A Game for the Living

  Sauzas nodded. “Enrique!” he called to one of the detectives in the bedroom. “Come and take the señor’s fingerprints!”

  The detective came in at once and got busy with Theodore’s hands, using Lelia’s work table to rest on.

  “Señora de Silva,” Sauzas said, “how often do you see Señor Schiebelhut here?”

  She shrugged quickly, like an embarrassed schoolgirl. “I see him—maybe once a week. But Lelia has told me that he comes more often.”

  “You live in the next apartment. Have you ever heard them quarrelling?”

  “Yes. Sometimes,” she said with a look at Theodore. “Oh, not seriously, I think. I don’t know.”

  “And how often does Ramón come here?”

  She shrugged again. “The same. The same as Don Teodoro.”

  “What is he like? Do you like him?”

  Sra. de Silva was looking for the answers in the corners of the room. “Ah, si. He is nice. He is very handsome. He is all right.”

  “Which one of the men did she like better?”

  A long hesitation.

  The door opened. A short, plump man with a satchel came in, greeted Sauzas with a wave of his hand, and Sauzas gestured towards the bedroom.

  “Well, which did she like better?” Sauzas repeated.

  “I think—I do not really know, señor. I think she liked them both. Otherwise she would not have let them come here so often. Lelia had many friends. Many times her friends rang up my house to speak to her. I have heard her on the telephone. She was not afraid to say no to people she did not want to see,” Sra. de Silva finished with an air of pride.

  “This man’s fingerprints are on the window-sill,” one of the detectives said to Sauzas.

  Theodore cursed himself for his clumsiness. “I think I leaned on the window-sill, looking into the patio.”

  “Are they facing out?” Sauzas asked the detective, who, not knowing what to answer, went back to the bedroom with the fingerprint papers.

  Carlos Hidalgo arrived, escorted by one of the young policemen. He was drunker than when Theodore had seen him last—Theodore knew the signs—though he looked merely stunned and bewildered until he saw Theodore. Then he rushed to him and put his hands on Theodore’s shoulders.

  “Teodoro, old man! What has happened? Lelia’s been murdered?”

  Theodore started to speak and couldn’t. Carlos wouldn’t have been able to hear him, anyway, because the young policeman was bawling out Carlos’s name and address as if he were announcing him at a ball; then Carlos started for the bedroom, where the detectives were prowling about, and the fat police officer caught him by the arm. Carlos staggered around, looking with wide, frightened eyes at the policemen, at the room itself.

  “Was this man at your house tonight?” Sauzas asked Carlos.

  “Yes.” Carlos nodded vigorously. “He had just come from the airport. He had his suitcase with him.”

  “From what time to what time?”

  Carlos looked cagily at Theodore, even in his drunkenness wary and mistrustful of the motives of the police.

  But Theodore gave him no sign.

  “I think from about twelve—to maybe about one,” Carlos said, which Theodore found surprisingly accurate.

  “You can’t say exactly what time he left?”

  “I didn’t see him leave. There’re so many people at the party. Maybe he said good-bye to my wife—” And it might have been a lie, from the furtive way Carlos glanced on either side of him as he spoke.

  “I didn’t say good-bye,” Theodore said. “I didn’t see either of you when I was ready to leave, so I just left. I then took a libre to Lelia’s.”

  “A libre to Lelia’s,” Carlos repeated, as if he were trying to fix an unlikely fact in his mind.

  “So,” Sauzas said, turning to Theodore. “A libre to Lelia’s after telling everybody at the party you were on your way home, probably. You meant to come here, kill her as quickly as possible, and take another libre home, no? That way you would have an alibi.”

  “Oh-h, no-o!” Carlos said in his loud, stage director’s voice. “This man here—”

  “Or maybe you came here from the airport, killed her, then went to the party? But what did you come back for? Did you forget something?”

  “My plane only arrived at eleven-five,” Theodore said. “It is the plane from Oaxaca. That you can verify. It was at least forty minutes before I reached the city in all the traffic. I went immediately to the Hidalgos’.”

  “But why did you sneak out of the Hidalgos’ house without saying good-bye to anybody?”

  “I didn't sneak out. Everybody was busy!”

  Carlos laughed suddenly. “That’s right! Busy! We were very busy tonight!” Then he sobered, seeing that Theodore and Sauzas were staring at him. “Teodoro,” Carlos said sympathetically. “Hasn’t anybody got a drink here?” He walked toward Lelia’s kitchen, and Theodore saw him stop as he saw her body in the room beyond, then continue with drunken determination into the kitchen.

  “Don’t touch anything in there!” shouted the fat officer, who had started after him.

  Theodore heard arguing voices and then the sound of liquor being poured into a glass, and he knew it would be Lelia’s yellow tequila.

  “My friend needs a drink,” Carlos said with dignity, and walked towards Theodore with glass and bottle.

  Theodore took the glass gratefully. It chattered against his teeth.

  More questions. How long had Carlos known Theodore Schiebelhut? Had he known Lelia Ballesteros? How long? Did she have many men friends? She had many men and women friends. How had Theodore looked when he came to the party this evening?

  “Fine,” Carlos said, “absolutely fine.” He took Theodore’s glass from him and poured some more.

  “That’s enough of that!” said the fat officer.

  “This is for me,” Carlos said, and drank some from the glass, then passed it back to Theodore before the fat officer could take it from him.

  Theodore felt suddenly exhausted. He walked to the couch, sat down, and leaned to one side on his elbow.

  The plump doctor waddled slowly into the room, and Sauzas turned to him. “She has been dead—oh, two to three hours. And she has been raped,” the doctor said wearily, fastening the last latch of his satchel.

  Raped. Theodore felt the ultimate twist of disgust in his throat. He sat forward on the couch, holding his trembling knees down with his forearms. He pushed his cuff back nervously and saw that his watch said one-fifty.

  The detective was questioning Carlos about Ramón.

  “I don’t know Ramón so well. He is in a different line of work,” Carlos said somewhat prissily. “I have seen him perhaps three times in my life.”

  He had seen him many more times, Theodore thought, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered until they saw Ramón. He was startled by Carlos shouting, “Mutilated?” in an astonished tone.

  Carlos looked at Theodore blankly. “She was mutilated?” he asked, as if this somehow changed everything.

  And then Ramón entered the room.

  Theodore stood up.

  Ramón looked around in a startled way, then fixed his eyes on Theodore. Ramón was of medium height, with black hair and dark eyes, and his body was strong and compact with that mysterious thing, a certain vitality, or perhaps only proportion, which was immensely attractive to women. His face could change expression in an instant, yet it was always handsome, even unshaven, even when his hair was tousled or uncut, the kind of face women always looked at; and now as he stood in the room in his inexpensive suit and with his hair mussed, Theodore felt that everyone must be thinking that Ramón had been her favorite.

  “Where is she?” Ramón asked.

  The policeman who held his arm pulled him towa
rds the bedroom, and the detectives trailed after them to watch Ramón’s reaction. Theodore also followed. Lelia lay on her back, and her head rested on her pillow, mangled arms at her sides. It was a horrible attitude of repose, as if she had just lain down for a moment, fully clothed, and something unbelievable had happened to her. To Theodore’s battered senses it seemed that the blood might be dark red paint that they could simply wash off her. Except that if one looked closely, Lelia had no nose.

  Ramón put his hand over his mouth. His shoulders crumpled. He made a strange muffled sound. The detective pulled at his shoulder, pulled hard, but Ramón whirled out of his hold and flung himself down by the bed, gripping Lelia’s knees, which the pink blanket just covered. He pressed his face against her thighs and sobbed. Theodore looked away, reminded of Ramón’s Catholicism—of this aspect of it—that made him want to touch something, embrace something that was no longer alive. Theodore was at the time aware that he had not touched Lelia, not with any affection, that he had simply turned her over as a stranger might have done, and he regretted that, in the privacy before anybody had come, he had not touched her, not kissed her blood-smeared forehead.

  “Where were you this evening, Ramón Otero?” Now it was the fat little police officer, beginning like a machine.

  A detective crossed the room in two strides and pulled Ramón away from the bed. The question had to be repeated and repeated. Ramón might have lost his voice or his senses. He stared at Theodore again.

  “Where were you this evening?” Theodore asked in his deep voice.

  “Home. I was home.”

  “All evening?” asked Sauzas.

  Ramón looked at him with dull eyes. One side of his face was wet with tears. He held his right hand against his stomach.

  “You weren’t here this evening?” Theodore asked him.

  “Yes. I was here,” Ramón said.

  “At what time?” asked Sauzas.

  Ramón looked as if he were trying to reach far back in time. He suddenly bent over, clutching his head.

  “What’s the matter with him?” Sauzas asked Theodore impatiently.

  “Perhaps it’s a headache. He’s prone to them,” Theodore said. “Sit down, Ramón.”

  One of the detectives pulled Ramón towards the long table where there was a chair. Ramón collapsed in it, and a detective took his right hand and began inking the fingertips.

  “At what time were you here, Ramón?” Sauzas asked more gently. “Did you have dinner here?”

  “Yes.”

  “And then what? How long did you stay?”

  Ramón did not answer.

  “Did you kill her, Ramón?” Sauzas asked.

  “No.”

  “No?” Carlos Hidalgo asked challengingly.

  Sauzas waved Carlos back. “What time did you arrive for dinner?” Sauzas waited a moment, then approached Ramón suddenly as if he were going to slap him into sensibility, but he stopped as Ramón, without a change in his dazed expression, began to talk.

  “I came here about eight, and we had dinner. We thought Teo might come. We were going to have a party. I brought some rum. Then I didn’t feel well. I went home.”

  “At what time?”

  “I think—about ten-thirty, maybe later.”

  “Did you have a quarrel with Lelia tonight, Ramón?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t quarrel about Teodoro? You hoped he would come?”

  “Yes,” Ramón said, nodding.

  “I sent Lelia a postcard saying I would be in tonight,” Theodore said, but Sauzas did not seem to be listening.

  “And did you bring her these flowers, Ramón?”

  “No,” said Ramón, looking at them.

  “Were the flowers here when you were here?” Sauzas asked, feeling the flowers’ stems.

  “I don’t remember,” Ramón replied.

  “Did you eat at this table?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then the flowers must have arrived after you left. Did she say she was going out to buy flowers?”

  Once more, Ramón tried to think. “I don’t remember,” he said miserably, shaking his head.

  “Look in the kitchen for a paper that might have come around the flowers,” Sauzas said to one of the detectives. “Look carefully!”

  Theodore stared at the flowers, not knowing what to make of them. He had not thought that Ramón brought them. Lelia might have gone out to get flowers after Ramón left, but why hadn’t she put them in a vase? Had the murderer accompanied her back to the apartment? But that was inconceivable to Theodore.

  The detective came back and reported no paper that the flowers might have come in.

  Sauzas turned to Ramón, frowning. “She washed the dishes after dinner, Ramón?”

  “Yes. And I dried them.”

  One of the detectives, at Sauzas’s order, was wiping Ramón’s face with a wet towel.

  “Does he take drugs for these headaches?” Sauzas asked Theodore.

  “No. He’s had no drugs. He’s just stunned.” As soon as he had said it, Theodore realized that if Ramón were stunned it would indicate that he had not done the crime.

  “There was a noise on the roof tonight,” Sauzas said to Ramón. “Señora de Silva said she heard something like running footsteps on the roof. Were you here when that happened?”

  “Footsteps on the roof?” Ramón repeated.

  “Ramón, wake up! We haven’t all night to get a little information out of you!” Theodore burst out.

  “Oh, yes, we have all night,” Sauzas said with a chuckle and lit a fresh cigarette. He smoked Gitanes, and the strong bittersweet smell of their ‘caporal’ tobacco was beginning to fill the room. “Well, did you hear the footsteps on the roof?” Sauzas asked.

  “I don’t remember. I don’t think so.”

  A detective stood up abruptly from the table. “His fingerprints are on the bottle,” he said, pointing to the Bacardi on the table. “There is also one of his on the bedstead and on the table by her bed.”

  “What about the window-sill and the knives in the kitchen?” Sauzas asked.

  “There is only one knife with fingerprints, and the fingerprints are those of the woman,” the detective replied.

  “Um-m,” Sauzas said non-committally. “Were you in love with Lelia, Ramón?”

  “Yes,” Ramón said.

  “Did you want to marry her?”

  Ramón’s lips pressed together, then he jumped up from his chair and strode to the door. A detective and the two policemen ran after him and yanked him back. As they turned Ramón round, Theodore saw for a moment a frantic, tired, bewildered expression on his face, then they bounced him into a chair again. He sprang up. “I didn’t do it!” Ramón shouted. “I didn’t! I didn’t!”

  “No one has said you did.”

  Ramón was standing and would not be put back into the chair. A policeman on either side of him held his arms akimbo. “Did you do it, Teo?”

  “No, Ramón, but I found her. I came here and found her,” Theodore said.

  “I don’t believe you! Are those your flowers? Do you deny bringing them?” Ramón’s voice rose hysterically.

  “That remains to be found out, Ramón,” Sauzas said. “Señor Schiebelhut says he came here and crawled through the transom because he had no key—”

  “But he has a key!” Ramón interrupted, jerking at the policeman’s hold.

  “I left it at home. I have no key with me. I saw a light, Ramón, and I called to her.”

  “Search him for a key,” Sauzas said to one of the detectives.

  Theodore patiently emptied his pockets on to the table—wallet, key chain with two keys to his car and two to his house plus a mail-box key, cigarettes, lighter, change, a bu
tton that had fallen from his raincoat—but the detective felt in every pocket for himself. The keys on the chain were tested to see if they fitted the door.

  Sauzas turned to Ramón. “You have her key with you?”

  Ramón nodded, reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out a key-ring with three or four keys on it.

  “Which is hers?” Sauzas asked, and when Ramón singled it out and handed the key-ring to him, he opened the door and tried it. The key worked. “Did you lock the door when you left here, Ramón?”

  “Of course I did not. She was here.”

  “Did you hear her lock the door after you?”

  “No. I don’t remember.”

  “Was she in the habit of keeping the door locked?”

  Ramón hesitated, and Theodore knew there wasn’t any answer to that. Lelia did not have habits like that. She just might or might not lock the door after someone left her.

  “The señorita’s keys,” Sauzas said suddenly. “See if you can find them, Enrique,” he said to the detective who was standing in the hall doorway.

  The detective went back to the bedroom, and Sauzas walked after him.

  Theodore looked into the painted clay bowl on the bookshelf where Lelia often dropped her keys. The bowl was quite empty.

  The keys were not to be found. The detectives looked even in the kitchen for them. The keys were not in any handbag, not in the pocket of any coat, not in any drawer. Theodore and Ramón were asked where she was in the habit of putting them, and both said in the clay bowl on the bookshelf.

  “She was not very orderly,” Theodore said, “but we should be able to find them if they are here.” He was wondering why Ramón would have taken them. Or if somebody else could have taken them, someone who now had access to the apartment.

  “Why did you take her keys, Ramón?” Sauzas asked abruptly.

  “I did not take them.”

  “What did you do with them?”

  Ramón stared back at him and lighted one of his little Carmencitas.

  Sauzas walked up and down the room thoughtfully. “They may still be here—or they may not.” He shrugged. “This would seem to eliminate the drainpipe as a means of exit. The murderer could have locked the door from the outside when he left. We shall have to look over your apartment, Ramón, but that can wait for a little while. Now—” He paused to light a fresh cigarette and looked at Ramón as he inhaled the smoke. “Would you say Señor Schiebelhut is a good friend of yours, Ramón?”