A Game for the Living by Patricia Highsmith

smiled a little, awaiting a sign that he was pleased.
    â€œThat’s very fine, Inocenza. And where is the counterpane? I haven’t seen it yet.”
    Inocenza ran to get it from the sofa in the living-room. Theodore had gone by it without seeing it. It was in a bright pink-and-green package.
    The counterpane was made of little sewn-together squares of crochet work, a vast display of patient labor.
    â€œIt’s magnificent,” Theodore said, feeling it between his fingers. “You must put it on my bed at once. I’ll write your Aunt Maria and thank her. It’s very kind of her to do all this work for me.”
    â€œShe would do anything for you!”
    Maria was the aunt whose two children Theodore was putting through the University of Durango.
    Theodore sat down at his solitary place. A new copy of Time lay beside his plate, and he opened it without interest. Next week, he supposed, they would report the Ballesteros case with a photograph of Lelia’s body, perhaps, and get as much fun as they could out of the fact that she had been the mistress of two men who were friends. Theodore had no appetite. He could not even begin on the lamb chop.
    That evening he received a telephone call from an official of the policia, who told him that Lelia’s body had been taken to the agencia funereal he had asked that it be sent to, and that the autopsy revealed the stabs had been made by a knife at least five inches long and probably longer, and the widest of the stabs was an inch and a half wide. Many of the stabs had been four inches deep.
    Theodore then called Josefina and got her consent to fix the funeral for the following afternoon.
    â€œWould you mind telling Ramón about the funeral, Josefina?” Theodore asked. “I don’t think he wants to talk to me just now.”

CHAPTER SIX
    The funeral was at three o’clock the next afternoon at a cemetery some twenty miles from the city. A safari of some thirty cars crept along the ugly, bus-congested Avenida Guatemala eastward, jogged and crept eastward again on the highway that eventually led to Puebla and to Veracruz, where Lelia had been born. Huge, impatient Pemex petrol and Carta Blanca beer trucks pulled into the oncoming lane and tried to get beyond the front of the safari, always failed and had to creep back between two of the funeral cars. Theodore had hired twelve cars to take Lelia’s friends and neighbours and several of her relatives who had come from Veracruz and gathered at Josefina’s house. Theodore himself drove his grey Mercedes-Benz with Carlos and Isabel Hidalgo in the back seat and Olga Velasquez—who had asked Theodore that morning if she might come—in the front seat beside him. In front of him for most of the way was Josefina’s family’s car with her husband Aristeo, their daughter Ignacia and her fiancé Rodolfo, and two other people Theodore did not know. The cemetery was a dry, flat field surrounded by a wall of white-painted brick, behind which grew cypresses of varying heights. On either side of the gates was written in fading black paint:
    POSTRAOS! AQUI LA ETERNIDAD EMPIEZA
    Y ES POLVO AQUI LA MUNDANAL GRANDEZA!
    a legend on nearly every Mexican cemetery that still sent a shiver of awe through Theodore—even though he did not believe in an afterworld. There was no doubt, at any rate, that here worldly grandeur was dust.
    Theodore looked around for Ramón and saw him standing, head down, in the third or fourth row of people who bordered the grave. Ramón did not take his eyes from the casket, and though Theodore could see his tears, his face seemed strangely relaxed. Beside him stood the short, comfortable figure of Arturo Baldin, who was holding his hat respectfully against his stomach.
    The coffin lid was fastened. Lelia’s face had of course been beyond the powers of the embalmers to repair, and Theodore—having heard earlier that she would not be exposed to