The Simple Way of Poison by Leslie Ford

Author:Leslie Ford [Ford, Leslie]
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Crime, OCR-Editing
Amazon: B000J5O8HC
Goodreads: 9846641
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 1936-12-31T23:00:00+00:00

13

Iris’s low taut voice still vibrated in my astonished ears. I sat down on the padded window seat and stared unseeing past the garden wall at my own house. The only thing I was conscious of was the shattering fact that Lowell Nash had been in the house the night her father was killed, and had said nothing about it—Lowell, who whatever her faults I would have bet my last sous was as passionately honest as anyone in all the world. Why? Why? It kept beating in my brain, and I had no answer. The idea that Lowell could have had anything to do with her father’s death by poison was unthinkable… even more unthinkable than for Iris to have had. And yet… My eye fell on the broken spot in the wall between our two gardens. Lowell was still a Nash… a direct descendant of the General Nash on whose immortal soul that dark burden lay.

“It is not possible!” I said sharply to myself. I got up and turned on the light. Some simple explanation would turn up, I told myself. I powdered my nose and went downstairs.

Halfway down I heard the sound of Mac’s voice from the drawing room, and stopped dead in my tracks. If Lowell had come to the house, then Mac must have come too. I don’t know why that struck me so forcibly just then, or why it hadn’t occurred to me before. I remembered now that they’d left the dance early.

I listened again. Someone else was speaking. I recognized Steve Donaldson’s voice. He was saying, “But if they can prove anybody else at all was here Doyle can get her off. He doesn’t even need that if he puts her on the stand.”

I waited for Mac to say something, but he didn’t. All I heard was the tinkling of ice in a glass, and the crackling of the fire. Not even Colonel Primrose’s voice. I glanced quickly down to where his coat and hat had been when I went upstairs. They were gone.

I went on down and into the drawing room. Mac and Steve were there alone. They got up, both looking pretty washed-out. Mao for the moment had evidently buried the hatchet, or maybe, I thought, he’d realized by this time that Steve was not trying to cut him out with Lowell.

“Where’s Angus?” I asked.

“Somebody called up for Colonel Primrose,” Mac said. “They beat it out of here hell for leather. Angie and that guy with the iron mug.”

Stephen Donaldson said nothing… but no sky writer ever had a question more plainly written in the air all around him.

“Iris is holding up marvelously,” I said.

“Then I guess I’ll go along. Tell her if there’s anything I can do…” he said lamely. When he’d gone I turned to Mac.

“Didn’t you and Lowell come by the house after the Assembly?” I asked casually.

“No,” he said… too promptly. “Why?”

“I just wondered.”

He got up from where he was sprawling on the sofa and wandered around the room for a minute.

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