The Nantucket Diet Murders

by Virginia Rich

  “Oh, we have men, Mary Lynne, such as they are,” Dee said, with a touch of acidity. “Our old lawyer, our old doctor, our old lush of a stockbroker, our nonwriting author-in-residence, our pet poodle retired clergyman. And of course Peter, here at the Scrim.” Dee lowered her voice. “Peter is the exception, as you well know. The rest of them are pretty much on their last legs, if you ask me.”

  “Dee, honey, the health of our dear boys is not the point,” Mary Lynne went on. “It’s just how many of them there are.” Her voice never lost its tentative, questioning lilt. “Most places there aren’t half as many men as women our age, don’t you know, Dee? Lordy, back in Chattanooga there are never enough to go around, my friends write me, of any age or state of debility whatsoever.”

  “Get back to the new man, Mary Lynne. I know the old ones,” Mrs. Potter prompted. “And what does he have to do with how thin you all are? I can’t believe you’re all wasting away in unrequited love, at our age, at least not all for the same man.”

  There was a perceptible pause, and then Leah spoke, the pale fluff of her hair still a shock, as was the green sparkle of her slanted eyes. “It’s unbelievable, Genia,” she said. “Everything’s different since Tony came. That was last June, and now he’s staying all winter. It’s a miracle.”

  “Leah calls him the Master, “another member of the group put in unexpectedly. Mittie’s clear, slightly nasal New England voice was flat and self-assured. “She says she’s joking, but she really does. I think that’s sacrilegious, and incidentally, Leah, so does George Enderbridge. The Altar Guild was a little bit shocked, too, to hear you’d said that, and I think you should know.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Leah said. “Until I began to call him Tony, I just said ‘Doctor.’ He prefers that to his real title, he told me so.”

  “Oh, a new doctor,” Mrs. Potter said. ‘’How does dear Arnold feel about that? What does he say about a new man coming in and taking over his patients? Or is Arnold ready to retire?”

  “Tony isn’t a doctor doctor,” Mittie assured her quickly. “He’s frank with me about this, naturally, knowing of Daddy’s former standing in the academic world. Tony’s degree is Ph.D., and he studied at Heidelberg. Anyway, you don’t go to him for the flu or a broken leg. His field is health and beauty.”

  Mittie’s light brown hair was smoothly turned under in the same pageboy style she had worn for years. The bright pink scarf, high on her throat above her pastel-striped wool pullover, exactly matched the pink of her well-fitted wool pants, both garments looking exactly like those—except for being much smaller—Mrs. Potter thought Mittie might have worn two years ago, when she last saw her.

  Mittie, like the others, had never been really fat (although Mary Lynne had been close to it, Mrs. Potter recalled), but her gently settling shape had been that of one who had given up the sports of her proper New England upbringing—tennis, sailing, skiing, swimming—for bird-watching and needle-Work. Her love for gardening was in landscape design, not in stooping and bending and digging. While her life had become more sedentary, the years of outdoor sports, of sun and wind, had left their mark on Mittie’s fair skin, etching it with a network of fine lines, which now seemed more deeply wrinkled.

  Mary Lynne’s soft, questioning voice continued her place in the talk. “You know, Genia, honey,” she said seriously, “that we’ve all tried pretty much to keep ourselves up to the mark?” Mrs. Potter nodded expected agreement. “The thing is, now we have someone giving direction to our lives.”

  “This is absolute rubbish,” Dee, Countess Ferencz, whispered into Mrs. Potter’s right ear.

  Helen Latham’s clear midwestern voice, used to authority, now took firm command. “What everyone is trying to tell you, Genia, is that a remarkable man has come to the island, and I can’t imagine why Gussie hasn’t told you all about him. I met him first—he came here visiting old New York friends at the start of last summer—and he insisted on taking a personal interest in my case from the start. I see a great future for him here.”

  “Whatever he’s doing, you’re the thinnest of all,” Mrs. Potter said. She remembered Helen’s undefined and unremarkable square shape, her somewhat heavy jaw and features, her stiffly set dark hair. Presiding at a committee meeting, Helen always made Mrs. Potter think of a Roman emperor. No, better yet, of Mussolini, one hand upraised to command instant silence and attention.

  Helen today was a tiny, rigid doll whose dark fluff of hair seemed a—chocolate? no, cocoa—version of the pale lemon-vanilla cotton candy on Leah’s head, or Mary Lynne’s of spun maple syrup. Cotton candy, fragile and full of air. Larry was clearly outdoing himself with his newly and fashionably thin year-round regulars.

  Mary Lynne’s soft voice again regained the floor. “You can see we’re all learning so much, Genia, darling,” she said. Mrs. Potter nodded expectantly. Her friends smiled back at her.

  Impatiently, she broke the silence. “I can’t stand this any longer,” she told them. “Gussie, you’re responsible for my being back on Nantucket. If you expect me to unpack my bags at your house after lunch, tell me. What’s going on with you all?”

  Mrs. Potter’s hostess squirmed. “I was going to give you the full rundown later,” she said, “but since you’ve brought us this far, with your usual nose-poking”—and she gave Mrs. Potter’s arm another affectionate squeeze—”you might as well hear the whole story about our wonderful new celebrity on the island. I can’t wait for you to meet him.”

  “Celebrity, my foot,” Dee said flatly. “Resident, yes, and you all think you have a wonderful new magic man, and yes, you’re all certainly thin. What Genia has to know is that the miracle man is Count Valerian Mikai Alexander Antonescu Ferencz, no less. It’s Tony, Genia, my Tony. At least he was my Tony for two years, which was exactly twenty-three months too long. We got married just when I landed the job as editor of Éclat and Tony was beginning to make a name for himself in the diet and beauty racket.”

  Dee looked steadily around the table, her gaze level beneath the stiff dark brim of her hat. “I’m not saying he doesn’t know his business, my dears, and apparently he’s learned a few more tricks since he started out. All I want Genia to know is what I should have warned you all as soon as he set foot on the island. Tony Ferencz is a complete and unmitigated bastard, and you’ll all be sorry before this is over.”

  3

  The table was silent. Lips were closed in resolute smiles. Eyes glanced about the room in a bright, polite way, indicating that there would be no unseemly disagreements among friends. Quickly, with her usual composure and grace, Gussie spoke up. “Shall we think about lunch? Genia just got in on the late morning plane from Boston, remember, and we came directly here to the Scrim from the airport. I’m sure she’s starved.”

  As she spoke, a light babble of voices came from the doorway of a private dining room, open to the main room in which Les Girls of Nantucket were seated. Occasionally a high shriek of feminine laughter broke the ripple of sound.

  A stout middle-aged waitress came in from the kitchen bearing a heavy tray of drinks and disappeared into the doorway. Moments later she was back in the main room and at Mrs. Potter’s side, giving her a familiar and friendly pat on the shoulder. “Glad to see you back,” she said. “Seems like old times to have all you gals together again. A real reunion. What’ll it be, ladies?”

  “I’m ready to order, Jadine,” Beth answered promptly. “The Yankee bean soup, please, and then I think the individual chicken pot pie and the fresh fruit salad plate with cream cheese dressing. I’ll decide about dessert later. I see your Scrimshaw Rum Pie is on the menu, but this might be a good day for a hot mocha fudge sundae.”

  She faced the others apologetically. “I played paddle tennis on the outdoor court most of the morning,” she explained, “and I’m planning to walk the beach at Eel Point after lunch. I need my strength.”

  Dee set the handwritten menu aside with a brisk, dismissing gesture. “Just a pot of tea for me, plea
se, Jadine.” Turning to Mrs. Potter, she spoke beneath her breath. “You wait and see about Tony.”

  “I’ll order for the rest of us,” Helen Latham said decisively, her glance around the table apparently assuring her that she was, as usual, to be the voice of the group. She spoke to the waitress. “We’ll choose our lunch from the salad bar, Jadine. No roll basket or butter on the table. And we’ll begin with a glass of freshly squeezed vegetable juice—whatever Peter has them turning out in the kitchen today.”

  Turning to Mrs. Potter, she continued. “And you’ll go along with us, I’m sure, Genia?” The brisk tone, which had settled the issues—usually wisely—at so many island committee meetings, was still commanding. It surprised Mrs. Potter to hear it coming from this new and tiny doll. With affectionate amusement, she realized that Il Duce was still running the show.

  A murmur came from Beth. She believed she would have just a small basket of the small hot breads with her lunch, and were there any little cinnamon rolls today?

  A second murmur, and Mrs. Potter suggested another slight change. “The salad bar sounds perfect, Helen, and I can see from here how tempting it looks,” Mrs. Potter assured her, “but a January day needs more than vegetable juice to celebrate a reunion lunch, to my mind. Please change that to a dry martini—oil the rocks with a twist of lemon, right, Gussie?—for me and Mrs. Van Vleeck, Jadine. And what for the rest of you? Drinks are my treat today.”

  “Oh, no, Genia. You have one—not for me, thanks.” Gussie’s voice was half regretful, but certain.

  Helen spoke promptly. “We all know what Tony says about liquor.” The slightly heavy jaw and forehead, a bit too large now in the small face, were still forceful.

  The others were in instant agreement. “We just couldn’t,” Mittie explained. “We’re committed.”

  “I’m not committed,” Beth put in cheerfully. “I’d like a frozen daiquiri. Not too sour please, Jadine. Peter knows how I like it. A drink is just what we need to celebrate Genia’s return to the fold.”

  Mrs. Potter, who without Beth’s acceptance would have withdrawn her suggestion, now turned to Dee. “You’ll join us?”

  Dee’s acceptance was as prompt as Beth’s had been, but Mrs. Potter felt slightly awkward in the face of the others’ stand. “It’s a cold day,” she said apologetically, realizing that it was actually rather warmer than usual for the season.

  Leah’s small kitten face was downcast, as something seemed to prompt her to take up a familiar refrain. “These January days are gloomy,” she said. “I just can’t get used to going home to a big empty house without darling Fanwell there.” Her lips pursed and her rings and bracelets were silent.

  Gussie glanced sideways at Leah with less than her usual ready compassion. She herself had been most recently widowed, and for a third time. All of the women at the table would be returning to houses in which they lived alone. Leah’s claim to special circumstances was, except for Gussie’s glance, rather blankly ignored.

  Of all of them, only Helen Latham had a child at home, an only daughter in her mid-thirties, of whom, Mrs. Potter remembered, Lew used to say that she had an utterly forgettable face. She always had to prompt her husband with the name, and she herself often had to struggle to remember, not always quickly enough, that Laura Latham, Lolly, somewhat vague and seeming not overly bright, nearly invisible in her mother’s admirable and forceful presence, was Helen’s daughter.

  Of the entire group, Gussie Van Vleeck was the only one to have even temporary company at the moment—that of her old friend, Mrs. Potter. And Mrs. Potter, widowed herself since her days as a regular member of the lunching group, also lived alone, most of the time in a sprawling ranch house miles from her nearest neighbors.

  Gussie’s regard of Leah softened as she caught a glimmer of amusement in the eyes of her guest, and she quickly suppressed a smile. As Mary Augusta Baines of Rye, New York, and Eugenia Andrews, fresh out of Harrington, Iowa, they had found the same small things funny from the day they had met in the halls of their freshman dormitory. Among these shared amusements—sometimes rueful ones—was the opinion that Leah was out to win the title of World’s Most Bereft Widow. There was the accord of concealed glee now in observing that Leah was still competing, still winning, even though she was out of mourning clothes at last and again wearing her pretty rings and bracelets.

  A louder burst of laughter now came from the adjacent room. There was a brief round of clapping and more high-pitched shrieks of laughter.

  “Softball girls in there, really whooping it up,” the waitress announced as she brought the drinks Mrs. Potter had ordered, and glasses of pale liquid, its color vaguely orange, for the rest. Another crescendo of laughter came from the private dining room.

  “Jadine, didn’t you forget something?” Dee asked, with a flash of smile. “You know Peter likes to send a little pot of his special cheese with the cocktails.”

  Nodding with apparent satisfaction at being reminded, the waitress rushed back with the complimentary specialty. Mrs. Potter watched Dee Ferencz top a crisp rye cracker with a quick, neat, and generous mound of the cheese-rum mixture. Dee’s entire lunch today, she realized, would be these cheese-spread crackers and probably several small hot breads from Beth’s luncheon roll basket, along with the pot of tea she originally ordered.

  As she sipped her own drink, Mrs. Potter tried to keep up with the surface play of conversation. She found that, being alone as much as she was now—and happily so, for the most part—she found it exhausting to follow so much talk at one time. Her mind sifted out snatches, much of it news Gussie had previously relayed by letter or telephone, hoping that her facial muscles were making appropriate responses and wondering vaguely why Gussie had not told her about this new diet celebrity who had come to the island. Her friends’ voices seemed higher in pitch, their speech more rapid, than she recalled.

  “. . . died while we were sailing,” Mary Lynne was saying.

  “. . . a heroine,” the others chorused proudly, “bringing in the boat all alone . . . too late, of course . . .”

  This, she knew, was the story of Bo Heidecker’s fatal heart attack the previous summer.

  “. . . naturally Mummy’s furniture has to be kept heated,” Mittie was explaining, “and the Shimmo house could be drained and closed . . .”

  This meant Mittie must be living for the winter in the old family house on Main Street, above Gussie’s.

  “Cottage Hospital . . . new president of the board . . .” That was Helen, Mussolini now reduced to a china doll. The others beamed.

  “. . . plans for the Daffodil Festival in April . . .” That, it seemed, was again Mary Lynne. The others beamed again. “We’re so proud of her for not giving up the chairmanship after Bo’s death,” someone said.

  “. . . have to say about six names—Paula, Clare, Ginny, Tricia, Annabel—before I remember which one . . .”

  This apparently was part of a report on Higginson daughters and daughters-in-law, and there was a groan of sympathetic laughter.

  “. . . told her we’d learn to bake Portuguese bread . . .”

  That had been part of Gussie’s telephoned invitation, which had brought Mrs. Potter back for this midwinter visit. The death of Gussie’s third husband, in late fall, had perhaps come as a liberation to them both—to Gordon from querulous invalidhood and to Gussie from several years of being tyrannized by his bad-tempered illness—the invitation had not been based on need for sympathy or support.

  Years ago, Mrs. Potter had flown to Gussie’s side at the moment she learned that Gussie’s first husband, who was also Mrs. Potter’s favorite cousin, had been killed in a hunting accident. She had done so as well when Gussie’s second husband died of a heart attack in New York, sharing Gussie’s grief at the loss of the good man she had loved so greatly for so many years, and the father of her two children. Just as Gussie had come to be with her when Lew died.

  This time they both—she and Gussie—had known without saying t
hat it had not been necessary for her to come back to Nantucket when Gordon died, and that this January visit was purely for the pleasure of continuing their old friendship.

  The mention of bread-baking had apparently caught Beth’s attention, and her response brought Mrs. Potter back from her thoughts. “Portuguese bread—marvelous!” Beth was saying, enthusiastically, then adding a note of doubt. “But Manny said he wouldn’t be back until May. I put a dozen loaves in the freezer before he closed, of course. I always do.”

  The old town bakery was closed for the winter, everyone said. There was no way they could learn to make Portuguese bread, they said, and besides, who eats bread?

  Mrs. Potter smiled. “I do,” she said, “and you all know I’ve been trying to bake real Portuguese bread for years. I trust Gussie. If she says we’re going to make Portuguese bread, we are.”

  Thus, ignoring the rising decibels of laughter from the doorway of the private dining room, talk continued at the round table in the bay window.

  “. . . so many things we share.” This was Leah’s voice, trailing into a familiar plaintive note. “Most of us past garden club presidents, nearly all of our husbands once commodores of the Yacht Club . . . some happy memories, some tragic. . .”

  There were husbands then, Mrs. Potter reflected. On Nantucket it was always summer then, and summer was always weekends. The harbor was always blue at midday, dotted with racing sails. The nights were always starlit, the surf always music on wide clean beaches.

  There were picnics then, parents languorous by the firelight after a day in the sun; teen-agers clustering around a portable radio just out of range of the light, scuffling sand with bare feet as they taught each other the twist and the frug, dances they hadn’t learned at their proper off-island winter dancing classes.