The Simple Way of Poison Read Online Free PDF Page B

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