surer insight into the complex and I think quite unconscious springs of her stepdaughter’s soul than anyone else had. Steve Donaldson picked her up bodily, unresisting, and carried her up the broad stairs. We stood there in her room for a moment, looking down at her, sobbing quietly on the high four-poster bed, her head in her arms.
“Poor little kid!” Steve said gently. He smoothed her dark silky curls. “Buck up, old chap!” he said.
I turned on the light by the mahogany table by the windows and switched off the light by her bed. Steve was still standing there, one of her limp hands in his.
I shook my head involuntarily. “You’ve given yourself a pretty tough assignment, my friend,” I thought… not seeing how anybody could possibly be a friend of Lowell and Iris Nash at the same time. It seems to be a characteristic of the Nash difficulties. You’ve got to be on one side or the other. It was true with Randall and Marie’s divorce, it was true of the two children, it seemed to be almost nauseatingly true of Iris Nash and her stepdaughter, though of Iris only because Lowell forced it to be that way.
I was glad when the door opened and the doctor came in.
“This’ll quiet her,” he said. “Severe shock.”
“I’m afraid so,” I said.
He jerked his head over his shoulder in the direction of the stair well.
“Other one’s holding up all right.”
There was a sardonic inflection in his voice that should have told me more than it did. But it seemed to me then that it must have been perfectly apparent to all of them that Iris Nash was going on her nerve… and on the sure knowledge that everybody in the place couldn’t indulge in the luxury of cracking up and sleeping off the first frightful hours of this with a shot in the arm. That’s being rather hard on Lowell, I suppose; but I really didn’t feel that her virulent attack on her stepmother before the assembled police had any justification in shock or nerves or anything else. If she’d thought what she said, and I suppose she really did, she should never have said it. This flying to bits every time anything didn’t please her was more like her mother, really, than like Lowell. Marie Nash’s life with Randall, I knew, had been one stormy scene after another, with a ninety mile gale raging at the drop of a hat. Lowell’s scenes had hitherto been like her father’s—the product of a carefully designed plan of action that could seize an opportunity and make the most of it, as Randall Nash had done on Christmas Eve when he’d told the story of the Nash vault. The business downstairs fitted in so perfectly with what had gone on at my house after the dog was found dead that I was really alarmed. If Lowell had set out to get even with Iris, she had certainly scored a strike with her first ball. There was no doubt of that.
However, there was also no use wasting moral indignation on anyone so completely and outrageously pagan as a modern eighteen-year-old. The interesting thing to me was seeing how my sympathy, that had been with Lowell since she was four and swiped the funeral wreath, had changed since the Christmas Eve scenes, and veered completely to Iris with her final attack a few minutes before. After all, you don’t just go about accusing people you happen to dislike because they married your father of poisoning your dog, much less of poisoning your father. No matter how richly it’s deserved— either the poison or the accusation.
And
It was then, I think, that we all became aware of Mac. He came forward, knelt down beside her and put his arm around her gently.
“Don’t, Lowell. Please don’t. Please, honey!”
He looked up helplessly as she shook passionately away from him. Colonel Primrose took a step forward. Suddenly Iris said, in a voice nearly as cool and detached as it had been two hours before, “You take her upstairs, Steve. Grace will show you the way.”
Which should, I suppose, have shown that Iris Nash had a surer insight into the complex and I think quite unconscious springs of her stepdaughter’s soul than anyone else had. Steve Donaldson picked her up bodily, unresisting, and carried her up the broad stairs. We stood there in her room for a moment, looking down at her, sobbing quietly on the high four-poster bed, her head in her arms.
“Poor little kid!” Steve said gently. He smoothed her dark silky curls. “Buck up, old chap!” he said.
I turned on the light by the mahogany table by the windows and switched off the light by her bed. Steve was still standing there, one of her limp hands in his.
I shook my head involuntarily. “You’ve given yourself a pretty tough assignment, my friend,” I thought… not seeing how anybody could possibly be a friend of Lowell and Iris Nash at the same time. It seems to be a characteristic of the Nash difficulties. You’ve got to be on one side or the other. It was true with Randall and Marie’s divorce, it was true of the two children, it seemed to be almost nauseatingly true of Iris Nash and her stepdaughter, though of Iris only because Lowell forced it to be that way.
I was glad when the door opened and the doctor came in.
“This’ll quiet her,” he said. “Severe shock.”
“I’m afraid so,” I said.
He jerked his head over his shoulder in the direction of the stair well.
“Other one’s holding up all right.”
There was a sardonic inflection in his voice that should have told me more than it did. But it seemed to me then that it must have been perfectly apparent to all of them that Iris Nash was going on her nerve… and on the sure knowledge that everybody in the place couldn’t indulge in the luxury of cracking up and sleeping off the first frightful hours of this with a shot in the arm. That’s being rather hard on Lowell, I suppose; but I really didn’t feel that her virulent attack on her stepmother before the assembled police had any justification in shock or nerves or anything else. If she’d thought what she said, and I suppose she really did, she should never have said it. This flying to bits every time anything didn’t please her was more like her mother, really, than like Lowell. Marie Nash’s life with Randall, I knew, had been one stormy scene after another, with a ninety mile gale raging at the drop of a hat. Lowell’s scenes had hitherto been like her father’s—the product of a carefully designed plan of action that could seize an opportunity and make the most of it, as Randall Nash had done on Christmas Eve when he’d told the story of the Nash vault. The business downstairs fitted in so perfectly with what had gone on at my house after the dog was found dead that I was really alarmed. If Lowell had set out to get even with Iris, she had certainly scored a strike with her first ball. There was no doubt of that.
However, there was also no use wasting moral indignation on anyone so completely and outrageously pagan as a modern eighteen-year-old. The interesting thing to me was seeing how my sympathy, that had been with Lowell since she was four and swiped the funeral wreath, had changed since the Christmas Eve scenes, and veered completely to Iris with her final attack a few minutes before. After all, you don’t just go about accusing people you happen to dislike because they married your father of poisoning your dog, much less of poisoning your father. No matter how richly it’s deserved— either the poison or the accusation.
And
Similar Books
