Ehrengraf for the Defense (6 page)

Ehrengraf paused, and his right hand went to
finger the knot of his necktie. This particular tie, rather more
colorful than his usual choice, was that of the Caedmon Society of
Oxford University, an organization to which Martin Ehrengraf did
not belong. The tie was a souvenir of an earlier case and he tended
to wear it on particularly happy occasions, moments of personal
triumph.

“Murchison left careful instructions,” he
went on. “He would call the lawyer every Thursday, merely repeating
the alias he had used. If ever a Thursday passed without a call,
and if there was no call on Friday either, the lawyer was to open
the letter and follow its instructions. For four Thursdays in a row
the lawyer received a phone call, presumably from Murchison.”

“Presumably,” Beale said heavily.

“Indeed. On the Tuesday following the fourth
Thursday, Murchison’s car went off a cliff and he was killed
instantly. The lawyer read of Walker Murchison’s death but had no
idea that was his client’s true identity. Then Thursday came and
went without a call, and when there was no telephone call Friday
either, why, the dutiful attorney opened the letter and went
forthwith to the police.” Ehrengraf spread his hands, smiled
broadly. “The rest,” he said, “you know as well as I.”

“Great Scott,” Beale said.

“Now if you honestly feel I’ve done nothing
to earn my money—”

“I’ll have to liquidate some stock,” Beale
said. “It won’t be a problem and there shouldn’t be much time
involved. I’ll bring a check to your office in a week. Say ten days
at the outside. Unless you’d prefer cash?”

“A check will be fine, Mr. Beale. So long as
it’s a good check.” And he smiled with his lips to show he was
joking.

The smile gave Beale a chill.

* * *

A week later Grantham Beale remembered that
smile when he passed a check across Martin Ehrengraf’s heroically
disorganized desk. “A good check,” he said. “I’d never give you a
bad check, Mr. Ehrengraf. You typed that letter, you made all those
phone calls, you forged Murchison’s false name to the money order,
and then when the opportunity presented itself you sent his car
hurtling off the cliff with him in it.”

“One believes what one wishes,” Ehrengraf
said quietly.

“I’ve been thinking about all of this all
week long. Murchison framed me for a murder he committed, then paid
for the crime himself and liberated me in the process without
knowing what he was doing. ‘The cut worm forgives the plow.’”

“Indeed.”

“Meaning that the end justifies the
means.”

“Is that what Blake meant by that line? I’ve
long wondered.”

“The end justifies the means. I’m innocent,
and now I’m free, and Murchison’s guilty, and now he’s dead, and
you’ve got the money, but that’s all right, because I made out fine
on those stamps, and of course I don’t have to repay Speldron, poor
man, because death did cancel that particular debt, and—”

“Mr. Beale.”

“Yes?”

“I don’t know if I should tell you this, but
I fear I must. You are more of an innocent than you realize. You’ve
paid me handsomely for my services, as indeed we agreed that you
would, and I think perhaps I’ll offer you a lagniappe in the form
of some experience to offset your colossal innocence. I’ll begin
with some advice. Do not, under any circumstances, resume your
affair with Felicia Murchison.”

Beale stared.

“You should have told me that was why you and
Murchison didn’t get along,” Ehrengraf said gently. “I was forced
to discover it for myself. No matter. More to the point, one should
not share a pillow with a woman who has so little regard for one as
to frame one for murder. Mrs. Murchison—”

“Felicia framed me?”

“Of course, Mr. Beale. Mrs. Murchison had
nothing against you. It was sufficient that she had nothing for
you. She murdered Mr. Speldron, you see, for reasons which need
hardly concern us. Then having done so she needed someone to be
cast as the murderer.

“Her husband could hardly have told the
police about your purported argument with Speldron. He wasn’t
around at the time. He didn’t know the two of you had met, and if
he went out on a limb and told them, and then you had an alibi for
the time in question, why, he’d wind up looking silly, wouldn’t he?
But Mrs. Murchison knew you’d met with Speldron, and she told her
husband the two of you argued, and so he told the police in
perfectly good faith what she had told him, and then they went and
found the murder gun in your very own Antonelli Scorpion. A
stunning automobile, incidentally, and it’s to your credit to own
such a vehicle, Mr. Beale.”

“Felicia killed Speldron.”

“Yes.”

“And framed me.”

“Yes.”

“But—why did you frame Murchison?”

“Did you expect me to try to convince the
powers that be that she did it? And had pangs of conscience and
left a letter with a lawyer? Women don’t leave letters with
lawyers, Mr. Beale, any more than they have consciences. One must
deal with the materials at hand.”

“But—”

“And the woman is young, with long dark hair,
flashing dark eyes, a body like a magazine centerfold, and a face
like a Chanel ad. She’s also an excellent typist and most
cooperative in any number of ways which we needn’t discuss at the
moment. Mr. Beale, would you like me to get you a glass of
water?”

“I’m all right.”

“I’m sure you’ll be all right, Mr. Beale. I’m
sure you will. Mr. Beale, I’m going to make a suggestion. I think
you should seriously consider marrying and settling down. I think
you’d be much happier that way. You’re an innocent, Mr. Beale, and
you’ve had the Ehrengraf Experience now, and it’s rendered you
considerably more experienced than you were, but your innocence is
not the sort to be readily vanquished. Give the widow Murchison and
all her tribe a wide berth, Mr. Beale. They’re not for you. Find
yourself an old-fashioned girl and lead a proper old-fashioned
life. Buy and sell stamps. Cultivate a garden. Raise terriers. The
West Highland White might be a good breed for you but that’s your
decision, certainly. Mr. Beale? Are you
sure
you won’t have
a glass of water?”

“I’m all right.”

“Quite. I’ll leave you with another thought
of Blake’s, Mr. Beale. ‘Lilies that fester smell worse than weeds.’
That’s also from
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
, another of
what he calls Proverbs of Hell, and perhaps someday you’ll be able
to interpret it for me. I never quite know for sure what Blake’s
getting at, Mr. Beale, but his things do have a nice sound to them,
don’t they? Innocence and experience, Mr. Beale. That’s the ticket,
isn’t it? Innocence and experience.”

The End

“
Dame Fortune is a fickle gypsy,

And always blind, and often tipsy.”

—
William Mackworth Praed

Martin Ehrengraf was walking jauntily down
the courthouse steps when a taller and bulkier man caught up with
him. “Glorious day,” the man said. “Simply a glorious day.”

Ehrengraf nodded. It was indeed a glorious
day, the sort of autumn afternoon that made men recall football
weekends. Ehrengraf had just been thinking that he’d like a piece
of hot apple pie with a slab of sharp cheddar on it. He rarely
thought about apple pie and almost never wanted cheese on it, but
it was that sort of day.

“I’m Cutliffe,” the man said. “Hudson
Cutliffe, of Marquardt, Stoner, and Cutliffe.”

“Ehrengraf,” said Ehrengraf.

“Yes, I know. Oh, believe me, I know.”
Cutliffe gave what he doubtless considered a hearty chuckle.
“Imagine running into Martin Ehrengraf himself, standing in line
for an IDC appointment just like everybody else.”

“Every man is entitled to a proper defense,”
Ehrengraf said stiffly. “It’s a guaranteed right in a free
society.”

“Yes, to be sure, but—”

“Indigent defendants have attorneys appointed
by the court. Our system here calls for attorneys to make
themselves available at specified intervals for such appointments,
rather than entrust such cases to a public defender.”

“I quite understand,” Cutliffe said. “Why, I
was just appointed to an IDC case myself, some luckless chap who
stole a satchel full of meat from a supermarket. Choice cuts,
too—lamb chops, filet mignon. You just about have to steal them
these days, don’t you?”

Ehrengraf, a recent convert to vegetarianism,
offered a thin-lipped smile and thought about pie and cheese.

“But Martin Ehrengraf himself,” Cutliffe went
on. “One no more thinks of you in this context than one imagines a
glamorous Hollywood actress going to the bathroom. Martin
Ehrengraf, the dapper and debonair lawyer who hardly ever appears
in court. The man who only collects a fee if he wins. Is that
really true, by the way? You actually take murder cases on a
contingency basis?”

“That’s correct.”

“Extraordinary. I don’t see how you can
possibly afford to operate that way.”

“It’s quite simple,” Ehrengraf said.

“Oh?”

His smile was fuller than before. “I always
win,” he said. “It’s simplicity itself.”

“And yet you rarely appear in court.”

“Sometimes one can work more effectively
behind the scenes.”

“And when your client wins his freedom—”

“I’m paid in full,” Ehrengraf said.

“Your fees are high, I understand.”

“Exceedingly high.”

“And your clients almost always get off.”

“They’re always innocent,” Ehrengraf said.
“That does help.”

Hudson Cutliffe laughed richly, as if to
suggest that the idea of bringing guilt and innocence into a
discussion of legal procedures was amusing. “Well, this will be a
switch for you,” he said at length. “You were assigned the Protter
case, weren’t you?”

“Mr. Protter is my client, yes.”

“Hardly a typical Ehrengraf case, is it? Man
gets drunk, beats his wife to death, passes out, and sleeps it off,
then wakes up and sees what he’s done and calls the police. Bit of
luck for you, wouldn’t you say?”

“Oh?”

“Won’t take up too much of your time. You’ll
plead him guilty to manslaughter, get a reduced sentence on grounds
of his previous clean record, and then Protter’ll do a year or two
in prison while you go about your business.”

“You think that’s the course to pursue, Mr.
Cutliffe?”

“It’s what anyone would do.”

“Almost anyone,” said Ehrengraf.

“And there’s no reason to make work for
yourself, is there?” Cutliffe winked. “These IDC cases—I don’t know
why they pay us at all, as small as the fees are. A hundred and
seventy-five dollars isn’t much of an all-inclusive fee for a legal
defense, is it? Wouldn’t you say your average fee runs a bit higher
than that?”

“Quite a bit higher.”

“But there are compensations. It’s the same
hundred and seventy-five dollars whether you plead your client or
stand trial, let alone win. A far cry from your usual system, eh,
Ehrengraf? You don’t have to win to get paid.”

“I do,” Ehrengraf said.

“How’s that?”

“If I lose the case, I’ll donate the fee to
charity.”

“If you lose? But you’ll plead him to
manslaughter, won’t you?”

“Certainly not.”

“Then what will you do?”

“I’ll plead him innocent.”

“Innocent?”

“Of course. The man never killed anyone.”

“But—” Cutliffe inclined his head, dropped
his voice. “You know the man? You have some special information
about the case?”

“I’ve never met him and know only what I’ve
read in the newspapers.”

“Then how can you say he’s innocent?”

“He’s my client.”

“So?”

“I do not represent the guilty,” Ehrengraf
said. “My clients are innocent, Mr. Cutliffe, and Arnold Protter is
a client of mine, and I intend to earn my fee as his attorney,
however inadequate that fee may be. I did not seek appointment, Mr.
Cutliffe, but that appointment is a sacred trust, sir, and I shall
justify that trust. Good day, Mr. Cutliffe.”

* * *

“They said they’d get me a lawyer and it
wouldn’t cost me nothing,” Arnold Protter said. “I guess you’re it,
huh?”

“Indeed,” said Ehrengraf. He glanced around
the sordid little jail cell, then cast an eye on his new client.
Arnold Protter was a thickset round-shouldered man in his late
thirties with the ample belly of a beer drinker and the red nose of
a whiskey drinker. His pudgy face recalled the Pillsbury Dough Boy.
His hands, too, were pudgy, and he held them out in front of his
red nose and studied them in wonder.

“These were the hands that did it,” he
said.

“Nonsense.”

“How’s that?”

“Perhaps you’d better tell me what happened,”
Ehrengraf suggested. “The night your wife was killed.”

“It’s hard to remember,” Protter said.

“I’m sure it is.”

“What it was, it was an ordinary kind of a
night. Me and Gretch had a beer or two during the afternoon, just
passing time while we watched television. Then we ordered up a
pizza and had a couple more with it, and then we settled in for the
evening and started hitting the boilermakers. You know, a shot and
a beer. First thing you know, we’re having this argument.”

“About what?”

Protter got up, paced, glared again at his
hands. He lumbered about, Ehrengraf thought, like a caged bear. His
chino pants were ragged at the cuffs and his plaid shirt was a
tartan no Highlander would recognize. Ehrengraf, in contrast,
sparkled in the drab cell like a diamond on a dustheap. His suit
was a herringbone tweed the color of a well-smoked briar pipe, and
beneath it he wore a suede doeskin vest over a cream broadcloth
shirt with French cuffs and a tab collar. His cufflinks were simple
gold hexagons, his tie a wool knit in the same brown as his suit.
His shoes were shell cordovan loafers, quite simple and elegant and
polished to a high sheen.