The Black-Eyed Blonde: A Philip Marlowe Novel by Benjamin Black

of a stuff I think is called taffeta, gave off crackling noises and a waft of perfume came out of the folds. “You’re doing a job for my daughter, is that so?” she said.
    I took out my case and matches and lit a cigarette. No, I hadn’t forgotten to offer her one, but she had waved it aside. “Mrs. Langrishe,” I said, “how did you know about me?”
    She chuckled. “How did I track you down, you mean? Aha, that’d be telling, wouldn’t it.” The waiter came back with the teapot and nervously filled her cup. “Look at that, now,” she said to him. “That’s the way it should be, strong enough to trot a mouse on.”
    He smiled with relief. “Thank you, madam,” he said and glanced at me and went away.
    Mrs. Langrishe slopped milk into the tea and added four lumps of sugar. “They won’t let me do this at home,” she said darkly, putting down the sugar tongs. She scowled. “Doctors—pah!”
    I said nothing. I wouldn’t have thought there was anything anyone would be capable of not letting this lady do.
    “Will you have a cup?” she said. I politely said no. Two intakes of tea in one day was more than I could face. She drank from her cup, holding the saucer under her chin. I had the impression that she smacked her lips. “There was talk of a lost necklace,” she said. “Is that so?”
    “Did Clare—did Mrs. Cavendish tell you that?”
    “No.”
    Then it had to have been the husband. I leaned back in the chair and smoked my cigarette, making myself look relaxed. People tend to think private dicks are stupid. I suppose they figure we were too dumb to make it on to the police force and be real detectives. In some instances, they’re not wrong. And sometimes it comes in handy to play the numbskull. It gets folks relaxed, and relaxed folks get careless. However, I could see that wasn’t going to be the case with Mrs. Dorothea Langrishe. She may have looked like the Irish Washerwoman and sounded like a navvy, but she was as sharp as the pin in her hat.
    She put down the cup and saucer and glanced around the room with a scathing eye. “Look at this place,” she said. “A cathouse in Cairo it could be, by the look of it. Not, mind you, that I’ve ever been to Cairo,” she added merrily. She picked up the menu—it had been made to look like an ancient scroll, with fake hieroglyphics in the margins—and held it close to her nose, squinting at it. “Ach,” she said, “I can’t read that, I forgot my specs. Here”—she thrust the menu into my hands—“tell me, have they any cakes?”
    “They have all kinds of cakes,” I said. “Which one would you like?”
    “Have they chocolate cake? I like chocolate.” She put up a fat little hand and waved, and the waiter came. “Tell him,” she said to me.
    I told him: “The lady will try a slice of Triple-Cocoa Fondant Delight.”
    “Very good, sir.” He went away again. He hadn’t asked if I wanted anything. He must have known I was the help, just like him.
    “It’s not about pearls at all that Clare hired you, is it,” Mrs. Langrishe said. She was rooting in her purse and brought out at last a small magnifying glass with a bone handle. “My daughter is not the kind of woman who loses things, especially things like pearl necklaces.”
    I looked at one of the slave girl statues. Her eyes, heavily outlined in black, were tear-shaped and unnaturally long, reaching halfway around the side of her head with its helmet of gold hair. The sculptor had given her a nice bosom and a nicer rear end. Sculptors are like that; they aim to please—to please the men in the room, that is. “I want to ask you again, Mrs. Langrishe,” I said, “how did you hear about me?”
    “Ah, don’t bother your head about that,” she said. “It wasn’t hard to find you.” She gave me a teasing glance. “You’re not the only one able to conduct an investigation, you know.”
    I wasn’t going to be diverted. “Did Mr. Cavendish tell you I’d been at your