The Nantucket Diet Murders

by Virginia Rich

  While Mrs. Potter felt sure that she would, the party quickly divided into three camps. There were those who knew they were going to love frogs. There were those, like Leah and Helen, who announced that no one could ever persuade them to try one. And there were a few, like Arnold Sallanger, who were skeptical but curious enough to try.

  “Anybody who prefers his oyster on the half shell, without the beer, report to Jimmy,” Peter directed, “and then here for picks and cocktail sauce. You can mix your own the way you like it, right on the oyster with a dab of chili sauce, a little horseradish, and a drop of hot sauce. Or you can squeeze on a little plain lemon juice. Lemon wedges here, crackers on the side. Now everybody, it’s frog time!”

  It was a tribute to Peter’s infectious good humor that even the few guests who were not oyster lovers seemed to enjoy watching the frog consumption by those who were. A few gentlemanly or ladylike boilermakers were taken on the side, Mrs. Potter noted, watching Mittie screen herself from Tony’s sight as she and George Enderbridge edged to the far end of the room. A great many oysters were taken straight from the half shell as Jimmy continued to lay them open with skillful twists of his knife.

  Gussie had moved propitiatingly to Tony’s side in the doorway, Mrs. Potter noticed, bringing him an opened oyster balanced on a paper napkin, with a pick and a lemon wedge. She did not see whether he accepted it, for at that point she went again to look for Beth and Ted. A quick tour showed her that the two gold-and-white parlors were as empty as the dining room and library.

  As she returned, she saw that Leah and Helen Latham, with Lolly at her side, were now with Tony in the doorway, and that none of that small group appeared to be eating or drinking. Later she noticed that Mittie, after her apparent side trip into boilermaker country, was standing with them, looking slightly flushed and guilty, partially shielding her mouth with a napkin as she talked, in an evident attempt to deflect the rich aromas of bourbon and beer.

  By now Mrs. Potter was ready for a second frog, which proved to be even better, she decided, than the first. Jimmy was singing softly in calypso rhythm, as if to himself, as he continued to open oysters. Jadine was bouncing with enjoyment as she kept her table supplied with clean glasses and, Mrs. Potter suspected, herself supplied with an occasional sip of beer. Peter was cajoling, praising, encouraging, reaching out to embrace everyone in the room. Gussie was laughing and talking (not eating or drinking), moving about with a hostess’s watchful eye to be sure no one was neglected or left alone. Teresa moved back and forth from the pantry with freshly filled plates of tea sandwiches, which were now disappearing rapidly.

  The party was picking up in tempo, but the scene with Ted and Beth still weighed upon Mrs. Potter’s mind. She looked about for Tony Ferencz, to see what part he might be taking in this.

  “Tony just said good night,” Gussie whispered to her in passing, as if in answer to her question. “Helen has a headache, so he’s seeing her and Lolly home, and Leah thought she’d slip away at the same time.”

  As Gussie spoke, sounds from the piano in the back parlor moved the party, most of them with glasses in hand, from the kitchen. Peter had taken over there now, and he was playing music that drew them like a magnet—the songs with which they had embellished their youthful dreams, explained away their hurts, celebrated their occasional joys and triumphs, certain that each one contained its message of truth. They came as Peter played “Sophisticated Lady.” Dee, her brimmed hat still perfectly straight, her white teeth and gold earrings gleaming in the firelight of the marble fireplace, sat at his side on the needlepoint-covered piano bench.

  They sang. “It’s a treat to beat your feet on the Mississippi mud,” Victor Sandys proclaimed, in an offkey, thumping bass. “Sweeet and lovely, sweeter than flowers in May,” warbled Mittie’s clear, true soprano. “When your heart’s on fire, you must realize, smoke gets in your eyes,” responded George Enderbridge, his striped ascot slightly askew.

  “I’ve got you under my skin,” declared an impromptu quartet, of which Arnold Sallanger was the loudest member, in dubious harmony. “All aboard the Chattanooga choo-choo,” Mary Lynne sang, beating time with a snapping thumb and forefinger.

  Teresa came in with a tray of filled coffee cups and the platters of sweet sandwiches, which disappeared as quickly as had those of cucumber and cress with the beer.

  When they all left, Gussie and Mrs. Porter stood in the front doorway as departing guests headed toward their parked cars on the cobblestone street, or on foot toward their nearby homes, all still singing in ragged unison.

  “If I could beee with you one hour tonight, if I were freee to do the things I might,” they sang, going home into the chill of the January night.

  Mrs. Potter hoped that Ted had managed to get home safely and that Beth was tucked in, warm and comfortable and getting over the cold she must be coming down with, or whatever had made her look so pale and hollow-eyed. In spite of Peter’s valiant attempts at introducing gaiety, the tea party had left its guest of honor feeling increasingly disturbed.

  16

  Next morning, the prayers of the congregation were invoked on behalf of Oscar Hamill deBevereaux. Mrs. Potter renewed her vow to re-create in needlepoint the five Tiffany stained-glass panels above the altar, together making a scene of Nantucket wild flowers and sky and a meandering, rush-bordered stream, if it took the rest of her days—or rather, of all future television evenings. The final hymn was sung and she and her old roommate knelt again in last brief memory of their friend, whose body was now returned to its native soil on another island.

  The rector’s words were brief, saying that the town’s longtime leading attorney and trusted friend had been a member of the parish since 1959. His body would rest in the family plot in Southampton, where he had been asked to be buried beside the grave of his wife, Alice Chalmers deBevereaux (“Sunny,” Gussie mouthed in unneeded explanation), who had died in 1958, and that of his daughter Martha, who had died in 1957. (“Marthé,” Gussie whispered. “She was thirteen.”)

  “I didn’t see Beth,” she remarked as they left the church, after shaking hands with the new rector and explaining their inability to remain for after-church coffee in what Mrs. Potter still called the church basement, now renamed in what seemed to her a very British fashion, the Undercroft.

  “Maybe she came at eight,” Mrs. Potter offered as they hurried down the steps, waving and smiling but not pausing to talk with other departing parishioners. “I didn’t see Ted, either. They both slipped away yesterday after the tea spill. I’m sure we’ll see them both at Peter’s picnic in an hour or so.”

  Last night’s party cleanup, they now agreed, had been a breeze. Jadine and Jimmy, at Peter’s direction, had removed all vestiges of the frogs from the kitchen—the trash can full of oyster shells, the restaurant glasses, bottles, even the leftover chili sauce. Only a yeasty scent of beer remained after they left in the restaurant’s station wagon.

  Teresa had all of the silver washed during the time of the singing, some of it flannel-wrapped and stored away, other pieces polished and shining behind the glass fronts of the china cupboard in the dining room. She had done a quick tour with the vacuum. She had neatly repackaged the last of the sliced fruitcake, which Gussie insisted she take home with her, along with a nearly full box of leftover bonbons and the last of Beth’s burnt sugar almonds. “So I won’t be tempted,” Mrs. Potter had told Gussie. “I know what you’re doing.”

  Teresa had left, laden not only with the party’s bonus of treats but also with the damp bundle of the organdy tablecloth. “I’ll soak it again all night, and then give it a little bleach if I have to,” she remarked as she went out.

  “I mentioned temptation,” Mrs. Potter said, after she had gone. “I don’t think we had such a sinful evening, from the standpoint of calories, as you may think, Gussie. I know you feel bad because Tony left early, before the singing began, and you may be worried that you’ve wrecked your diet and he’ll never forgive you. But let�
�s figure this out.” Finding her crewel needlework bag, still at the side of one of the kitchen’s easy chairs, and retrieving the yellow pad she had used earlier for making the tea party lists, she had jotted some figures.

  “Peter said the bourbon part of the frog was less than a half ounce, right? Just a sip. That means less than fifty calories, certainly. How many frogs did you have? Well, I’ll tell you I had three, the first one with bourbon and the other two with just beer. So that’s fifty for Jack Daniel’s. Three oysters . . . certainly both of us have dieted enough times to remember how many calories in an oyster, Gussie?”

  “Oysters, four to six medium, seventy calories,” Gussie recited.

  “That means thirty-five calories for the oyster part. And beer?”

  “Beer, twelve ounces, one hundred and seventy calories,” Gussie intoned. “That’s regular, not light. I know the whole thing by heart, after all these years, from apples to zucchini.”

  “I’m sure I didn’t have more than four ounces of beer with each oyster,” Mrs. Potter said. “It’s hard to be exact with a bluepoint in the bottom of the glass. Suppose I had just that, twelve ounces of beer in three frogs.”

  “Add it up,” Gussie said, with very little show of interest.

  “All right, bourbon fifty; oysters, let’s say fifty; beer, maybe two hundred to be on the generous side. That makes three hundred calories, which sounds like a lot until you stop to think that was my whole dinner.”

  “Not even a cucumber sandwich?” Gussie asked doubtfully. “Not one of those lovely little watercress rollups you had so much fun making? Not even a slice of your very own grandmother’s special orange bread when you were having coffee later in the parlor? I know with my own eyes I saw you eat at least one bluepoint just on the half shell.”

  “All right, I forgot. I had two, without anything but lemon. They’re such a treat! I was only counting the frogs,” Mrs. Potter replied, then, pondering, continued. “You know, to be honest, although I did have a cucumber sandwich, I actually don’t think I had any of those other things. Shall we say I had a five-hundred-calorie dinner? I don’t think that’s too bad.”

  And, she thought now, remembering this Saturday night after-party conversation, I doubt that anyone at the party has wakened this Sunday morning with a headache or a remorseful stomach. There had been a lot of laughing and singing, but she felt sure that no one’s sum total of frogs had added up to more than very mild inebriation (Peter had removed the Jack Daniel’s, she noticed, when he went to the piano) and a fairly modest supper.

  At that point, Saturday evening, Gussie had sighed and they had gone on to other talk of the just-finished party, although Mrs. Potter could see that she was still troubled. Gussie had wanted her tea party to be a tribute to the person who was clearly beginning to take an important place in her life—Tony Ferencz. Now, although she couldn’t help being pleased that for most of the guests the party had turned into a resounding success, Gussie was undoubtedly reflecting that Tony had gone home in stiff and disapproving formality.

  It had been, therefore, a relief to them both when the telephone rang and Gussie could return with good news. “He wanted me to know he understood the social pressures I was under, as hostess this evening,” Gussie said, a new lilt in her voice. “He thought I looked marvelous—do I look marvelous, Genia?—and he has already forgiven Peter for what he calls ‘his schoolboy prank.’ And he’s eager to see both of us again tomorrow at Peter’s beach shack picnic.”

  Mrs. Potter had earlier decided not to mention Ted’s unspeakable behavior. In fact, she scarcely wanted to think about it herself—an old friend of ordinarily impeccable manners, now so far gone in alcoholism as to create such a nightmarish scene at the tea table. How lucky it was, she thought, that only she and Beth had been witness to his sudden wild flight from reality.

  Yet, behind Ted’s accusations, drunken fantasies though they might be, there were troubling coincidences. There had been her own sudden guess that poison might have caused both Edie’s and Ozzie’s deaths. There was the possibility that poisons had been the subject of Beth’s library research. And the idea of poison must have been somewhere in Ted’s mind if he could imagine skull and crossbones on a blue bottle in Beth’s lightship basket. Whatever the basket had contained, she wished that Beth had shown it to her.

  At the end of the party, she could not bring herself to speak of any of this to Gussie, who by then was in such good spirits. Instead, she joined her in a quick tour of the house. They discovered a few last cups and saucers Teresa had missed. They rejoiced that the dining room tabletop and the soft blues and greens of the rug seemed undamaged by the tea spill.

  Later, they even recalled a few more old songs. At Gussie’s insistence, Teresa had left the washing of the teacups and plates. The two remembered long-forgotten lyrics and tunes as they took pleasure in washing and drying the fragile china, and Mrs. Potter felt the evening’s unease finally dissipating.

  “I’d like to get you on a slow boat to China,” they chanted. Then, as they at last and somewhat wearily ascended the stairway to their bedrooms, it was “I get a kick out of you . . . Mere alcohol doesn’t thrill me at all . . .”

  Now on Sunday morning, hurrying the short distance home from church to change into warm clothes for Peter’s picnic, they repeated their concern about Beth. “She really looked dreadful yesterday,” Gussie said. “Those great circles under her eyes! Of course she was trying to be cheerful, being Beth, getting more tea and then taking your place at the table, but she just wasn’t herself. And it wasn’t like her to come so late.”

  They tried to cheer themselves again with the thought that they’d be seeing her again shortly, when perhaps they could find out what was the trouble.

  As she changed from church clothes to the warm wool pants and sweater of the first morning’s walk in the snow, Mrs. Potter felt thinner. I’m thinner in just three days, she told herself, with sudden elation. But I’m not going to stand in front of that hall mirror beside Gussie again until I feel a lot thinner than this.

  She considered their regimen since that first morning. Breakfast, after the one of cranberry muffins with a then cheerful Beth, had been only a freshly expressed glass of vegetable juices, an improbable mélange newly invented by Gussie each morning, purporting to follow Tony’s prescription for her special needs. Lunches continued to be a piece of fruit and a bit of cheese, or cottage cheese on salad greens. After the second day she had declined the glass of wine and the slice of Portuguese bread Gussie had offered. She was determined to eat exactly what her hostess did, and to keep up with her in the daily exercise session.

  Cocktail time each day was leisurely. They drank soda water with ice and a slice of lime or a twist of lemon peel as they listened to the evening news before dinner. She found she was beginning to enjoy it.

  She reviewed the dinner menus. The first night had been Gussie’s Eggs Florentine-Benedict—a poached egg on chopped cooked spinach on a base of artichoke bottoms, hot and nicely seasoned. Thursday had brought a small broiled slice of beef filet, a small baked potato with chopped chives, innocent of butter or sour cream, and a salad of greens with a splash of Gussie’s homemade tarragon vinegar, Friday the portion of fish was a little more generous—Nantucket plaice, lightly broiled. With it had been fresh broccoli, cooked quickly to remain green and slightly crisp, with lime wedges to go with both. There had been no salt on the table. Desserts had been a few sections of tangerine on a plate with a small bunch of cold green grapes; a handful of winter-shipped strawberries, au naturel; a halved pink grapefruit, prettily notched.

  It wasn’t being too bad, she told herself. And that waistband had been a little tight. Today, to her surprise, she found herself hoping Peter’s picnic lunch wouldn’t be so good as to undo the whole thing. Dear Peter. She needn’t worry. Whatever it was, it would be perfect.

  17

  As they drove to the south shore, Mrs. Potter remarked that this was her first look at the island other
than coming down on the plane on Wednesday, when she had seen the island as a whole from above—a rough triangle fourteen miles across and no more than six deep, thirty miles off the New England coast. This was her first time to renew acquaintance with moors and beaches and open sky, now empty, deserted, bleakly beautiful, so different from summertime’s tranquil green and blue, gold and white.

  Today’s drive was a short one to the south shore, taking them past a narrow pond where a few dark duck-shapes moved among the bordering reeds. As they approached the shore front and before they reached the former end of the paved town road, they were halted by an imposing wooden barricade. Gussie, unsurprised, swung sharply to the right on a new gravel road. Ahead, fully ten yards beyond the barricade, Mrs. Potter could see grassy, clearly abandoned tracks of the old lane she remembered leading to Peter’s beach house. “I hadn’t realized how much erosion there has been on this shore!” she exclaimed. “The end of the town road must have washed away a lot more since I was here last.”

  “People keep telling me Nantucket will be all under water in another hundred years, or maybe I mean centuries,” Gussie replied, in an unworried tone. “I think it just erodes one place and builds back up someplace else. Anyway, all the places that could be dangerous are blocked off. Nobody could possibly miss all the blockades and warning signs. The old road that used to branch off to the left here to Surfside is gone, of course, at least abandoned and I suppose mostly washed out. But that’s no problem—you can get there directly from town on the next paved road. Luckily this new branch road the town put in to go to Peter’s is now far enough back from the water to be good for years. They hope.