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

take money. I’m very rich, you know.”
    “Yes. Your daughter told me.”
    “You could name your price.” I just looked at her. “God, Mr. Marlowe, but you’re a fierce stubborn man.”
    “I’m not,” I said. “I’m just your ordinary Joe, trying to earn a buck and stay honest. There are thousands like me, Mrs. Langrishe—millions. We do our dull jobs, we go home tired in the evenings, and we don’t smell of roses.”
    She said nothing for a while, only sat and looked at me with a half-smile. I was glad to see she’d wiped the cream off her chin. It hadn’t done anything for her, that blob of cow fat. “Have you heard of the Irish Civil War?” she asked.
    That threw me for a second. “I knew of a guy once that fought in some Irish war,” I said. “I think it was the War of Independence.”
    “That came first. Wars of independence usually do, before a civil war. It’s the way of these things. What was your friend’s name?”
    “Rusty Regan. He wasn’t a friend—in fact, I never met him. He got killed, by a girl. It’s a long story, and not a very edifying one.”
    She wasn’t listening. I could see by her look that she was off somewhere in the far past. “My husband was killed in that war,” she said. “He was with Michael Collins’s men—do you know who he was, Michael Collins?”
    “Guerrilla fighter? Irish Republican Army?”
    “That’s the one. They murdered him, too.”
    She picked up her empty teacup, looked into it, put it down again.
    “What happened to your husband?” I asked.
    “They came for him in the middle of the night. I didn’t know where they were taking him. It wasn’t till the day after that he was found. They’d brought him down to the strand at Fanore, a lonely spot in those days, and buried him up to his neck far out in the sand. They left him there, facing the sea, watching the tide come in. It takes a long time, at Fanore, to reach high water. He was discovered when the tide went out again. They wouldn’t let me see the body. I suppose the fish had already been at him. Aubrey, he was called. Aubrey Langrishe. Wasn’t that a queer name for an Irishman? There weren’t many Protestants that fought in the Civil War, you know. No, not many.”
    I let a beat go past, then said, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Langrishe.”
    She turned to me. “What?” I think she’d forgotten I was there.
    “The world’s a cruel place,” I said. People are always telling me about the terrible things that have happened to them and their loved ones. I felt sorry for this sad old lady, but a man gets weary, acting sympathetic all the time.
    “I was seven months gone when he died,” she said wistfully. “So Clare never knew her father. I think it has affected her. She pretends it didn’t, but I know.” She reached out and put a hand on mine. It gave me a shock, being touched like that, but I tried not to show it. The skin of her palm was warm and brittle and felt like—well, like papyrus, or what I imagined papyrus would feel like. “You’d want to go carefully, Mr. Marlowe,” she said. “I don’t think you know who you’re dealing with.”
    I wasn’t sure which one she meant, herself, or her daughter, or someone else. “I’ll be careful,” I said.
    She took no notice. “People can get hurt,” she said, in an urgent voice. “Badly hurt.” She let go of my hand. “Do you know what I mean?”
    “I’ve no intention of harming your daughter, Mrs. Langrishe,” I said.
    She was looking into my eyes in a funny way that I couldn’t make out. I had the feeling she was laughing at me a little but that at the same time she wanted me to understand what she was warning me of. She was a tough old dame, she was probably ruthless, she probably underpaid her workers, and she could probably have me killed, if she wanted to. All the same, there was something about her that I couldn’t help liking. She had fortitude. That wasn’t a word I felt called on to use very often, but in this