A FEW MONTHS AFTER PHILIP BYRNE HAD JILTED MARGARET RUSSELL TO MARRY HER SISTER CORNELIA WHEN SHE HAD RECEIVED AN UNEXPECTED LEGACY FROM A COUSIN, MISS WILMA TRUMBELL, MARGARET WAS ASKED TO MIND THEIR HOUSE, AS CORNELIA NEEDED A HOLIDAY AFTER BEING ILL. IT ALSO MEANT LOOKING AFTER HILARY BEVERTON, AN INQUISITIVE EIGHT-YEAR OLD WHO HAD BEEN STAYING WITH THEM.

THE DARK AND GLOOMY HOUSE WAS TROUBLE ENOUGH WITHOUT HILARY BREAKING ORNAMENTS AND COLLECTING MEMENTOS OF THE ABSENT OWNER, MRS. ISABEL FOALE. AMONG OTHER THINGS HILARY FOUND WAS A PHOTO OF PHILIP, AND MARGARET REALISED HE HAD LIED WHEN HE SAID HE DIDN’T KNOW THE OWNER.

ONE DAY WHEN HILARY WAS AT THE MOVIES, MARGARET WAS STARTLED TO SEE A YOUNG MAN TRYING THE UNLOCKED DOOR. HE SAID HE WAS LOOKING FOR MRS. FOALE, THEN INTRODUCED HIMSELF AS JEROME KINCAID, SAYING HE HAD GONE TO SCHOOL WITH MARGARET, BUT SHE WAS NOT SURE SHE REMEMBERED HIM. HER NEXT VISITOR WAS MUCH MORE UNPLEASANT-A SMALL, DARK-SKINNED, DRUNKEN MAN CALLING HIMSELF JULIO WHO CAME TO WIND THE CLOCK AND INSOLENTLY DEMANDED PAYMENT.

ADDING TO MARGARET’S WORRIES, HILARY BECAME FEVERISH WITH A CHILL AND WAS IN BED WHEN MISS ELIZABETH HONEYMAN CALLED FOR A BOOK SHE HAD LENT MRS. FOALE. DURING THE CONVERSATION MARGARET GATHERED PHILIP HAD STAYED WITH MRS. FOALE AFTER HER HUSBAND’S DEATH, BUT MISS HONEYMAN HAD DOUBTS THAT HE WAS MRS. FOALE’S COUSIN, AS HAD BEEN STATED.

THAT NIGHT, JULIO CAME BACK. MARGARET, KEEPING THE DOOR CLOSED, TOLD HIM TO GO AWAY. THE NEXT MORNING SHE FOUND BLOODSTAINS WHERE HE HAD STOOD. WITHOUT THINKING, SHE IMMEDIATELY WASHED THEM AWAY. FRIGHTENED HE MIGHT COME BACK, SHE IS STARTLED BY THE DOORBELL.

URSULA CURTISS

Hours to Kill

DODD, MEAD & COMPANY

NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT © 1961 BY URSULA CURTISS

To Raymond T. Bond, with appreciation

The characters, places, incidents and situations in this book are imaginary and have no relation to any person, place or actual happening

One

THEY said goodbye in the beautiful shadowy living room, Cornelia counting her gloves as though there might possibly be more than two of them, Margaret straightening an ashtray on the piano in a brisk taking-over gesture. Philip, foresightedly, had gone out to the car and was doing a great deal of door-slamming. “Well. . . goodbye.”

“Goodbye, and for heaven’s sake don’t worry.”

“I wouldn’t,” said Cornelia with a hunted glance about her, “if it weren’t for that child. No wonder her parents are on the brink of divorce. Infanticide would be more like it.”

Save the surface and you save all—but then, just for an instant, Cornelia touched below the surface. She gave Margaret a direct look that undid all her previous appearance of blindness, and said, “I haven’t dared ask if you mind this. Coming here, I mean.”

“Don’t be foolish,” said Margaret lightly. She saw Cornelia flush unhappily and, for the moment, didn’t care. She opened the door and the clear spring day came slicing into the room, across waxed floors and Oriental scatter rugs to the fluid white adobe fireplace with the beaded birds on the mantel above it. “Better go, it sounds as though Philip’s counting to ten.”

She would not hide from Philip, but neither did she want her hand in his, even for an automatic instant. She compromised by standing on the flagstoned porch while Cornelia walked down the steps and across the lawn to the waiting car. Philip, bare-headed in the sun, took his wife’s arm and handed her into the car. Back on the driver’s side, he looked up at Margaret, smiling, and threw up a hand in salute. “See you on the twentieth, Mag. Take care.”

The “Mag” had slipped out; he was the only one who had ever called her that. It was a shock to realize that memory could be so one-sided. “Take care yourself,” she called back, and waved to Cornelia’s ducked-down face through the windshield as the car edged out of the drive, and she stepped into the house again. The pale shining day vanished, the dim elegance of the immense living room surrounded her. The beaded peacocks glowed against the white chimney, the rosewood grandfather clock across what seemed to be acres of floor chimed eleven—and somewhere, water was running. Margaret took a long breath, recalling herself to the guardianship of a rented house and a strange child, and called, “Hilary . . . ?”

Even though—or perhaps because—Cornelia was her sister, it was difficult for Margaret to go over, in imagination, the scene that must have taken place between Cornelia and Philip when, with all plans made for the vacation the doctor had recommended after Cornelia’s severe bout of flu, the housekeeper they had arranged for had fallen and broken a hip.

“Well, that’s that,” Cornelia would have said—close to tears, probably, because she was still weak. It wasn’t only a question of Hilary, the daughter of friends of Philip’s who were trying a reconciliation in Mexico City; the house was not a house to lock the door upon lightly. There was the antique furnace to be considered, the paintings, the locked closets and cupboards full of Mrs. Foale’s silver and valuable china. You took on, in a rented house, all the responsibilities of the owner, and if it were left invitingly dark for night after night, while newspapers accumulated visibly on the front lawn, you asked for trouble.

It was certainly Philip who would have thought of Margaret.

Even through the happy blindfold of six months of marriage, Cornelia would have been shocked at that. “Margaret? Oh, Philip—”

“She’s your sister, isn’t she? If she knew you’d been ill, and hadn’t been able to get away, and had a relapse just because you wouldn’t ask her—”

“Yes, I know, but. . .”

They would have argued it back and forth then.