The Black-Eyed Blonde: A Philip Marlowe Novel Read Online Free PDF

away he called after me, “If you’re selling insurance, you’re wasting your time.” He snickered again. I hoped for his sake it was something he would grow out of—when he got into his fifties, maybe, and started wearing three-piece suits and sporting a monocle.
    I crunched across the gravel and took the way he had pointed to, along by the side of the house. Stretching off to my left, the garden was the size of a small public park, only much better kept. The sweet smell of roses was carried to me on a breeze, along with the scent of cut grass and a briny whiff of the nearby ocean. I wondered what it would be like to live in a place like this. I glanced in through the windows as I walked past them. The rooms, what I could see of them, were large, lofty, and impeccably furnished. What if you wanted to flop in front of the television set with a bucket of popcorn and a couple of cans of beer and watch a ball game? Maybe they had specific places in the basement for that kind of thing, billiard rooms, romper rooms, dens, whatever. I suspected that in Langrishe Lodge, the real business of living would always be carried on somewhere else.
    The conservatory was an elaborate affair of curved glass and steel framing attached to the back of the house like a monstrous suction cup and reaching up two or three stories. There were giant palms inside, pressing their heavy fronds against the panes as if appealing to be let out. A pair of French doors stood wide, and in the opening a white gauze curtain undulated languidly in the gently stirring air. Summer in these parts isn’t harsh and punishing like it is over in the city; these folks have their own special season. I stepped across the threshold, batting the curtain aside. In here the air was heavy and dense and smelled like a fat man after a long, hot bath.
    At first I didn’t spot Clare Cavendish. Partly hidden by a low-leaning swath of palm leaves, she was sitting on a delicate little wrought-iron chair, before a matching wrought-iron table, writing in a leather-bound diary or notebook. She wrote with a fountain pen, I noticed. She was dressed for tennis, in a short-sleeved cotton shirt and skimpy white skirt with pleats, ankle socks, and pipe-clayed bucks. Her hair was pinned back with barrettes at both sides. I had not seen her ears before. They were very pretty ears, which is a rare thing, ears being in my estimation just a little less weird-looking than feet.
    She heard me approach, and when she glanced up a look came into her eyes that I couldn’t quite figure. Surprise, of course—I hadn’t called to say I was coming—but something else, too. Was it alarm, sudden dismay even, or did she just not recognize me for a second?
    “Good morning,” I said, as lightly as I could.
    She had shut her book quickly, and now, more slowly, she fitted the cap to her fountain pen and laid it on the table with slow deliberation, like a statesman who has just finished signing a peace treaty, or a declaration of war. “Mr. Marlowe,” she said. “You startled me.”
    “Sorry. I should have phoned.”
    She stood up and took a step backward, as if to put the table between her and me. Her cheeks were a little flushed, as they had been yesterday when I’d asked her to tell me her first name. People who blush easily have it tough, always being liable to give themselves away at the drop of a brick. Once again I had trouble not looking at her legs, though somehow I saw that they were slim, shapely, and honey-hued. A crystal jug containing a tobacco-colored drink stood on the table, and now she touched a fingertip to the handle. “Some iced tea?” she asked. “I can ring for a glass.”
    “No, thanks.”
    “I’d offer you something stronger, only it seems a little early…” She glanced down and bit her lip, in just the same way Everett the Third had. “Have you made some progress in your inquiries?” she asked.
    “Mrs. Cavendish, I think maybe you should sit down.”
    She gave her