Hours to Kill

by Ursula Curtiss

  Thirteen

  KINCAID hadn’t called; Margaret made sure of that before she washed her flushed face with cold water, combed her sleep-rumpled hair, smoothed the dress she had lain down in and went into the living room. The drugstore delivery was her prescription. The lady, looking austerely aloof while Margaret found her pocketbook and paid, was Elizabeth Honeyman.

  She said stiffly as Margaret closed the front door, “I’m terribly sorry; I didn’t realize you were ill”

  From her tone and her elevated brows, she might have been saying “tipsy.” Margaret was surprised at the depth of her sudden clear dislike of the slender erectness, the small bitter-bright mouth in the lace-netted face, the eyelids wearied at a lifetime of contemplating inferior things and people. She said as civilly as she could, “Well, yes, I’ve had the doctor. I hope you don’t catch—”

  “I never catch anything,” said Miss Honeyman, tipping the comer of her lips a trifle. Her eyes examined Margaret. “I’m hardy, I suppose. Do you get enough Vitamin C?”

  “Yes,” said Margaret briefly. “If you’ll excuse me, I think I’d better start this stuff.”

  The capsules looked like Cornelia’s except that they were blue and white instead of blue and yellow. Margaret swallowed one, wincingly, and went back to the living room in time to find Miss Honeyman straightening a small curlicued mirror beside the front door. Would she run a gloved finger over the tables, next?

  But she didn’t; she said with a tolerant air, “I came because—but I think it had better wait, don’t you, as you aren’t feeling well?”

  There were any number of barbs on this. “No, not at all. What is it?”

  “As a matter of fact, it’s,” Miss Honeyman tilted her head with a deprecating smile, “the yard.”

  Margaret glanced instinctively out a window, but the yard was still there, the new-leafed lilacs quiet and sunlit against the adobe wall.

  “Papers,” said Miss Honeyman disturbedly. “Old leaves. The wind, you know. It doesn’t look . . . I don’t imagine your sister had time to engage a yard man. Hadley and Christina always had a yard man, and I thought that perhaps if I gave you his name . . .”

  Margaret quelled her instant and fiery rage, because after a small pause Miss Honeyman was saying, “. . . Julio Garcia. One of Hadley’s projects. Hadley always felt that steady work and responsibility would redeem the very worst character. I saw Julio a few days ago, and asked him to come around. Did he?”

  Keep very still, very steady; this woman’s eyes were sharp under her tolerating eyelids. “A man came to wind the clock a few days ago. He seemed to know the house, so I imagine it was Mr. Garcia.”

  “Oh dear. He didn’t come back again, about the yard?”

  This was much more than casual, even for a woman of Miss Honeyman’s insolence; there was a point to it, if only Margaret’s tonsil, pulsing painfully, would allow her to grasp it. She took refuge in a Hilary-like maneuver, saying to Lena as the girl slipped into the hall, “Has a man come here, asking about yard work?”

  Lena said no in her soft anxious voice, and Miss Honeyman frowned at her gloves. “How very odd. I don’t suppose you have his address? I know Isabel had him, she must have it jotted down somewhere.”

  “I haven’t seen it.” Something rang in Margaret’s mind, an echo, something about the gloves. “In any case, I imagine my sister and her husband would prefer to make any such arrangement themselves.”

  She said it with the other woman’s own deprecating smile, and got a small raspberry twitch in return. “Oh, of course, if they . . . We’re generally swamped here, you know, with requests for finding help for newcomers. But possibly your sister knows of someone and simply hasn’t gotten around to having him come.”

  Margaret’s anger slipped its leash. “Possibly, but I don’t know. In the East we rather like old gum wrappers and dead leaves. We think it makes a place look lived-on. And before I forget—” the cold haughty stare drove her on “—you did find a letter of Mrs. Foale’s, didn’t you, in the pantry drawer one day when you were here? I remember seeing it there, and although it wasn’t unopened mail it was correspondence, and I only realized that Mrs. Foale might want it after you had left with the address book.”

  The vigas seemed to echo: no one had been so challenging with Elizabeth Honeyman in uncounted years. She could not be sure that she had not been observed from the kitchen, and she said after the barest pause, “Yes, thank you, I did find it,” but her flush heightened. “It was a letter of condolence from someone called Grace, saying that she would have come out for a visit but her daughter was expecting her first child.”

  She was plainly telling a truth that had maddened her—and her temper matched Margaret’s; it was evident in her very control. “I’m quite sure Isabel didn’t want the letter, but it was kind of you to worry, and very—thorough.”

  How bitterly disappointed she had been in the interesting word “pregnant,” which she had pounced upon and found to be less than ashes. Ironic, really, that with all its innocence the letter had been Hilary’s springboard and, in a sense, Margaret’s.

  “Thank you,” said Margaret in the same steady tone, “and now I’m supposed to be in bed, so if you’ll excuse me—”

  The front door closed behind Miss Honeyman’s totally silent departure, but there was, moments later, no corroborating slam from the door of her smart little foreign car. Was she possibly prowling around the grounds seeking further indictment in broken twigs and leaf-tangled iris? No, because she hadn’t come here for that in the first place. She had come to find Julio Garcia, because she had not seen the small newspaper mention of his death, or she had come to find out how much Margaret knew about him. The state of the grounds had been a pretext, just as the cookbook had been in the beginning, just as—

  But the message from Mrs. Foale had not been a pretext, had it?

  Margaret, standing automatically at one of the living room windows, watched an erect tweedy figure pass the end of the adobe wall and disappear from view. Miss Honeyman was walking today, doubtless to preserve her superior constitution.

  As long as Lena was in the house, Hilary was happily, even smugly occupied. Margaret’s deep feverish sleep had taken the edge off her exhaustion, and for one of the few times in her adult life her throat refused cigarette smoke. Why didn’t Kincaid call, to say that he had found Cornelia and Philip, or that he hadn’t found them, or that—?

  No. She would not think about that, not yet. She didn’t have to, because while she was staring frantically at the silent telephone it rang.

  Cornelia and Philip had spent last night at the Golden Drifts Motel in Hawks, Arizona. It was the manager’s impression that they meant to go on to Stagerock; he had recommended the Alvarado there, although it was a long drive for Mrs. Byrne.

  “Why?” demanded Margaret instantly. “Why did he think it was a long drive for Cornelia?”

  “Long drive for anybody,” said Kincaid, but Margaret’s queer new intimacy with his voice knew he was holding something—perhaps only his own bafflement-back from her. “They aren’t at the Alvarado yet, I checked. I’ll try again in about an hour, but I thought I’d let you know.”

  “Cornelia wasn’t sick?”

  “He’d have said if she was. I told him I was her brother-in-law.”

  But would he? Margaret wondered. Mightn’t the average motel, mindful of adverse publicity or annoying questions later, wash its hands of an ailing stranger?

  “. . . told you I might be wrong,” Kincaid’s voice was saying briskly into her ear, and then, “How do you feel?” To almost anyone else Margaret would have said automatically, “Oh, not bad.” To Kincaid she said, “Awful.”

  “Is your girl going to stay?”

  “Until Hilary’s had her dinner anyway.”

  “Get her to stay all night,” said Kincaid sharply, and the wire hummed a little before he added, “Mind your own business, Kincaid.”

  “No, I will if I can.” Because she wanted
to know, but even more because she hated to relinquish the sound of his voice, Margaret said, “Did you send Elizabeth Honeyman for Mrs. Foale’s address book?”

  “Nobody sends Elizabeth Honeyman anywhere,” said Kincaid dryly. “My guess is that she was always a would-be Mrs. Foale, and now, with one thing and another, she hopes she’s onto something.”

  And that was it, the busy preoccupation with the gloves, the small habitual gesture just after which the woman had said, “I know that if it hadn’t been for me, Hadley wouldn’t have known where to turn . . .”

  What a shock, after all her attentions and solicitude, her expectancy of being mistress of a house she loved, to find that Hadley had been married in the East to a woman so much younger than she, and a woman he hardly knew at that. No wonder that, fresh from finding out that Kincaid was curious about the widowed Isabel, she had come to the house to grasp whatever correspondence might be there, hoping to find something that could be used as a weapon against her successful rival. Miss Honeyman’s capacity for affection could not be guessed at; her vindictive pride and possessiveness could.

  Margaret, about to speak, grew suddenly aware of an odd airiness on the line, like a hole in an otherwise solid pipe. She said rapidly, “Call me, will you, Jerome?” and replaced the receiver and went silently back through the house.

  Lena was waxing the kitchen floor. Hilary, trapped, was on top of her bed trying to thrust her feet into a wall of sheet. She said hastily as Margaret came in, “I have to go to the bathroom sometimes.”

  Margaret lifted the sheet free of its tangle. “Hilary—” She was suddenly too spent and too sore, too released from immediate tension to want to go on, but she did. “You must not listen on telephone extensions, ever. That’s eavesdropping.”

  Hilary’s brow darkened, but very effortfully. “I thought if you were sick you wouldn’t want to be bothered so I was going to say you were out.”

  “But then when . . .” It wasn’t worth it, not with Hilary. Congestion in her lungs, Wimple had said; was that the pressure she felt low between her shoulder-blades, like a balled fist driving in? She could understand Cornelia’s submissiveness now. “Is there anything you’d like before I lie down for a while?”

  “Lena’s here,” said Hilary contentedly, and then as Margaret reached the door, “Do you really think Cornelia’s sick again?”

  In some way the question completely undid Margaret, or perhaps the full realization of Cornelia’s situation hadn’t penetrated before. She said with unaccustomed gentleness, “No. She’s fine. She’ll be—home soon,” and escaped before Hilary could see her cry.

  The bending of her mouth into tears was nonsense, and she blew her nose fiercely, swallowed another aspirin with difficulty, and lay down to huddle under her coverlet again. Instinct told her not to get undressed and between the sheets her body longed for. You were so helpless in a nightgown.

  Not that she could help anyway. Even if she and Hilary weren’t sick, even if she didn’t have to monitor the telephone for a possible call from Cornelia, she had no car and only a limited amount of funds. Given both, she was completely lost in a strange part of the country. She had heard vaguely about the immensity of the Southwest, but it took maps and mileage distances to give even a small indication of the vastness.

  But if Cornelia died, she would always wonder what it was that she had left undone.

  She lay quietly, breathing shallowly over the pain in her back, and gradually Cornelia presented herself in the short ice-green silk dress and wreath of pale pink roses she had worn as flower girl at the wedding of somebody or other. She had a Dutch bob, like a lot of children her age, but hers was shiningly fair. She was endearingly plump; Margaret, inheriting the dress, had looked like a twig in a tent.

  Bangs, plumpness . . . Cornelia turned disconcertingly into Mrs. Foale, saying beseechingly, “No, don’t— don’t. . .”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” said Lena apologetically, “but I brought the newspaper, and I have to go now.”

  The high windows behind the dimity curtains were almost dark. Margaret struggled awake, caught in the half-panic of her dream, and said, “Lena, you couldn’t possibly stay tonight? Not to do anything, just so there’d be someone in the house?”

  Lena was sorry, but she was taking care of her sister’s children while her sister was in Juarez.

  The darkening windows should not have struck her with such dread. “Is there someone else you know of, who might come in just for the night?”

  Lena thought, and shook her small neat head regretfully. She said she had given Hilary her dinner; would Margaret like something before she left?

  Dinner. Margaret thought a little wildly of the Frenchman who, queried as to whether he had lunched while crossing the English Channel, had replied, “Am contraire.” She said she would get something later, and went with Lena to the door.

  She hadn’t realized, until the house closed silently in around her and Hilary, how comforting the girl’s presence had been. The details of her dream had vanished but the dangerous atmosphere remained, almost bewitched, as though the night-blackened windows and door panels, the shadowy vigas, the great areas of darkness left by thrifty Lena, would be willing props for a re-enactment; were, in fact, waiting.

  Drivenly, feeling as vulnerable on all sides as on the night Julio Garcia had gone weaving off into the dark, Margaret switched on lamps, took another of her capsules and settled down to wait.

  Even with her whole being concentrated on the telephone she made herself comb the newspaper for any mention of Garcia. There was none. He had apparently been in trouble locally before, and certainly on his first appearance at the house he had been drinking heavily. His wavy stance, his shiny eyes and heavy breathing, his slurry words: “Missa Foale . . .”

  Mrs. Foale? Or Mr. Foale, the only designation he could find for Philip?

  Chances were the police would assume a brawl, in the course of which somebody had produced a gun, at some time before the hit-and-run accident. And it was just possible, Margaret reminded herself, staring blindly at the newspaper, listening for the telephone. It was possible, too, that both of Philip’s previous wives had died of natural causes, that he had no designs on Cornelia’s life, that they would both drive up in a day or two, tanned and rested and cheerful.

  Tomorrow, she realized shockedly, gazing at the paper’s date. Philip, waving from the driveway, had called, “See you on the twentieth,” and tomorrow was the twentieth.

  Wasn’t this when it would happen, if it were going to happen? The vacation as planned, interrupted by tragedy just as the happy couple neared home: it appeared in the newspapers so often that it bore the stamp of truth.

  The telephone rang, and Margaret reached it before it could ring again.

  Fourteen

  CORNELIA and Philip had registered at the Alvarado less than an hour ago. The desk man had told Kincaid that he believed Mrs. Byrne was lying down in her room, but after a brief off-telephone conversation with somebody else it was established that the Byrnes had gone out to dinner. After consideration, Kincaid had not left a message; instead, he had gotten a list of dining places from the desk man. Stagerock wasn’t large, and the list was short. He was about to start calling, but had wanted to let Margaret know.

  Leaning on the pantry counter, she felt spineless and light-headed with relief. The mere fact that Philip had taken Cornelia to the place recommended, that they were so definitely, any-nightishly out to dinner, seemed so immensely reassuring that she wondered briefly if she had been going mad for the past few days, or if the whole thing were a wishful projection of some unconscious jealousy.

  Stagerock was, as she remembered the map, more than another day’s drive from here, but at least they had been located, pinpointed out of an unknown vastness. It was not until Kincaid’s voice was gone and the peculiar personality of the house closed about her again that she realized nothing had changed.

  Philip did not know that he had been located. He didn
’t know about the snapshot of himself on the porch of this house, or the laboratory number Cornelia had written down, or Hilary’s untiring detective work. He was probably unaware of Kincaid’s existence. Until Kincaid got him on the telephone and warned him that he was being watched this time, he would be proceeding according to plan.

  And—the desk man had thought Mrs. Byrne was lying down in her room, the manager at the last motel had thought the drive might be too tiring for Mrs. Byrne. Cornelia was ordinarily an indestructible traveller, thought Margaret over a slow heavy gathering of her heartbeats, and certainly she had looked fresh enough when she left. Thinner, shadow-eyed the night before, but radiant on the morning of departure, as though she had already gathered strength from the open sunny miles ahead, the leaving behind of the house and Hilary.

  She was sick again, then. Or she was being made to appear sick, so that disinterested people, miles apart, could bear witness—

  At once miles away and directly in Margaret’s ear, Hilary had begun to shriek.

  “There couldn’t have been a man,” repeated Margaret, in command of herself again five minutes later. “Hilary, your windows are too high for anyone to look in. You saw a reflection, that’s all.”

  Hilary gave her a look of scarlet and belligerent contempt. “People stand on things to look in windows, and the light was out.”

  Margaret could well believe it. The crash following Hilary’s outcry had been her bed-tray, and the floor was sprinkled with shattered china, a rich deposit of Jello, and a slippery trail of asparagus that Hilary’s heel had struck as she dived back into her bed. It seemed impossible, through Margaret’s pounding head and throat and chest, that she would ever be capable of cleaning all that up. She said with an edged reaction from terror, “And what was your light doing out?”