The Nantucket Diet Murders

by Virginia Rich

  “I think you look absolutely great,” she told him, sliding her hand into his pocket for a friendly, reassuring squeeze. She was surprised to meet a cold, tight fist, or so it seemed until it relaxed, a welcoming paw, to clasp her own gloved fingers. “You get my vote any day.”

  “They all wanted to stay by the fire with him,” Peter said, his grin now wider, seeming less forced. “Helen won. Helen almost always wins, but all the guys wanted to be with him.”

  “I didn’t. I wanted to walk on the beach with you,” she said as Peter gently withdrew his hand, looked at his watch, and with a shout summoned the others.

  “Oley oley oats in freeee . . .” he called, his voice raising in a genial howl against the wind. “Oley oley oats in free!” Turning to Mrs. Potter, he began to laugh. “Thanks, old dear, for the kind words,” he told her. “But don’t get the idea I’m competing with Tony. All I want is to see my guys well and happy.”

  A few minutes later, as they all were leaving for town, Jimmy and Jadine pulled into the parking area in the big station wagon. They’ll take over the cleanup, Mrs. Potter thought, Waving to them, as they had done after the tea party frogs.

  “Put the shutters back up, Jimmy, after you drain the plumbing, the way I showed you,” she heard Peter say, “and be sure to leave the key in the usual place.”

  Laughing, he turned to face the others. “Yep, same place you all keep yours if you’ve got a shack anywhere. Find a loose shingle at the side of the door where you can wedge it in, then hope you can remember which shingle and which side when you come back.”

  He put his hand on the car door handle. “I’ll pull out first,” he apologized. “I’ve got to get back to the kitchen in town now, guys—I’m a working stiff, remember, Potter? And Jimmy, you two try to finish up by four. I’ve got to get ready for a silver anniversary dinner tonight, but Tony says he’ll drive the wagon and come back for you, so listen for his honk and be ready.”

  18

  She and Gussie settled down for a quiet afternoon of reading and letter writing and the promise of an early bedtime after the two parties.

  It had not been reassuring to hear Beth’s dull, listless answer when, after several tries, Mrs. Potter reached her by phone.

  “Just a little under the weather,” Beth told her. “I’ll see you tomorrow at lunch.”

  With that she had to let things stand for the moment, although she was now decidedly worried. Why had Beth resisted opening her basket? It would have been so easy then to prove that Ted was mistaken in his hysterical outburst about a bottle of poison. Besides that, there was the whole frightening business of poisons and possible murders, which must have some connection with Beth’s day at the science library. Well, she was simply not going to believe that Beth—cheerful, loving Beth, whom she had known for thirty years—could be involved in any of this, except in a totally innocent and explainable way. Without much success, she tried to think what these innocent and explainable ways might be.

  Later, as she and Gussie sat with a tray supper between them in front of the library fire, she was temporarily distracted from these troubling thoughts by the reminder of another deep concern. Gussie’s romantic interest in Tony Ferencz was growing. So were her own secret doubts about him.

  “I’ve been writing my Sunday letters to Marilyn and Scott,” Gussie said. “They met Tony at the time of Gordon’s funeral, and of course when they were here at Christmas, but I wanted to tell them more about him. I can only hint to them about the foundation, naturally. . ..”

  “What foundation?” Mrs. Potter inquired quickly. “You used the word before, but you didn’t explain what you were talking about.”

  “Forget I mentioned it,” Gussie replied. “Tony will announce it in his own good time, when he finds the right place for it and has all his financing and staff arrangements complete. Really, I wasn’t writing the children so much about that as just to prepare them for, well, knowing how important he’s becoming to me.”

  “Oh, Gussie, stop it!” Mrs. Potter said. “You promised me you’d not rush into another marriage, the way you married Gordon. You don’t really know anything about Tony except that you—and most of the rest of Les Girls—find him charming. Glamorous. Handsome. And that his diets make you nice and thin and pleased with yourselves.”

  “At least that’s pretty good for starters,” Gussie said, exploding in sudden laughter.

  “You know it isn’t enough, Mary Augusta Baines,” Mrs. Potter replied. “That’s all just surface, and I don’t think you or any of the others have the slightest idea of what he’s really like as a person. Besides, what’s all the rush?”

  “Well,” Gussie temporized, her laughter subsiding, “I’m not getting any younger, for one thing. . ..”

  “Not good enough,” Mrs. Potter told her. “Actually, I even wonder why you’d consider marrying a fourth time at all. Being a widow isn’t the end of life, you know, except if you practice suttee or puttee or whatever it is. Lots of people manage to live alone and to feel happy and useful.”

  Gussie was now serious. “That may be all right for you and all those lots of other people you’re talking about. Maybe I just happen to think of marriage as my career. I’m not awfully involved in good works, except for small things like Meals on Wheels and the garden club. Nothing big, like Helen’s jobs. I love my home and my garden. I like having a man to cook for and dress for. Honestly, Genia, I don’t see how you can really enjoy giving dinner parties alone, or going to them by yourself, that is, supposing anyone asks you by yourself.”

  “So it’s really a matter of wanting a man around the house,” Mrs. Potter said. “Fair enough. But please, Gussie, be sure you’ve got a good one this time, like Theo or Jules, and take your time before you start thinking wedding bells.

  “Besides,” she added, “I’m not sure I can find another green horsehair picture hat.”

  19

  Monday was the regular lunching day of Les Girls. Today, the day after Peter’s beach picnic, they were back on schedule.

  “I don’t know when we started to go to the Scrim instead of meeting at people’s houses,” Gussie said as the two walked briskly toward the small inn. “It’s easier, of course, and the place has sort of become our club. Peter knows what we like, and it’s always so comfortable there.”

  It used to be fun, Mrs. Potter reminded her, when they each put a sandwich in their baskets and took turns being hostess at home. Sherry or Dubonnet first, she reminisced, then dessert and coffee later, while they all caught up on the week’s island news.

  “Maybe it was the dessert part that finally got to be too much,” Gussie said. “Not the trouble of making it as much as the fact that none of us except Beth eats dessert anymore, except maybe a little fruit.”

  “One day at your house,” Mrs. Potter said, “you served Bride’s Pudding. Remember that old recipe? And you said, ‘Oh, it’s just air and love’ and we all ate it knowing very well that it was mostly whipped cream and fresh coconut under that heavenly sauce of fresh raspberries. And then—was it Mittie?—anyway someone said when you urged second servings that no, she wouldn’t but she could have finished the whole enormous mold of it by herself? Funny the things one remembers about food.”

  Mrs. Potter, feeling definitely thinner in spite of her few transgressions at yesterday’s picnic lunch, decided she would at least read that old recipe in Gussie’s cookbook. Maybe she could trust herself to make it when she got back to the ranch, she said, first making sure she invited enough people to eat the whole thing at one dinner party, with no chance of leftovers.

  “Oh, I suppose it’s in most old cookbooks,” Gussie said, “or something like it. I could recite it to you right now. You soften two envelopes of plain gelatin in a half cup of water—okay? You whip six egg whites to a froth with a pinch of salt, then beat in—let’s see—three-fourths cup of sugar. When it holds a peak, you mix in the gelatin, slowly, to be; sure it’s mixed well, along with a teaspoonful of vanilla. The last
step is to whip a pint of heavy cream and fold that in. And that’s all there is to it.”

  “How about the fresh coconut?” Mrs. Potter asked.

  “Don’t be silly,” Gussie responded. “Brides don’t grate coconut. What you do is to butter a springform cake pan and pat it with most of a can of flaked coconut. After you fill the pan with the egg-white mixture, you sprinkle the rest of the can on top.”

  “And the fresh raspberry sauce I remember so well?” Mrs. Potter continued.

  “Just plain thawed frozen berries,” Gussie told her. “You unmold the pudding when it’s chilled firm—give it at least four or five hours—on a big round chop plate and you dribble part of a couple of packages of raspberries over the top and pour the rest around the sides.”

  Mrs. Potter, hungry for lunch after their breakfast of fresh vegetable juices and tea, listened with attention. She’d get Gussie to recite it again when they got home, and write it down.

  Mary Lynne joined them from the opposite direction as they came to the discreet weathered sign of the Scrimshaw Inn. Her thoughts seemed also of food—specifically of Peter’s Sunday lunch. “The best meals I’ve eaten in my life,” she declared, “were always at somebody’s coffee table, either here or back home. Don’t you love it when there’s lots of wonderful food, like Peter’s yesterday, and everything seems so easy and relaxed? And don’t you think even Tony loved it?” Gussie nodded, but her smile seemed strained.

  Mrs. Potter to date had not observed Tony eating or drinking very much of anything at all, but she did not mention this. And whether or not he loved the picnic, at least he had been the center of his small adoring circle yesterday. It seemed surprising to her that her friends should be so dependent upon his approval. What he’s doing for them with his diet and treatments should be enough, she thought, without their expecting him to love them all, too.

  Leah and Helen were already at the round table for eight in the sunny window, again, as they had been the previous Wednesday, the only luncheon guests as yet in the room at their chosen early hour of noon. A wood fire crackled as usual in the small fireplace. The pink holiday poinsettias glowed as before in their leafy setting of house plants beside the salad bar and the tiny hydroponic garden of herbs. Jadine was bustling in purposefully with a tray laden with salad greens, and Peter Benson was blowing kisses of welcome from the half-open kitchen door. Tony Ferencz was not in the dining room. It would be nice to be with old friends today without the tension his presence created.

  Dee and Mittie arrived and the lunch table held only one vacant chair. “We may just as well have our juice before Beth comes,” Helen announced, denying any possibility of opposition. “She won’t want any, anyway.”

  The door to the private dining room was closed today, and there were no sounds of merriment. To cover the sudden silence as they all thought of Edie Rosborough’s death, they began talk of choices for a new lawyer to handle their affairs. Mittie wondered if they knew the new young lawyer, Jonathan Silverstein. “After all, he’s Harvard,” she said.

  They spoke of the instant and crazy success of the Pied Piper fragrance of the new bakeshop. They spoke of frogs and the comments they’d heard from other guests at Gussie’s tea party. Frog lovers, predictably, included only those who liked beer, bourbon (neat), and oysters (raw).

  There was unanimous agreement that the excitement of the tea spill and the consequent flurry of mop-up operations had really turned the tide of the party. Mrs. Potter speculated privately on how to stage a minor disaster for any future party at the ranch that had got off to a chilly start.

  “Nobody heard what Ted was squealing about,” Leah remarked, “but he must be all right, if he flew off-island to visit his mother yesterday. Let’s hope we see Beth looking more like herself today when she gets here.”

  They had almost decided to proceed to the salad bar for their luncheon choices when Beth came into the room. Her face was white and drawn, she was hatless, without a coat, her curly white hair tousled, the purple shadows under her eyes alarming.

  Peter, who had taken his place at the miniature herb garden, scissors in hand, rushed to meet her. “Hey, guy, you missed my picnic yesterday,” he told her, one arm around her shoulders in an affectionate, forgiving squeeze.

  Beth appeared not to hear him. Pushing aside his embrace, and without glancing at the friends awaiting her arrival, she went to the salad bar. She peered for a long minute at the hydroponic tank and the various herbs growing there, then, even more closely, at the display of color and greenery in the ornamental plants behind and around the salad table.

  Without a word she turned, her body sagging, her face gray and expressionless, and walked slowly out of the dining room. As they heard the heavy old front door of the inn close, Mrs. Potter and Gussie rose to their feet.

  “We’ll catch her,” Gussie told the others at the table. “Go ahead with lunch. Genia, grab your coat!”

  Beth seemed to be walking blindly on the narrow brick sidewalk, almost grazing an old horsehead hitching post, stumbling, slowing, then rushing on in the direction of her own house.

  “Where’s your coat?” Gussie demanded as they caught up with her. “It’s raw in this wind, Bethie. Here, take mine and we’ll all huddle together and get back to the Scrim.”

  Mrs. Potter looked carefully at Beth’s face and the unfocused stare in her eyes. “Look, we’ll make a cape of both our coats, so, “she said, “with Beth in the middle, and we’ll all go to her house. Now.”

  Samson’s hollow bark greeted them as they opened the door of the house on India Street, and his agitation was frantic as they entered. “Down, Samson, good dog,” Mrs. Potter said, hoping to calm him. Then as they saw the disarray confronting them, the two women swung into action.

  “Genia, you put Samson on leash and take him out for a minute,” Gussie directed. “After that I expect he may be ready for his dinner.”

  The tact of this remark seemed lost on Beth. It was apparent that Samson had not been walked and that he had not been fed.

  “I’ll just make us all a cup of tea and a sandwich,” Gussie continued as she gathered up a cold mug, half filled with coffee, a thin milky film congealing on its surface, ignoring the crusty ring it left on the old pine of the table. Quickly she cleared crumpled papers from the chairs and floor. She turned off lamps, opening chintz curtains to let in the winter sunshine.

  “Come on, Beth,” she said gently, “come show me what we three can rustle up for lunch. And it’s cold in here. Where’s the thermostat? I’ll turn up the heat.”

  Docile but unhelpful, Beth allowed herself to be led to her own kitchen, where the disorder was less apparent, except for long gashes, claw marks, clearly new, on the soft pine of the frame of the back door, showing Samson’s earlier panicked attempts to get out.

  “Soup,” Gussie decided after a quick look at the kitchen stores, as Mrs. Potter and Samson returned. “Soup for us, and Samson’s dinner—I found cans for both in the pantry.”

  Samson’s voracious hunger was quickly appeased and he settled himself amiably enough on a rug in the corner. Beth took a few listless spoonfuls of hot soup, then appeared to lose interest.

  “I mixed cream of tomato and green pea and added a little curry powder,” Gussie said, hoping to tempt her. “Come on now, Beth. See, Genia’s eating hers and it’s good. Now a bite of cracker—that’s fine. And a little more soup, while it’s hot.”

  Finally able to coax Beth to eat, they were less successful in persuading her to talk. Mrs. Potter put a sympathetic arm around her plump shoulders. “What’s the trouble, Bethie?” she asked again, as they both had done before.

  The three sat in silence for several minutes before Beth began to speak. “I’m a murderess,” she told them slowly, her voice low and unemphatic. “I poisoned Ozzie deBevereaux, and before that I poisoned his secretary. And Ted Frobisher thought I was going to poison him and a lot of other people at Gussie’s party, and he knocked over his cup of tea and the teapot
to keep me from doing it.”

  Gussie’s eyes widened, at first in horror, then in complete disbelief. Beth munched another cracker.

  “You couldn’t have murdered anybody,” Gussie told her. “Edie Rosborough died of an allergic reaction. Don’t you remember? And Ozzie died of a heart attack. Arnold said so.”

  As a clinching argument, Gussie assured her that Ted was fine. (He had drunk too much at the party, Mrs. Potter added, and said crazy things, but he’d recovered. He’d even flown off-island to visit his mother.) “You didn’t poison anybody, Bethie,” Gussie told her over and over, “you couldn’t have.”

  Mrs. Potter again put her arm around Beth’s now shaking shoulders. “Just talk to us about it,” she implored. “We know you’re sad about Ozzie and Edie Rosborough. We all are, but you didn’t have anything to do with their dying.” No matter how things look, she told herself.

  Beth slowly ate another cracker before she spoke, and her voice was thick and mechanical. “The last proof was at the Scrim today,” she said, “although I knew, of course, what it had to be. You both know what dumb cane is, don’t you?”

  “Yes, dieffenbachia,” Gussie replied promptly. “Everybody has a plant or two around, I suppose. It’s a popular house plant, easy to raise.”

  “Do you really know why its common name is dumb cane?” Beth persisted. “Because that’s what it does, that’s why. There are little needles of a crystalline stuff in it, and worse than that, a kind of enzyme in the leaves that causes swelling in the tongue and gullet. And it can kill people that way, just as it—just as I—killed that poor girl, Edie. You’ll find my notes about it on the table in the living room.” Her voice was clearer now, and almost matter-of-fact.

  Gussie hastily retrieved the crumpled papers she had gathered earlier and had crammed into a chintz-covered waste-basket. Smoothing them uncertainly, she found one with the heading Dieffenbachia written in Beth’s neat round script.