The Nantucket Diet Murders Read online

  “I think she told you she’s moved into town for the winter,” Gussie said. “It’s nice having her nearby, but I think she misses her gardens out there, and that beautiful house. The problem is money—we’re afraid she may be having a little trouble.”

  Mrs. Potter remembered the Main Street house very well from visits when Mittie’s parents had been alive. She could not help wondering if it also wasn’t pretty expensive to keep up, maybe as much as the house at Shimmo. It undoubtedly cost a great deal to heat and a fortune to have repainted every few years.

  “At least she has a nice stretch of lawn for an eventual garden behind the house,” Gussie said, “if she sells the Shimmo place. Her ace in the hole was going to be the rental of the apartment over the old carriage house in the back of the property. It’s really charming, and it should bring a nice amount for a summer rental. The living room looks out over the lawn between it and her parents’ house, remember? The property goes all the way through the block, so Mittie’s on Main Street and Dee’s at the back. The apartment is almost across from Ozzie’s house—I’m sure you know the place.”

  Mrs. Potter remembered very well, but the reference to Dee was puzzling. “I thought Dee had a tiny place on Milk Street, or was it Vestal?” she said. “She’s living in Mittie’s carriage house? I can’t see that’s going to help Mittie’s financial picture, Dee being as, well, hard up—I almost said penurious—as she always seems to be.”

  That was the problem, Gussie explained as the two walked around the marina. “Mittie has always taken having money as a matter of course, so when Dee had to leave her little rented place, she invited her to move in for the winter. And now I think she’s embarrassed to suggest that Dee pay her any rent, and she has the expense of extra utilities, and she’s probably agonizing over telling Dee that she wants to let the agents line up a good profitable summer rental for her.”

  “I can’t believe it!” Mrs. Potter exclaimed. “Mittie is always so sure of herself. I can’t imagine that she won’t simply tell Dee the whole thing: that she can’t afford to keep her on as a nonpaying guest, and that she needs and expects the several thousand dollars—four or five at the least, maybe ten, the way things are going now—that some nice summer people would pay for the place for the season.”

  “Mittie does seem totally assured, socially,” Gussie said. “It’s just that talking about money is something she can’t do. Or maybe her pride keeps her from admitting she made a too hasty invitation and that she regrets it. To Mittie, that would be the worst possible manners.”

  The two had made their way around the pattern of the wharves of the marina. “Shall we step it out a little and go all the way to the circle?” Mrs. Potter asked. “There’ll never be a prettier day, and we’re both dressed for it.”

  They walked briskly, delighting in the blue of the harbor as the sun rose higher in its restricted southern arc of New England winter. Meanwhile, Mittie’s move into town had reminded Gussie of another one of the group of women who lunched together weekly. “It’s quite different for Helen, of course,” she said. “In money problems, I mean. She’s spent a fortune on that house and, recently, on her new garden-room addition. She and Lester used to come summers years ago to that big house they rented on the Cliff, remember? And then we were all so proud of her when she had gumption enough to buy one of the bricks and came here to stay on the island, a few years after he died.” Gussie was musing now. “She was the first of us to be widowed.”

  “What a long time ago that was,” Mrs. Potter mused. “I think Lolly was still very young when they came to stay, and Elna was more nurse than cook. Remember how surprised we all were when Helen let Lolly stay on in school here through high school? I suppose that’s why she always seemed so much more a part of the town group, like the softball league yesterday, than, say, of the Yacht Club, even though she grew up in one of the grand brick mansions. She was always such a quiet little thing and I don’t think any of our children ever knew her very well.”

  “She had reason to be a quiet little thing,” Gussie replied. “We’re all inclined to forget what it must have done to her to be the one to find her father after he’d shot himself. And after that, I really think Helen turned over the parents’ job to Walter and Elna.”

  Mrs. Potter remembered Helen’s plump, elderly cook and houseman very well. “I suppose Lolly was lucky that the two of them stayed on all these years,” she said. “At least they knew what she’d gone through.”

  Gussie was thoughtful. “Walter once told me she used to wake up screaming for months afterward, and they tried to make things easier for her any way they could. That worried me—I thought maybe they’d given her paregoric or something of the sort to calm her down, but if so, it was apparently before they moved back here to stay. By then, which was a couple of years later, he said she was better.”

  “I think they may simply have let her overeat,” Mrs. Potter said. “It would have been so easy for them to do, if it seemed to make her feel better. That might account for her being overweight now, and the reason she’s always seemed, well, out of things. Instead of going out to play, I have an awful feeling she went to her room with a handful of cookies, and that maybe she’s still doing it, in a manner of speaking.”

  “They’ve done the best they knew how,” Gussie said. “At least Walter said she always came to the two of them with her troubles. That was something. But nothing could have made up for the shock of Lester’s shooting himself and Helen’s obvious indifference to the child after that. Maybe even before that, for all we know. Helen’s not a very warm person and she’s always had a very busy schedule. Poor little Lolly.”

  “Did you see how she seemed to respond to Peter yesterday?” Mrs. Potter asked. “I thought that was very nice.”

  “What I’d really like is to turn her over to Tony,” Gussie said. “He could do wonders with her. Peter’s a dear, of course, but Tony could work a miracle, at least with her looks, and that, as we all know, can make all the difference in the world in how we feel about ourselves.”

  “All right, we’ll give her to Tony,” Mrs. Potter said, “and then to Larry to do something about that frizzy home permanent—I’ll bet Elna did that. While we’re planning this great make-over, you can take her to that little woman of yours at Bergdorf’s to find her some decent clothes. That old raincoat and hat yesterday were a disgrace.”

  Gussie was totally serious. “Helen said Edie Rosborough was her first real friend, and I wonder if maybe she wasn’t her only real friend. Edie’s dying that way, right beside her at the lunch table, must have been almost as much of a shock as her father’s suicide was. I say it again, poor Lolly.”

  They continued walking steadily, occasionally pulling close to the edge of the path to avoid spattering slush from an oncoming car. Gussie continued talking. “Funny how all of us first came here as summer people and then stayed on, all but you, when the husbands died or retired.”

  The salt marshes at the edge of the harbor showed brilliant blue pools in the morning sunlight, suddenly almost as blue as in summer, when, rimmed with emerald grasses, they reflected warmer skies, of even deeper blue. The sight did not entirely block a disquieting thought, at the mention of husbands.

  Again remembering a glowing and triumphant young Gussie, saying, “I’ve just met the most wonderful man!” Mrs. Potter resolved to find out immediately how serious this Tony thing was, starting with the question of why Gussie hadn’t told her about him before.

  Gussie looked slightly embarrassed. “First, I was too busy taking care of Gordon,” she said, “and then when I began to realize that Tony was becoming important in my life, I thought it was just the diet, and how much better I was feeling. Now, I don’t know. Anyway, I really do want you to get to know him too, while you’re here.”

  Mrs. Potter knew her old friend to have been an unquestionably faithful and loving wife to her first two husbands, and at least a dutiful one to her third. Was Tony to become the fourth, and Gussie
the second Countess Ferencz? She was not sure she liked the idea, without being at all sure of why.

  “Being a widow isn’t the worst fate in the world,” she heard herself saying. “I know your Tony is terribly attractive, but will you promise me something, Mary Augusta?”

  Gussie looked at her quizzically.

  “Promise me,” Mrs. Potter continued, “that if you ever do think of marrying again, you’ll take plenty of time to learn all about the man in question, whoever he is.”

  Gussie smiled amiable agreement. “I’ll let you help decide next time,” she said. “Maybe. All right, probably.”

  This sounded very much as if there might be a next time. Mrs. Potter decided she had said enough for the moment. She also decided she now really wanted to know what Dee Ferencz had been talking about when she said her former husband was—what was it?—an unmitigated bastard?

  9

  They walked as far as the traffic circle, from which the south road led to the airport and the Milestone Road started eastward toward ’Sconset. This, Mrs. Potter remembered clearly, branched northward along its way, leading to Monomoy, Shimmo, Shawkemo, Polpis, Pocomo Head, Wauwinet—that litany of Indian names on the southern rim of the harbor—all those now nearly deserted winter communities that would again be full of color and life in the summer season.

  “Let’s go back by way of Orange Street,” Gussie said, “at least as far as Mary Lynne’s. We might as well do the tour of where everyone’s living now, so you’ll really feel at home again.”

  Mrs. Potter was savoring every step of the way, a route as familiar to her as her daily Maine walks from the cottage to the post office in Northcutt’s Harbor, as familiar as the two-mile ranch road from headquarters down to the RFD mailbox on the county road in Arizona.

  Here, as a walker or bicycler or in a four-wheel car, she thought she knew almost every street, road, lane, pathway, or rutted road on the island. It’s like an old and much-loved book, she thought to herself. Open it anyplace and you know what came before and what’s going to follow. Put me down almost anyplace on Nantucket, she thought, on clean winter-bare pathways or on green shady streets dappled with sunshine, and my eyes and feet are going to know where they are.

  As they passed Manny’s bakery, she grimaced at the CLOSED sign in the window, then returned to her musings about the island’s special enchantments. “After being away for a while, I just can’t get over it,” she told Gussie. “Other places have so many mixed-up styles—Spanish and Tudor and early-California bungalows and French Provincial suburban all in the same block. Here—well, there may be a few exceptions, but they’re just that, exceptions. There’s one clean pattern, and that’s the stamp the old Quaker builders left behind them. Simple lines, center chimneys, those heavy board framings for windows that still have their ledge of snow now, like white eyebrows. Weathered shingles or white clapboards . . .”

  “White trim on the shingled houses, or soft painted gray trim, like on Beth’s perfect little old house on India Street,” Gussie continued enthusiastically. “And don’t you love the houses with raised foundations of brick or stone with basement windows where the old summer kitchens used to be?”

  “I just realized what makes it so clean-looking,” Mrs. Potter went on. “Most of the houses front directly on the street, with the gardens and outbuildings in the back. Having them all lined up together this way, you aren’t looking at driveways with boat trailers parked in them, or at people’s barbecue grills or clotheslines, if people have clotheslines anymore. You don’t see any of the usual front yard clutter. All you see are the fronts of these incredibly lovely houses, big ones and little ones.”

  As she spoke, she knew it was not only the clean island architecture she loved, with its satisfying lightness of proportion and scale, but the delight of the vistas at each bend of the winding streets, down crooked lanes, up and down the gentle slopes of the village streets. There were unexpected little paved courts, lined with dollhouses. There were houses tucked behind other houses, houses set sidewise. There were tiny gardens, bright with massed color in summer, today clean and beautiful with the tinsel touch of melting snow and sun, to be glimpsed through high privet hedges, and great gardens hidden from view behind old brick walls covered with ivy.

  Before they reached Mary Lynne’s white-columned front door as they headed back home, they met Mary Lynne herself, slim and lithe in a fitted ski suit.

  “Awful, isn’t it, about Ozzie,” she said as they met. “Helen just called me. The poor old dear dying alone that way. And then that poor girl yesterday at the Scrim. I know how Peter must feel that he wasn’t able to save her.”

  She straightened her shoulders. “But don’t you two look great!” she said, her voice determinedly cheerful. “Like a couple of sisters out in the snow! I told myself this would be a wonderful morning for walking, and you two are the living proof of it. Now you come right back to my kitchen with me for coffee and tell me where all you’ve been.” She grasped each of them by the arm.

  Before Mrs. Potter could reflect, somewhat wryly, on the present disparity of sisterly sizes, Mary Lynne was tugging them both toward her doorway. “The chairman of the antique auto parade isn’t coming for at least a half hour—that’s part of the Daffodil Festival, Genia—and he’s always comfortably late anyway. Don’t you just hate and despise people who are always on time? Come right back in with me now and meet my babies and we’ll have a good visit!”

  Gussie interrupted, pleasant but firm. “We’d love to, another day. Right now you get your walk while you can, before you get wrapped up in festival plans. We’ll see you tomorrow at Larry’s, if not before,”

  Mary Lynne, agreeing reluctantly, headed down the street as Mrs. Potter admired the slim shape in the ski suit, a shape she had never suspected was there beneath the former imposing facade of Mary Lynne Heidecker in the years she had known her.

  “She’s been wonderful since Bo’s death,” Gussie said as they went on. “She gets out and walks. She’s got these two new little dogs—hear them yapping in the house now?—to keep her company. Lhasa apsos, a new breed to me. She’s-lost all that weight, and she’s being a magnificent chairman for the festival. Mary Lynne is much tougher than she will admit.”

  “When you called me last summer, I realized that, if I hadn’t before,” Mrs. Potter said. “No wonder she felt sorry for Peter. It must have been terrible for her having Bo die out there in the sailboat and not be able to do anything to save him.”

  They had not yet encountered other friends as they walked. From time to time they had waved at passing cars or trucks—the garbage man, the plumber, a woman with a familiar face and a carful of small children. It was not until they neared the top of Orange Street that they were hailed with a genteel shout.

  “Genia!” Ted Frobisher called out as he came down his front steps, just a little unsteadily. “I must say, you’re looking great!”

  Ted lived, as she knew, in one of four attached houses known as “the block,” just as the big red-brick mansions on Main Street were known as “the bricks.” Built in a style now said to be town houses, or before that, row houses, in Philadelphia and Baltimore, each was a generous and quite elegant dwelling. The shared wall of the long-ago construction had been planned, it was said, to conserve both heat and land space, and perhaps to afford comfort and company to the families of sea captains during the months or even years of long whaling voyages. Each had its beautiful front parlor, its elegant dining room just behind, its side hall and fine stairway leading to two upper floors of bedrooms.

  Mrs. Potter remembered that Ted had once taken her down into what had been the old basement kitchen before a newer one had been added to the back of each house, long before he came there to live. High windows gave good light on the front, on the street side. The huge fireplace was dark and long unused. A rusting bicycle leaned against one wall.

  Ted was using part of the long room for garden supplies, as a potting room, he had told her that day,
with a stairway leading up to a small attached greenhouse adjoining the present-day kitchen at ground level.

  Her chief recollection of this long-ago tour was of cobwebs and old shelves laden with dusty canning jars and old bottles. That, and someone’s—was it Lew’s?—comment that the chief potting done on those premises was that which Ted did to himself.

  As they now exchanged the greetings of old friends who have not seen each other for several years, Mrs. Potter reflected on how little real pleasure there is in hearing “You’re looking great.” She favored the opposite approach.

  “Ted, it’s marvelous to be back!” she told him, “and I’m so pleased at running into you this first morning. I hope you’re well—you look a little pale, but perhaps that’s because I always think of you with a deep summer tan.”

  Ted beamed, immediate proof of her theory that people prefer to be told they may not look too robust. Then the response can be that they’re actually fine, with the implication that whatever they’re suffering (everybody’s suffering something), they’re doing so gallantly, in noble silence. She liked this much better than hearing the opposite: You may think I look well enough, but let me tell you what I’ve been going through.

  “I’m absolutely topnotch,” he assured her jauntily. “See you Saturday, Gussie, at your house, cocktails at five, I remember. So good of you to include me.”

  He again raised his Irish tweed hat and, again somewhat unsteadily, turned to walk up the street in the direction of his office.

  Then, as if remembering necessary courtesies, he inquired if they had heard about Ozzie. Too awfully sad, he told them, dying by himself that way. Must have been late at night, since he’d heard Ozzie in his office at maybe eleven, eleven thirty.

  “You were working that late?” Gussie asked in surprise.

  Well, some way he’d fallen asleep at his own desk after work. The admission clearly left him a little abashed, and he seemed relieved when Mrs. Potter asked if he was sure he wasn’t working too hard.