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

sister was shown his corpse the next day and expressed no doubts.”
    “I know, but the point is—and here we’re at the nub of the thing—someone spotted him recently in the street, and he wasn’t dead at all.”
    There are are silences and silences. Some you can read, some you can’t. Whether Hanson was surprised by what I’d just said, whether he was astounded by it, or whether he was only saying nothing the better to let himself think, I didn’t know. I watched him—a hawk wouldn’t have done it more sharply—but still I couldn’t decide.
    “Let me get this straight,” he began, but just then the door opened again and Bartlett the butler came in backward at an ape-armed stoop, carrying a wide tray on which there were cups and saucers and a silver teapot and little silver jugs and white linen napkins and I don’t know what all. He came forward and set the tray down on one of the small tables, sniffed, and padded out. Hanson leaned down and poured the tea into two cups—through a silver strainer, no less—and handed one to me. I balanced it on the arm of the chair. I had a vision of myself knocking it by accident with my elbow and sending the scalding stuff flooding into my lap. I should have had an aunt when I was small, one of those fierce ones in bombazine, with a lorgnette and a mustache, who would have coached me in how to comport myself in social situations like this.
    I could see Hanson preparing to claim again, in that studied, jaded way of his, that he’d forgotten what we were talking about. “You wanted to get something straight,” I said, prompting him. He had taken up position by the fireplace again and was slowly stirring a silver spoon around in his tea, stirring and stirring.
    “Yes,” he said, then paused—more thinking. “You say someone saw Mr. Peterson in the street recently.”
    “That’s right.”
    “Claimed to have seen him, that is.”
    “The person was pretty certain.”
    “And this person is…?”
    “Someone who knew Mr. Peterson. Someone who knew him well.”
    At that his eye took on a weaselly sharpness, and I wondered if I’d said too much. “Someone who knew him well,” he repeated. “Would that be a female someone?”
    “Why do you ask?”
    “Women tend to be more prone than men to that kind of thing.”
    “What kind of thing?”
    “Seeing a dead man walking in the street. Imagining they did.”
    “Let’s just say this person was an associate of Mr. Peterson’s,” I said, “and leave it at that.”
    “And this is the person who hired you to come here and make inquiries?”
    “I didn’t say that. I don’t say that.”
    “Does that mean you’re operating on a secondhand report? On hearsay?”
    “It was said, and I heard it.”
    “And did you believe it?”
    “Belief is not part of my program. I take no position. I just do the inquiring.”
    “Right.” He drew the word out, giving it a sort of sighing fall. He smiled. “You haven’t touched your tea, Mr. Marlowe.”
    I took a sip, to be polite. It was nearly cold already. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d drunk tea.
    A shadow moved in the glass panel of the door we had entered by, and looking up I spotted there what I took to be a boy, thin and sharp-faced, peering in at us. Seeing me see him, he shifted quickly and was gone. I turned to Hanson. He didn’t seem to have noticed the figure at the door.
    “Who did you call that night,” I asked, “after you’d seen the body?”
    “The police.”
    “Yes, but what police? Downtown or the Sheriff’s office?”
    He scratched his ear. “I don’t think I know,” he said. “I just called the operator and asked for the police. A squad car came, and a motorcycle policeman. I think they were from Bay City.”
    “You remember any of their names?”
    “I’m afraid not. There were two plainclothes officers and the motorcyclist in uniform. They must have told me their names, I suppose, but if they did I’ve forgotten them. I wasn’t