Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith Page A

storeroom for paper and types. To make the building moisture-proof Vic had covered the outside with roof insulation and then covered the whole with sheets of tin which he had then painted. A somewhat rutty road wound from the plant to a larger dirt road about two hundred yards away. The plant was a ten-minute drive from where Vic lived.
           On the day that he received the call about Charles De Lisle, Melinda was not home at one o'clock. Vic ate a solitary lunch and read a book at the table. He felt curiously disturbed, as if somebody were looking at him from behind as he walked around in the empty house. He put on the Gregorian chants and turned them up loud so that he could hear them when he went out to put his herb boxes back into the garage just before three. There had been no note from Melinda in the house. Vic had even looked in her room for one, though Melinda had never left one there. She usually put a note in the middle of the living room floor when she left one.
           Was she with Charles De Lisle? The question had risen to the surface of his mind like a bubble, making a small, unpleasant explosion when the words had come. Why should he think that? He remembered Charles De Lisle's face, but very vaguely, as being on the swarthy side—narrow, dark, and he had heavily brilliantined hair. Vic remembered thinking that he looked like an Italian crook. He had seen him only once, he thought, one afternoon about three weeks ago when he had had a cocktail with Melinda in the Lord Chesterfield bar. Melinda hadn't made a sin comment about his piano playing, Vic thought, which was unusual.
           He put Charles De Lisle out of his mind. One thing he didn't want to be guilty of was suspicion before suspicion was necessary. Melinda was always innocent until she proved herself guilty.
           Melinda was still not at home when Vic arrived at a quarter to seven that evening. Trixie had been home since four-thirty, and Vic asked her if she had heard from her mother.
           "Nope," Trixie said indifferently. She was lying on her stomach on the floor, reading the funny paper page of the 'New Wesleyan'.
           Trixie was used to her mother's being out at odd times. She had had it for the better part of her life.
           "How about a game of Scrabble?" Vic asked her.
           Trixie looked up at him, thinking it over. Her little oval, sun-kissed face reminded Vic suddenly of an acorn, a shiny, brand-new acorn just dropped from a tree, with a pointed tip that was Trixie's chin and a cap that was her straight bangs and the straight-down hair that had just been cut so that it reached the middle of her ears. "All right!" Trixie said finally, and jumped up and got the Scrabble box from a bookshelf.
           The phone rang and Vic answered it. It was Melinda.
           "I'll be home around eight, Vic. Go ahead and eat if you want to, but I'm bringing somebody by for a drink—if you don't mind," she added heavily, and he could tell she had had a few drinks already. "Okay?"
           "Okay," he said. He knew whom she was bringing, too. "Okay, I'll be seeing you."
           "Bye-bye."
           He hung up "Mommie won't be home for about an hour, shug," Vic said. "Are you getting hungry?"
           "I'm not hungry," Trixie said.
           Trixie loved to eat with them. She would wait hours—though Vic's deadline for her was nine so that she could have her dinner when they had theirs. Usually they ate at about eight-thirty. They wouldn't tonight, Vic thought. He forced himself to concentrate on the game. He and Trixie played with her making two moves to his one in order to even out the score a little. Trixie was already a better speller than her mother, Vic thought, though he did not think it diplomatic to tell Trixie so. Vic had taught her to read when she was three. They were well into their second game, Trixie had eaten a chocolate doughnut with ketchup, and