Hours to Kill
face with something disarming about it, an air of usually getting what he wanted. “Mrs. Foale?”“Mrs. Foale is abroad and has rented this house,” said Margaret. Her wet head felt cased in ice by the incoming air.
“Abroad?” She might have said in orbit. Not a brogue, Margaret thought, unconsciously cataloguing things in the order of their importance, but there was one not far behind. “You wouldn’t have her address, by any chance?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Wait a minute,” said the man, staring at her, and then, parenthetically, “Should you be standing there in the open door if you’re waiting for the doctor?” He stepped inside, but lightly; not quite closing the door behind him, carefully not frightening her. “You don’t remember me.”
“I’m afraid not,” said Margaret again, distantly, but she wasn’t frightened.
“Jerome Kincaid,” he said expectantly. “And you’re— wait, don’t tell me—you lived in Connecticut, in Fairfield . . . you used to arrive at Rumford Elementary School in an old green Chevrolet . . . your father was an etcher . . . Russell. Margery Russell.”
“Margaret,” she corrected, and had a sudden dizzyingly clear remembrance of the school playground, green, shady, with swings and slides.
“And Miss Hatch,” he said, intercepting her. “I was back in Fairfield last year and she’s still principal and still going strong. You had a sister in my class—Comelia, was it? Blonde. Is she out here in New Mexico with you?”
Margaret said yes, guardedly. They were both sitting down now, she on the brocade settee, Jerome Kincaid in a wine-colored wing chair near the piano. Did she actually remember his name, or was that persuasion? Childhood held so many half-memories—a particular pair of mittens, a set of long eyelashes above freckled cheeks, a boy who defended your turn on the slide. Imagination could easily creep in.
This man had turned the doorknob, had planned on entering the house unobserved.
Margaret said, lashes down, “Rumford . . . for heaven s sake. Do you remember Willy Burnett?”
He tilted his head frowningly. “Somebody at school?”
“Yes. Oh, you must remember—somebody threw a snowball with a stone in it and he lost the sight of one eye, just after Christmas vacation.”
She was deliberately pinpointing it for him, inviting him to step into a trap, because there had been no Willy Burnett. Kincaid considered it, appearing to try for recollection, and shook his head. “No—but I do remember Eleanor Something, a friend of Cornelia’s, doing a back flip at the beach one summer and cutting her head open on the diving board. Eleanor was fine, and Cornelia passed out cold on the float.”
How well she remembered that. Cornelia coming groggily out of her faint on the warm, salty white-painted float, Margaret swimming back to shore with her, side-stroke, so that she would have her face out of the water and one arm free in case of trouble.
She felt a tremendous ease; she forgot that she sat there, towel cloaking her shoulders, hair drying as wispily as a child’s, until the clock chimed warningly. She jumped up distractedly. “Oh Lord, Hilary’s out of the movies.”
Jerome Kincaid stood too, smiling. “Hilary’s not yours, I take it?”
“No, nor Cornelia’s. She and Philip were taking care of her for friends when Cornelia got sick—I’ll have to rush.”
“Couldn’t I pick her up for you? My car’s outside.”
“The very last thing I told her was about strange men, but if you’d be kind enough to give me a lift down to the theatre—”
Belatedly, Margaret remembered her towel and her hair. She rushed into the bedroom, used a lipstick hastily, put on a navy chiffon scarf and her lemon wool coat, caught up her pocketbook, and came rushing back.
Kincaid said, smiling at her as he held the door, “Do you run everywhere? How old is this Hilary?”
“A terrible eight.”
“Parents?”
“Reconciling in Mexico City.”
“Oh.”
They spoke with a comfortable elision that Margaret * could not remember with anyone outside her own family.
Kincaid seemed to have an exact picture of the Reverton situation in his mind, although of course he could not. Margaret said randomly as the car moved down the hill, “What did you want with Mrs. Foale?”
“Nothing. We have a friend in common in New York, and I was at a loose end, so—”
So you thought you’d slip in and have a look at her house and her things while she was out, finished Margaret’s mind. The comfortableness was gone, because for all his odd friendliness Kincaid considered it no business of hers what he had wanted with Mrs. Foale and had told her an easy lie instead.
The feeling of having intruded, of having earned a rebuff, was so sharp that Margaret could feel her face color—but there was the theatre and there was Hilary, looking sour and, at the sight of the car, adopting a pained squint.
“Is that Hilary?”
“Yes.”
“She looks like a handful.”
“She’s very nice, really,” said Margaret, and had the small satisfaction of a lie of her own. “Thanks very much for the ride.”
“But you’re not getting out? Tell her to jump in, and I’ll drive you back.”
“Thanks,” said Margaret steadily, “but it’s a lovely afternoon and I want the walk.”
Kincaid knew exactly what had happened; she saw a betraying flicker of muscle at the comer of his mouth. “Is that good for wet hair? And what about the doctor?” Margaret gazed at him speechlessly, thinking, Go to the devil, saying finally with dignity, “He’s obviously going to be very late on his rounds today. Thank you once more . . .”
She turned away. A horn sounded impatiently behind Kincaid, but before he put the car into gear he said, “I’m not due on the Coast for a few days. I’ll call you if I may.”
He was gone. Hilary said at Margaret’s side, “Who was that?”
“A friend. How was the movie?”
“All right, but I have an awful headache. I told you,” said Hilary reproachfully, “that I wasn’t allowed to go to the movies.”
Margaret felt an instant pang of contrition. Hilary’s eyes looked sharp as a hawk’s, and she made no objection to