Free The Nantucket Diet Murders by Virginia Rich Page B

Rotch all right, and his office might have been up the stairs behind this door, up where Ted’s and Ozzie’s are now, but my guess is that those early Nantucketers were too good merchants to dump valuable tea overboard. Anyway, the island was always really more Tory than otherwise, although nobody talks about that now.”
    “Speaking of merchants,” Mrs. Potter said, “is the Christmas Walk still going strong?”
    This holiday event had begun only a year or two before Mrs. Potter’s last wintertime stay on the island. The annual putting up of the trees on Main Street, their lighting and trimming, had been a tradition for many years before that. Then, sparked by whoever’s bright idea the two could not remember, the merchants of the town had added an embellishmentof their own. When the trees went up in December, they designated an evening for this special Christmas event. All of the stores and shops remained open until late in the evening. There was street entertainment with music and carols; there were special Christmas treats and prizes and good things to eat; the shops, bejeweled in their Christmas finery, were a part of a continuing round of small holiday parties, their owners for the evening more hosts than merchants. The Walk had become an off-season tourist attraction, a new tradition on an old cobblestone thoroughfare.
    “Usually I have a cocktail party beforehand,” Gussie said, “and then we all go to the Scrim or someplace for dinner after we’ve done the entire tour. This year, I just didn’t feel like it. Partly because of Gordon’s dying in October, and I hadn’t really begun having people in. And then partly because I had just got such a good start with my program with Tony, and I didn’t quite trust myself with all that liquor and fattening food in the house.”
    “But you’re having people for cocktails Saturday on my account,” Mrs. Potter pointed out. “Are you sure you want to? I mean, you really can’t have a cocktail party without liquor and a lot of things to eat that aren’t on
anybody’s
diet.”
    “Yes, I do want to, and everybody’s invited, but it’s not a cocktail party,” Gussie said. “To be honest, I expect everyone
does
think it is. That’s the assumption when an invitation’s for five o’clock. The fun of it is, I’m going to shock the socks off them—they’re coming to a tea party.”
    Seeing the look of mild surprise on Mrs. Potter’s face, Gussie elaborated. Tony was terribly tolerant, of course, except for his special clients, but he was adamant about no liquor for
them
. (Mrs. Potter had a guilty recollection of proposing drinks at yesterday’s lunch party.) Gussie continued that all of them, all of Tony’s “people,” would find it so much easier if drinks weren’t offered, and anyway she thought it was high time someone came up with an alternative to cocktails for casual hospitality.
    “So nobody’s going to worry about disobeying Tony,” she went on. “We’ll have tea and a lot of really good little thingsto eat for whoever isn’t dieting, and this will be your coming-back party.”
    “It sounds wonderful,” Mrs. Potter said. “Of course, I saw all of Les Girls yesterday, and Peter Benson. But there are the other men—I’m eager to see Arnold Sallanger, naturally. He’ll always be my favorite doctor. Ted is fun, in a way, even if he always is a little tiddly. George Enderbridge is nice, if a bit worthy, but of course as a clergyman and retired headmaster he can’t help that. And I suppose Victor Sandys is coming? Is he writing anything these days, and has anybody persuaded him to get a hearing aid?”
    “You forgot Ozzie,” Gussie reminded her. “Poor Ozzie.”
    They walked onto the wharf that encircled one end of the marina, sending hundreds of starlings beneath the heavy planking into twittering panic. “The weather’s been like fall, up to now,” Gussie said. “They’ll take off when it gets really cold. My perennial borders