The Nantucket Diet Murders

by Virginia Rich

  “He’d have enough to do just looking after all his old patients, I’d imagine,” Mrs. Potter said. “Although the ranks are getting thinner, like losing Ozzie deBevereaux last week. Ab Leland and Fan Carpenter died before I left, but there was Gordon Van Vleeck last fall. Not to mention Bo Heidecker last August. He was a patient too, wasn’t he?”

  The waiting room was unoccupied and Jenny moved about as she spoke, rotating the bowl of flowering narcissus on her desk against the sun, plucking off a dead leaf or two from the plants on the front windowsill, reaching up with a practiced finger to test the moisture of the hanging pot of Swedish ivy.

  “That was a hard one for Mrs. Heidecker,” she remarked. “I suppose you know the story of how he died out in the sailboat.”

  Mrs. Potter nodded. “Awful for her,” she agreed, “particularly if his heart attack was as unexpected as Mr. deBevereaux’s. Or had he had warnings?”

  “Oh, he’d been a patient of Doctor’s for quite a time for it,” Jenny said, debating whether to snap off a flowering red geranium head, still colorful but beginning to shed a few petals, like great drops of blood, on the waiting room carpet. She snapped it. “The reason he retired when he did was a first heart attack back in Tennessee—I thought you’d have known. None of my business to mention it, but I still think if he hadn’t taken up smoking again, and hadn’t put on so much weight, he might never have had that second one out in the boat.”

  Jenny had provided part of the information Mrs. Potter was seeking. Bo’s fatal heart attack was not unexpected. Her brief, unhappy suspicions on that score seemed groundless. “I suppose he died instantly, then,” she said, “the way most people say they want to go, doing something they really love, as he loved sailing.”

  “Nobody knows if it was instant, “Jenny said, striving for professional accuracy. “Doctor thought so. That new Count Tony, whatever his name is, administered CPR, so they said, but it was apparently way too late. The funny thing was that Mr. deBevereaux asked me that same thing, the next day, and so did Peter Benson, the man who owns the Scrimshaw. All I could tell them was that a half hour later, when they got him in town to the hospital, the general agreement was he’d been dead maybe an hour.”

  So both Ozzie and Peter had been suspicious of Tony, just as she, instinctively, had been when she found out he’d been the first one to reach Bo’s body in the sailboat. It was a relief to find that the three of them had been wrong about this, chiefly because Mary Lynne need not face the added sorrow of thinking something might have been done to save his life.

  After a few exchanged inquiries about each other’s families, Mrs. Potter left, saying she’d try to schedule a checkup for herself while she was on the island. I think I’ll lose a few more pounds before I do, she decided. I don’t want Jenny Spicer, much as I love her, looking up old records until I’m sure the scale won’t show any added pounds since my last visit.

  She walked briskly, rehearsing notes for the yellow pad when she got home. A quick stop to see Larry, the hairdresser, had to be next on her list. Disliking herself for the subterfuge, she would use the pretext of consulting him about having her hair cut.

  Fortunately the only customer in the small shop was an elderly woman Mrs. Potter knew to be deaf, asleep under the dryer. Predictably, Larry recommended a new hairstyle. Mrs. Potter studied the illustrations he showed her in a glossy trade publication, and actually looked with some interest as Larry unpinned her hair, tousled and lifted it, showed her—almost convincingly—that she could look younger and better if he took her in charge.

  “I’ll have to think about it a little longer,” she told him. “All my friends look so much better these days. I’m sure you deserve a lot of the credit, but of course it all seems to have begun when Count Ferencz came to the island.”

  Larry apparently had no reservations about Tony. “The man is great,” he said. “All my rich widows—excuse me, all my best clients—look better. Better hair, better figures. I think he gives them vitamin shots.”

  He brushed Mrs. Potter’s hair into an approximation of cotton candy of a flavor she could not define. An anemic taffy, she decided. “All my regulars are eating out of his hand,” he went on. “Even the Latham girl, not that she ever comes here to the shop, seems to be gone on him, the way I saw her looking at him on Main Street the other day. Not that he’d bother with her.”

  Mrs. Potter was torn between the wish to learn more from Larry and the embarrassed realization that she had stooped to exchanging gossip with her friends’ hairdresser.

  “You like the man?” she asked. “What do people around town think of him?”

  “Maybe there’s a few who aren’t so keen on him,” Larry admitted. “I’m told Peter Benson might be having some second thoughts about him, but he’s too good a guy to turn the man out—that’s the way I’ve got it figured out. Personally I think he ought to cash in on that private beauty hotel everybody’s talking about, with a resident plastic surgeon and the works. He could do the kitchen. And wouldn’t it be something if yours truly was the official hairdresser? Put in a word for me if you get a chance, will you?”

  The arrival of a young woman with two children for haircuts provided a chance for Mrs. Potter to escape without committing herself to having one herself, and she promised to let Larry know what she decided.

  It was a little early, she thought, for lunch, but perhaps all the better time to catch Peter before the influx of other luncheon guests at the Scrimshaw. Jadine was lighting a freshly laid fire when she arrived, and the room was, as always, warm and welcoming.

  It is like a club, she thought. Peter is the one who ought to be setting up an exclusive, expensive diet-resort hotel for rich widows, a place with wonderful food, artfully planned and skillfully cooked for trimming off a few pounds, with an exercise program geared for fun and relaxation as well as figure-molding. A good hairdresser, of course, and whatever other amenities seemed necessary in the pursuit of health and beauty without setting impossible goals. With Peter to run it, it would be a place where his “guys”—she knew all his guests would be his “guys”—would have fun, feel better, maybe even live longer.

  “Afraid I haven’t got the salad bar set up yet,” Jadine informed her, “and it’s too late for breakfast, but what can I get you? Mr. B.’s already sent out the luncheon menu, so look it over and maybe you’ll see something you’d like there, if it’s ready yet. Or, how about a cocktail while I finish the salad setup?”

  Mrs. Potter hesitated. If she ordered a glass of white wine, she’d have to confess it to Gussie. I’ll be shot for a sheep, she decided, or a goat. Whatever. “Yes, a martini please, Jadine. Bombay gin on the rocks, very little vermouth, and a twist of lemon. Mr. Benson knows how I like them, if he’s in the bar pantry, and if he is, Jadine, and he’s not too busy, will you ask him if he has time to come out for a minute?”

  Peter himself brought the drink. “Naughty, naughty, Potter,” he admonished her. “Sneaking one behind Gussie’s back, are you?” They laughed together with the ease of old friends as she told him, quite happily, that that was just what she was doing and that she had already composed her speech of contrition.

  “Sit down a minute, Peter?” she asked. “If you have time?”

  The square, tweedy figure took the chair beside her own. “Let’s have it, Potter,” he said. “You’ve got something on your mind. Tell Uncle Peter all about it, if you can do it in”—he looked at the watch on his wrist—”in exactly five minutes. I’m timing a pan offish timbales for lunch, to be served with a spoonful of lobster Newburg. Very simple, but they’ll be nice.”

  “I’ll come right to the point,” Mrs. Potter told him. “I think Gussie is falling for this Count Tony Ferencz of yours, and I can’t bear to think of her having another unhappy marriage after the several quite miserable years she had with Gordon. So I’m playing father of the bride, or whatever you’d call it. I’d like to learn something more about the man, besides the fact that he’s handsome and s
exy as all get out and that all my friends think he’s God’s gift to Nantucket.”

  “Good question,” Peter said, his voice sober and quiet, all hint of laughter gone. “He’s staying at the inn for the winter, so I guess you think he’s here under my sponsorship. Actually he’s not my guest and I’m not going to tell you who the bills go to. When he came to the island last summer, I hadn’t seen him for twenty years. He stayed with various friends as a houseguest through the summer, I think, and for August, as I recall, he was staying with some people you’d probably know in one of the houses out at Wauwinet.”

  (So Tony did have a reason to be there, Mrs. Potter thought. His being the first to reach the sailboat was natural enough.)

  “How did you come to know him?” Mrs. Potter asked.

  “Oh, I was learning the restaurant business then,” Peter explained, “in New York. I was sort of a rotating apprentice at what was a rather fashionable place in the East Sixties. It folded up since—I don’t think I had anything to do with that—but at the time it was drawing pretty classy trade, and part of the owner’s secret was that Count Tony Ferencz was plugging the place with his society clients, people who had just taken him up as a health and beauty authority. No doubt but that Tony was well paid for what he did for the place. Anyway, I got to know him then and we remembered each other right away when he turned up here last summer.”

  Mrs. Potter decided to be direct. “Is he here, then, as a drawing card for the Scrimshaw, Peter?” she asked. “You’re doing too well here to need anything like that. It doesn’t sound like you, Peter, if you want me to be honest about it.”

  Peter’s response seemed uncomfortable. “Of course I don’t need Tony Ferencz or anybody else to show me how to run this place, Potter. I know as much about diet and health and nutrition as he does, and a heck of a lot more about making it taste good. But he showed up, and all the guys fell for him—Latham, Carpenter, Heidecker, even your dear Gussie—and one thing led to another. . ..” Peter’s friendly face clouded. “Anyway, he’s here for the winter, and he sees a few clients in his rooms upstairs. He seems to feel pretty much at home at the Scrim, but I don’t really feel I know him, even now.”

  “You’re being evasive, Peter. What I want is your honest opinion of Tony as a person. Is he good enough for Gussie?”

  It seemed obvious that Peter was speaking against his will. “There may be a few things I don’t like,” he admitted slowly. “There were some questions about how and when Heidecker’s husband died, and personally I didn’t much like the thought that he was treating Gordon Van Vleeck last fall. But nobody seems to take these seriously.”

  He hesitated, and then his ready smile prompted her own. “He may be as terrific as the guys think he is. You’re a better one to decide about that than I am, Potter.”

  “Everybody says he’s going to set up an exclusive private diet clinic here on the island. What about that?” Mrs. Potter persisted.

  “Yeah, I heard that story too, including hair by Larry of Nantucket and food by yours truly at the Scrimshaw. I don’t know what’s going on, Potter, any more than you do, and probably a darned sight less.”

  Peter looked at the watch on his square muscular wrist. “Hey, I’ve got to get back to my timbales. Tell Jadine what you want and I’ll fix it for you.”

  Mrs. Potter nodded. As she had suspected, Peter shared her doubts about his friend but was too honest and loyal to say more. She bent to inhale a cold, gin-fragrant whiff of her drink. “One more quick question,” she said as Peter rose to leave for the kitchen. “Do you know where Tony was between the time you first knew him in New York and when he turned up here on the island?”

  “Oh, sure.” Peter’s reply was easy. “His mother, Eva, ran a health spa of some kind in Europe and he was there working with her until she had a run-in with the authorities over something—some kind of tricky stuff. Nothing he’s using now, I’m sure.”

  The martini was as good as Mrs. Potter remembered, realizing with amusement that she was enjoying it as a past and bygone treat, although she had actually been on the island only a week.

  So Tony had been in Europe, improving his knowledge of diet and health at his mother’s establishment. Had someone mentioned Romania? Was that the yogurt place, where people lived practically forever? Or the glandular injection clinic? Was the “tricky stuff” that supposedly magic but illegal drug with the wonderful name—what was it?—Gerovital? Other vague recollections of miracle cures and treatments, from half-read pages in Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar and Éclat, came to mind as Mrs. Potter sipped her martini.

  Jadine appeared at her side.

  “Lunch?” Mrs. Potter responded, roused from her conjectures. “Oh, yes, lunch. I’ll have the fish timbale with lobster sauce if it’s ready, Jadine. I might as well makes my confession a good one.”

  25

  “Everything’s poisonous,” Gussie whispered, although she and Mrs. Potter were the only occupants of the long table, and for the moment the only visitors in the science library, which in summer would have been crowded with bird watchers, wild-flower fanciers, and other nature lovers of all ages, studying Nantucket flora and fauna. Today, watching them with little apparent interest, Lolly Latham leaned on the desk at the end of the room, occasionally dropping a pencil or rustling through a wastebasket.

  “Shh, it’s not that bad,” Mrs. Potter whispered back. “Show me your list.”

  Gussie slid her yellow pad across the table, one of the two Mrs. Potter had brought along for their note-taking. “Nice innocent little lily of the valley. How do you like that?”

  Mrs. Potter read the notes. “Leaves, roots, flowers, and fruits contain cardiac glycoside . . . symptoms loss of appetite, irregular heartbeat, nausea . . . hallucinations . . . heart failure.”

  “Awful,” she murmured, pushing back Gussie’s pad. “At least you say it’s not as potent as some other plants in the family and that it tastes worse. I suppose that’s something to cheer for.”

  Gussie was already immersed in another page. “Listen to this!” she whispered. “Delphinium seeds! Fatal if eaten in large quantities! When I think of all the delphiniums I’ve planted from seeds—tiny little dark things—you could bake them on a poppy-seed roll and not notice the difference.”

  Mrs. Potter felt an inner chill thinking of minced dumb-cane leaves atop a green salad and remembering the look of agonized bafflement in a girl’s eyes as her throat closed, cutting off her last breath, with the sounds of “Happy Birthday” fading away.

  The two women again bent closely over their books, a shared small stack Lolly had piled haphazardly in front of them. They had long passed checking the sources of Beth’s crumpled notes about dieffenbachia and foxglove. “Digitalis purpurea,” Gussie had written earlier. “She had it all straight.”

  “Poisonous common houseplants,” Mrs. Potter now said, half under her breath, writing rapidly. “Daffodil, rhubarb, holly, Jerusalem cherry, English ivy. Mistletoe! How’s that for a dual-purpose Christmas trim—kiss or kill, whichever suits your fancy.”

  “Nerium oleander,” Gussie reported. “Leah has some, houseplants about eighteen inches tall, and they bloomed indoors for her all last spring and summer. And here’s ranunculus—the flowers we had on our tea table Saturday! But no, I guess they just might give you dermatitis. . ..”

  She was silent again, then leaned across the; table. “Did you ever see Erica Wilson’s crewel design called ‘Woody Nightshade’? It was gorgeous the way she worked it, with purple leaves and yellow flowers and red berries. Here it’s called climbing nightshade—even more poisonous than deadly nightshade, which we’ve all read about in old mystery novels.”

  Lolly approached the table. “Are you finding what you want? When you’re ready, I can bring you what we have on poisonous mushrooms.” She paused as the two, sighing, shook their heads and Gussie looked at her watch.

  Mrs. Potter motioned Lolly to sit at her side. “I know Mrs. Higginson was here last week,” sh
e said earnestly, “and she seemed terribly upset and worried afterward. She said you were so very kind and helpful to her, so I’m sure you remember. Can you tell us about what happened that day? Last Thursday, wasn’t it, Gussie?”

  Lolly sat silent, twisting her fingers. “The day after your friend Edie died,” Mrs. Potter said gently. “You remember—Mrs. Higginson said you walked home with her at the end of the afternoon.”

  “I guess maybe I did,” Lolly said. “She was pretty nervous.”

  “And I think you even got her to talking about her own garden, just to get her calmed down,” Mrs. Potter said. Lolly smiled uncertainly.

  “Did she tell you why she was looking up plant poisons?” Mrs. Potter persisted.

  “Not exactly,” Lolly admitted. “I think she already knew all the answers. Mrs. Higginson knows a lot about herbs and garden plants. All I did was get out the books for her, the way I did for you and Mrs. Van Vleeck today.”

  “You realized how upset she was,” Mrs. Potter said, kindly but decisively. “You walked her home and you even made tea for her. Tell us what she said, everything you can remember.”

  Lolly seemed even more uncertain and alarmed. “I told her she never meant to kill Edie and Mr. deBevereaux,” she blurted suddenly. “I told her those two plants, the Dieffenbachia J. Schott and the Digitalis purpurea, probably wouldn’t do anything more than make people sick for overnight. I told her I knew she hadn’t meant to hurt them. It was like about a thousand to one, I told her so. You saw all the figures about how few people ever died from them. I told her it had to be just a horrible, horrible accident that they died.” Lolly’s voice, lowered in spite of their being the only ones in the library, was now almost a whisper.

  “I told her I knew it was just a horrible, horrible accident. I knew she never meant to kill Edie and Mr. deBevereaux.”