A Pinch of Poison

A Pinch of Poison Read Free

Book: A Pinch of Poison Read Free
Author: Frances Lockridge
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over and let his thumb move gently along her wrist. He could feel her pulse there, going steadily. Thump, thump. It made him feel as if he had something very important to say.
    â€œRose,” he said. “I tell you, Rose. It makes you think.” He said it with a kind of wonder, as if it were really something very important to say.

2
    T UESDAY
    5:30 P.M. TO 9:45 P.M.
    It was a surprise to find Buddy at home. It was a surprise to find him even in town. He called from the living-room as she stepped into the foyer of the apartment on the roof.
    â€œLois?” he called, and when, as she nodded to Mary, who stood smiling attentively at the foot of the stairs to the second floor, she admitted her identity: “Come here a minute, will you, Sis?”
    â€œI’ll want Anna in a few minutes, Mary,” Lois said. “After I speak to Mr. Ashley. Coming, Buddy.”
    Buddy could stand up at the entrance of a lady with all the nonchalance of one who was still sitting down. He did so now.
    â€œWe thought you might like a drink,” he said. “After your services in the cause.”
    Buddy was, she had to agree as she looked at him, handsome enough, for a man who drank as much as he did at twenty-three. He was wiry and thin, although you would never confuse his sort of thinness with that of, say, her little taxi-driver. He also looked discontented, and his voice was heavily ironic on “services in the cause.”
    â€œHello, Buddy,” Lois said. “Madge.” She paused, with a tentative smile for the third person in the room, a relaxed and olive-skinned young woman in the very enticingly cut print, who reclined in a deep chair.
    â€œCarol Halliday.” Buddy was casual. “This is my sister Lois, Carol. My half-sister, to be exact. Lois Winston.”
    â€œOh, yes,” Carol said. Her voice was attractively husky. “How do you do, Miss Winston?”
    â€œYou all look very comfortable,” Lois said. “And cool.”
    â€œBuddy has simply saved our lives, Lois. Literally.” That was Madge.
    Lois said she was so glad. Buddy said, “What’ll it be, Sis?” He said it a little as if he expected a refusal. But she took a cocktail and, still standing near the door, sipped it slowly.
    He brought me in to prove he can have Madge here when he likes, Lois thought. And her friends. He is sometimes unbelievably callow, Lois thought.
    â€œWhat I really want,” she said, “is a shower and something dry.” She finished the cocktail; put down the glass. He can have a dozen Madges for all me, she thought. My foolish little brother. I’m not responsible for what he does. But she wished she could really convince herself of that. She shook her head as Buddy raised the shaker again.
    â€œNot now,” she said, as she smiled at them again and turned through the door. “Perhaps later.” Perhaps, she thought, I really will; the coolness of the apartment, brought by motors which somewhere turned with untiring ease, lessened her weariness. It was good to be cool again, and at home. It was good to have space and quiet and service.
    It’s fine to have money, all right, she thought, thinking of little Max Fineberg. Money and no real worries—except a little about Buddy. And of course, she added to herself, a little about Dave. And a little about the afternoon’s puzzle.
    But after all, she thought, I’m only a volunteer. I can quit any time and just play. And I’m young and people don’t mind looking at me and …
    And, she thought a few minutes later, as she stood under the shower and looked approvingly down at herself, I’m not going to have a baby. Hurray, hurray! Not like poor little Mrs. Fineberg.
    Anna was quietly efficient when Lois came out of the shower. The spread on the bed was turned back, the shades closed, everything as she had imagined it that long, hot distance ago when she was walking down the street

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