The Simple Way of Poison

by Leslie Ford

  I glanced at Iris. She had turned away and was brushing the ashes from Angie’s cigarette into the fireplace with the hearth broom.

  “He’s absolutely different from all the other people you meet, Grace,” Lowell announced positively. She looked impudently at Mac bringing me a cup of egg nog from the old silver punch bowl on the table in front of the garden windows at the other end of the room. He was a little sore, I thought, but took it remarkably well.

  “Why don’t you sock her one, Mac?” her brother said, over his shoulder from in front of the radio.

  “Mac doesn’t care,” Lowell retorted promptly. “He’d much rather talk to Iris than me… wouldn’t you, Mac?”

  Iris Nash turned her head. I thought she was going to say something, but she didn’t. She simply shook her head at Mac and smiled. He gave her a rueful grin and kicked the log further into the fireplace. Iris came and sat down by me.

  “Did you have a grand time in Nassau?” she said. But she didn’t listen to my answer. Her whole body in its green brocaded coat stiffened. I could see the muscles of her throat contract sharply. Her eyes were fixed on the hall door.

  “Angie,” she said. I don’t know that if I hadn’t been so close to her I should have noticed the sharp edge of alarm in her voice. “Is that someone in the hall?”

  Angus Nash leaned away from the radio and looked around the door. I could hear odd shuffling steps myself, now, though how anyone who didn’t know they were out there could have done, above the fitful changes Angie was ringing on the radio, I didn’t see.

  “It’s nothing,” he said. “Just old Lavinia. Come for her weekly hand-out from the old man, I guess.”

  Iris took a deep breath. Her slim body relaxed against the back of the sofa. She gave me an ironic little smile.

  “I’m nervy, I guess,” she said.

  “I can’t see what the hell Father lets her come around for,” Lowell exclaimed, with such sudden and extraordinary violence that everybody started. “She’d make anybody nervy. She’s nothing but a horrible prowling old beggar!”

  We all looked shocked, I think—all of us, that is, but her brother. He looked at her over his shoulder. “That’s the old Christmas spirit, Sis,” he said cheerfully.

  “You shut up. You don’t have to live here and have her sneaking around the house all the time. Why can’t they put her away somewhere?”

  Iris Nash got up. Her oval finely sculptured face was white. She went over to the small rosewood table on the other side of the fireplace and took a cigarette out of the tooled leather box.

  “She’s just old and poor, Lowell,” she said quietly, in her rich slightly husky voice. “And it’s always a good idea to remember that there but for the grace of God go I.”

  The silence that followed for an instant was so intense that I could hear the front door closing, very softly.

  For a moment Lowell was stunned. Then she picked up her tinsel.

  “I suppose that’s what you say, Iris, when you see Mrs. Gilbert St. Martin hobbling along the street in three-inch heels and dyed hair,” she said coolly, with I think as quiet concentrated cruelty as I’ve ever heard in anybody’s voice. “Come on, Mac, let’s finish the tree.”

  The mother-of-pearl lighter in Iris’s hand stopped dead half-way to the tip of her cigarette, for just an instant. It was long enough to light up something pretty dangerous that darkened and snapped in her green eyes’. I saw then what must have been fairly obvious—that Iris Nash had a pretty iron control over her temper, in spite of her red hair and her stepdaughter.

  Angus Nash looked up from the floor in front of the radio—on which at that moment a boy soprano was singing “Silent Night.”

  “Don’t mind her, she can’t help it,” he said pleasantly. “The pretty lamb, she’s half hellcat.”

  Lowell whirled round from the tree, her smoldering black eyes burning. She threw the roll of tinsel on the floor. Angie Nash got to his feet and took two swift steps toward her.

  “Listen, my pet,” he said, in the cool controlled tone that I wish I could manage when I’m boiling with rage. “Iris’s affairs are her affairs—not yours… or our friends’ here.”

  He waved a hand toward the rest of us.

  “Really? It seems to me they’re also my father’s—or is that too old-fashioned for people who live on Massachusetts Avenue?”

  I looked at Iris. A cool smile played in her eyes under their dark curling lashes and deepened in one corner of her scarlet mouth.

  “I always say there’s nothing like a first-class family row to make guests feel at home on Christmas Eve,” she said. “Who’d like a cocktail? Mac, you and Steve go out and make one. Lowell will show you where the vermouth is.”

  Angie Nash came over to her, put his arm round her shoulders and gave her a rough brotherly sort of hug. “You’re swell, Iris!” he said. “I don’t see how the hell you stick her.”

  I saw the quick tears spring to her eyes. She tossed her cigarette into the fire, her fingers trembling.

  “I suppose I’ve got it coming to me,” she said.

  “Personally, I’d like to give her a good swift kick,” Angie said bitterly. “Incidentally, I guess now’s as good a time as any.”

  Iris laughed. “You just keep Mac busy,” she said. “Let’s try to hold the bloodshed in the family.”

  She took another cigarette and held the box out to me.

  “And how long,” I asked, “in heaven’s name has this been going on?”

  “Oh, it’s like hives. It breaks out any time,” she said wearily. “It’s worse now because her mother’s quite sick and she’s upset. Then she’s quarrelling with Mac about Steve.”

  “And who’s Steve?”

  “He’s terribly nice. He’s a lawyer. She met him at Gloria Mason’s coming-out tea Thanksgiving. She’s perfectly mad about him.”

  “And what about him?”

  She threw the cigarette she’d just lighted into the fire and sat down by me, her elbows on her knees, her body hunched forward, staring into the fire. She didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she said, in a dead hard voice, “I don’t know, really. I suppose that’s part of the trouble. I was a damned fool, probably. But with all her lacquer of sophistication she’s nothing but a kid, and I… well, I suggested—in the most tentative fashion, because she resents so bitterly anything she can possibly take as criticism—that she ought to give him a chance to do a little of the telephoning.”

  She leaned her head on the back of the damask sofa and closed her eyes. Her face looked tired—not pathetically, but with the kind of disillusioned weariness that comes from perfectly futile and useless effort.

  “I thought if she’d understand I was speaking from experience she’d see I wasn’t simply being stepmotherish. So I told her about the years I thought I was in love with Gilbert St. Martin, and how I did most of the bothersome things, like standing in line for tickets and all that. And all the thanks I got.”

  She got up abruptly and stood, looking down into the fire.

  “Well, you’d think at my age and with my experience I’d have better sense than to give another… another woman a fine hand-turned club to whack me with.”

  She moved away down the room—straightening things, anything to absorb the nervous tension from her hands—to the garden windows. The old gold taffeta curtains rustled softly as she held them back and stood there, staring out. I saw her slim green-brocaded shoulders with their old-fashioned puffed sleeves rise as she drew a long deep breath. Past her the lights from the other windows streamed on the snow-shrouded garden so that it looked like a scene in a play. The summer house with its little White-capped dome was there, and beyond it the high brick wall that separates my small garden from their large one.

  “The snow’s lovely,” she said. “It’s a shame to shut it out.”

  She looped the heavy silk into the elaborate gold leaf arrangement there.

  “What about Angie?” I asked. “I was dumbfounded seeing him.
Has Randall quit being the heavy father?”

  She shook her head. “No, no,” she said, with something almost like a groan. “I do so wish he would. Angie understands—he’s a peach. I… just do my best to try to keep them apart. I’d be pretty miserable without him.”

  She turned back. “I thought Lowell needed a brother’s gentle hand. And I thought Angie needed her—she’s a marvelous counter-irritant.”

  We could hear Lowell now, coming back with the three men, and the clinking of ice and glass on silver. Iris drew a sharp breath, perfectly composed again, even managing her cool detached smile. They all came trooping in.

  “I don’t know why we drink that nauseating bilge just because it’s Christmas,” Angie said. He took my egg nog cup and replaced it with a cold amber Martini. “It probably won’t mix, Mrs. Latham, but that’s your problem. We all have our problems.”

  He looked at his sister. She smiled sweetly. “May I have just one, Iris? A tiny one—please?”

  “No,” Angie said. He took the glass out of her hand and handed it to Mac. “You’re foul enough sober.”

  I expected her to flare up, but she didn’t. “I didn’t want it anyway,” she retorted, with a couple of dance steps back to where Stephen Donaldson was standing. She gave him a radiant smile and wrinkled her nose pertly at poor Mac. I glanced at Iris. She was looking at the door again, her glass untouched in her hand. Angus had gone back to the radio. I saw Iris move sharply as if something inside hurt her. Her face was absolutely bloodless.

  I put my empty glass down and got up. She started quickly. “Oh no, Grace—don’t go! Can’t you stay for dinner?”

  I shook my head. “I’d love to—”

  “But please don’t go yeti Randall’s just coming down—he’ll want to see you.”

  She put her hand on my arm. It was as cold as if she’d held it in the snow. I looked at her, definitely alarmed; as perfectly aware, suddenly, as if she’d told me in so many words that it was Randall Nash’s step she’d been listening for out in the hall, and that she dreaded his coming, dreaded it horribly.

  I could hear him out there now, crossing the hall toward the library. How she could have heard him sooner I still don’t see. Though that’s not quite true, for Colonel Primrose tells me fear sharpens people’s senses almost miraculously. And Iris Nash was afraid. I recognized it then. What I didn’t know was what an unbearable fear it was.

  “Please stay!” she said, with a smile. I looked at my watch. It was just six, and I didn’t really have to be home until time to tie my younger son’s tie for his first formal party. I sat down. As I did, I happened quite accidentally to glance at Steve Donaldson. He was looking at Iris, his teeth gripped so hard on the bit of his pipe that there were ridges on his cheeks, his eyes so completely revealing that I sat there simply staring at him.

  3

  Mac’s voice at my elbow brought me to my senses. “Where’s your glass, Mrs. Latham?”

  He groaned suddenly. “Don’t tell me you’ve gone screwy too!”

  I pulled myself sharply together. “It was that last cocktail, Mac.”

  “Then you’d certainly better have another.”

  “No, thanks,” I said.

  “How about you, Iris?”

  He stepped back—and there rose instantly the most ungodly squeal, full of pain and wrath and horror and outrage, with a loud clatter and bang of fire irons. There was a sharp cry of protest from Lowell and a muttered swearing from Mac, and above the din I could hear Angie’s pleasant young voice: “Oh, that’s all right. Just another of the little sister’s oddities. Loyalty to the brute creation—especially if the brute happens to give everybody else the jitters.”

  Lowell was down on her knees on the floor, trying to pull Senator McGilvray out from under the sofa.

  “Oh, poor blessed lamb! Mac didn’t mean to step on him! He’s just a big clumsy! Come on, baby!”

  Mac glowered at her angrily, wiping the gin and vermouth off his trousers. Senator McGilvray snarled and snapped. Lowell was cooing to him. “No, no—he wouldn’t bite his mother! Would he, precious! There, there, baby!”

  “Oh, shut up!” Angie groaned. “If you weren’t so damn stubborn you’d let somebody take the aged beast out and give him a nice bone and shoot him.”

  Lowell got up suddenly, her face white. “You all hate him because he’s mine!” she cried passionately. “You ought to be ashamed of yourselves! He doesn’t hurt any of you!”

  “Okay, Toots,” Angie grinned. “All the same, if he snaps at me again, I’ll break his damn neck.”

  She turned on him, her eyes blazing; but before she could say anything a deep voice spoke from the hall, so charged with anger and hate that my blood froze. I realized abruptly that much as things may have changed in the Nash household, they hadn’t changed enough to help.

  “If that’s the way you feel about your sister’s pets, young man, you can get out of this house and stay out!”

  For an instant no one breathed. Then I saw Lowell’s taut slim body and angry face crumple like a punctured toy balloon. She ran quickly to Randall Nash in the doorway, gripping his arm with both hands. “Oh no, dad! It was all my fault, really!”

  Randall disengaged her hands and pushed her out of his way so abruptly that she almost lost her balance. She stared at him with frightened eyes. He had not even looked at her; his steely grey eyes were fixed coldly on his son.

  “What are you doing here anyway?” he said curtly. “Don’t you know your mother is sick? That’s where your place is.”

  Iris had moved quickly to where Angie was standing, completely stunned, I think, by the sudden violence of his father’s attack. I know the rest of us were. It was so hideously unfair and uncalled-for, so like the Randall Nash that Angus’s mother had divorced, and yet so unlike the one Iris had married and believed in, and who had saved her when she needed saving most. What, in heaven’s name, I thought, had happened to change him so? I glanced from his angry face to the slim composed figure of his wife, clear-eyed, as unflinchingly protective beside his son as if he were her own. Randall was looking at her too, his face corroded with bitterness. It was almost unbelievable that he could have changed again, back to what he had been, so quickly.

  Iris put her arm in Angie’s and pressed it to her. He was trembling, not from fear, his mouth set, his brown hard fists clenched, his eyes burning dangerously. As Iris’s hand closed over his he gripped it tightly, without taking his eyes off his father.

  “Please, Randall!” Iris said quietly. “I asked Angie to come. He’s been with his mother all week. It’s the first afternoon he’s been out. She has a nurse; she doesn’t need him there every minute of the day.”

  Randall Nash’s thin lips tightened ominously. I’d never noticed before what an arrogant fanatical face he had, with his thin hawk-like nose and cold bloodshot eyes. His glance shifted slowly to his wife.

  I tried not to look at him. It was hard to know where to look. I’m afraid Stephen Donaldson and I simply gave up trying to pretend we weren’t really there, and just openly stared. Mac was obviously used to this sort of thing. He flushed, looking desperately miserable.

  “It shouldn’t surprise me to find you taking his part against me, my dear.”

  He spoke so curtly that Iris’s green eyes winced as if she had been lashed with a whip across the face. Angie’s taut body jerked forward, but her hand tightened on his arm. “Don’t!” she whispered. I could hear every separate breath drawn in that room… and through it all, like a Greek chorus, Senator McGilvray loudly, hideously, licking his wounds under the sofa.

  “Well,” Randall said icily, “are you going? Or are you hiding behind a woman’s skirts until you’re kicked out?”

  Angus Nash gave Iris’s hand a quick hard squeeze and let it drop. He strode across the space that separated him from the door where his father stood. Lowell stared at him with frightened tear-filled eyes, her lips trembling. For a moment I think she thought what I know I did—that
Randall Nash would strike him as he passed, and then… Angus stopped in the door and turned back to his sister.

  “I said next time that beast of yours snapped at me, I’d break his neck,” he said coolly. “Well, that goes for all your pet connections, Sis.”

  Lowell held out her hands. “Oh, I didn’t mean it, Angie,” she whispered, choking back the scalding tears.

  He gave her a quick twisted grin. “I know it. Well, so long. Don’t let ’em get you down.”

  He said it to Lowell, but I knew, and I think everyone else did, that it was Iris he was speaking to.

  He turned and walked out, without a glance at his father.

  Iris, her face a mask of pale inscrutability, started after him. Randall Nash deliberately closed the door. “You can stay where you are,” he said slowly. “And let this be the last time that young man comes into my house. Is that quite clear?”

  For a moment Iris stood in front of him, erect and rigid, her eyes meeting his without wavering.

  “Quite,” she said. Then she shrugged her slim shoulders and turned back to the rest of us with a cool smile.

  “I can only offer you my husband’s deepest apologies. He is not entirely himself this afternoon.”

  She came back to the fire and held her hands out to the blaze. Mac had moved around until he was between Lowell and her father.

  “I think you’re a bit hard on him, sir,” he said stolidly. “The whole thing was my fault. I’m very sorry.”

  Randall Nash jerked his head around, his jaws working, and gave him a long savage stare. It hadn’t occurred to him, apparently, that Mac—or anyone, for that matter, but Iris— would stand up against him. Even Lowell looked alarmed for a moment, and then smiled, proudly, I thought. I glanced at Steve Donaldson. He was leaning against the carved window-trim, his hands in his pockets, teeth tightly clamped on his pipe, his face a little flushed.