The Black-Eyed Blonde: A Philip Marlowe Novel by Benjamin Black Read Free Book Online Page A

you introduce me to your husband and indicate how unhappy he makes you—”
    “I—”
    “Let me finish, Mrs. Cavendish, then you can have your say. I come to your lovely home—”
    “I didn’t invite you here. You could have phoned and asked me to call in to your office again.”
    “That’s true, that’s very true. But here I came, the bearer of bad news, news that would be a shock to you, as I thought, only to discover that you already knew what I had to say. Then you take me for a pleasant stroll in your delightful garden, you link your arm in mine and lead me onto your private beach and tell me you know my friend Mrs. Loring, who recommended my services to you after you didn’t tell her why you needed them—”
    “I did tell her!”
    “You half told her.” She tried to speak again, but I held a hand in front of her face. She was gripping the seat at both sides and looking up at me with an expression of desperation I didn’t know whether to believe in or not. “Anyway,” I said, feeling tired suddenly, “none of that matters. What matters is, what exactly do you want from me? What is it you think I can do for you—and why do you feel you have to pretend to be on the verge of falling in love with me to get me to do it? I’m for hire, Mrs. Cavendish. You come to my office, you tell me your troubles, you pay me some money, I go out and try to solve your problem—that’s how it works. It’s not complicated. It’s not Gone with the Wind —you’re not Scarlett O’Hara and I’m not what’s-his-name Butler.”
    “Rhett,” she said.
    “What?”
    She had lost her stricken look and had turned her eyes away from mine and was gazing down the beach, toward the waves. She had a way of batting things aside, things she didn’t like or didn’t want to deal with, that always left me hanging. It’s the kind of knack that only a lifetime soaked in money can teach you. “Rhett Butler is the character you mean,” she said. “It’s also, by coincidence, my brother’s pet name.”
    “You mean Everett the Third?”
    She nodded. “Yes,” she said, “we call him Rett—without the h .” She smiled to herself. “I can’t imagine anyone less like Clark Gable.” Now she looked at me again, with a puzzled frown. “How do you know him?” she asked. “How do you know Everett?”
    “I don’t. He was mooching about the lawn when I arrived. We exchanged a few friendly insults and he pointed me in your direction.”
    “Ah. I see.” She nodded, still frowning. Again she looked off in the direction of the ocean. “I used to bring him here to play when he was little,” she said. “We’d spend whole afternoons, paddling in the surf, building sand castles.”
    “He told me his name is Edwards, not Langrishe.”
    “Yes. We have different fathers—my mother married again, when she came here from Ireland.” She pulled down the corners of her mouth in a wry smile. “It wasn’t a success, the marriage. Mr. Edwards turned out to be what the novelists used to call a fortune hunter.”
    “Not just the novelists,” I said.
    She inclined her head in an ironic little nod of acknowledgment, smiling. “Anyway, in the end Mr. Edwards checked out—worn down, I suppose, by the effort of pretending to be what he wasn’t.”
    “Which was? Apart from a fortune hunter, that is.”
    “What he wasn’t was fair and honest. What he was, well, I don’t think anyone knew what he really was, including himself.”
    “So he left.”
    “He left. And that’s when my mother brought me into the firm, young though I was. I turned out to have a talent for selling perfume, to the surprise of all, especially me.”
    I sighed and sat down beside her. “You mind if I smoke?” I asked.
    “Please, go ahead.”
    I produced my silver case with the monogram on it. I’ve never found out whose monogram it is—I bought the case in a pawnshop. I opened it and offered it to her. She shook her head. I lit up. It’s pleasant, smoking