Dinner at Antoine’s
A Book by Frances Parkinson Keyes
(Editor’s Note)
As a best-selling novel in 1948 (multi-millions sold), Dinner at Antoine’s is both fiction and a time capsule of mid-century New Orleans’ history. It’s a peek into what life was like at that time, not just in New Orleans, but in the United States as a whole. The writing is definitely period, reading like an overacted black-and-white movie, with lots of flowery descriptions and details, not just of the characters, but also of the scenes, the dress, the social situations, and reflecting the morals/mores of 1948. The novel begins and ends with dinners at Antoine’s, oh those dinners! When written it was an atmospheric rendition of contemporary life, now it shows us how much life has changed. Although the traditional, historic atmosphere that makes New Orleans so attractive today and those fine dining establishments which are luckily still with us, can take us back to this era. The book will make you want to get on a plane for a week in New Orleans – to enjoy a “Dinner at Antoine’s”, Arnaud’s, Commander’s Palace, The Court of the Two Sisters, drinks at the Monteleone’s Carousel Bar or at Pat O’Brien’s, a late night café au lait at Café du Monde, Breakfast at Brennan’s and to take the green trolly down St. Charles Avenue to the turn at Carrollton for a casual diner meal at the Camelia Grill!
Dinner at Antoine’s is available at Amazon.com, but (spoiler alert) we decided to give a short, and complete book-club-like-discussion of this murder mystery, because the book is almost unknown today, very hard to access, and it’s not downloadable as an e-book, or an audiobook.
Enjoy your trip back in time – set your time-travel dial for 01/02/1948, New Orleans, Louisiana – 713 St. Louis Street, in the heart of the French Quarter.
Dinner at Antoine’s opens on January 2, 1948, with a line of restaurant goers waiting for their opportunity to dine at Antoine’s. A limousine draws to the curb and Orson Foxworth, a shipping magnate and president of the Great Blue Fleet, and his niece, Ruth Avery, a debutante who has been introduced to society on the east coast but is still looking for the man of her dreams, are admitted to Antoine’s ahead of the waiting tourists and returned veterans. Ruth is uncomfortable being led into the restaurant ahead of people waiting in line for over an hour.
Orson and Ruth are met by Angelo Alciatore, the proprietor’s nephew and maître d’ hôtel, and escorted to the Rex Room for drinks and then to the 1840’s room for dinner celebrating Foxworth’s return to New Orleans from Central America plus introducing Ruth to his friends, and to Carnival. Upon entering the room, Orson checks with Angelo to make sure the ducks have arrived and will be pressed by Roy Alciatore himself for tonight’s guests.
At this dinner, most of the characters are introduced:
Russell Aldridge, a wealthy young archaeologist whom Foxworth has asked to escort his niece to the dinner tonight and to introduce her to New Orleans.
Amélie Lelande, a beautiful widow and the object of Foxworth’s affections for many years.
Caresse Lelande, Amelie’s younger daughter and the host of a radio show about nostalgic fashion, sponsored by The Fashion Plate Dress Shop.
Odile Lelande St. Amant, Amelie’s older daughter who has been suffering from chronic palsy.
Léonce St. Amant, Odile’s husband and an employee of a used car dealership.
Dr. Vance Perrault, the Lelandes’ family physician.
The guests began with drinks, Sazeracs for the men, and a Bacchus (half Dubonnet and half French Vermouth), sherry or a champagne cocktail for the women. Dinner included Huîtres à la Foch (fried Louisiana gulf oysters on toast buttered with pâté, topped with a Colbert sauce) and the pressed duck. “Roy Alciatore had entered the room and was greeting the guests while his assistants kindled the flames under two chafing dishes. Over one of these, the breast filets of the ducks, which had been roasted and carved in the kitchen, were now set simmering. Over the other, a shallow copper skillet, silver-lined, was carefully heated while a lump of butter softened and melted. The gleaming silver device, part of which resembled a letter press, was now moved forward on the side-board, and as the screw was turned to put more and more pressure on the chopped duck carcasses in its silver cylinder, the expressed juices were caught in a porcelain bowl. Roy skillfully blended those with various wines and spices over the flickering alcohol flame of his burner. Then he added cream and brandy, almost drop by drop; from a tiny pepper mill he dusted a few grains of freshly ground white pepper into the chocolate-colored sauce, just before this was decanted over the filets.”
During dinner, Odile, wearing a beautiful white gown, spilled red wine down the front. Her palsy tremors were becoming noticeable to others and troubling to Odile and her family. The dinner guests decided to finish the evening dancing at the Blue Room. Dr. Perrault promised to make a house call to Odile’s the following morning but instead discussed it with Odile when he took her home early from the dancing. During the ride home, he warned Odile that she would be needing skilled nursing care, more than Tossie Pride could deliver. (Tossie has been Odile’s caretaker since birth and when Odile and Léonce married, Tossie stayed on with her, as her maid.) While undressing, Odile told Tossie about the change that was coming, in her health care. Toss was visibly upset, feeling that loving care was better medicine and more needed than skilled nursing care. In the discussion, Tossie stated that she would rather be in her grave than have anyone else take care of Odile and that she would rather see Odile in her grave, rather than have strangers taking care of her.
The next morning, January 3, Dr. Perrault confirmed that Odile Lalande St. Amant’s chronic palsy will only worsen with time. After she has lunch with her former fiancé, Sabin Duplessis, Odile tells Sabin that, even though her marriage isn’t a good one, she is still married and they can’t have an affair. Sabin gives her a gift of his prized gun and bullets, he had acquired during World War II. After lunch, stressed out, Odile has a breakdown. Sabin takes her home, carries her in and upstairs to her room and Dr. Perrault is called back to the house to administer a sedative. Later, after giving Odile a sedative, Dr. Perrault leaves again, promising to return one more time, at midnight, to check on her.
At the same time when Odile and ex. fiancé Sabin were having lunch, Odile’s husband, Léonce, picks up Odile’s sister, Caresse, after her radio broadcast for The Fashion Plate Dress Shop. Léonce borrows a car from the used car sales lot where he works, so no one will know that Caresse and he are going for a drive. He gets one with Mississippi license plates, drives out of town and circles back toward a tourist court. He has adventurous romantic plans for the afternoon, but Caresse realizes that Léonce has made this trip, many times before, with others. During the ensuing argument, they have a car accident in which both are injured and Caresse’s bloody nose drips onto her beautiful red dress.
Dr. Perrault returns to the Lalande home at 10 PM, declaring that he was in the neighborhood seeing another patient and decided to check on Odile earlier than planned. When he came in she had awakened and was walking around her room. While he was giving Odile more morphine, Léonce and Caresse returned home. Upon seeing their injuries, the physician stayed to examine them, also.
The Doctor issued orders that Odile was not to be disturbed! Tossie (Odile’s caretaker) was worried that her “baby” needed her and went to Odile’s room anyway, to find Odile dead on the floor, shot in the abdomen, and Sabin’s WW II gun eight feet away. A suicide note was beside the bed. It read: “Darling – I have tried to be a good daughter and a good wife, but I can’t take this any longer. I love you. Odile”.
It was assumed by the family that she had ended her illness, rather than becoming a burden to the family and without having to endure a painful death, that was in her future. Dr. Perrault calls the police who, arriving at 1:30 AM, and immediately they declared Odile’s death was not a suicide… but a murder.
All the people in the house were suspects: Amélie Lelande, Caresse Lelande, Léonce St. Amant, Joe Racina (a successful news reporter on current events), Tossie, Orson Foxworth (engaged to Amélie Lelande and who entered the house without ringing the bell, claiming no one answered the bell and that the front door was unlocked), and Dr. Perrault. They had the opportunity and all but Dr. Perrault had a motive. The police interview everyone in the house, take fingerprints and identify two people, Léonce and Tossie were as people of interest, because they have swirls on their fingerprints similar to a print found on the murder weapon… but Tossie’s print is an exact match. The police arrest Tossie and put her in jail as a flight risk. Tossie crying – proclaiming her innocence. After all, Odile was her “baby” and she loved her “baby” more than anyone! (The police did not actually suspect her, but wanted to make certain she was kept safe, jailing her for her own protection.)
It was later discovered that Sabin Duplessis was in the courtyard at the time of the murder, hoping to see Odile, and saw her in the window in an embrace with another man. This gave Sabin the opportunity and the motive for murder, making him a suspect as well. He wanted Odile to elope with him.
The rest of Dinner at Antoine’s covers the police interviewing the possible murderers, trying to discover the truth in the alibis, and following the tangled relationships. During the investigation to discover who is lying to the police, relationships start shifting… Ruth falls in love with Russell Aldridge, but also is dating Sabin Duplessis, who falls in love with Ruth; Caresse won’t have anything to do with Léonce and she is offered a dream job in New York City as a radio personality and as a model for a major department store. She will have to leave for New York by Saturday to interview for the job, but has been told by the police, to stay in town until the murderer is identified and arrested. Caresse is distressed at losing this good opportunity. Joe Racina takes her to meet with the police detective “Toe” Murphy to explain the injuries and the car accident, since nothing was reported to the police about the accident. Once “Toe” is comfortable that the unreported accident did happen and it was outside of New Orleans, he gives Caresse permission to leave town.
Ruth (the debutante niece) and Russell (the wealthy young archeologist) continue to get to know each other, dining at The Court of Two Sisters, followed five hours later with ate night sugared beignets and coffee at Café du Monde. They are falling in love, but Ruth hears him talking of his plans to explore caves off the coast of Honduras and fears he will leave her behind.
Shipping magnate Orson pressures Amélie to marry him. Amélie had been using Odile’s illness as an excuse not to marry Foxworth and she couldn’t leave because Caresse is only nineteen years old. Orson tells Amélie that he is the one who masterminded Caresse’s great job offer, knowing that if Caresse is settled, Amelie will be willing to leave town.
Amélie accuses Foxworth of killing Odile to take away her excuse for not marrying him. Foxworth suddenly sees Amélie as controlling and has been stringing him along, only caring about herself. He decides to break off his proposed engagement with Amélie and does so.
Amélie had interrupted Foxworth’s negotiations that morning with Francisco Darcoa, the principal stockholder of the very successful Trans-Carribean Fruit and Steamship Company. Late afternoon, after his argument and break-up with Amélie, Orson realizes that Darcoa has been waiting hours for him to return to the office to continue discussions on merging the two shipping companies. Since it is so late, Foxworth goes to the Darcoa home. Francisco Darcoa is not home, but his beautiful, intelligent, and pleasant daughter, Clarinda makes him feel welcomed. They have tea and talk for an hour. A phone call finds that Mr. Darcoa is still waiting at the office. Darcoa, Clarinda’s father, returns home and the negotiations continue while Clarinda stays in the room with the men and contributes to the discussion/negotiations.
As for Russell and Ruth… Ruth is awakened on January 10 to hear she has a visitor in the family library. It takes her fifteen minutes to dress and, by the time she gets downstairs, she sees Russell and knows he is there to tell her goodbye. She is very disappointed. He says goodbye and immediately leaves for his next archaeological adventure. Ruth is depressed until she gets a telegram asking her to meet to marry him. She agrees immediately and makes plans to leave for Honduras.
Ruth’s step-father, Richard Huntington, the Assistant Secretary of State, suddenly shows up in New Orleans to check on her, to meet Russell, and to give Uncle Orson a detailed alibi for the night Odile was killed. Foxworth had been in secret meetings planning to merge his Blue Fleet with Francisco Darcoa’s fleet and planning a coup d’é·tat in Llorando, to facilitate his merger, detailed minute by minute by the FBI in their efforts to stop the coup.
Orson Foxworth falls in love with Francisco Darcoa’s daughter Clarinda and feels very lucky to have avoided a permanent relationship with Amélie. To impress Clarinda, Foxworth decides to have a dinner party at his home. He plans an elegant event, using his best porcelain dishes, gilt flatware, candelabra, and linens. He invites the Darcoas, Ruth, Russell, Joe and Judith Racina (the reporter), as well as Caresse. All is well until the cook has a toothache and the butler and housekeeper prove they do not have the skills to prepare the elaborate dinner Orson has planned. A decision is made, to have cocktails only at home, then head off to Antoine’s Mystery Room for an elaborate fine dinner. Most of the suspects attend this dinner.
Caresse has just said goodbye to her friends at The Fashion Plate Dress Shop, and she brings Miss Hickey, the representative of the Haas and Hector department store, who will be hiring Caresse in New York City. Assistant Secretary of State, Richard Huntington, his step-daughter Ruth Avery, who is eagerly planning her upcoming marriage to the absent Russell Aldridge, Joe and Judith Racina, Sabin Duplessis, both Francisco and Clarinda Darcoa, and hopefully Dr. Vance Perrault will all attend – the Doctor was uncertain, because said he needed to spend the evening checking on his favorite patients in anticipation of leaving his practice and New Orleans for a long trip.
The police detective, “Toe” Murphy, a former local star football player, at one time or another, suspects each character, all have a motive and the opportunity. Each suspect also has a firm opinion, “knows” who committed this murder, and each presents their scenarios to Detective Murphy. Toe tells each of them, he knows who the murderer is, he just has to be able to prove it, and he plans to announce that name on Saturday.
The dinner at Antoine’s is beginning as the door to the Mystery Room opens and Angelo Alciatore enters with a long envelope in his hands. “It was brought to the door by a cab driver, with instructions to deliver it straight to Miss Lalande.” In the envelope is the key to the Lalande family crypt and a note from Dr. Perrault, “Dear Caresse, I did not forget to give this key to you yesterday, as you probably thought I did. I knew I should want to use it again myself. But now that my need for it is past—“
Sabin jumps up and races to the telephone. Guests ask Orson if he knows what this means and he says “I assume it is Perrault’s confession.”
In the note accompanying the key, Dr. Perrault confesses to giving Odile a sedative when he first reached the Lalande house, that previous Saturday night. The effects were not as tranquilizing has he had hoped. Odile had begged him to “put her to sleep so that she would never wake up” and he told her that was impossible. She burst into uncontrollable weeping but, rather than leave, Dr. Perrault went into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. When he returned, he noticed that his hypodermic needle kit and the morphine tablets were missing. Odile pretended to be drowsy and the doctor pretended to believe her.
He then left, knowing what Odile planned to do, instructing Amélie and Tossie to let her sleep and, on no account to enter her room. He promised to return at midnight, knowing Odile would be past mortal help by that hour.
He went home to a dinner he could not eat. He tried to check on other cases but could not. After several house calls, he began to think clearly again, to understand that he was responsible for the mortal sin which Odile was about to commit. And he realized he must “take that sin from her and upon myself.” That’s when he returned to the Lelande house, telling the family he had been looking in on a neighbor. When he reached Odile, he saw that only a miracle could rouse her. He tried to revive her, he gave her a powerful stimulant, he tried to get her to walk. When he realized it was too late to save her life, he knew there was only “one other way to take the sin of self-destruction from her: I must kill her while she was still alive”. He had Sabin’s gun in his pocket and he used it to shoot and kill Odile.
Dr. Perrault hired a limousine and went to a florist, buying small red roses (Odile’s favorite), then went the Lelande tomb, instructing the driver to leave him there, but take the note and envelope to Caresse at Antoine’s, and a copy of the note to Captain Murphy at the New Orleans Police Department. At the tomb, the Dr. took out a hypodermic needle, filled with morphine, said a prayer then injected himself with a fatal dose of the drug.
The narrative and plot ends here, even though there are several sections giving follow-up stories for what then happened to many of the surviving characters.
If made into a movie in 1948, these twists and turns would have made for a romance, taking place in some of New Orleans’ most popular restaurants. If made today, it could be directed as an Orient Express type drama, since everyone could be guilty, everyone suspects everyone else, and it ends with a murder.
Dinner at Antoine’s is a fun read, with insight into life during 1948 in New Orleans. Frances Parkinson Keyes was a popular writer at that time, with quite a few books being best sellers. For a while, Dinner at Antoine’s was considered one of the top five books of the first half of the twentieth century. Reading it gives you an enjoyable break from life today.
The first 80 pages are descriptions of characters and their relationships, many with people other than their spouses. Following the table of contents is a list of characters, with a description of who they are, very helpful when reading since there are several from the same family, with the same last names.
There are several themes in this book, first there is the spectacular food at the dinners. Then “camellia flowers” play a big role and the different varieties of flowers used as a garnish, or as hair ornaments, or dress enhancements, or as symbols of love, as well as table arrangements. The experience of Carnival (Mardi Gras) – how women were seated, and how eligible men were dressed as chefs, wearing masks.
In the table of contents, the chapters have subtitles telling us what to expect in each chapter and the date that chapter takes place. The book ends on January 10, 1948. Much has transpired, but only eight days have elapsed since Orson Foxworth, the shipping magnate and his niece, Ruth Avery arrived via limousine for drinks and their pressed duck Dinner at Antoine’s.
(Source: Special thanks and hopefully soon an actual dinner at Antoine’s, goes to Ann Latture Atkinson for reading the very musty hardbound, first-edition of Dinner at Antoine’s provided and writing up this synopsis.)
For more creative and sensentional posts visit our art blog category!
