Read The Simple Way of Poison for Free Online Page B

single chord struck suddenly on a cello.
    “Isn’t that strange,” Lowell said quickly; “I never thought of that!”
    She looked up from where she was picking up the bright flimsy pieces of the broken ornament.
    Steve Donaldson spoke quietly. “You wouldn’t,” he said. “There are probably lots of things you don’t think of, my child.”
    She looked at him sharply, her lips parted for an instant, I thought for some violent retort. Then she bent her head and picked up the last bits of the red ball, her face flushed.
    Randall Nash moved his eyes slowly away from Iris.
    “No,” he said coldly. “I’m afraid that is a refinement of cruelty that one has to have been—or be—deeply in love to understand.”
    It was then that I realized with a sick feeling In the pit of my stomach what that curious thin smile on his face had meant. He had intended from the beginning to tell that story, even before Lowell had given him that perfect cue.
    He lighted a cigar and blew out the match, still smiling a little.
    “Well,” I said, “I think I’ll go home.”
    It was more abrupt than I’d meant, but I was afraid if I’d stayed there much longer I’d have started taking pot shots at people myself.
    Iris got up and followed me out into the wide handsomely designed hall with its hanging staircase rising gracefully to the Palladian window at the broad landing. “Perfect for a wedding, my dear!” as the women invariably say who troop in there every Spring when the house is opened for the Garden Club Pilgrimage. It looked to me riper for a funeral just then.
    Iris helped me on with my coat.
    “Don’t let them get you down, honey,” I said, repeating Angie’s parting words. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Are you going to the Assembly Tuesday?”
    “I suppose so,” she answered dully. “Why don’t you go with us?”
    “I’d like to,” I said. “I haven’t got a beau, unless somebody turns up before then.”
     
    I suppose I should have thought more about the Nashes that evening than I did if it hadn’t been for the business of getting my two sons’ ties tied and having their two pretty blank-faced girls for dinner and getting them off at ten o’clock for their party. The old-fashioned days when parties began at eight-thirty and ended at twelve seemed very remote as I waved goodbye to them and went back into the drawing room to put a last finishing touch on the tree and arrange the presents from distant relatives that Lilac brought out of hiding.
    “Ah didn’ get a chance to tell you, Mis’ Grace, but the Colonel was ovah, this evenin’.”
    I looked up with a start.
    “Colonel Primrose?”
    Lilac beamed. “Yas, ma’am.”
    I felt myself blushing.
    “Yas’m, it sho’ was. An’ ’deed, Mis Grace, he lookin’ mighty fine.”
    She started out, and turned back at the door.
    “The Sergeant, he wasn’ with him. Ah guess the Sergeant don’ lak the Colonel cornin’ see you all time, Mis’ Grace. Law, ’sif you’d marry Colonel Primrose, pretty an’ stylish as you is.”
    I just stopped myself in time from demanding what was wrong with Colonel Primrose, seeing from the wicked look in her saucer-white old eyes that that was exactly the trap she’d set.
    “We’ll have hot cakes and that country sausage for breakfast, Lilac,” I said with dignity. “Downstairs, about half past nine if the boys are up.”
    “They’ll be up all right, Mis’ Grace. That’s one consolation. ’Night, Mis’ Grace.”
    Lilac’s habit of finding consolation in odd and sometimes quite unconsoling things always manages to cast a grave and sinister aura about the immediate future as well as the immediate past, and in fact to raise doubts about the entire stability of human experience.
    I said “Goodnight,” put the last gaily wrapped package on the low table by the Christmas tree, and changed a green bulb that had burned out for a red one. I stood there looking at the frosty glittering tree with the vague aching