Frightened Bowerbird — Frances Y. McHugh

After a strenuous year as a free lance commercial artist, working overtime to meet deadlines, Jill Grayson felt the need of a month of complete peace and quiet. So she rented a shack on a Maine beach, where she could eat, sleep and read murder mysteries.

She had barely unlocked the door, however, before her nearest neighbor dropped by to warn her to be certain to lock it before retiring and to warn her her life might be in jeopardy. Even as she wondered about her visitor's bona fides, she realized uneasily that, apart from this stranger, there was nothing between her and the village but a Victorian monstrosity of a house inhabited by her landlady, and notable for an aviary whose winged denizens truly merited the appellation of "queer birds."