The Nantucket Diet Murders

by Virginia Rich

  It’s a silly kind of snobbery, Mrs. Potter thought, that the older one’s lightship baskets are (and eventually everyone collected several shapes and sizes), the better they and their owners are regarded socially. I wonder if people do things to make new baskets look old. I wonder how many basket makers and ivory carvers there are on the island now. I wonder what the early artisans—industrious early sailors with long stretches at sea, including those on duty on the lightship Nantucket during her years on Nantucket Sound—would think about present-day basket idolatry.

  She remembered how shocked she had been at the price when Lew had bought her first one, more, she told him, than she’d ever paid for five summer straw handbags. Now, with the prices of authentically Nantucket-woven baskets and Nantucket scrimshaw what they had become, she wondered that anyone could afford one at all.

  Maybe they weren’t so expensive, after all, even at today’s prices. That first gift from Lew was still going strong, with an occasional repair to the carefully crafted rattan hinges or to the hasp, which was secured by an ivory pin, and it had outlasted a dozen ordinary summer handbags. And there was always the fun of recognizing a fellow Nantucketer by smiling at each other’s similar baskets, swinging from suntanned arms on other islands, from Captiva to Catalina, Maui to Mykonos, Bermuda, Eleuthera, St. Croix.

  Old baskets, old money, she thought again, We all want to pretend we were born having both.

  Yet she knew that Helen’s basket and her beautiful brick house came from Lester’s success in making watch bracelets and graduation rings; that Mary Lynne and Bo Heidecker’s affluence had its origin, as had her own and Lew’s on a lesser scale, in modest beginnings; that Dee probably got a commission for selling lightship baskets by bringing buyers to basket makers.

  Gussie’s money (she was not sure whether Gussie or Helen might have more) was both old and new, she continued to muse, coming from her family and also from two successful and hardworking husbands. Mittie’s old money was slipping away, it seemed, with only the great hilltop house on the south rim of the harbor left to show for it, and the family’s old house on Main Street. It was reassuring to believe that old family was far more important than money in Mittie’s heritage.

  She couldn’t remember where and how Fanwell Carpenter had come into his comfortable Nantucket retirement. Probably by inheritance, she thought. Fanny never seemed very bright, although he was pleasant enough, sometimes even a little too much so. And Beth—nobody ever thought of money one way or the other about the Higginsons, only that there seemed to be enough not to worry about it.

  The scent of a bowl of flowering narcissus on the small table beside her now seemed heavy and cloying in the overwarm, moist room, where Helen sat, her note-making discontinued, a helmeted astronaut from an alien planet glaring angrily into space. Gussie was now upright, her towel-wrapped head ready for Larry’s clever scissors. All this thinking about baskets and money was footless, and her stomach was complaining irritably about its failure to receive a decent breakfast. Mrs. Potter began again to think about the two deaths on Wednesday and her growing, painful suspicions. Each time these dark thoughts had surfaced, she had denied them. And yet last evening, in certain, intuitive recognition, she had known how her old friend Ozzie and his secretary had died. She had known, even as she tried to hide her shock, when Gussie had said, so amiably, “Name your poison.”

  It suddenly seemed imperative that she should take some kind of action. Where could she learn something about death by poison? And could she do so without creating a storm of official inquiry? Her intuition, she told herself severely, might well be, and not for the first time, slightly off the mark.

  The source of knowledge was only a few blocks away. The Atheneum, of course.

  And what was she going to say to her good friends behind the librarians’ desk?

  “It occurs to me that two people on the island might have been poisoned, day before yesterday, and I need a little help on this.” A fine start that would be. “Of course, I haven’t any proof they were poisoned, and no idea at all of why anyone should have wanted to do them in . . .”

  But she did know why. It had to be someone about whom the two might have had dangerous and damaging information. Someone who believed that what the two knew, or had, could threaten a career or a love affair or a life. Maybe even something just as crass as a big deal of some kind. Again, none of this could she speak aloud anywhere, let alone within the hushed walls of the Atheneum.

  It wasn’t even a suspicion she wanted to share with Gussie, and she hoped she was wrong in believing in the momentary shocked agreement of their raised eyebrows the evening before at the mention of poison. The reason for this reluctance was, she knew, Gussie’s interest in Tony. She did not like what she had learned of him so far, from Dee, but it was not fair to him or to Gussie to suggest that he might have killed two people because of a long-ago tragedy, for which he might have been only indirectly responsible.

  The Atheneum was out, unless she had more knowledge of what to look up and could find it for herself in the card files. Suddenly she thought of Beth, who had spent all day yesterday at the science library. Beth must already share her suspicion of poison and must already know what she herself scarcely knew how to begin looking up.

  “I’m going to take a walk,” she said to Gussie as Larry unwrapped her wet head and flourished his scissors. “I might just go up to Beth’s to see what she’s up to, but I’ll be back before you’re finished, in time to go with you to the bakeshop.”

  The Higginson house on India Street appeared deceptively small. Its architecture was traditional Nantucket, two stories high in front, sloping to one, with a series of additions, in the back. The front door was at one side, and the house itself fronted directly on the street. A narrow brick-paved path led back along one side, with a winter-mulched edging of perennials. This led, as Mrs. Potter well remembered, past the old garden-shed addition to Beth’s sunny herb garden behind the house.

  There was no garage, and Beth’s sturdy yellow four-wheel Scout was parked in front, its two left wheels up on the low sidewalk as an accepted and customary courtesy to other drivers on the one-way street.

  Mrs. Potter knocked gently, then with increasing insistence. The deep bark of a large dog was her only answer. The drawn curtains of the front window twitched, the curious nudging of Samson’s nose, she presumed, remembering his name.

  His calm, unworried bark sounded more like “good morning” than “get out.” The fact that Beth’s car was there meant simply that she was out walking, as was her habit. Her own feeling of unease was only that of simple hunger. She had probably been secretly hopeful of the hospitable midmorning snack she knew Beth would have urged if she had been at home.

  In spite of these reassurances to herself, she was still troubled as she returned to the beauty shop with a detour that took her partway around Brant Point, surveying the blank shutters of the big houses there, houses that in June would again be open to sun and summer laughter, as they had been for many years. She walked past now-deserted sandy beaches where golden children in bright trunks would dig and wade and learn to swim.

  Later, as she and the newly coiffed Gussie headed toward the new shop called The Portuguese Bread Man, she knew there was no way in the world she was going to be able to resist tearing off crusty chunks of that fresh bread. She’d have to eat some right on the street as they walked home. What was there about making up your mind that you were about to start on a diet that made you so absolutely ravenously starving?

  Her appetite was momentarily stayed by another silent question. Certainly it could not have been Beth behind her own drawn front-window curtains, deciding not to answer the knock of an old friend? She told herself again, sensibly, that Beth was only out walking and that they would at any moment meet her on the street somewhere on their way home. They did not, and after that she and Gussie were totally occupied with preparations for Saturday’s tea party,

  15

  “Th
ere!” Gussie exclaimed with pleasure as she lighted the tall lemon-yellow candles in the branched silver candelabra. “That’ll knock ‘em dead!”

  “If they don’t die of shock finding they’ve come for tea instead of cocktails,” Mrs. Potter added, trying to sound jocular and wishing she felt more in a party mood. Some way she’d have to get Beth aside for a minute later to get an inkling of why she’d gone to the science Library and what she’d learned there. At the very least she could arrange for a time to see her alone, with the excuse of begging a sight of her house and new dog.

  She tried to find reassurance, as well as pleasure, in the scene before her now.

  The long oval mahogany table in Gussie’s dining room was covered with a full-length tablecloth of embroidered white organdy. Its centerpiece of long-stemmed anemones—their counterparts to be known as ranunculus when they would appear later in Gussie’s spring garden—had arrived from the florist ready-arranged but had been deftly and speedily separated by Gussie’s quick fingers, then rearranged to her satisfaction in a great open basin of silver with scrolled and curving legs. The flowers’ spring colors were echoed in fainter tints by Mrs. Potter’s drugstore bonbons in silver compotes. A round silver tray was covered with thin slices of the hitherto neglected holiday fruitcake, and its twin offered the orange and cranberry breads Mrs. Potter and her hostess had baked on the preceding afternoon. There were clear shining glass plates bearing the thinnest of tea sandwiches, circles, triangles, diamonds, and rolled ones sporting flirtatious sprigs of emerald-green watercress, all of these still under cover of damp linen napkins, awaiting their debut.

  At one end of the table was the large, comfortable armed dining chair (could it be that her cousin Theo, then Jules, and then Gordon had all successively occupied that same host’s chair at dinner?) where Mrs. Potter prepared to seat herself as Gussie went to greet the first party arrivals. Before her was a gargantuan silver tray bearing the tools of the tea pourer’s trade.

  Mrs. Potter checked hastily to be sure that everything was in order. Teresa would bring in the silver pot of the strongly brewed tea essence, and she knew there was more in the kitchen, being kept warm to appear when it was needed. A spirit lamp burned beneath a shining handsome kettle, where freshly boiling water would be kept as near to that temperature as possible, this also to be kept replenished from the kitchen. There was a bowl of cube sugar with silver tongs (Mrs. Potter knew she would find herself using her fingers as the party went on), a silver jug of milk, a small plate of thinly sliced quarters of lemon, some of these with a whole clove imbedded, and a generous silver slop bowl for the lukewarm dregs of teacups returning for a second filling.

  At the left of the tray were a dozen of Gussie’s best Royal Doulton teacups and thin saucers, neatly stacked, and a stack of small matching plates. A pile of embroidered organdy napkins followed, and an array of teaspoons set out by Teresa with mathematical precision. On the sideboard were more teacups and saucers in different patterns of china.

  Gussie was on her way to the front hall, where sprays of golden forsythia now bloomed in the big Chinese vase. Mrs. Potter took her seat in the big armchair. Teresa brought in the tea essence and whisked the damp napkins from the tops of the sandwich plates. They were ready. Everything was ready. Tea would be served that day, in the big white house, to some thirty guests, all but one of whom would be coming in the certain, unthinking belief that they had been invited to cocktails.

  Now Gussie was greeting the first arrival, pointing the way to the hallway benches and chairs for leaving his coat, escorting him to the dining room. Mrs. Potter knew that from now on, guests would simply be shooed toward the room where she was ensconced, coming in from the front hall through the big open double doors from the library. She knew that after receiving tea and telling her it was nice to have her back, most of them would eventually drift into the two similarly connecting front and back parlors on the other side of the house. She waited to see who would be first, She wished she could quell this feeling of growing unease.

  “Well! Well . . . I must say!” Ted Frobisher proclaimed slowly as he made an uncertain passage to where Mrs. Potter was sitting. “We’re having tea! Gussie, I can’t tell you what a delightful surprise this is! Mother used to have tea parties like this! Genia, my dear, you’re looking lovely today in that yellow dress. Tea! I can’t get over it . . . I couldn’t be happier!”

  Ted’s delight seemed totally genuine. He may have imbibed whatever was his usual quantity of vodka by this time of day, but as he bent to kiss Mrs. Potter’s cheek, his bearing changed from that of middle-aged alcoholic vacuity to that of a happy young man. “No sugar, thank you, Genia,” he said with obvious satisfaction. “My dear, is that Earl Grey tea I smell? If it is, I’ll skip the milk. Just middling strong, thanks. And do I see cucumber sandwiches?”

  By now Gussie was back in the big front hall and Mrs. Potter heard more arrivals, more greetings, more invitations to leave your coat here, anyplace, more announcements that Genia was in the dining room, where she’d be so pleased to see them.

  Ted’s apparent pleasure in the party was a help, and Mrs. Potter’s spirits lifted briefly as she affectionately was welcomed back to the island by a succession of friends. Still, she found herself watching them, old and new, with even greater than usual intentness. She could not completely push to the back of her mind her uneasy fears about Ozzie’s and Edie’s deaths, nor her inner certainty that Beth’s library research had to do with poisons. She could not shake the growing feeling that someone among the party guests knew more about all this than she did. She knew she was making an inner recording of who arrived and what happened, at the same time she was greeting and being greeted, being embraced and embracing.

  Mary Lynne arrived, her newly svelte figure smoothly encased in violet wool, her magnolia throat encircled with pearls. The pearls at the open neck of Helen’s heavy white satin blouse, above her skirt of dark green velvet, were smaller but, as Mrs. Potter realized, undoubtedly real, whereas it seemed likely that Mary Lynne’s, like her own similar strand in the jewelry case upstairs, were certainly not. Helen’s daughter, in the tan wool dress she undoubtedly wore for her Saturday at the science library and carrying the same shapeless tan shoulder bag, was predictably plump, pale, bespectacled, trailing her mother. A newly vivacious Leah arrived in a black velvet pantsuit, white ruffles showing at the neck, her earrings as green as her eyes, her silver hair now appearing even a little more emphatically platinum.

  Victor Sandys was resplendent in what appeared a new and fashionable costume—a black velvet blazer over plaid tartan trousers (a different tartan from the day before, Mrs. Potter noticed), wearing shining new patent leather slippers with a flat grosgrain bow. Arnold Sallanger’s gray flannels were baggy, his tweed jacket bore elbow patches of worn leather, but his brown eyes were bright behind the rimmed spectacles, and he smelled antiseptically clean. Dee’s flat dark hat and great earrings were as dashing as ever above the white flash of her smile, and her high-necked, long-sleeved fine wool knit dress, the color of mushrooms, was not only timeless but clearly infinitely adaptable. Mittie wore a fine creamy cashmere turtleneck sweater, equally timeless, with a long skirt of plaid wool in huge blocks of black and white—a skirt Mrs. Potter thought looked vaguely familiar, although of course much much smaller than any Mittie might have worn before. Beneath it Mrs. Potter glimpsed the trim toes of Mittie’s tassel-tied black Belgian flat pumps. George Enderbridge arrived at the same time in a neat headmasterly suit of gray tweed, made more casual by his well-polished loafers and slightly more dashing by the striped ascot at his throat. All of the women had lightship baskets over their arms, some round, some oval, some small, some large, but all different in their ivory-decorated lids.

  Interspersed among these old friends, mingling with them all in easy familiarity, were other islanders Mrs. Potter knew and remembered with fondness. The new couple Gussie had mentioned were not so new after all—they had met on her last Nantucket vi
sit. There were those she had known for many years—couples, singles, some now retired, various academics, artists, and writers now making the island their home, and a few people connected with present-day island business, including the owner of the dress shop from which Mrs. Potter knew she could happily choose her wardrobe for the rest of her days. And, inevitably, there were more widows—bright, independent, attractive women who had chosen to come to Nantucket, or to remain there, now that their husbands were gone and their children grown.

  In spite of these happy distractions, Mrs. Potter found herself tense and watchful. Beth, usually the first guest at a party, quick to see how she might be of help, was very late today, she thought.

  Meantime, Ted Frobisher’s initial reaction to the unexpected drama of the tea table, and his unconcealed enjoyment of the party as it progressed, were the most surprising, and to Mrs. Potter the most gratifying, response of the hour that followed.

  Ted stood back politely between each round of newly arriving guests, then stepped forward to kiss each cheek or shake each hand. His smile was happy and his offers of assistance were eager and endearing as he pointed out the various sandwiches. He rejoiced over the arrival of the hot cheese puffs as Teresa brought them in fresh from the oven, and he spoke again his compliments for Gussie’s special parsley sandwich filling as well as the blackly rich one with the olives. He offered to take people’s cups back to Mrs. Potter for refills, as she was busy saying hello and being kissed. He brought the tray of second-best teacups from the sideboard when they were needed,

  He inquired with a politely lifted eyebrow if Mrs. Potter needed Teresa to bring more boiling water. As the guests recircled the table and the room grew more crowded, he deftly shepherded those on the outer rim back out through the hall and into the parlor with freshly filled teacups.