The Nantucket Diet Murders (17 page)

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!”

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.