The Simple Way of Poison

by Leslie Ford

  He laughed.

  “We found Lavinia wrote the letters by keeping a watch on the Nash house, and seeing her slip the one you and Wilkins tried to hide under the door mat.—It’s quite simple.”

  “Very,” I said. “Especially when compared with the larger life, and abstract ideas, and fundamental—”

  “That’s how we arrived at the conclusion that it probably was Lavinia, even earlier,” he said imperturbably. “It was someone who was jealous and envious and was trying to turn Randall Nash against his wife. We figured whoever it was wouldn’t stop now that Randall was dead—there was still Iris. There was some kind of an idea of giving her as much rope as she wanted.”

  “Oh,” I said. “And did you know about the money?”

  He shook his head.

  “And… A. J.? Do you think—”

  He stopped me. “There will be a post mortem directly, Mrs. Latham. We have to wait till Dr. Kavanaugh reports. It’s the same situation we’re up against in the case of Randall Nash.”

  “You mean—”

  “That if autopsy shows A. J. was poisoned with cyanide of potassium—and it looks like it—we have to determine how it was administered. If he took it directly into his stomach, then he got it after he left the Nash house at quarter past five. And some time after, Mrs. Latham, in fact just before he died. It acts very quickly.”

  “And if he didn’t…?”

  “If he didn’t, then it was given as it was given to Senator McGilvray, and as it may have been given to Randall: in the form of enteric capsules.”

  He looked steadily at me over the marble-topped table. “Which means, of course, that he was poisoned in Beall Street… while he was having tea.”

  “I see,” I said. “The enteric capsule retards the action.”

  “For some time, Mrs. Latham. An hour, or more; it’s almost impossible to tell.”

  I nodded, trying to think. “And if he did take it at tea, it means that he was poisoned by one of us, there.”

  “Iris, Lowell, Angus, Mac, Steve Donaldson—”

  “Wilkins,” I put in.

  “Wilkins, and Edith St. Martin. They are the possibilities.”

  “But if he got it after he left there… He went to Mr. Hofnagel’s… and to Gilbert St. Martin.”

  He nodded.

  “Well,” I said, “I hope they find it in his stomach.”

  He looked at me queerly. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. Mr. Hofnagel obviously wouldn’t have any reason to poison him… and that just leaves dear Gilbert.”

  There was a faint smile around his eyes.

  “It leaves someone else, my dear.”

  “Who?”

  “Lowell Nash.”

  “Oh dear!” I said. I hadn’t thought of that. And I saw now that he had been thinking of it, for some time.

  “You know,” he said, “I don’t want to seem brutal, but somebody probably ought to tell Lowell that her position in all this is becoming… well, let’s say damned ambiguous.”

  I put down my fork. My fingers were suddenly too weak to hold it.

  “When Lowell tells the District Attorney and Captain Lamb her story about Lavinia coming there last night, and her terror, and all that,” he went on deliberately, “they’re going to be sorry for the poor kid… until Mr. Belden Doyle gets hold of it. And when he does, then he’ll get hold of her in a jiffy. And he’ll ask her if she doesn’t hate her stepmother, if she hasn’t quarreled with her father, if the reason she left Mac down in the car wasn’t to be alone with her father for twenty minutes in the house, with nobody else there. If Lavinia’s coming in didn’t terrify her not because she was afraid of the poor half-mad old woman her father had set on the road to ruin but because the old woman caught her just as she had poisoned her own father… and that fear and no other was what drove her to catch up the decanter of whiskey that she knew was this poor old derelict’s mortal weakness and thrust her out with it into the night… while she fled and danced, danced and drank champagne punch, while her father lay dead and her mother lay dying—was already dead, as a matter of fact, though she didn’t know it.”

  He sat back in his chair and drew a long breath.

  “Belden Doyle is a very dramatic fellow,” he remarked dryly. “And damnably plausible. And has he got something to go oh?”

  I sat staring at him, utterly aghast.

  “But what for?” I cried.

  “For a lot of money that she’s been so determined her stepmother was trying to steal.”

  “But where,” I said, “in Heaven’s name would Lowell Nash be getting cyanide of potassium?”

  The network of wrinkles round his black sparkling eyes deepened, but there was no laughter in them. “I know where the poison came from, Mrs. Latham.”

  I didn’t eat the rest of my ham and eggs. I couldn’t. I watched Colonel Primrose finish his in silence. He paid the check and helped me on with my coat. He looked at his watch.

  “Lamb’s going to phone me at nine. Shall we go back and look at Buck’s loot?”

  I nodded.

  “Let’s walk,” he said.

  We went down Wisconsin Avenue and turned on M Street, neither of us speaking. When we crossed at the intersection where A. J. had nearly been run down he took my arm.

  “I didn’t realize that such an idea would be so much of a blow to you,” he said. “I thought you’d have seen it by now. You would have, of course, if Lavinia hadn’t scared you out of your wits… or if you weren’t so determined to think well of your friends.”

  I shook my head. “It wouldn’t have occurred to me in a thousand years,” I said. “And anyway, I wasn’t scared of Lavinia. I was… just sick.”

  The little knot of people that had been hanging around the brown columned door when we came out had gone. The terrier was still there, and still less interested. We stepped over him and went up the stairs. At the first narrow landing Colonel Primrose stopped suddenly and gave me a warning glance. I could see his black eyes snap as he went on lightly, on his toes, up the last few steps and a little way along the corridor. He stopped there, listening. I followed cautiously and listened too, just as the door opened. He pushed me across the hall into a dark indentation in the wall.

  We heard quick light steps coming from Miss Lavinia’s room, and spacing them, the heavy brisk tread of Sergeant Buck’s army boots. At the head of the stairs they stopped, both pairs of feet, and I heard the Sergeant’s hard ominous voice.

  “Now you run home and don’t let on to nobody you came here. There’s people hangin’ around would give their left leg to catch you in an uncompromising position like this here. You scram and leave it to me. I’ll get them letters.”

  Colonel Primrose’s hand closed on my arm. My heart sank to my boots.

  We heard a swift breath caught abruptly, and quick steps on the stairs. We both looked out. The dark figure of a slender woman passed rapidly down the stairs, the dingy gleam of the single drop bulb lighting up for an instant as she went under it the unmistakable glory of her burnished copper hair. But I’d known before that it was Iris Nash that Sergeant Buck had caught in what he’d called so perfectly, with quite unexpected literalness, an uncompromising position.

  I looked at Colonel Primrose, expecting him to follow Sergeant Buck back to Lavinia’s room and lay down the law. But he didn’t. As soon as the Sergeant had closed the door again he said, “Let’s go to Beall Street, Mrs. Latham.”

  I was glad my car was back on Wisconsin Avenue…

  Iris could get home before we got there, and be saved the embarrassment of coming in on us cold. And she was there when Wilkins let us in. At least I hoped she was. Madame had not been feeling well, and had retired immediately after dinner, he said when Colonel Primrose asked for her.

  Colonel Primrose took my coat. “Would you go up and ask her to come down, please, Mrs. Latham.”

  He turned back to the butler. “Who else is here?”

  “Miss Lowell, Mr. Angus and Mr
. Donaldson are in the drawing room, sir. Mr. Mac left as soon as he heard the tragic news of his uncle.”

  He took Colonel Primrose’s coat and hat. Halfway up the stairs I turned and looked back. Colonel Primrose was standing in the middle of the hall, looking at his watch. I saw him hold it to his ear to see if it was still running. It was the first evidence I’d had that the time until he heard from Captain Lamb and knew what was to be known about A. J.’s death was lying heavily on his hands. He would know at nine o’clock. I remembered with a start that ten o’clock was when Gilbert St. Martin was to be at my house to see Iris, and I’d still not told her about it.

  On the landing by the great Palladian window I looked back again. Colonel Primrose was just going into the drawing room. It was too bad, I thought, that someone couldn’t put poor Lowell on her guard, tell her that every word she said against Iris now would be used dreadfully against her when Belden Doyle got into action.

  I hurried on up the stairs and turned the handle of Iris’s door. It was locked. I rapped gently and called. “It’s Grace, Iris.” After a moment I heard her light steps on the carpeted floor, and heard the big key turning in the old-fashioned brass lock.

  “Come in,” she said. I looked at her. She had on a green lace negligee with long tight sleeves… but she still had an outdoor air about her. Even if I hadn’t known she’d been out I think I would have felt the negligee and mules a little unconvincing. I didn’t say anything, thinking for once that I’d let nature and Sergeant Buck take their course. And, of course, I didn’t know… and I suddenly felt a little chill. I could protest until I was black in the face that Iris Nash was innocent of all this—not only of the murder of her husband, but of the liaison with Gilbert St. Martin, of taking and keeping Randall Nash’s money, of poisoning A. J. McClean because he knew, and all the rest of it; but could I go on doing it in the face of such conduct as I’d just witnessed, and was witnessing now in the green negligee?

  “Colonel Primrose wants to see you downstairs,” I said.

  A quick smile lighted her grey eyes for the barest instant. “Does he know I’ve been out?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “Did Sergeant Buck tell him?”

  “No. He saw you.”

  “I suppose it was stupid of me to go there.”

  “I’m afraid it was,” I said. “And by the way…”

  I’d closed the hall door behind me and was standing in the door of her dressing room while she put her street clothes on again.

  “I didn’t tell you this morning that Gilbert came to see me. But you heard us in the library.”

  She nodded.

  “Did he want to know why I did it?”

  The delicate irony in her voice left me rather gaping.

  “He would, of course. He probably thinks I murdered Randall just so I could marry him.”

  “Something of the sort,” I admitted.

  “He must be glad he’s getting out in the morning,” she said, with a queer little laugh. There was nothing bitter in it, as I must have expected there would be… I noticed so instantly there wasn’t.

  “Well, the point is,” I said, “that he’s horribly anxious to see you before he goes.”

  “And probably doesn’t think it would look well for him to come here?”

  She looked at me with a quick amused smile. “So I’m to go to your house and meet him, tonight—after it’s dark. Is that it?”

  “You’ve been talking to him?”

  She slipped her foot into a brown suede pump, her face hidden from me for a moment as she leaned down to brush a speck of powder off the toe. She straightened up, a strange inscrutable smile in her eyes as green as emeralds, and came over to where I was standing. She put her hands on my shoulders and looked at me, still with that strange complex smile.

  “I haven’t talked to him, Grace. I know Gilbert St. Martin so well that I know everything he thinks, and everything he’s going to say or isn’t going to say. I knew everything he’s been thinking ever since he heard Randall was dead.”

  “He’s going to be at my place at ten,” I said.

  “Unless detained by his wife’s guests.”

  She burst into a merry little gust of laughter as fresh as a summer breeze.

  “Listen, Grace,” she said. “Don’t you understand that I got past Gil as a significant fact of life a long time ago, and that Gil as an emotional prop that I’d rush to in trouble just doesn’t exist at all? You see, Grace, all the years I knew him, and was in love with him, I knew—in my mind—what he was like. That he was vain, and a snob, and using me as a general door mat, and all the rest of it. I knew it in my head, but my heart denied all of it to the very end. It even tried to find an excuse for his marrying Edith and her money and her pekes.”

  She picked up a handkerchief off her desk. “Love that’s dead is deader than that gardenia, Grace.”

  I looked down at the brown withered blossom she picked up off the long table in front of the mirror. It was dry and unlovely, all its waxen dewiness gone, and all its strong perfume; even the silver ribbon that had tied it was stringy and tarnished. She held it in her hand an instant, dropped it into the waste basket beside the chair, and wiped off her hands with a quick delicate gesture.

  “The trouble with Gil is the trouble with a lot of spoiled pampered people,” she said quietly. “He’s never learned that life goes on without him. I thought I’d explained sufficiently to him that mine had gone on, the other night when I told him that even if Edith did divorce him-—which she talks about from time to time and doesn’t mean—it wouldn’t concern me at all. I thought he’d understood it… we certainly had a touching enough farewell, sealing it.—He’s been grand about helping me do over the house, and leading me to odd lovely bits he’s heard about in the country. Though I’ve paid their full Park Avenue value.”

  I looked at her in astonishment. Her eyes were perfectly frank, a clear velvet-grey, no green fire serpents guarding them. Could, it possibly be, I thought, that she didn’t know about all the letters…? Like a flash the scene I’d had with Gil in his pine-paneled shoppe on Christmas Eve came back to me. “Does Iris know about these letters?”—“Don’t be funny, Mrs. Latham.”… and the sudden tightening of his lips and hardening of his eyes.

  It seemed incredible. And, if it was true, and she didn’t know about Lavinia’s compositions, then why had she been at Lavinia’s? Why, and how, and for what, was Lavinia forcing her to terms?

  There was also the scene I’d witnessed—and that her husband had heard—through the Palladian window from my own window Christmas Eve, when Gilbert St. Martin was there… and that she’d denied to the police. Or was that the touching farewell?

  I think I’d started to ask her bluntly, when a tap on the door brought us to the awareness that Colonel Primrose was waiting downstairs. “Just coming,” I called. Chiming in with my voice the blue Sevres clock-on Iris’s mantel struck nine tiny silver notes. Downstairs I could hear the telephone ringing urgently.

  Colonel Primrose was just coming out of the library. I tried to read in his face which message he had got, but I couldn’t.

  “I want to talk to you, Iris,” he said quietly. “Let’s go into the dining room.”

  I went too. He didn’t tell me not to, and Iris caught my hand as she followed him.

  We went into the long room with windows opening on the garden, and sat at one end of a Chinese Chippendale table with a low silver urn filled with a fairy shower of sweet-smelling mimosa. Facing me, between two of the three windows, was the mahogany, cellarette where Lowell had got the decanter of whiskey to give Lavinia. Over the lovely Hepplewhite sideboard with its gleaming silver service and tall ornate candelabra at either end was the mirror in which Iris had watched the silent suety figure of the butler move from place to place.

  “I suppose Mrs. Latham has told you we saw you at Lavinia’s just now,” Colonel Primrose said pleasantly.

  “I asked her if you had,” Iris answered. “
She said yes.”

  “Why did you go there?”

  He had a way of looking at people that made it awfully difficult to tell anything but the truth.

  “I can’t tell you, Colonel Primrose,” Iris said. She met his glance with straightforward composure.

  “You mean you won’t?” he said politely.

  “That’s just what I mean.”

  He beat a muffled tattoo on the polished surface of the table with his fingertips, regarding her with steady appraising eyes.

  “Does Belden Doyle know you went there?” he asked abruptly.

  “No… nor why I went. And I couldn’t tell him, either. It’s a private matter.”

  “I see.” He leaned forward. “Iris, I think I ought to tell you that they have found out that A. J. was poisoned.”

  She nodded. “Lowell told me. I’m sorry.”

  “Lowell was… guessing,” Colonel Primrose said steadily. “She was right, however. And I think we may take it for granted that he was poisoned because he had found out—or because somebody thought he had found out—who has Randall’s money.”

  “Then for God’s sake why don’t you let him keep the money!” Iris said passionately. “It isn’t worth it… not all the money in the world is worth all this!”

  Something flickered for an instant in his eyes.

  “The second point about it is this,” he went on impassively; “Mr. McClean was poisoned with cyanide of potassium, administered just as it was administered to Senator McGilvray, in enteric capsules, in chocolate candy. He died at approximately five minutes to six. He took that poison into his system sometime between four and five o’clock this afternoon.”

  She looked at him, the smooth gold mask of her face changing to a tragic bewilderment.

  “But… he couldn’t have! He was here, in… in this house, having tea!”

  The horror dawned in her face as she turned from Colonel Primrose to me, and back again. Her lips parted, her face drained of all its warm golden glow. She gripped the edge of the table with her hands, and got some way to her feet.

  “That means that someone… someone here at tea…”

  The words came out of her lips in Controlled jerking monosyllables.