Enough Rope

by Lawrence Block

  “It’s always possible Gates told her,” Ehrengraf suggested. “Or perhaps she heard you accusing your wife of infidelity. You and Gretchen had both been drinking, and your argument may have been a loud one.”

  “Could be. A few boilermakers and I tend to raise my voice.”

  “Most people do. Or perhaps Miss Mullane saw some of Gates’s sketches of your wife. I understand there were several found in his apartment. He may have been an abstract expressionist, but he seems to have been capable of realistic sketches of nudes. Of course he’s denied they were his work, but he’d be likely to say that, wouldn’t he?”

  “I guess so,” Protter said. “Naked pictures of Gretchen, gee, you never know, do you?”

  “You never do,” Ehrengraf agreed. “In any event, Miss Mullane had a key to your apartment. One was found among her effects. Perhaps it was Gates’s key, perhaps Gretchen had given it to him and Agnes Mullane stole it. She let herself into your apartment, found you and your wife unconscious, and pounded your wife on the head with an empty beer bottle. Your wife was alive when Miss Mullane entered your apartment, Mr. Protter, and dead when she left it.”

  “So I didn’t kill her after all.”

  “Indeed you did not.” Ehrengraf smiled for a moment. Then his face turned grave. “Agnes Mullane was not cut out for murder,” he said. “At heart she was a gentle soul. I realized that at once when I spoke with her.”

  “You went and talked to Agnes?”

  The little lawyer nodded. “I suspect my interview with her may have driven her over the edge,” he said. “Perhaps she sensed that I was suspicious of her. She wrote out a letter to the police, detailing what she had done. Then she must have gone upstairs to Mr. Gates’s apartment, because she managed to secure a twenty-five caliber automatic pistol registered to him. She returned to her own apartment, put the weapon to her chest, and shot herself in the heart.”

  “She had some chest, too.”

  Ehrengraf did not comment.

  “I’ll tell you,” Protter said, “the whole thing’s a little too complicated for a simple guy like me to take it all in all at once. I can see why it was open and shut as far as the cops were concerned. There’s me and the wife drinking, and there’s me and the wife fighting, and the next thing you know she’s dead and I’m sleeping it off. If it wasn’t for you, I’d be doing time for killing her.”

  “I played a part,” Ehrengraf said modestly. “But it’s Agnes Mullane’s conscience that saved you from prison.”

  “Poor Agnes.”

  “A tortured, tormented woman, Mr. Protter.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Protter said. “But she had some body on her, I’ll say that for her.” He drew a breath. “What about you, Mr. Ehrengraf? You did a real job for me. I wish I could pay you.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I guess the court pays you something, huh?”

  “There’s a set fee of a hundred and seventy-five dollars,” Ehrengraf said, “but I don’t know that I’m eligible to receive it in this instance because of the disposition of the case. The argument may be raised that I didn’t really perform any actions on your behalf, that charges were simply dropped.”

  “You mean you’ll get gypped out of your fee? That’s a hell of a note, Mr. Ehrengraf.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about it,” said Ehrengraf. “It’s not important in the overall scheme of things.”

  Ehrengraf, his blue pinstripe suit setting off his Caedmon Society striped necktie, sipped daintily at a Calvados. It was Indian Summer this afternoon, far too balmy for hot apple pie with cheddar cheese. He was eating instead a piece of cold apple pie topped with vanilla ice cream, and had discovered that Calvados went every bit as nicely with that dish.

  Across from him, Hudson Cutliffe sat with a plate of lamb stew. When Cutliffe had ordered the dish, Ehrengraf had refrained from commenting on the barbarity of slaughtering lambs and stewing them. He had decided to ignore the contents of Cutliffe’s plate. Whatever he’d ordered, Ehrengraf intended that the man eat crow today.

  “You,” said Cutliffe, “are the most astonishingly fortunate lawyer who ever passed the bar.”

  “ ‘Dame Fortune is a fickle gypsy, And always blind, and often tipsy,’ “ Ehrengraf quoted. “Winthrop Mackworth Praed, born eighteen-oh-two, died eighteen thirty-nine. But you don’t care for poetry, do you? Perhaps you’d prefer the elder Pliny’s observation upon the eruption of Vesuvius. He said that Fortune favors the brave.”

  “A cliché, isn’t it?”

  “Perhaps it was rather less a cliché when Pliny said it,” Ehrengraf said gently. “But that’s beside the point. My client was innocent, just as I told you—”

  “How on earth could you have known it?”

  “I didn’t have to know it. I presumed it, Mr. Cutliffe, as I always presume my clients to be innocent, and as in time they are invariably proven to be. And, because you were so incautious as to insist upon a wager—”

  “Insist!”

  “It was indeed your suggestion,” Ehrengraf said. “I did not seek you out, Mr. Cutliffe. I did not seat myself unbidden at your table.”

  “You came to this restaurant,” Cutliffe said darkly. “You deliberately baited me, goaded me. You—”

  “Oh, come now,” Ehrengraf said. “You make me sound like what priests would call an occasion of sin or lawyers an attractive nuisance. I came here for apple pie with cheese, Mr. Cutliffe, and you proposed a wager. Now my client has been released and all charges dropped, and I believe you owe me money.”

  “It’s not as if you got him off. Fate got him off.”

  Ehrengraf rolled his eyes. “Oh, please, Mr. Cutliffe,” he said. “I’ve had clients take that stance, you know, and they always change their minds in the end. My agreement with them has always been that my fee is due and payable upon their release, whether the case comes to court or not, whether or not I have played any evident part in their salvation. I specified precisely those terms when we arranged our little wager.”

  “Of course gambling debts are not legally collectible in this state.”

  “Of course they are not, Mr. Cutliffe. Yours is purely a debt of honor, an attribute which you may or may not be said to possess in accordance with your willingness to write out a check. But I trust you are an honorable man, Mr. Cutliffe.”

  Their eyes met. After a long moment Cutliffe drew a checkbook from his pocket. “I feel I’ve been manipulated in some devious fashion,” he said, “but at the same time I can’t gloss over the fact that I owe you money.” He opened the checkbook, uncapped a pen, and filled out the check quickly, signing it with a flourish. Ehrengraf smiled narrowly, placing the check in his own wallet without noting the amount. It was, let it be said, an impressive amount.

  “An astonishing case,” Cutliffe said, “even if you yourself had the smallest of parts in it. This morning’s news was the most remarkable thing of all.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’m referring to Gates’s confession, of course.”

  “Gates’s confession?”

  “You haven’t heard? Oh, this is rich. Harry Gates is in jail. He went to the police and confessed to murdering Gretchen Protter.”

  “Gates murdered Gretchen Protter?”

  “No question about it. It seems he shot her, used the very same small-caliber automatic pistol that the Mullane woman stole and used to kill herself. He was having an affair with both the women, just as Agnes Mullane said in her suicide note. He heard Protter accuse his wife of infidelity and was afraid Agnes Mullane would find out he’d been carrying on with Gretchen Protter. So he went down there looking to clear the air, and he had the gun along for protection, and—are you sure you didn’t know about this?”

  “Keep talking,” Ehrengraf urged.

  “Well, he found the two of them out cold. At first he thought Gretchen was dead but he saw she was breathing, and he took a raw potato from the refrigerator and used it as a silencer, and he shot Gretchen in
the heart. They never found the bullet during postmortem examination because they weren’t looking for it, just assumed massive skull injuries had caused her death. But after he confessed they looked, and there was the bullet right where he said it should be, and Gates is in jail charged with her murder.”

  “Why on earth did he confess?”

  “He was in love with Agnes Mullane,” Cutliffe said. “That’s why he killed Gretchen. Then Agnes Mullane killed herself, taking the blame for a crime Gates committed, and he cracked wide open. Figures her death was some sort of divine retribution, and he has to clear things by paying the price for the Protter woman’s death. The D.A. thinks perhaps he killed them both, faked Agnes Mullane’s confession note, and then couldn’t win the battle with his own conscience. He insists he didn’t, of course, just as he insists he didn’t draw nude sketches of either of the women, but it seems there’s some question now about the validity of Agnes Mullane’s suicide note, so it may well turn out that Gates killed her, too. Because if Gates killed Gretchen, why would Agnes have committed suicide?”

  “I’m sure there are any number of possible explanations,” Ehrengraf said, his fingers worrying the tips of his neatly trimmed mustache. “Any number of explanations. Do you know the epitaph Andrew Marvell wrote for a lady?

  “To say—she lived a virgin chaste

  In this age loose and all unlaced;

  Nor was, when vice is so allowed,

  Of virtue or ashamed or proud;

  That her soul was on Heaven so bent,

  No minute but it came and went;

  That, ready her last debt to pay,

  She summed her life up every day;

  Modest as morn, as mid-day bright,

  Gentle as evening, cool as night:

  —‘Tis true; but all too weakly said;

  ‘Twas more significant, she’s dead.

  “She’s dead, Mr. Cutliffe, and we may leave her to heaven, as another poet has said. My client was innocent. That’s the only truly relevant point. My client was innocent.”

  “As you somehow knew all along.”

  “As I knew all along, yes. Yes, indeed, as I knew all along.” Ehrengraf’s fingers drummed the tabletop. “Perhaps you could get our waiter’s eye,” he suggested. “I think I might enjoy another glass of Calvados.”

  The Ehrengraf Riposte

  Martin Ehrengraf placed his hands on the top of his exceedingly cluttered desk and looked across its top. He was seated, while the man at whom he gazed was standing, and indeed looked incapable of remaining still, let alone seating himself on a chair. He was a large man, tall and quite stout, balding, florid of face, with a hawk’s-bill nose and a jutting chin. His hair, combed straight back, was a rich and glossy dark-brown; his bushy eyebrows were salted with gray. His suit, while of a particular shade of blue that Ehrengraf would never have chosen for himself, was well tailored and expensive. It was logical to assume that the man within the suit was abundantly supplied with money, an assumption the little lawyer liked to be able to make about all his prospective clients.

  Now he said, “Won’t you take a seat, Mr. Crowe? You’ll be more comfortable.”

  “I’d rather stand,” Ethan Crowe said. “I’m too much on edge to sit still.”

  “Hmmm. There’s something I’ve learned in my practice, Mr. Crowe, and that’s the great advantage in acting as if. When I’m to defend a client who gives every indication of guilt, I act as if he were indeed innocent. And you know, Mr. Crowe, it’s astonishing how often the client does in fact prove to be innocent, often to his own surprise.”

  Martin Ehrengraf flashed a smile that showed on his lips without altering the expression in his eyes. “All of which is all-important to me, since I collect a fee only if my client is judged to be innocent. Otherwise I go unpaid. Acting as if, Mr. Crowe, is uncannily helpful, and you might help us both by sitting in that chair and acting as if you were at peace with the world.”

  Ehrengraf paused, and when Crowe had seated himself he said, “You say you’ve been charged with murder. But homicide is not usually a bailable offense, so how does it happen that you are here in my office instead of locked in a cell?”

  “I haven’t been charged with murder.”

  “But you said—”

  “I said I wanted you to defend me against a homicide charge. But I haven’t been charged yet.”

  “I see. Whom have you killed? No, let me amend that. Whom are you supposed to have killed?”

  “No one.”

  “Oh?”

  Ethan Crowe thrust his head forward. “I’ll be charged with the murder of Terence Reginald Mayhew,” he said, pronouncing the name with a full measure of loathing. “But I haven’t been charged yet because the rancid scut’s not dead yet because I haven’t killed him yet.”

  “Mr. Mayhew is alive.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you intend to kill him.”

  Crowe chose his words carefully. “I expect to be charged with his murder,” he said at length.

  “And you want to arrange your defense in advance.”

  “Yes.”

  “You show commendable foresight,” Ehrengraf said admiringly. He got to his feet and stepped out from behind his desk. He was a muted symphony of brown. His jacket was a brown Harris tweed in a herringbone weave, his slacks were cocoa flannel, his shirt a buttery tan silk, his tie a perfect match for the slacks with a below-the-knot design of fleur-de-lis in silver thread. Ehrengraf hadn’t been quite certain about the tie when he bought it but had since decided it was quite all right. On his small feet he wore highly polished seamless tan loafers, unadorned with braids or tassels.

  “Foresight,” he repeated. “An unusual quality in a client, Mr. Crowe, and I can only wish that I met with it more frequently.” He put the tips of his fingers together and narrowed his eyes. “Just what is it you wish from me?”

  “Your efforts on my behalf, of course.”

  “Indeed. Why do you want to kill Mr. Mayhew?”

  “Because he’s driving me crazy.”

  “How?”

  “He’s playing tricks on me.”

  “Tricks? What sort of tricks?”

  “Childish tricks,” Ethan Crowe said, and averted his eyes. “He makes phone calls. He orders things. Last week he called different florists and sent out hundreds of orders of flowers to different women all over the city. He’s managed to get hold of my credit-card numbers and placed all these orders in my name and billed them to me. I was able to stop some of the orders, but by the time I got wind of what he’d done, most of them had already gone out.”

  “Surely you won’t have to pay.”

  “It may be easier to pay than to go through the process of avoiding payment. I don’t know. But that’s just one example. Another time ambulances and limousines kept coming to my house. One after the other. And taxicabs, and I don’t know what else. These vehicles kept arriving from various sources and I kept having to send them away.”

  “I see.”

  “And he fills out coupons and orders things C.O.D. for me. I have to cancel the orders and return the products. He’s had me join book clubs and record clubs, he’s subscribed me to every sort of magazine, he’s put me on every sort of mailing list. Did you know, for example, that there’s an outfit called the International Society for the Preservation of Wild Mustangs and Burros?”

  “It so happens I’m a member.”

  “Well, I’m sure it’s a worthwhile organization,” Crowe said, “but the point is I’m not interested in wild mustangs and burros, or even tame ones, but Mayhew made me a member and pledged a hundred dollars on my behalf, or maybe it was a thousand dollars, I can’t remember.”

  “The exact amount isn’t important at the moment, Mr. Crowe.”

  “He’s driving me crazy!”

  “So it would seem. But to kill a man because of some practical jokes—”

  “There’s no end to them. He started doing this almost two years ago. At first it was compl
etely maddening because I had no idea what was happening or who was doing this to me. From time to time he’ll slack off and I’ll think he’s had his fun and has decided to leave me alone. Then he’ll start up again.”

  “Have you spoken to him?”

  “I can’t. He laughs like the lunatic he is and hangs up on me.”

  “Have you confronted him?”

  “I can’t. He lives in an apartment downtown on Chippewa Street. He doesn’t let visitors in and never seems to leave the place.”

  “And you’ve tried the police?”

  “They can’t seem to do anything. He just lies to them, denies all responsibility, tells them it must be someone else. A very nice policeman told me the only sensible thing I can do is wait him out. He’ll get tired, he assured me, the man’s madness will run its course. He’ll decide he’s had his revenge.”

  “And you tried to do that?”

  “For a while. When it didn’t work, I engaged a private detective. He obtained evidence of Mayhew’s activities, evidence that will stand up in court. But my attorney convinced me not to press charges.”

  “Why, for heaven’s sake?”

  “The man’s a cripple.”

  “Your attorney?”

  “Certainly not. Mayhew’s a cripple, he’s confined to a wheelchair. I suppose that’s why he never leaves his squalid little apartment. But my attorney said I could only charge him with malicious mischief, which is not the most serious crime in the book and which sounds rather less serious than it is because it has the connotation of a child’s impish prank—”

  “Yes.”

  “—and there we’d be in court, myself a large man in good physical condition and Mayhew a sniveling cripple in a wheelchair, and he’d get everyone’s sympathy and undoubtedly be exonerated of all charges while I’d come off as a bully and a laughingstock. I couldn’t make charges stand up in criminal court, and if I sued him I’d probably lose. And even if I won that, what could I get? The man doesn’t have anything to start with.”

  Ehrengraf nodded thoughtfully. “He blames you for crippling him?”