Ehrengraf for the Defense (3 page)

“I’m reasonably well off,” Gort said.

“I know. It’s a commendable quality in
clients.”

“And I’d certainly be glad to pay one hundred
thousand dollars for my freedom. On the other hand, if you don’t
get me off then I don’t owe you a dime. Is that right?”

“Quite right.”

Gort considered again, nodded again. “Then
I’ve got no reservations,” he said. “But—”

“Yes?”

Alvin Gort’s eyes measured the lawyer. Gort
was accustomed to making rapid decisions. He made one now.

“You might have reservations,” he said.
“There’s one problem.”

“Oh?”

“I did it,” Gort said. “I killed her.”

* * *

“I can see how you would think that,” Martin
Ehrengraf said. “The weight of circumstantial evidence piled up
against you. Long-suppressed unconscious resentment of your wife,
perhaps even a hidden desire to see her dead. All manner of guilt
feelings stored up since early childhood. Plus, of course, the
natural idea that things do not happen without a good reason for
their occurrence. You are in prison, charged with murder; therefore
it stands to reason that you did something to deserve all this,
that you did in fact murder your wife.”

“But I did,” Gort said.

“Nonsense. Palpable nonsense.”

“But I was there,” Gort said. “I’m not making
this up. For God’s sake, man, I’m not a psychiatric basket case.
Unless you’re thinking about an insanity defense? I suppose I could
go along with that, scream out hysterically in the middle of the
night, strip naked and sit gibbering in the corner of my cell. I
can’t say I’d enjoy it but I’d go along with it if you think that’s
the answer. But—”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Ehrengraf said,
wrinkling his nose with distaste. “I mean to get you acquitted, Mr.
Gort. Not committed to an asylum.”

“I don’t understand,” Gort said. He frowned,
looked around craftily. “You think the place is bugged,” he
whispered. “That’s it, eh?”

“You can use your normal tone of voice. No,
they don’t employ hidden microphones in this jail. It’s not only
illegal but against policy as well.”

“Then I don’t understand. Look, I’m the guy
who fastened the dynamite under the hood of Ginnie’s Pontiac. I
hooked up a cable to the starter. I set things up so that she would
be blown into the next world. Now how do you propose to—”

“Mr. Gort.” Ehrengraf held up a hand like a
stop sign. “Please, Mr. Gort.”

Alvin Gort subsided.

“Mr. Gort,” Ehrengraf continued, “I defend
the innocent and leave it to more clever men than myself to employ
trickery in the cause of the guilty. And I find this very easy to
do because all my clients are innocent. There is, you know, a legal
principle involved.”

“A legal principle?”

“The presumption of innocence.”

“The presumption of—? Oh, you mean a man is
presumed innocent until proven guilty.”

“A tenet of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence,”
Ehrengraf said. “The French presume guilt until innocence is
proven. And the totalitarian countries, of course, presume guilt
and do not allow innocence to be proved, taking it for granted that
their police would not dream of wasting their time arresting the
innocent in the first place. But I refer, Mr. Gort, to something
more far-reaching than the legal presumption of innocence.”
Ehrengraf drew himself up to his full height, such as it was, and
his back went ramrod straight. “I refer,” he said, “to the
Ehrengraf Presumption.”

“The Ehrengraf Presumption?”

“Any client of Martin H. Ehrengraf,” said
Martin Ehrengraf, “is presumed by Ehrengraf to be innocent, which
presumption is invariably confirmed in due course, the
preconceptions of the client himself notwithstanding.” The little
lawyer smiled with his lips. “Now,” he said, “shall we get down to
business?”

* * *

Half an hour later Alvin Gort was still
sitting on the edge of his cot. Martin Ehrengraf, however, was
pacing briskly in the manner of a caged lion. With the thumb and
forefinger of his right hand he smoothed the ends of his neat
mustache. His left hand was at his side, its thumb hooked into his
trouser pocket. He continued to pace while Gort smoked a cigarette
almost to the filter. Then, as Gort ground the butt under his heel,
Ehrengraf turned on his own heel and fixed his eyes on his
client.

“The evidence is damning,” he conceded. “A
man of your description purchased dynamite and blasting caps from
Tattersall Demolition Supply just ten days before your wife’s
death. Your signature is on the purchase order. A clerk remembers
waiting on you and reports that you were nervous.”

“Damn right I was nervous,” Gort said. “I
never killed anyone before.”

“Please, Mr. Gort. If you must maintain the
facade of having committed murder, at least keep your illusion to
yourself. Don’t share it with me. At the moment I’m concerned with
evidence. We have your signature on the purchase order and we have
you identified by the clerk. The man even remembers what you were
wearing. Most customers come to Tattersall in work clothes, it
would seem, while you wore a rather distinctive burgundy blazer and
white flannel slacks. And tasseled loafers,” he added, clearly not
approving of them.

“It’s hard to find casual loafers without
tassels or braid these days.”

“Hard, yes. But scarcely impossible. Now you
say your wife had a lover, a Mr. Barry Lattimore.”

“That toad Lattimore!”

“You knew of this affair and
disapproved.”

“Disapproved! I hated them. I wanted to
strangle both of them. I wanted—”

“Please, Mr. Gort.”

“I’m sorry.”

Ehrengraf sighed. “Now your wife seems to
have written a letter to her sister in New Mexico. She did in fact
have a sister in New Mexico?”

“Her sister Grace. In Socorro.”

“She posted the letter four days before her
death. In it she stated that you knew about her affair with
Lattimore.”

“I’d known for weeks.”

“She went on to say that she feared for her
life. ‘The situation is deteriorating and I don’t know what to do.
You know what a temper he has. I’m afraid he might be capable of
anything, anything at all. I’m defenseless and I don’t know what to
do.’”

“Defenseless as a cobra,” Gort muttered.

“No doubt. That was from memory but it’s a
fair approximation. Of course I’ll have to examine the original.
And I’ll want specimens of your wife’s handwriting.”

“You can’t think the letter’s a forgery?”

“We never know, do we? But I’m sure you can
tell me where I can get hold of samples. Now what other evidence do
we have to contend with? There was a neighbor who saw you doing
something under the hood of your wife’s car some four or five hours
before her death.”

“Mrs. Boerland. Damned old crone. Vicious
gossiping busybody.”

“You seem to have been in the garage shortly
before dawn. You had a light on and the garage door was open, and
you had the hood of the car up and were doing something.”

“Damned right I was doing something. I
was—”

“Please, Mr. Gort. Between tasseled loafers
and these constant interjections—”

“Won’t happen again, Mr. Ehrengraf.”

“Yes. Now just let me see. There were two
cars in the garage, were there not? Your Buick and your wife’s
Pontiac. Your car was parked on the left-hand side, your wife’s on
the right.”

“That was so that she could back straight
out. When you’re parked on the left side you have to back out in a
sort of squiggly way. When Ginnie tried to do that she always ran
over a corner of the lawn.”

“Ah.”

“Some people just don’t give a damn about a
lawn,” Gort said, “and some people do.”

“As with so many aspects of human endeavor,
Mr. Gort. Now Mrs. Boerland observed you in the garage shortly
before dawn, and the actual explosion which claimed your wife’s
life took place a few hours later while you were having your
breakfast.”

“Toasted English muffin and coffee. Years ago
Ginnie made scrambled eggs and squeezed fresh orange juice for me.
But with the passage of time—”

“Did she normally start her car at that
hour?”

“No,” Gort said. He sat up straight, frowned.
“No, of course not. Dammit, why didn’t I think of that? I figured
she’d sit around the house until noon. I wanted to be well away
from the place when it happened—”

“Mr. Gort.”

“Well, I did. All of a sudden there was this
shock wave and a thunderclap right on top of it and I’ll tell you,
Mr. Ehrengraf, I didn’t even know what it was.”

“Of course you didn’t.”

“I mean—”

“I wonder why your wife left the house at
that hour. She said nothing to you?”

“No. There was a phone call and—”

“From whom?”

Gort frowned again. “Damned if I know. But
she got the call just before she left. I wonder if there’s a
connection.”

“I shouldn’t doubt it. Who was your wife’s
heir, Mr. Gort? Who would inherit her money?”

“Money?” Gort grinned. “Ginnie didn’t have a
dime. I was her legal heir just as she was mine, but I was the one
who had the money. All she left was the jewelry and clothing that
my money paid for.”

“Any insurance?”

“Exactly enough to pay your fee,” Gort said,
and grinned this time rather like a shark. “Except that I won’t see
a penny of it. Fifty thousand dollars, double indemnity for
accidental death, and I think the insurance companies call murder
an accident, although it’s always struck me as rather purposeful.
That makes one hundred thousand dollars, your fee to the penny, but
none of it’ll come my way.”

“It’s true that one cannot profit financially
from a crime,” Ehrengraf said. “But if you’re found innocent—”

Gort shook his head. “Doesn’t make any
difference,” he said. “I just learned this the other day. About the
same time I was buying the dynamite, she was changing her
beneficiary. The change went through in plenty of time. The whole
hundred thousand goes to that rotter Lattimore.”

“Now that,” said Martin Ehrengraf, “is very
interesting.”

* * *

Two weeks and three days later Alvin Gort sat
in a surprisingly comfortable straight-backed chair in Martin
Ehrengraf’s exceptionally cluttered office. He balanced a checkbook
on his knee and carefully made out a check. The fountain pen he
used had cost him $65. The lawyer’s services, for which the check
he was writing represented payment in full, had cost him
considerably more, yet Gort, a good judge of value, thought
Ehrengraf’s fee a bargain and the pen overpriced.

“One hundred thousand dollars,” he said,
waving the check in the air to dry its ink. “I’ve put today’s date
on it but ask you to hold it until Monday morning before depositing
it. I’ve instructed my broker to sell securities and transfer funds
to my checking account. I don’t normally maintain a balance
sufficient to cover a check of this size.”

“That’s understandable.”

“I’m glad something is. Because I’m damned if
I can understand how you got me off the hook.”

Ehrengraf allowed himself a smile. “My
greatest obstacle was your own mental attitude,” he said. “You
honestly believed yourself to be guilty of your wife’s death,
didn’t you?”

“But—”

“Ah, my dear Mr. Gort. You see, I
knew
you were innocent. The Ehrengraf Presumption assured me of that. I
merely had to look for someone with the right sort of motive, and
who should emerge but Mr. Barry Lattimore, your wife’s lover and
beneficiary, a man with a need for money and a man whose affair
with your wife was reaching crisis proportions.

“It was clear to me that you were not the
sort of man to commit murder in such an obvious fashion. Buying the
dynamite openly, signing the purchase order with your own name—my
dear Mr. Gort, you would never behave so foolishly! No, you had to
have been framed, and clearly Lattimore was the man who had reason
to frame you.”

“And then they found things,” Gort said.

“Indeed they did, once I was able to tell
them where to look. Extraordinary what turned up! You would think
Lattimore would have had the sense to get rid of all that, wouldn’t
you? But no, a burgundy blazer and a pair of white slacks, a
costume identical to your own but tailored to Mr. Lattimore’s
frame, hung in the very back of his clothes closet. And in a drawer
of his desk the police found half a dozen sheets of paper on which
he’d practiced your signature until he was able to do quite a
creditable job of writing it. By dressing like you and signing your
name to the purchase order, he quite neatly put your neck in the
noose.”

“Incredible.”

“He even copied your tasseled loafers. The
police found a pair in his closet, and of course the man never
habitually wore loafers of any sort. Of course he denied ever
having seen the shoes before. Or the jacket, or the slacks, and of
course he denied having practiced your signature.”

Gort’s eyes went involuntarily to Ehrengraf’s
own shoes. This time the lawyer was wearing black wing tips. His
suit was dove gray and somewhat more sedately tailored than the
brown one Gort had seen previously. His tie was maroon, his cuff
links simple gold hexagons. The precision of Ehrengraf’s dress and
carriage contrasted sharply with the disarray of his office.

“And that letter from your wife to her sister
Grace,” Ehrengraf continued. “It turned out to be authentic, as it
happens, but it also proved to be open to a second interpretation.
The man of whom Virginia was afraid was never named, and a
thoughtful reading showed he could as easily have been Lattimore as
you. And then of course a second letter to Grace was found among
your wife’s effects. She evidently wrote it the night before her
death and never had a chance to mail it. It’s positively damning.
She tells her sister how she changed the beneficiary of her
insurance at Lattimore’s insistence, how your knowledge of the
affair was making Lattimore irrational and dangerous, and how she
couldn’t avoid the feeling that he planned to kill her. She goes on
to say that she intended to change her insurance again, making
Grace the beneficiary, and that she would so inform Lattimore in
order to remove any financial motive for her murder.