A Game for the Living by Patricia Highsmith Page A

Ramón Otero in prison. Why don’t you go and question him?” With his begonia pot, he advanced towards the door, and the two men stepped back to make way for him. Then they followed him through the dining area and into the living-room, where they gaped for the second time at the stairway that curved up out of sight with no visible means of support.
    â€œWould you like to see the first floor?” Theodore asked ungraciously.
    The detective, bending towards a small nude of Lelia that Theodore had painted, did not answer. The fat officer yawned, exposing several gold teeth. They tramped up the carpeted stairs to Theodore’s bedroom, his bathroom, the guest-room and its bathroom, the little front corner room where he painted, and finally even Inocenza’s room and bathroom, which were the only rooms on the second floor.
    â€œLots of bathrooms,” commented the police officer.
    The tiny red bulb was still burning beneath the effigy of the Virgin made of sea-shells and pink and white coral that a friend of Inocenza had sent her from Acapulco. A reproduction of a bad painting of the Last Supper advertised as well Bayer’s Cafiaspirina, bore a calendar of the year with all the saints’ name days on it, and wished to all Prosperidad y Bienestar para el Año 1957 . They went downstairs.
    â€œYou are not to leave the house,” said the fat officer, “without notifying us.”
    â€œI have no intention of leaving the house,” Theodore replied.
    They copied his telephone number from the telephone in the living-room, then drifted out of the door, taking time to bend and inspect one of the blossoming cacti that bordered the patio. Theodore made sure the iron gates had latched after them, then closed his house door.
    He carried his suitcase up to his bedroom, interrupted his unpacking to take a bath, but the water was cool because the heater was not turned up. He went down to the kitchen, turned it up, collected his other plants and stood them in the kitchen sink and its wash-basin, then went up and resumed his unpacking. There was a little horse of glazed black Oaxaca clay that he had bought for Lelia, and a mermaid of grey unglazed clay, strumming a guitar, for Ramón. Besides this, he had bought Lelia an antique bracelet of silver set with garnets, and for Ramón half a dozen hand-woven ties. He tossed the presents on his bed and felt that the better part of his existence had been torn from him and destroyed. He bathed before the water was quite hot enough, but he was so eager to be clean he did not mind. Then he shaved and put on clean linen, a blue and red striped tie, and a freshly pressed grey suit.
    He walked out of the room, down the stairs, snatched up his keys from the cocktail table and went out. He pressed the bell of the house next door.
    Constancia, fat and brown and in a pink uniform, opened the door. “Ah, Señor Schie-bale-hoo!” she cried shrilly. “ Pase Usted! Benvenido! Com’ está Usted? ”
    He could see from her tentative smile that she had heard the news. “All right, Constancia. And you?”
    â€œWell, thank you!” she said mechanically.
    â€œAnd Señora Velasquez?”
    â€œShe is well, too, and so is the cat. Wait till you see him! Leo! Leo!” She preceded him through the grape-arboured patio, calling to the cat on either side, assuming in spite of the murder of his friend that he would be extremely interested in seeing his cat. “We do not let him out on the street. His girl friends have missed him,” Constancia said, smiling.
    The door of the house was open, and Olga Velasquez rushed across the foyer to greet him. She was about forty, small and small-boned and very chic with her short blonde-tinted hair and her tiny high-heeled sandals. “Theodore!” She reached up for his shoulders and made a gesture of kissing both cheeks, though she came only to the middle of his tie. “I have just seen