Set Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries) (31 page)

“And biding,” said Helen, quietly, “her time.”

“Yes. Until now. She learned there was to be a
Hamlet;
she approached him in some manner, I’m not quite sure how; and she volunteered to do Gertrude one last time, “for old times.”

“For old times,” Nina found herself echoing.

“Of course,” Jackson continued, “she knew what drugs he took. And then..well, we should let Nina take it from there.”

Nina did.

“I’m not that knowledgeable about drugs. But one thing didn’t make sense, Hope, in either your story or Helen’s. In both of your accounts Clifton Barrett drank the medication, immediately felt dizzy, and passed out in bed. But that couldn’t have happened.
 
It would have taken some time—at least a half an hour according to my encyclopedia of dangerous drugs (She smiled inwardly, wondering how Margot would react to this new title) for the overdose to make him feel anything at all, other than amorous. That he was certainly feeling while he gave his farewell speech.
 
Everybody was aware of it.”

“Yes,” said Helen, demurely, “his hands were quite—active.”

“The cad,” muttered Hope.

John muttered something else.

“And that’s what we were all watching. But we didn’t see the mouse trap that he was reaching back into, and from which he was taking his Scotch. First one glass, then another, then another.”

“I didn’t notice it myself,” said Helen.
         

“No, because you were dealing with his hands. But only one hand at a time.
 
Behind him, almost but not quite out of the sight of the video cameras, someone—Constance—was pouring ‘juice of cursed hebenon into the porches of his ears.’ Except not ears in this case but mouth.
 
And the cursed hebenon was Percodan. She put a huge dose in every glass of Scotch.
 
Thank heaven nobody bothered to clean the kitchen today, and Alana has promised me to lock it
 
That glass is surely there, with the Percodan traces left in it. Even if Constance Briarworth recants her story—which I doubt she will do—the proof is there.
 
At any rate, Barrett was feeling the drug when he got home. He did in fact take his normal amount of Pitocin…not a spiked amount, because neither you, Helen, nor you, Hope, ever spiked the medication at all…but when that amount of Pitocin reacted with the giant amount of Percodan he had already ingested…well, the end was near.
 
He had only an hour or so to live.”

Jackson Bennett interrupted at this point. He looked at Helen, then at Hope and asked:

“So let me get this straight, you two:
 
Hope, you actually thought your daughter had given Barrett the overdose?”

Hope shrugged:

“I didn’t see any other possibility.
 
Helen had told me the truth about her husband, and what he was about to do to both of us. I’d seen him strike her—something I shall never forget. I’m, as I have said, a pharmacist’s wife. I’ve seen many users of drugs.
 
Barrett did not seem to me the kind of man who would accidently overdose. Once I learned that he was dead, I had no choice but to believe that Helen had done it…and that she would be arrested for it. I could not let that happen.”

“But Helen…you knew your grandmother hadn’t done it.”

“Of course I did. She never came into the room, and I was certain of that.
 
Once I realized that morning that Clifton was dead, I honestly assumed that he’d overdosed, and that the autopsy would prove that. But when Grandmamma stepped in and made her confession…such a strikingly detailed confession—I simply had no choice. I had to make up the story that I had done it.”

“Would both of you have gone to jail?”

There was silence for a time.

Finally Hope began to form the thing that was, after several hours of reintensification, to become her smile.

“I’m a very stubborn lady.”

“Yes, you are,” said Helen.

“And I still resent your implication that I could not have killed the man.
 
I was just as capable of doing so as you.”

“Neither one of you could kill anybody,” said Nina.
 
“And you know it.”

“Well…”

“Well…”

“Jackson,” asked Nina, “where is Constance Briarworth now?”

“On a plane to New York.”

“New York?
 
Why?”

“Because that’s where everybody involved wants this trial to take place. We’ve already granted extradition. That’s also why Edie said so little at the press conference.”

“I don’t understand, Jackson.”

He shook his head:

“Let me put it this way. Let’s say a married couple from Bay St. Lucy took a trip to New York City, and stayed in a hotel room. One got mad at the other and committed murder.”

“We would want the trial to take place here.”

“Of course. They’re Bay St. Lucy people. It would be our affair, not the city of New York’s. And that’s the way it is here.
 
If there’s going to be a media circus, it belongs in New York. Clifton Barrett brought his own evil here, and it devoured him. But it was an evil that had been building up for a long time.
 
Now it’s gone back to where it originated.”

“So the press conference announcing the real murder, and revealing the murderess…”

“Will be tomorrow morning. In New York. Where it belongs.”

Another period of silence, after which John said:

“Nina.
 
You did it again.”

She shook her head.

“I knew these two couldn’t kill anybody. They’re Bay St. Lucyans.
 
We don’t do things that way.
 
And when you think about it, we’re not really
Hamlet
kind of people, anyway.”

Jackson, smiling, asked:

“What kind of people are we?”

Nina rose.

“Just walk down the street, Jackson. You can’t help hearing it.
 
Summer mornings in front of The Stink Shak, or every afternoon when the tinkly little bell rings at Margot’s shop. Or when the high school band has a concert in city park or the ice cream truck passes in front of the library.
 
Or the ocean just makes the noise it always makes, and the sea breeze blows through the wind chimes. No, Jackson, to quote T. S. Eliot, ‘We are not Prince Hamlet, nor were we meant to be’.”

She took a step toward the door.

“Our little hills are alive with the Sound of Music.
 
Now—I’ve had a very full day for an old retired school teacher…I’m going home.”

And she did so.

CHAPTER 23:
 
EPILOGUE

The real summer highlight in the village of Bay St. Lucy, Mississippi, occurred seven days before the first day of autumn, on September fifteenth, Saturday morning, at 10 a.m.

It occurred when John Giusti married Helen Reddington in the Second Methodist Church, with Nina giving Helen away,
 
Jackson serving as John’s best man, and Hope’s face serving as an electric light bulb radiating white luminosity from the front pew.

The couple were, immediately after the ceremony, to be whisked away for a week’s exotic honeymoon in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where they would do heaven only knew what.

But now there were other matters to attend to.
        

Nina, standing some ten feet behind Helen, could only behold children from the congregation picking at the immense bridal train, grabbing for this imaginary leaf or that minute bit of dust that might somehow dim the impossible radiance of the gown, which could only be compared to The Continent of Antarctica but starched.

Nina picked her way around it, slowly, carefully, don’t step in a crevasse, watch for polar bears…

Finally she reached the gown’s headquarters, which was Helen herself.

“Ready?” she asked.

Helen turned to look at her.

This movement, small though it was, set off several minor tremors in the gown, causing the children to panic and start grabbing for a new assortment of things drifting down through the atmosphere and landing on the pure and driven snow that trailed The Bride.

“I think so.”

“This is your big number.”

“I know.”

“Nervous?”

“As a cat.”

“Well, you don’t know much about theater.”

“You know, you’re right, Nina.
 
I have a feeling this is my premiere.”

“You’ll be fine. Just hope that John doesn’t drop the ring.”

“He won’t. He’s amazing.
 
He’s the real performer in the family now.”

“All right, but remember…”

“Be quiet, you two!” hissed someone who’d also crowded into the church’s vestibule. “I think the organ is beginning to play!”

“All right, then,” said Helen. “Five, four, three two one…”

NOW!

And the doors of the church itself blew open, revealing nothing stretching between the bridal party and the stage itself but pew after pew after pew, all filled with smiling people.
 
They stood as one now and began applauding while the organ roared Mendelsohn’s
Wedding March
.
   

Nina stood on tiptoe, so that she could see past the children carrying the train, and past Helen, walking slowly, a halo of radiance emitting from the smile that she now must be training on the stage itself.
     

Where stood John Giusti, trusty John Giusti, his tuxedo as elegant as the captain’s outfit he had worn in
The Sound of Music
, his cuff links gold-glowing in what seemed celestial light flooding down from the choir loft.

And so she arrived onstage, her grandmother leaping from the front pew to stand beside her.

And so he said, ‘I do,’ and so she said ‘I do,’ and so the community looked on and approved.

And Nina found herself thinking that things—all things connected with this couple—and with the Bay St. Lucy that had raised them—were going to be all right.

And in thinking all of these things…she was exactly right.

THE END

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Pam Britton (T’Gracie) Reese is an Assistant Professor in the Communication Science and Disorders Department at Indiana/Purdue University at Fort Wayne. Previously, she worked as a speech pathologist in schools in private practice. She was also a supervisor in communication disorders at Ohio University. She likes nothing better, professionally, than helping small, silent two year old boys start talking. She has also published books about autism with LinguiSystems for the last 15 years.
The Circle of Autism
was previously published on-line at ken*again e-magazine

Joe Reese is a novelist, playwright, storyteller, and college teacher.  He has published four novels, several plays, and a number of stories and articles.  When he is not teaching (English and German), he enjoys visiting elementary schools, where he tells stories from his Katie Dee novels and talks to students about writing.  He and his wife Pam have three children:  Kate, Matthew, and Sam.

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