The Nantucket Diet Murders

by Virginia Rich

  “I don’t know when I’ve had such a good time!” he said, beaming. His impeccably cut navy flannel blazer showed a discreet flash of its foulard-patterned lining at its back vent as he whirled back to the tea table, triumphant from a skillful maneuver of guests from dining room to parlor. The layout of the house, including the return shortcut by way of the back hall, was as familiar to him as to most of the guests. His step was quick and precise, his cheeks were pink in faint reflection of the crimson stripe of his neatly folded ascot.

  It interested Mrs. Potter to observe that Lolly Latham was being a willing but slightly awkward aide at the tea table as well, taking cups and plates back to the kitchen as they were abandoned on the sideboard. Beth’s undoubtedly right, she thought. We’ve underestimated Lolly, even considered her a bit slow-witted when she may be merely shy. Perhaps she’s coming out of it at last.

  Ted’s unexpected boyish delight and his unassuming ease at the tea table were mildly contagious. None of Gussie’s well-mannered guests showed any sign of obvious surprise to find the guest of honor pouring tea, and none inquired the way to the bar. All accepted a teacup with some expression of pleasure. The women nibbled token sandwiches, the men not a great many more. The party was decorous, too well brought up to show surprise. Everyone asked about Mrs. Potter’s health and that of her offspring. Everyone smiled. And smiled and smiled.

  To everyone but Ted, she thought, this is a very dull party, and for myself I can’t get over the dreadful feeling that something is wrong somewhere. Yet one good thing about it—Les Girls are able to observe their no-drinking diets, although so far Count Ferencz hasn’t arrived to award any gold stars. Beside that, she told herself, there are people here who will enjoy their later dinners more than if they had drunk several cocktails and eaten too many hors d’oeuvres. There are people who will later rejoice that they did not talk too much, did not tell a dubious joke or betray an indiscreet confidence. There are people who will sleep better, wake up happier. But there are people here, maybe all of them except Ted (and that included herself), who would have found this party more festive with, say, at least one small glass of sherry in hand, deplorable as she knew this to be.

  Then there was sudden excitement in the front hallway, out of her vision beyond the library door; the atmosphere was charged with new tension as Tony Ferencz strode into the dining room. Gussie, following, watched his progress with smiling eyes.

  As he bowed and kissed Mrs. Potter’s hand as she sat at the tea table, she felt again the hidden challenge of their earlier meeting. She was aware of the heightened vivacity of the women in the room. Count Ferencz made his sweeping rounds, kissing each hand, bowing his tall head courteously to Ted and the few men, who now, she noticed, began to slide away toward the parlor side of the house.

  The count declined tea, but he stood for a moment at Mrs. Potter’s side, saying that he hoped Gussie’s dear Eugenie was having a happy return to the island, saying that he regretted that he had, of necessity, had to be away during the first few days of her visit. His gray eyes held hers briefly, then those in turn, with slow regard, of each of the women around the tea table. Leah and Helen, who had previously taken tea and then moved to the parlors, now returned.

  Gussie, flushed and happy, spoke from the library doorway. “Peter’s going to be here any minute, Tony says,” she announced, “and Beth just came in at last. I asked her to take your place at the table, Genia, to let you circulate for a bit.”

  Mrs. Potter peered questioningly into the pot in front of her.

  “Need some more? Let me get it,” Beth offered quickly as she came into the dining room. Mrs. Potter saw that her usually rosy face was pale, despite the Christmas red of her wool suit, and that her eyes were underlined with purple shadows. “I see Teresa’s busy at the moment . . .” Beth’s gaze followed Teresa’s measured progress with a white birch log for the library fire, her wood basket making evident her intent to continue to the twin marble fireplaces of the parlors. “I’ll find it, Gussie, don’t bother. I know my way around your kitchen.”

  From the front door, now unattended, came a genial shout. “Hey, guys! Anybody home around here?” the voice inquired loudly and unnecessarily to a houseful of amiably twittering guests. “Potter, wherever you are, come see what I brought to your tea party!”

  Gussie’s dash to the front door was followed by a press of others, Mrs. Potter among them. Peter Benson stood in the open doorway, bringing with him a rush of cold fresh air from the north.

  “Look what I brung you,” he repeated, this time to Gussie. “Just what every tea party needs at this stage of the game. A barrel of oysters and a keg of beer!”

  Under the streetlight in front of the house was a long station wagon with SCRIMSHAW INN lettered on its sleek, wood-patterned side. There was a flash of bright smile from the driver’s seat, and in back, Jadine, her well-blonded curls bobbing, waved vigorously.

  “Okay, you two drive around to the side and unload at the kitchen porch door,” Peter called to them. “Anybody in the kitchen to let them in?” he asked Gussie, almost in the-same breath. “Don’t look so scared. This part of the party is all under control. You don’t have to do a thing except relax and have fun. We’re going to have frogs!”

  The word was repeated, blankly, by those of the guests nearest the front door, as Peter swept into the hall, exuberantly hugging each one in turn, men and women alike.

  “I suppose you mean frogs’ legs, Peter,” someone said doubtfully. “Didn’t we have those at the Scrim not long ago, dear?” the man asked his wife, whose smile did not quite cancel out the slight shudder glimpsed in her eye blink.

  “Did he say frogs?” Victor Sandys queried with an unconcealed grimace. “I can’t stand the little beasts. What’s come over Benson, playing a schoolboy trick like bringing frogs to a party?”

  “Do we play frogs, or hunt them, or eat them, or what?” Gussie asked. “I don’t know what you’re up to, Peter, or what oysters or beer have to do with it, but let’s all go to the kitchen and let Jadine and your friend in, and maybe we’ll all find out.”

  Those in the hallway crowded through the library and dining room to the kitchen, following Peter and Gussie. Those in the dining room who had not yet heard Peter’s frog announcement, yet sensing the excitement, were following closely. Ted and Mrs. Potter alone remained at the tea table, where Beth was about to seat herself in the big armchair.

  “At least you can pour yourself a cup of tea, even if the party seems to be deserting you,” Mrs. Potter said. “I’m sure they’ll all be back in a minute.”

  “Half a second,” Beth said apologetically. “I left my basket in the kitchen when I got the fresh tea and I want my diet sweetener pills. After that, I think Ted looks as if he’d take a second cup with me.” (Second, nothing, Mrs. Potter thought. This will be Ted’s fourth cup at the very least. The man’s not a lush, he’s a tea hound.)

  Slipping tack through the press in the kitchen doorway, Beth seated herself. Making a visible effort to look up at Ted with a smile, she opened the lid of the basket on her lap, but her attention was centered on Ted and the teapot. Mrs. Potter stood idly watching as Beth poured a little of the dark amber tea essence into the thin china cup and was reaching carefully for the pot holding the hot water to dilute it. Seeing herself no longer needed, she decided to move toward the kitchen door with the rest, where Victor Sandys was bringing up the rear.

  She looked back to see Ted, bending over beside Beth to await his fresh cup, waver visibly in his balance.

  Only Mrs. Potter, in the back of the throng bound for the kitchen, seemed to hear Ted’s voice—thin, high-pitched, a whisper that came to her ears with the vehemence of a scream.

  “Beth Higginson, that’s poison in your basket! That’s cyanide! Don’t touch it! You’ll poison us all if that gets into the teapot!”

  Still holding the partly filled cup with her left hand, Beth peered uncertainly into the opened lightship basket on her lap. With plump
, tentative fingers she reached her right hand toward its contents.

  With this, and as Mrs. Potter hurried back to his side, Ted’s second thin screech was almost incoherent with fright. “Don’t touch that!” he repeated. “That’s deadly poison, Beth! I know what I’m talking about!”

  Beth’s right hand obediently flipped shut the lid of her basket, but Ted, now nearly hysterical, seemed to misinterpret her movement. “We’ll all be poisoned!” His screak of warning was now nearly inaudible, but with a wild, spasmodic gesture he knocked the fragile cup from Beth’s now-quivering left hand, spilling its contents across the expanse of embroidered white organdy. The teapot followed, dousing the spirit lamp, spilling the tea kettle, drenching cloth and table.

  Confused, no one quite having heard Ted’s words, but aware of some kind of accident, the party now crowded back into the dining room. Everyone reached for plates, compotes, candelabra, centerpiece, intent upon rescue. The flood of tea and hot water was an instant threat to both the polished wood of the table and the soft patterns in the oriental rug beneath it.

  Teresa appeared with an armful of soft cloths and towels, dispensing these to waiting hands, Dee’s among them. Mary Lynne quite calmly rearranged a few toppled anemones in the silver basin, now relocated on the sideboard. Helen dropped quickly to her knees, raising the hem of her velvet skirt to avoid tea stains, mopping at minor flooding on the far side of the rug and motioning to Lolly, standing uncertainly on the sidelines, to help her. Mittie hurried in and out of the kitchen carrying teacups and plates with George Enderbridge helping her, their obvious aim that of clearing the decks so that a thorough mop-up could be accomplished.

  Meanwhile, Gussie was wadding the sodden length of tablecloth into a large plastic basin Teresa had brought and assuring everyone that there was nothing, absolutely nothing, to be concerned about, that a little excitement was just what this party wanted.

  Leah’s bracelets were jingling nervously. Victor Sandys was eating hot cheese puffs as he carried their silver dish to the kitchen, and glaring at Arnold Sallanger, who had momentarily blocked his way coming out. Count Valerian Mikai Alexander Antonescu Ferencz stood impassively in the wide doorway to the library, removing himself from the hubbub of the kitchen passage, a swordsman at repose.

  Still in the big chair at the end of the tea table, Beth sat motionless, dabbing ineffectually with her fingertips at the dark wetness on the front of her red suit.

  “Are you all right?” Mrs. Potter asked, handing her a clean towel. “I don’t think tea stains wool if you blot it right away and then sponge it with water.”

  Beth did not reply, but raised her plump hands toward her face, fingertips together, head bowed.

  “Are you all right?” Mrs. Potter asked again. “I think Ted just lost his balance when we all came rushing into the room, but see—he’s all right now, aren’t you, Ted?”

  Ted was now seated in one of the side chairs by the dining room window. He beckoned Mrs. Potter close to him, away from Beth and away from the others busy with the cleanup. “Beth might have poisoned us all,” he said, his voice low. “You look for yourself at what’s in her basket. She’s got cyanide—an old blue bottle, skull and crossbones, you look and see. I had to spill things, Genia, much as I hated to make such a mess. Cyanide, Genia. We’d all have been dead.” He was almost babbling now, in his whispered effort to convince her.

  Oh, dear, he’s been drinking all afternoon and I didn’t know it, she thought with dismay. All this time I thought he was as sober as I’ve ever seen him, haying as much fun as he probably used to at his mother’s parties when he was the adored and dashing young son. He’s been drinking all afternoon, probably sneaking a nip every time he went through the back hall.

  “Look, everything’s fine,” she assured him kindly as he sat, still immobile, in his chair, and then she repeated the same words to Beth, equally motionless, seated in the center of the room. “Nothing’s hurt and you heard Gussie say that a little excitement was just what this party needed. Come on, Bethie, let’s go across into the downstairs washroom and sponge off your red skirt. Then we’ll all go in the kitchen and see what new surprise Peter’s got for us.”

  She guided a shaking Beth across the back hall, wondering where Ted had his cache of vodka. “We all know Ted’s been drinking too much for years,” she said, in an attempt at reassurance. “I’m afraid it’s caught up with him today. Whatever did he see that set him off?”

  Beth was mute, her small plump hands firmly clenched on the rigid handle of her basket.

  “There now,” Mrs. Potter continued, “that won’t show if we blot it again with a dry towel. Put on a dab of lipstick and you’ll be fine.”

  Beth nodded uncertainly, her hands still on the basket handle. “I’ll be with you in a minute,” she said. “You go ahead.”

  As she awaited Beth in the kitchen, she saw that Peter and his staff of two had taken over. Peter introduced the man who was opening oysters with professional speed at an improvised bar at the kitchen sink. “Jimmy’s the one who cooks about half the good stuff at the Scrim that you give me credit for,” he said, grinning.

  He pointed at the wooden barrel placed in a shallow galvanized tub on the floor at Jimmy’s side, where a white plastic trash can next to it was already filling with shells. “Bluepoints from Maryland,” Peter said. “I had them flown in. Now, all of you, if you want to practice your French, talk to Jimmy the way Tony does—although his English is fine.”

  “As long as I don’t have to read it,” Jimmy said, smiling broadly. “If you want to write me a letter, do it in French s’il vous plait.”

  At the other end of the kitchen Jadine was setting out glasses, unpacking thick amber tumblers of water-glass size from a large carton, and a second set, equally heavy, of much smaller ones.

  Mrs. Potter looked for Beth and hurried back into the now empty dining room. Both Beth and Ted, she saw, had apparently slipped away. Ted, she assumed, had left in befuddled alcoholic shame and confusion. Beth, who had not really looked well anyway, was in probable discomfort in her damp wool skirt, and possibly in some embarrassment over whatever Ted had seen in her basket and had so wildly declared to be a bottle of cyanide.

  Sighing for them both, she returned to the kitchen to find that Peter had commandeered the long heavy sideboard there. He was setting out an array of paper napkins, wooden picks, bowls of oyster crackers, bowls of something red, smaller bowls of something white. From the pockets of his rumpled tweed jacket he produced bottles of Tabasco sauce. From a carton he extracted square, black-labeled bottles declaring themselves the product of a man named Jack Daniel. In the center he placed a wooden keg with a spigot.

  “All right, guys, who’s going to be the first for a frog?” Peter demanded, then answered himself. “Our hostess, of course. Berner, I mean Van Vleeck, step right up and show us what a brave kid you are. Come on, everybody, gather around and watch Gussie meet a frog. You too, Potter, come on closer, Carpenter, watch a frog meet Gussie.”

  Gussie gazed helplessly at Mrs. Potter, then imploringly toward the tall, aloof figure in the doorway. “Tony, rescue me,” she begged. “Something tells me I’m going to like this, and I’ll be sorry!”

  Tony’s face was expressionless, but he seemed to be displaying a certain icy tolerance, which Mrs. Potter interpreted as refusal to intervene.

  “Oh, go ahead, Gussie,” Arnold Sallanger urged. “Peter isn’t going to play any tricks that will hurt you, and after all, it’s your party.”

  Mrs. Potter knew her hostess well enough to realize that this reminder would ensure her taking up the challenge. It was indeed Gussie’s party, and the two of them had given enough parties, separately and together, through their hospitable years to know that this one was being a dud. Its only real satisfaction so far had been that of giving pleasure to Ted Frobisher, and now apparently that was spurious. The other guests had had more fun in the helter-skelter of rescuing the table and the rug from the spilled tea than
they’d had in the hour before. They were having more fun right now, crowding around to see what Peter Benson had thought of for their amusement. She knew what Gussie would do.

  “That’s a good kid,” Peter praised her. “Now, first go down to your breakfast table and get two glasses from Jadine—-one big one, one little one. Next stop, Jimmy at the oyster bar at the other end of the room. Eyes on Jimmy, now, everybody!”

  A plump raw oyster, cool, opalescent, slid from its opened shell into Gussie’s larger glass, and Jimmy smiled, with a flash of white teeth and gold fillings.

  “Now come here to Uncle Peter” was the next command. “Here we go. A little Jack Daniel’s in the small glass, next—not a lot, just a swallow, not even a half ounce. Now watch closely, while Uncle Peter makes a frog!” Taking the larger glass with the oyster in it, Peter held it under the spigot of the keg and filled it halfway with cold, foaming, pale golden beer.

  “And now,” he continued, “step right up and watch the little lady take on a frog! Bottoms up with the little glass, Van Vleeck!” Gussie closed her eyes and complied, and an audible shudder ran through those of Les Girls most closely surrounding her, all of them looking hastily at Tony Ferencz in the doorway to see his reaction.

  Without giving her time to catch her breath, Peter continued his instructions. “Now, a nice cool sip of the beer. Good, huh? Have another sip,” he urged.

  He faced his audience. “And what has our fearless hostess had so far? Right! A good old-fashioned boilermaker, that’s what. However admirable as that may be, it is not a frog.”

  “Face the nice people,” he told Gussie. “Take another good swig of that beer. Fine. You’re all ready now. Lift your glass, hold back your head just a little, open that lovely throat, and—whoops!—down goes the frog!”

  Gussie’s smile was immediate and triumphant. “That is absolutely delicious, Peter!” she assured him. “That was the best oyster—the best frog—I ever had! I adore oysters, and the taste is perfect in beer. In fact even the first sips of beer were marvelous with the salty flavor of the oyster coming through. Genia, you’re going to adore this!”