The Nantucket Diet Murders (20 page)

To keep from staring, she turned to Victor, suggesting that they turn the lazy Susan to bring the prosciutto and melon around again, just to clear their palates, so to speak. Busy eating, he did not hear. She turned it herself, whereupon he speared several of these colorful morsels in quick succession and then spread a generous slice of Brie on his toasted bread.

The two men were in striking contrast—the count tall, spare, elegant, his gray eyes piercing and direct, his smile an infrequent compliment; Victor, rather soft and pudgy, his shape and age accented by his youthful new finery, his skin slightly wattled, smelling strongly of tobacco smoke, and much more interested in himself and his meal than in the company of the women (herself and Dee) on either side of him.

She thought briefly about man-watching., something she might have discussed with Dee or Gussie with shared amusement, but which she ordinarily would not have admitted. We all do it, she thought, only not quite as often or as openly as men look at women. We probably assess their looks just as appraisingly, and sometimes as appreciatively, although we—at least women of my generation—do it very, very discreetly.

Peter, and her own sense of party manners, recalled her from these momentary mental wanderings. To her surprise, she found that she was honest in telling him that she really
couldn’t eat another spoonful of his bay scallop stew, magnificent as it was, and she hoped he’d permit her to skip the dessert.

“No problem, Potter,” he assured her. “Dessert is going to be this: everybody into coats and scarves and caps and gloves and out for a walk on the beach!”

Amid general enthusiastic agreement, only Helen demurred. Seated firmly on the banquette, she thrust forth her thin legs to show dark city pumps. Helen’s feet, like her hands, seemed too large for such brittle stems. “I’ll stay by the fire,” she told Peter decisively, “and Tony isn’t dressed to walk in the sand, either.” She pointed to his elegant English-made shoes. “You all go and we’ll get along fine without you for a bit. Lolly, for heaven’s sake,
you
go! After all that lunch, you need a workout if anybody does.”

Leah offered to stay to keep the two company (she had left with them from the tea party the evening before, Mrs. Potter remembered), but Helen waved this aside, pointing out Leah’s warm checked wool pants, her heavy green sweater, and her walking shoes. Leah, somewhat pettish in defeat, rose reluctantly to join the others, as did Victor, looking doubtfully at his shiny new boots.

In the fresh clear winter air of the beach, long, crested waves were breaking as they came from the open sea at the south. The sky was capricious in its refusal to stay long with either sunshine or clouds. The party, trying to find the narrow stretch of firm sand between high and low tidelines, gradually strung out in groups of two and three, and Mrs. Potter found herself bringing up the rear with Peter.

As they walked along in wordless enjoyment of the beach and surf, Mrs. Potter looked up, at one point, to see the crumbling end of the old paved road almost overhead, its ragged ends ready to break off, as they had done before, onto the sand ten feet below. She paused to study the fragility of the sandy turf, bound together only with a network of thick, fine grass roots, of which the island’s surface was composed. She shivered at its vulnerability to the onslaught of the tides and thundering storms.

Peter had walked on without appearing to notice her brief halt, and she hurried to catch up, suddenly aware that his shoulders were slumping and that he looked tired.

Thrusting her arm through his, she smiled up at him. “You always make things such fun,” she told him, “and your menu today was inspired, just as your frogs and your music were at the end of the party last night. You’re the one who ought to be the diet expert. I’m sure you know as much about it as Tony does, and you know how to make people happy at the same time.”

Peter managed a wry grin. “A working stiff like me? I started out as a short-order cook at a greasy spoon back in a little town in Indiana, Potter. None of that glamour stuff for me. Besides, just look at me, and then look at that guy.”

“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.”

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.”

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.