The Nantucket Diet Murders

by Virginia Rich

  They sat quietly, Lolly apparently staring at the fireplace behind Mrs. Potter’s shoulder, until Jadine reappeared.

  When the tea and tiny cinnamon rolls were set before them, Jadine remained, poking ineffectually at the fire, which was clearly refusing to burn. “Green wood,” she muttered.

  “Never mind,” Mrs. Potter told her, turning to look. “It’ll catch. Just give it time.” She didn’t want Jadine or anyone else to hear the words she had already framed in her mind.

  “I know the whole thing, Lolly,” she began, after Jadine had given the logs a few resentful jabs and retired, still muttering. “Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. I know how your friend Edie and Mr. deBevereaux died.”

  Lolly stared into her teacup, then reached slowly, almost absently, for a cinnamon roll.

  “I know you didn’t really plan to poison them, Lolly. You just knew a little about what those plants would do, reading about them at the library. You thought you could make both of them sick for a few hours, long enough for you to get Edie’s keys”—she suddenly remembered Lolly’s offer to take Edie’s things to the hospital—”and long enough for you to get something from the office that night.”

  Lolly shook her head in a definite negative, but her eyes were downcast as she spread butter on another bit of the sweet roll.

  Mrs. Potter took a quick guess. “You didn’t go to the office? You gave the keys to someone else?”

  Lolly’s eyes were those of a stubborn child, now apparently fixed on the smoldering logs behind Mrs. Potter’s shoulder.

  “You were terribly surprised and shocked and sorry when both those two people died, weren’t you, Lolly? You had been so sure they would just be a little upset for the rest of the day and evening.”

  Then, for the first time, Lolly spoke. “It was an accident, a horrible accident,” she said thickly, repeating her earlier words.

  “Then the next day Mrs. Higginson came to the library, first for a while in the morning, then back in the afternoon,” Mrs. Potter went on. “You could see how distressed she was, and you knew she was looking up the possible effects of the same two poisonous plants you’d given to Mr. deBevereaux and Edie. You knew she believed the whole thing was her fault because she was the one to take the comfrey to him.”

  Her voice was suddenly colder. “You figured out that switch in a hurry, it seems to me, just as soon as you heard her say, right here in this dining room, that she was going to take him the comfrey tea. It must have seemed so easy to you. You knew his door would be unlocked. You knew you could slip in and put foxglove leaves in Mrs. Higginson’s jar instead, and that he’d never know the difference.”

  Lolly’s pale face remained blank, and she continued to chew, buttering still another cinnamon roll.

  “I think you were even quicker to see how you could make sure she would blame herself for what you had done. You went home with her and—”

  Lolly interrupted. “I only went home with her because I felt sorry for her,” she said defensively. “Honestly. I didn’t intend for her to be blamed and I didn’t want her to feel bad.”

  “But you took that old cyanide bottle when she showed you her potting shed, Lolly. It’s quite clear you planned to make sure everyone thought she was a poisoner. You planned it all very cleverly, Lolly, and you had to do it all very quickly. Mrs. Higginson was right when she said we had underestimated you all these years.”

  For the first time, Lolly swallowed hard and her voice was clear and certain. “Not for her,” she said, “not for her. It was for me.”

  Mrs. Potter sat silent for a long minute. “You took the cyanide bottle from the shelf to kill yourself, ”she said at last.

  Slow tears rolled down Lolly’s cheeks. “She was my friend. She was my friend. And I killed her.”

  Mrs. Potter was suddenly near to tears herself. “But why, Lolly, why? Who asked you to get Edie’s keys?”

  Lolly ignored the question. “I knew about cyanide because it was used in my father’s business, back in Chicago,” she said. “I knew it wouldn’t take but a little. I told them I deserved to die, but then they showed me the bottle was completely empty, rinsed and clean. They said God would punish me in his own way and his own time.”

  Mrs. Potter again paused. “That was Walter and Elna, of course. You told them what you’d done, and that you wanted to kill yourself?” she asked doubtfully.

  “Then they said they were leaving, and they packed and walked right out of the house,” Lolly said. Mrs. Potter remembered two faraway figures with heavy suitcases, seen from the cupola, walking down Main Street in the early January dusk.

  “They said they’d done the best they could bringing me up, but they couldn’t stay in a house with a second suicide,” Lolly went on, her voice now bitter. “They said they had a job waiting for them in New York anytime they wanted to quit. They said they’d always been afraid I’d kill myself, just like my father.”

  Incredibly, Lolly poured herself another cup of tea from her small pot, added sugar, and drank it almost greedily. “I couldn’t take the poison because the bottle was empty, and I couldn’t shoot myself. I wouldn’t know where to find a gun or how to load it or how to shoot it. If I had, I’d have killed myself that way in spite of them.”

  Mrs. Potter now remembered the raincoat-clad figure glimpsed leaving Helen’s front door shortly after she had seen the couple with the suitcases headed in the opposite direction.

  “You went out after they left,” she told Lolly. “Where did you go, and who was it who asked you to get those keys?” There was no answer, and she added still other questions. “When did you get the idea of putting the empty poison bottle in Mrs. Higginson’s basket at the tea party? Or did someone else think of that?”

  Concentrating on Lolly’s face and her own questions, Mrs. Potter had only vaguely noticed that other people were moving about the dining room, none of them intrusively near. She had not seen that Jimmy had come in from the kitchen and was studying the smoking logs in the fireplace. Hearing him now, she turned to see what he was doing.

  He smiled at her broadly, showing his flash of gold teeth. With her mind focused on Lolly, it took her an instant to see that he held in one narrow fine-boned hand a can of charcoal lighter fluid.

  “Oh, no! Jimmy, no! That’s not the way you do it!” she shouted. “Jimmy, no!”

  Her warning was too late. Jimmy had directed a jet stream of the clear liquid at the smoldering wood. There was a flash that reached out in a long, flaming tongue from the hearth, the tongue of a dragon. Jimmy clutched his hands over his eyes, screaming in sudden pain.

  Peter and Jadine came running from the kitchen, drawn instantly by Jimmy’s agonized cries. Seemingly at the same moment, Tony materialized from the hallway door with Helen, one thin hand resting regally on his bent forearm. The blond woman detached herself from the group at the round table in the window, and one of the men joined her in the shocked and curious circle.

  Mrs. Potter looked down in disbelief at the right arm of her sweater. Several inch-wide circles of wool and of the pullover beneath it had completely disappeared. All she could see were gray patches of what must be her scorched flesh beneath. The smell of burnt wool and her own skin reminded her of something, she thought in detachment as she looked up, in equal disbelief, to see that the woman and man were Leah and Victor Sandys. Then hot, red pain pierced her arm and shoulder.

  Still sitting at the table, she heard Peter’s reassuring voice and felt herself doused with a pitcher of ice water. “Hang in there, Potter,” he said firmly. “We’re seeing to Jimmy first. Tony, you put these wet napkins on his eyes. Sopping, lots of water. Jadine, call the ambulance for him, and then get Dr. Sallanger here for Mrs. Potter. Helen, you take a look. I don’t think her burns are serious.”

  As Mrs. Potter lowered her head to keep from fainting, she remembered what the smell made her think of. Burning feathers. You burn feathers to keep people from fainting, she thought. I’m not go
ing to faint. I’m going to hear Lolly’s answers.

  A tuneless humming was the first sound she recognized, then, as she felt cool, rounded surgical scissors cutting away the sodden sleeve of her sweater and the turtleneck jersey beneath it. “Let’s have a look,” Arnold Sallanger was saying, interrupting his own humming, the apparently unconscious accompaniment to his examination.

  “Not too bad,” she heard him say. “Peter, Genia has you to thank for quick action. Flooding with cold water was the best thing you could have done.”

  He bent closer to Mrs. Potter, now sitting upright again, but now in a chair in the center of the room. “I’ll get you fixed up, kid, and then take you home to Gussie’s, You’ll be fine in a few days. Just a little discomfort until then.”

  Arnold resumed his humming as he wrapped her arm loosely with sterile bandages, assuring her that that was all he was going to do, since although the skin was blistered, its protective surface was unbroken.

  “I hate doctors who say things like ‘a little discomfort,’” Mrs. Potter told him. “Tell me you know it hurts like blue blazes, or I’ll call you at three A.M. and scream in your telephone.”

  “Do that, and all I’ll tell you is to take another two of these,” he said, putting a small packet in her lightship basket. “If you keep on screaming, I’ll tell Gussie to stick pins in you wherever it doesn’t hurt.”

  She managed a forced grin. “Thanks, Peter, for the good first aid,” she said. “I’ll let Arnold drive me home now. Call me when you have news of Jimmy from the emergency room, and Peter—did you see what happened to Lolly?”

  Jadine was the one to answer. Lolly hadn’t been splashed by the burning lighter fluid, she said, but she just sort of disappeared somewhere along the line.

  “Well, you know Lolly,” Peter said. “Probably scared to death, and nobody noticed what she was doing. I’ll check with Helen and let you know about her, too, at the same time I call with the report on Jimmy. Poor devil, I don’t know what he thought he was doing, trying to coax that fire with lighter fluid. I guess they don’t have the stuff where he comes from.”

  Jadine interrupted. “The count drove the station wagon to the hospital, right behind the ambulance, the way you asked him to,” she reported. “I don’t know what good that will do. No matter how friendly he tries to act when he comes in the kitchen, that man doesn’t give a hoot in hell about any of us.”

  The sound of Arnold Sallanger’s car horn in front of the inn announced that he had pulled up to take Mrs. Potter home. Peter helped her to the curb, with Jadine on the other side, both of them careful not to touch her right arm.

  Gussie was equally and gratifyingly solicitous when Arnold delivered her at the side kitchen door of the big house on Main Street. “Peter called me,” she said, “and he feels terrible about all this—your being burned, and especially about Jimmy. He feels so responsible for anything that happens at the Scrim. Oh, yes, and he said that as far as he knows, Lolly went home. I think he said Tony drove her, or maybe just saw her leave with her mother. Seems Helen had her station wagon there, too.”

  It was later, when Arnold had repeated to Gussie how many pain pills Mrs. Potter should have, and how often, and that he’d be in to take a look at her before his hospital rounds in the morning, that Mrs. Potter reminded Gussie that they should call Helen.

  She had not yet told Gussie more than that she had visited Dee at the carriage house, and nothing of the story of Mikai and Tony’s abandonment of his son. She had mentioned only briefly her own sudden impulse to take Lolly to tea at the Scrim once she had met her on her way home from the library, but nothing of the interrupted questioning there.

  Gussie, she noticed, listened to this brief recital with her head lowered, but her clear blue eyes raised and her eyebrows arched, unmistakable signs that she knew she was not hearing the whole story. She’d have to tell Gussie the whole thing soon, but at the moment her pain—slight discomfort, she raged inwardly, all doctors are alike!—gave her reason to postpone these long expositions.

  “Call Helen, will you?” she repeated, shifting her arm awkwardly as she sat in one of the easy chairs, now pulled well away from Gussie’s kitchen hearth. “Just ask her if Lolly’s home. That’s all I want to know.”

  Gussie returned from the phone and Mrs. Potter knew from her face that she would be expected to produce further explanations later. Helen says Lolly called from a friend’s house, Gussie reported. Said she was staying overnight so the two of them could go to the Cape tomorrow on their day off and take in the January sales in Hyannis. She sounded pleased that Lolly had another new friend. Helen apparently hadn’t got the name.

  Or bothered to ask, Mrs. Potter thought, suddenly disturbed, and at the same time realizing that she did not feel quite well. Gussie moved quickly, telling her she was going to bed immediately. As she helped her up the stairs, Mrs. Potter kept saying, rather irritably, that her legs were all right. It was just the slight discomfort in her right arm. Being burned, even a small blister from an unprotected kettle lid, always made her feel scratchy and cross, and she took some pleasure in resenting Arnold Sallanger. Doctors!

  The next morning, Friday, she let Gussie bring her breakfast in bed, although she was impatient to be up. Outside her windows she could see that a soft blanket of snow had fallen in the night, much like that of her first morning back on the island, happy and unworried. She got up to peer down at footprints on the sidewalk below as she drank her tea, somewhat clumsily, with her left hand.

  As soon as she could, she called Peter. Jimmy’s vision was still in doubt, he told her, and he’d insisted that they fly him to Boston. He had wanted to go along himself, but it was hard to leave on a busy Friday. He was glad to hear the news of Lolly’s weekend plans, when Mrs. Potter told him what Helen had reported.

  “That’s just what the poor kid needs,” he said, “and I’m glad she’s got another friend—one of the softball girls, I expect. They all seemed awfully nice and friendly to her that day they were all together. I’ll try to find out who it is, and let you know, since you’re worried about her. Anyway, this much is good news, and I’m encouraged. Maybe she’ll be all right, after all. I was afraid she might be cracking up, the way her father did.”

  Arnold arrived a short time later and said she was healing nicely. With his help, her loose, floating wool caftan slid down, a bit awkwardly, over her burned arm and his fresh wrappings.

  As soon as he had left, she pulled on wool trousers beneath it, and put on her wool knee socks and shoes.

  “You promised me a drive all over the island,” she reminded Gussie, who met her coming down the front stairs. “It’s a beautiful day, the sun’s out and it’s stopped snowing. Let’s go for a long drive. Helen’s alone, and she might like to go along, or how about some of the others?”

  “Four is enough in my little car,” Gussie said, “and I guess we could manage if you sit up front with me where you won’t get bumped. I’ll see who’s free today and wants an island bus tour,”

  As Gussie went to the phone, Mrs. Potter reviewed what she had learned in three quick calls of her own, after speaking to Peter and before Arnold arrived.

  First, Lolly had yet not come to work at the library, but it was not her day off and they were still expecting her, although with no concern. Apparently she often took a day off and since she was a volunteer, and apparently not particularly needed at that, no one thought much of it. The only number they could suggest to call was that of Helen’s house, which Mrs. Potter already knew.

  Second and third, and not exactly to her surprise, no one seemed to remember whether Lolly Latham, or anyone answering her description, had been on any plane to Hyannis, either last evening or this morning. No one seemed to remember if she had been on the morning boat to Woods Hole. Lolly, Mrs. Potter thought, was, of all people, designed to disappear in a crowd.

  She reported these calls to Gussie, elaborating on the fruitless minutes with the steamship ticket agent. “In fact, h
e didn’t even know who she was,” Mrs. Potter said, “until I told him it was Mrs. Latham’s daughter. Then he said, ‘Oh, her, yeah, red brick!’ He insisted he didn’t know any daughter.”

  Gussie pondered this briefly. “You know who is always the guilty one in mystery stories?” she asked. “The one person you never suspect, because they’re exactly like Lolly. No one ever notices what they’re doing. You’re looking for a poisoner, Genia, we both are, so we can get Beth to realize she isn’t one. I just got it—it’s Lolly! And now all we have to do is figure out how and why. Just remember who told you. And now let’s go for your drive. Mittie and Mary Lynne are coming along, but you’re company. You get to say where.”

  30

  It had been a long cold walk to the south shore. Luckily she had dressed warmly in the morning before she went to work, and luckily there was enough light in the sky, as the mist-circled moon appeared, to find her way on the road beside the pond. She was pleased with herself for thinking to snatch the remaining cinnamon rolls from the table, cramming them into her shoulder bag, when she had been told she must go, and where. There had not been time for more than a few words.

  Luckily, too, she was now able, after a little fumbling, to find Peter’s key, just where she remembered. Peter had been so nice about asking her to his lunch party last Sunday. She would be safe in Peter’s house, safe from all the questions and from her own fears.

  She remembered the two long facing sofas. Groping, she made her way to the farther one, the one facing the door. The cushions were soft, but the room, in the silent, lifeless chill of a closed house, seemed even colder than it had been outside.

  As soon as she had rested, she found the matches and candle she remembered on the long rough mantel. She could not risk a fire. Its smoke would be a certain signal of her presence there if anyone should be watching. The light of the candle seemed safe behind the shutters. She found blankets, a deep drawer full, smelling of lavender.