“I remember that night.” She was leaning forward with her hands on her cheeks. “I was doing homework in my dressing-gown with the roses. She came into my room; I could see from her face that something was terribly wrong. She rushed over and held me for a long time.” Hilda stopped speaking like she’d suddenly caught a high note in her ear and she couldn’t go on until the vibration ended.
“Hilda? Tell me about the gun.”
“The gun?”
“The one Elizabeth brought home. The one you got me to take to Ward’s house.” She was frowning at me slightly, as though she’d just suddenly noticed that I was selling magazine subscriptions. When I asked a question, I got a vague response. We danced around that way for a while, and then the note, or vibration, or whatever it was, must have gone away. She picked up the story again with a half apologetic smile.
“She cried and cried in my arms. We’d never been so close. She’d never needed me before. For a while it was as if she was me and I was her. All the while, she was babbling. Most of it I didn’t catch. But I recognized names: Joe, Bill and Chester. I heard about a gun that went off, that someone was hurt. Elizabeth went back for the gun. Bill Ward had dropped it. She was bone-white with fright. I held her close until morning.” Hilda looked little and crushed in her chair.
“But, Hilda, the gun?”
“The gun?” She looked away from my face. “Oh, I just kept it.”
“Was Elizabeth in love with Joe Corso?”
“Joe was the only one who did anything. The rest was sordid business. Joe had discovered how to make things in the lab. He could do anything. He was brilliant.”
“And Elizabeth worked with him?”
“Yes. That was why she stayed in residence that term. She wanted to be near Joe. She told me how they were often up all night waiting for the results of a group of tests. You don’t believe me, do you? You’re like all the others.”
“Hilda, I have difficulty accepting the hero status you’re trying to give both of them. They were in it either for the kicks or the money. Can’t you see it for what it was, a dirty piece of business at best? If they’d been caught, there would have been jail terms for both of them.”
“You don’t understand how what happened next wiped all of that away.”
“The security guard was shot a few months before your sister died. They came within an ace of killing that man, but they kept on making and pushing the stuff.”
“Haven’t you ever seen pictures on television or in the papers showing the wives of accused men walking to or from the courtroom? Have you studied the faces of those women as I have? They shout hatred at the cameras with their eyes, and defiance to the world. Questions of right and wrong are for courts and strangers. They have no place under the roof of the accused.”
“When did you see your sister last?” The question sounded like a parody of something just out of my reach. Hilda Blake smiled at me. It was a smile that could almost make me forget why I was there.
“She was busy with her final exams, so she hadn’t been home for more than a week. Of course, she telephoned nearly every day. She was full of talk about the papers she was working on, and Joe, and her plans for the summer. She was full of life, and brimming over with enthusiasm. Two days later she was dead. The inquest was a farce. They say the coroner was drunk. He called it suicide, but I knew they were all lying. I tried to say so, but the doctor gave me something to make me go to sleep.
“Mother wasn’t well enough to go to the funeral. I went. I tried to tell the people what happened, but I was taken away. I can’t remember by whom. Isn’t that odd? I just remember a strong hand on my arm. But I remember vowing over her coffin that I wouldn’t let Chester Yates and Bill Ward get away with what they had done. I knew that I would live long enough to send both of them to hell.”
“And you would do it the way they did: make their deaths look like suicide.”
“They murdered my sister, Mr. Cooperman. I saw them escape any shadow of blame. I knew that they wouldn’t escape me.” We sat quietly for a minute. I thought of lighting a cigarette, but there was something about this garden and this afternoon that frowned on such an idea. I took another sip of lemonade.
The sun had moved a little since we began talking. I was aware of shadows in the garden, but the warm spring afternoon continued. In her sun-drenched dress Hilda talked as simply as though we’d been discussing the plot of a novel, or the exploits of somebody who’d lived three centuries ago. I had to keep reminding myself that until recently we executed murderers like Hilda Blake.
“After Elizabeth died, Joe tried to get in touch with me. We talked on the telephone once.”
“Did he tell you what had happened?”
“He didn’t have to. He sounded frightened, and it could only be Ward and Yates that he was afraid of. They killed him too. I should have guessed that they would try to kill Joe. Then, a month later, Father had a stroke. He didn’t die right away, but he couldn’t speak any more. From his hospital bed, he looked at me the way he used to look at Elizabeth, and he told me things that he’d never been able to say before. I can’t describe those wordless conversations. There was an ecstasy about his eyes. I felt for the first time worthy. And I could take responsibility for what I knew he was telling me to do.
“The time after that is confusing. I’m not sure what happened next. I remember dropping out of school. I remember another funeral. I remember doctors and nurses and drugs. In the calm times I can remember hearing voices. Nothing to do with me, just people talking about their cats and dogs and family. I remember hearing two doctors talk about a nurse as though I wasn’t in the room. They were saying terrible, private things, as though I wasn’t able to hear. Then I can remember long corridors, and sunlight on balconies. I remember sitting in a garden watching the flowers. I think I could actually see them growing. The buds were slowly unfolding as I watched them.”
“Was it then that you met Liz Tilford?”
“Oh, I forgot. Yes, of course, you’d know about her, wouldn’t you?”
“I’ve had to keep my eyes open.”
“I’m glad it was you, Mr. Cooperman. What’s your Christian name?”
“My first name is Ben. But I’m Jewish.”
“Ben. I like that name. Ben. It suits you. You are a Ben. Liz Tilford would have liked you. She was my friend. I was closer to her than to anyone after Elizabeth, my sister. Funny, their both having the same name. It was a good omen.”
“She found you in the hospital on Queen Street, while she was still on staff, am I right? She took an interest in you, didn’t talk to people as though you weren’t in the room. She remembered things you told her, and later, when you began to get better, she brought you things.”
“Yes, we spent long afternoons taking society apart and putting it together again. I didn’t realize to what a degree I was occupying her time until later. She seemed to know that I was special right from the beginning. It was as though we’d known one another all our lives. It was like having an older sister again.
“I forced myself to stop walking around in a daze. I stopped worrying about things I could never quite fit together, things glimpsed at the corner of my eye, that always disappeared when I turned my head. I paid attention more. Tried not to think of Elizabeth or about Bill Ward and Chester Yates. I think they reduced the number of drugs they were giving me to keep me going. I started liking some of the doctors. We even had our own jokes. My bad dreams began to go, I was getting well, and I liked the idea of being well again.”
“At the beginning of last year, did Liz tell you that she would be leaving the hospital?”
“Yes. For a while I could see that something was bothering her; she could never hide anything from me. She had one of those faces that can never keep a secret. I asked her what it was, and she told me, making a long sad story of it. But I knew that we needn’t be separated for long. I was getting well, and with time off for good behaviour, I might look forward to leaving within a few months. I could feel the burden of strength in the relationship passing to me that morning. Do you know what I mean? I had changed what she had seen as a parting into promise and hope. I became the older sister, in a way. We began to make plans about what we would do when I was well.