The Black-Eyed Blonde

8

When I got back to my office in the Cahuenga Building, there was a message waiting for me with my phone service. The operator who gave it to me was the one with the nasal whine — her voice always makes it seem as if I’ve got a wasp trapped in my ear. “A Mrs. Anguish called,” she said.

“A Mrs. what? Anguish?”

“That’s what she said. I wrote it down. Says will you meet her at the Ritz-Beverly at noon.”

“I don’t know anyone called Anguish. What kind of name is that?”

“I wrote it down, I have it here on my pad. Mrs. Dorothea Anguish, the Ritz-Beverly Hotel, twelve o’clock.”

A light bulb went on, which should have gone on sooner — my mind was still at the Cahuilla Club. “Langrishe,” I said. “Dorothea Langrishe.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Right.” I sighed and put down the receiver. “Thanks, Hilda,” I growled. That’s not the operator’s name, but it’s what I call her, after I’ve hung up. She sounds like a Hilda, don’t ask me why.

* * *

The Ritz-Beverly was a swish joint and took itself very, very seriously. The doorman wore a claw-hammer coat and an English-style bowler hat; he looked as if he’d turn up his nose at anything under a ten-dollar tip. The black-marble lobby was half the size of a football field, and in the middle of it there was a cut-glass vase of giant calla lilies standing on a big round table. The heavy scent of the flowers tickled my nostrils and made me want to sneeze.

Mrs. Langrishe had asked me to meet her in the Egyptian Room. This was a bar with bamboo furniture and statues of Nefertiti look-alikes holding torches aloft and table lamps with shades made from stuff that could have been papyrus but was obviously just paper. A painted map of the Nile took up all of one wall. The river had Arab boats on it and crocodiles in it, and over it flew white birds — I think they’re called ibises — while along the banks there were, of course, painted pyramids and a sleepy-looking Sphinx. All this was impressive, in an overdone sort of way; but it was still a bar.

I had the image of Clare Cavendish in my mind and expected the mother to be the original of the daughter. Boy, was I mistaken. I heard her before I saw her. She had the voice of an Irish longshoreman, raucous, loud, and hoarse. She was sitting at a little gilt table under a big potted palm, telling a waiter in a white jacket how to make tea. “First of all, you have to boil the water — d’ye know how to do that? Then you scald the teapot — give it a good scalding, mind — and put in a spoonful for each cup and an extra one for the pot. Then leave it for three minutes to draw. Think of a soft-boiled egg — three minutes, no more, no less. Then you’re ready to pour. Now, have you got that? Because this stuff”—she pointed to the teapot—“is as weak as maiden’s water and tastes about the same.”

The waiter, a sleek Latin type, had gone pale under his smooth tan. “Yes, madam,” he said in a cowed voice and hurried off, carrying the offending tea and its pot at arm’s length; if he’d been less of a professional, he’d have mopped his brow.

“Mrs. Langrishe?” I said.

She was very small and very fat. Under her clothes, she might have been sitting in a barrel with holes cut in it for her arms and legs to stick out through. Her face was round and pink, and she wore a henna wig set in short, springy waves. The only thing in her of Clare that I could recognize was her eyes; those lustrous black irises ran in the family. She was squeezed into a two-piece suit of pink satin and had on clunky white shoes and a hat that must have been concocted, on an off day, by the same milliner who’d made the little black job Clare had been wearing the first time I met her. She looked up at me and arched a painted-on eyebrow. “Are you Marlowe?”

“That’s right,” I said.

She pointed to a chair beside her. “Sit down there now, I want to have a good look at you.”

I sat. She scanned my face closely. I’ll say this for her: she smelled nice, as you’d expect — every time she moved, her suit, that was made 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 house?”

The slice of Triple-Cocoa Fondant Delight arrived. Mrs. Langrishe, her little eyes turning to greedy slits, examined it under her magnifying glass, intent as Sherlock himself. “Richard is not a bad fellow,” she said, as if I’d criticized her son-in-law. “Bone-idle, of course.” She ate a forkful of her cake. “Oh, now, that’s good,” she said. “Mm-mmm.”

I wondered what the doctors would say if they saw her gobbling down this toxic delight. “Anyway,” I said, “are you going to tell me why you’ve asked me here?”

“I told you — I wanted to get a look at you.”

“Forgive me, Mrs. Langrishe, but now that you’ve had a look, I think—”

“Oh, stop,” she said placidly. “Get down off your high horse. I’m sure my daughter is paying you handsomely”—I might have told her that, in fact, her daughter hadn’t paid me a dime so far—“so you can spare a few minutes for her poor old mother.”

Patience, Marlowe, I told myself; patience. “I can’t talk to you about your daughter’s business,” I said. “That’s between her and me.”

“Sure it is. Did I say it wasn’t?” She had a dab of cream on her chin. “But she is my daughter, and I can’t help wondering why she’d need to hire a private detective.”

“She told you—”

“I know, I know. The precious pearl necklace that she lost.” She turned to me. I tried not to look at that blob of white on her chin. “What kind of a fool do you take me for, Mr. Marlowe?” she asked, almost sweetly, with a sort of smile. “It’s nothing to do with pearls. She’s in some sort of trouble, isn’t she. Is it blackmail?”

“I can only say it again, Mrs. Langrishe,” I repeated wearily, “I’m not in a position to discuss your daughter’s business with you.”

She was still watching me, and now she nodded. “I know that,” she said. “I heard you the first time.”

She put down her fork, gave a sated sigh, and wiped her mouth with her napkin. I was toying with the thought of ordering a drink, something with bitters and a sprig of green stuff in it, but decided against it. I could imagine Mrs. Langrishe fixing a sardonic eye on the glass.

“Know anything about perfume, Mr. Marlowe?” she asked.

“I know it when I smell it.”

“Sure, sure. But do you know anything about the manufacture of it? No? I thought not.” She settled back in her chair and did a sort of shimmy inside her pink suit. I felt a lecture coming and put myself as best I could into what I thought would seem a receptive attitude. What was I doing here? Maybe I’m too much of a gentleman for my own good.

“Most people in the perfume business,” Mrs. Langrishe said, “base their products on attar of roses. My secret is that I use only what is called rose absolute, which is got not by distillation but by the solvents method. It’s a far superior product. Know where it comes from?”

I shook my head; it was all I was required to do: listen, nod, shake my head, be attentive.

“Bulgaria!” she crowed, in the tone of a poker player slapping down a straight flush. “That’s right, Bulgaria. They do the harvesting in the morning, before the sun is up, which is when the flowers are at their most fragrant. It takes at least two hundred and fifty pounds of petals to produce an ounce of rose absolute, so you can imagine the cost. Two hundred and fifty pounds for one ounce — think of that!” Her gaze turned dreamy. “I made my fortune on a flower. Can you credit it? The damask rose, Rosa damascena. ’Tis a beautiful thing, Mr. Marlowe, one of God’s gifts bestowed upon us for nothing, out of His great good bounty.” She sighed again, contentedly. She was rich, she was happy, and she was full of Triple-Cocoa Fondant Delight. I envied her a little. Then her look darkened. “Tell me what my daughter hired you for, Mr. Marlowe, will you? Will you do that?”

“No, Mrs. Langrishe, I won’t. I can’t.”

“And I suppose you won’t 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 case it seemed right.

She stood up then, reaching inside her suit jacket to yank up a fallen strap in there. I got to my feet too and brought out my wallet. “That’s all right,” she said, “I have an account here. Anyway, you didn’t have anything. You’d have liked a drink, I suppose.” She gave a cackle of laughter. “I hope you weren’t waiting for me to ask you. No use being shy around me, Mr. Marlowe. Every man for himself, I say.”

I smiled at her. “Goodbye, Mrs. Langrishe.”

“Oh, by the way, while I have you here, maybe you can help me. I’m in need of a chauffeur. The last fellow was a terrible rogue and I had to get rid of him. Do you know anybody who would fit the bill?”

“Offhand, no. But if I think of anyone, I’ll let you know.”

She was looking at me with a speculative eye, as if she were trying to see me in a uniform and a cap with a peak.

“Too bad,” she said. She pulled on a pair of white cotton gloves, the kind you can buy at Woolworth’s. “You know, my name is really Edwards,” she said. “I married again, over here. Mr. Edwards subsequently took his leave of me. I prefer Langrishe. It has a certain ring to it, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, it has.”

“I’m not really Dorothea, either. I was christened Dorothy and was always called Dottie. That wouldn’t look too good on a perfume bottle, would it — Dottie Edwards?”

I had to laugh. “I guess not,” I said.

She looked up at me, grinning, and crooked an index finger and gave me a knock with her knuckle on the breastbone, through my tie. “Remember what I say, Marlowe,” she said. “People get hurt, unless they keep a sharp lookout.” Then she turned and waddled away.