The Nantucket Diet Murders (27 page)

“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 sexy 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.”

“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,” she 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.”

Mrs. Potter turned to Gussie and began to stack the books on the table before them. “Thanks, Lolly, for all your help,” she said as they gathered their notes to leave.

“Everything’s
poisonous,” Gussie repeated mournfully as they were walking home in the early dusk. “Everything in your house or your garden is just sitting there
waiting
to do you in.”

“It isn’t that bad, and you know it,” Mrs. Potter said. “Lots of plants contain poisonous substances, but honestly, Gussie, how many people actually ever
eat
them? I just read that castor beans are deadly, five beans for a child, eight for an adult. And yet Grandpa Andrews always planted a great row of them the whole west length of the barn, just: because they were big and showy and easy to grow, and a background for Grandmother’s hollyhocks. Nobody ever told Will and me they were poisonous. I’m sure nobody
knew
it, or Grandpa wouldn’t have had them on the place.”