The Simple Way of Poison (21 page)

The smile that had lingered in Colonel Primrose’s eyes vanished in a flash. Sergeant Buck’s hard face froze into solid granite. A faint smile lighted Lowell’s dark eyes for an instant.

“And if you think that’s just a crack at my stepmother,” she went on coolly, “you’ll probably have me hurled from the battlements for the next thing that occurs to me… since you’ve asked for it.”

“And what is that?” Colonel Primrose said politely.

“It is… this. As I understand the situation, from Mr. McClean, my father was turning his assets into cash, and trying to find somebody he trusted sufficiently to keep it for him… in order to defraud my mother of what he’d agreed to give her.”

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Sergeant Buck’s involuntary gesture of shocked protest. Colonel Primrose nodded calmly.

“And Mr. McClean was first choice, of course. He had a bank to keep it in, and all that. And he refused to do it, because he’s an honest man.”

Colonel Primrose nodded again. His sharp sparkling black eyes rested on hers, steadily probing.

“Then Iris would be the next person, of course, he’d be likely to turn to, if it had to be so completely sub rosa.”

She paused for a moment, looking quietly at each of us.

“And if we let the beautiful Iris out—as everybody insists on doing—then there’s only one other person that my father ever had the least confidence in… I mean to the point of giving him
anything
to keep for him. And that’s the only person—outside of Iris—that he’d be likely to have given that money to.”

“And… who is that?” I asked.

“One John Primrose,” Lowell said quietly.

There was a curious silence, integrated into three definite parts, each of us contributing. Sergeant Buck’s was simply hideously stony. Mine was a sort of “Bravo! Touché!” And Colonel Primrose’s was an oddly mingled annoyed and at the same time sardonically appreciative acceptance of a perfectly brilliant pronouncement of poetic justice. There was no possible doubt that Lowell had scored… twice.

She got up, tensely cool and composed. “And if that’s all you want of me, I think I’ll go.”

“By all means,” Colonel Primrose said, with a wry smile.

Sergeant Buck to my mind’s eye executed a sharp platoon right and opened the door, standing by at a smart and somewhat menacing Present Arms as she went out… colors flying.

“Well,” I said. “So it was you, all the time.”

He looked at me for a moment. Then his face cleared suddenly and he chuckled.

“We needn’t forget, Mrs. Latham, that Randall Nash went directly to your house from mine,” he said imperturbably. “And stayed there for twenty minutes. However, there’s a more important point at the moment.—I understand Gilbert St. Martin came to your house also, this morning, at eleven o’clock, in a state bordering on collapse.”

“Eleven-ten, sir,” Sergeant Buck said tersely, out of the corner of his mouth. “By the kitchen clock according to my information received.”

“No mention,” I asked, as blandly as I could, “of the fact that Mr. Steve Donaldson arrived somewhat earlier by the kitchen clock, in a somewhat similar state?”

“I haven’t figgered Mr. Donaldson as mixed up in this, ma’am,” Sergeant Buck answered briefly.

“Oh,” I said.

Colonel Primrose shot me a warning glance. I had already seen the door move, but I couldn’t at first see behind the massive rocky bulk of the Sergeant that Iris Nash was in the room. When I did I realized that she must have been there several moments. Her face was strained and white and shocked. I remembered then, with a guilty sinking in my stomach, that I hadn’t told her Gilbert St. Martin had come to my house, and why he hadn’t come here. And Colonel Primrose’s statement that he had come to my place in a state bordering on collapse would be the first news she had had of him… except, of course, that he was going away for a long trip to the Orient.

She moistened her lips, looking at us for an instant, trying to get back the composure that must have been literally shocked out of her. And I could have saved her this, I thought wretchedly, and hadn’t done it, just because I’d preferred to think she couldn’t be in love with the man she’d obviously been in love with all her life.

“Colonel Primrose,” she said. Her voice sounded like ripping satin. “Mr. McClean has been upstairs. Is it true… what he says about Randall’s estate? They… can’t find it?”

“It seems to be,” Colonel Primrose said impassively. “He… ought to know.”

She stood there, stock still, for a long time. Then she said slowly, “I don’t understand it.”

Colonel Primrose’s black eyes sharpened. “What don’t you understand, Iris?”

“Any of it. It doesn’t make sense.”

Colonel Primrose glanced at his Sergeant. The old signal system must have been in operation, though I couldn’t see any. Sergeant Buck left the room abruptly.

“Sit down, Iris,” Colonel Primrose said. He pulled a chair near the sofa where I was sitting.

She sat down, her hands folded in her lap, looking up at him, her eyes suddenly green under her glorious copper hair.

“Iris—did Randall give you his money to keep hidden for him?”

“No. He did not.”

“Did he ever suggest doing it?”

She shook her head.

“Never, at any time. I’ve told Mr. McClean that, as forcibly as I know how.”

She returned his steady appraising gaze.

“I must not sound convincing.”

There was more than a trace of bitterness in her voice. I gathered the interview between her and her husband’s executor had not been perfectly amicable.

“Did you know anything at all about this?”

“You mean the settlement with his first wife?”

Colonel Primrose nodded.

“I knew he’d made some arrangement with her, when his back was to the wall and he had to do anything she wanted to keep in the game at all.”

“You didn’t know he was planning to defraud her?”

“My husband never discussed his affairs with me, Colonel Primrose.”

“I didn’t ask you that, Iris. I asked you if you knew he was planning to… double-cross Marie?”

“I didn’t… know it.”

“You suspected—”

“Perhaps I did. At least I’m not surprised to find he did.”

“Why?” Colonel Primrose asked, very placidly.

“Shortly after we came back from Europe I saw a telegram on his dresser stating the price he’d got for some Chicago property. Things were obviously picking up; I asked why he was selling. He said he wanted his money where Marie couldn’t get her hands on it. He was going to ‘show her’.”

“That’s all he said?”

“At that time. Once some time later he told me that if anything happened to him I was to sit tight and wait for developments, that he’d arranged things for me and Lowell.”

“Did he tell you who to look to for advice?”

She got up abruptly, her eyes smoldering green, and went to the window where Lowell had stood, looking out for a moment before she turned and came back.

“He did tell me, Colonel Primrose—but I’m not sure it meant what it seems to me now he must have meant.”

She hesitated, an ironic smile flickering in her eyes.

“Anyway, it sounds definitely phony for both me and Mr. McClean to start shouting ‘Wolf! Wolf!’ every time the other appears on the scene.”

Colonel Primrose looked at her oddly. “It was A. J.—”

“Randall said that in case anything happened to him before he had set his house completely in order, I was to wait patiently until Mr. McClean arranged things for me.”

She laughed shortly.

“That’s why it’s so superbly amusing when Mr. McClean comes and practically accuses me of having Randall’s money. Well, I suppose it has the simple virtue of a sharp offensive before your unsuspecting enemy gets set. It’s an obvious advantage. It leaves me in the childish position of saying it isn’t me, it’s you. Sounds as if I was unprepared and caught out and that’s the only comeback I could think of, just offhand.”

Colonel Primrose shook his head soberly. “You ought to be awfully sure of yourself, Iris, before you make an accusation of that sort. A. J.’s reputation for honesty and fair dealing…”

“Oh, I know,” she said quietly. She sat down beside me on the sofa. “And I have none, and what little I might have had has been stripped off me by no less a person than the same honorable and upright McClean.”

“Don’t forget your stepdaughter,” Colonel Primrose said amiably.

“Great Heavens, how could I. But she’s not responsible for what she says. Mr. McClean is… You know, the day I came to this house he was here. My husband introduced us. I held out my hand… Mr. McClean didn’t see it. He’s never spoken to me directly once in the five times I can remember meeting him,-in this room or in the hall, just leaving as I came home. And since my husband died he’s been here steadily, limping through this house like a lame buzzard round a stricken sheep enclosure. And I’m sick of it! I can stand Lowell—at least she’s got the courage to come out and say she knows I murdered her father and stole her money. Mr. McClean polishes his pince-nez and says ‘My dear lady, you are after all the most obvious person for Randall to have deposited his funds with.’ ”

Her eyes were blazing, two passionate red spots burned in her cheeks.

“He doesn’t care if Randall’s dead… and I’ll bet you anything he doesn’t insist now on Lowell’s marrying Mac immediately—and the reason he’ll give is that
I’m
opposed to it, and he wouldn’t want to run against my wishes since his dead friend reposed so much confidence in them!”

She turned abruptly to Colonel Primrose.

“I’m sick to death of upright men! I’ll take a plain openwork scoundrel any day. Then I’ll know I’ve got to lock the doors and watch the family plate. More people have been ruined by their upright friends than ever have been by their enemies!”

I thought, sitting there, of an old saying of Lilac’s: “It’s you’ friends that do you—you’ enemies cain’ get to you.”

Colonel Primrose was watching her with sober compassionate eyes.

“We’ll try to find that money, Iris,” he said quietly. “Half of it is yours when we do find it. The other half is Lowell’s. They have determined that Marie Nash’s death preceded Randall’s. Her lawyers, and Angus as her heir, have accepted it.”

“Didn’t she leave Lowell… anything?” Iris asked sharply.

“Two thousand dollars, a little jewelry, a mink coat, I think is all.”

“Then—if you don’t find the money, she’ll have nothing at all…”

“Half of this house. The other half is yours.”

Iris smiled. “She can have it all, I don’t want it. But don’t tell her—or Mr. McClean—I said that. They’ll be sure then I’ve got all the rest of it stowed away somewhere, just waiting a chance to use it.”

Sergeant Buck put his head in the door.

“Mrs. St. Martin is here, ma’am,” he said, menacingly.

Iris’s lips tightened.

“Tell her I’m busy, please, Sergeant.”

“You can run along, Iris,” Colonel Primrose said.

“I don’t want to see her. Tell her I’m lying down. Tell her anything!”

The Sergeant looked at his Colonel.

“She’s already in, Iris,” Colonel Primrose said.

Iris laughed. “Oh, all right.” She pressed her cigarette out with sudden violent fingers and went out.

I turned to Colonel Primrose. “You don’t think she has that money, do you—really?”

His face was sober.

“I don’t know, Mrs. Latham.”

“I wish she hadn’t said that about Lowell’s having the house.”

He gave me a quizzical smile.

“You’re almost as tenaciously stubborn as Lowell, you know?” he observed.

“Of course, it
is
reasonable—with A. J. holding up his hands in pious horror at Randall’s proposal to rook Marie out of a large sum of money—that Iris was the next logical person… hate to admit it as I do. And Lowell’s point seems eminently sound. If she and Iris were to profit, you’d think they’d be the ones to know about the arrangement.”

He shook his head… to my great relief.

“To the mind of a man who didn’t make his wife even a co-executor of his estate? McClean, you recall, is sole executor. The bond was waived too, by the way.”

I didn’t think for an instant or two that there was anything queer about the way he said that. Then I looked sharply at him. He was sitting there placidly, gazing into the empty grate, beating a slow noiseless tattoo with his fingers on his knee. My look gradually evolved into a downright open-mouthed stare.

“Colonel Primrose!” I said. “Are you… actually, by any chance, suggesting that A. J. might have…”

I put my hand up over my mouth exactly the way Lilac does when the butcher tells her how much a pound porterhouse steak is, and continued to stare at him, absolutely aghast. His tattoo slowed down to a finale. He cocked his head down and around and looked up at me with that shrewd quizzical glint in his black sparkling eyes. He chuckled suddenly.

“I thought Iris’s denunciation of the upright man was sufficiently stirring to convince even you, Mrs. Latham.”

“Any upright man but A. J., maybe. But not… Why, my dear—”

He chuckled again.

“Listen to me, Grace Latham. Randall Nash put an unbearable temptation in somebody’s way. McClean figures he succeeded in liquidating—and secreting somewhere—something between two and three hundred thousand dollars. And there’s the strongest presumption, of course, that the sum was just handed to somebody to hold. He was obsessed, blinded, crazed, by hatred of Marie, and just corroded by. bitterness, or he’d have seen the folly of it. He did anyway, in a sense. That explains the letter he left with me. And there’s no doubt he saw the folly of it well enough too to tell his custodian that there was that letter… or I’ll wager this would have happened before now.”

“Not
A. J. McClean,” I said.

He smiled.

“All right, my dear. Let me tell you a few things. Lamb and the District Attorney are at the bank now. Don’t look so shocked. The man’s human. He could—possibly—give in to temptation as well as… well, let’s say Gilbert St. Martin. You wouldn’t be surprised to hear we were investigating him, would you?”

“But that’s
very
different,” I said.