A Game for the Living Read Online Free PDF

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.
    â€œWhere 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.
    â€œWhere were you this evening?” Theodore asked in his deep voice.
    â€œHome. I was home.”
    â€œAll 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.
    â€œYou weren’t here this evening?” Theodore asked him.
    â€œYes. I was here,” Ramón said.
    â€œAt what time?” asked Sauzas.
    Ramón looked as if he were trying to reach far back in time. He suddenly bent over, clutching his head.
    â€œWhat’s the matter with him?” Sauzas asked Theodore impatiently.
    â€œPerhaps 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.
    â€œAt what time were you here, Ramón?” Sauzas asked more gently. “Did you have dinner here?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œAnd then what? How long did you stay?”
    Ramón did not answer.
    â€œDid you kill her, Ramón?” Sauzas asked.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œNo?” 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.
    â€œI 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.”
    â€œAt what time?”
    â€œI think—about ten-thirty, maybe later.”
    â€œDid you have a quarrel with Lelia tonight, Ramón?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œYou didn’t quarrel about Teodoro? You hoped he would come?”
    â€œYes,” Ramón said, nodding.
    â€œI sent Lelia a postcard saying I would be in tonight,” Theodore said, but Sauzas did not seem to be listening.
    â€œAnd did you bring her these flowers, Ramón?”
    â€œNo,” said Ramón, looking at them.
    â€œWere the flowers here when you were here?” Sauzas asked, feeling the flowers’ stems.
    â€œI don’t remember,” Ramón replied.
    â€œDid you eat at this table?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œThen 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.
    â€œLook 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?”
    â€œYes. And I dried them.”
    One of the detectives, at Sauzas’s order, was wiping Ramón’s