Ehrengraf for the Defense

by Lawrence Block

  “Not really,” said Ehrengraf.

  Cutliffe delivered four limericks while Ehrengraf sat with a pained expression on his face. The first concerned a mathematician named Paul, the second a young harlot named Dinah, the third a man from Fort Ord, and the fourth an old woman from Truk.

  “It’s interesting,” Ehrengraf said at length. “On the surface there’s no similarity whatsoever between the limerick and abstract expressionist painting. They’re not at all alike. And yet they are.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “It’s not important,” Ehrengraf said. The waiter appeared, setting a plateful of rare beef in front of Cutliffe, who at once reached for his knife and fork. Ehrengraf looked at the meat. “You’re going to eat that,” he said.

  “Of course. What else would I do with it?”

  Ehrengraf took another small sip of the Calvados. Holding the glass aloft, he began an apparently aimless dissertation upon the innocence of his client. “If you were a reader of poetry,” he found himself saying, “and if you did not systematically dull your sensibilities by consuming the flesh of beasts, Mr. Protter’s innocence would be obvious to you.”

  “You’re serious about defending him, then. You’re really going to plead him innocent.”

  “How could I do otherwise?”

  Cutliffe raised an eyebrow while lowering a fork. “You realize you’re letting an idle whim jeopardize a man’s liberty, Ehrengraf. Your Mr. Protter will surely receive a stiffer sentence after he’s been found guilty by a jury, and—”

  “But he won’t be found guilty.”

  “Are you counting on some technicality to get him off the hook? Because I have a friend in the District Attorney’s office, you know, and I went round there while you were visiting your client. He tells me the state’s case is gilt-edged.”

  “The state is welcome to the gilt,” Ehrengraf said grandly. “Mr. Protter has the innocence.”

  Cutliffe put down his fork, set his jaw. “Perhaps,” he said, “perhaps you simply do not care. Perhaps, having no true financial stake in Arnold Protter’s fate, you just don’t give a damn what happens to him. Whereas, had you a substantial sum riding on the outcome of the case—”

  “Oh, dear,” said Ehrengraf. “You’re not by any chance proposing a wager?”

  * * *

  Miss Agnes Mullane had had a permanent recently, and her copper-colored hair looked as though she’d stuck her big toe in an electric socket. She had a freckled face, a pug nose, and a body that would send whole shifts of construction workers plummeting from their scaffolds. She wore a hostess outfit of a silky green fabric, and her walk, Ehrengraf noted, was decidedly slinky.

  “So terrible about the Protters,” she said. “They were good neighbors, although I never became terribly close with either of them. She kept to herself, for the most part, but he always had a smile and a cheerful word for me when I would run into him on the stairs. Of course I’ve always gotten on better with men than with women, Mr. Ehrengraf, though I’m sure I couldn’t tell you why.”

  “Indeed,” said Ehrengraf.

  “You’ll have some more tea, Mr. Ehrengraf?”

  “If I may.”

  She leaned forward, displaying an alluring portion of herself to Ehrengraf as she filled his cup from a Dresden teapot. Then she set the pot down and straightened up with a sigh.

  “Poor Mrs. Protter,” she said. ‘‘Death is so final.”

  “Given the present state of medical science.”

  “And poor Mr. Protter. Will he have to spend many years in prison, Mr. Ehrengraf?”

  “Not with a proper defense. Tell me, Miss Mullane. Mrs. Protter accused her husband of having an affair with you. I wonder why she should have brought such an accusation.”

  “I’m sure I don’t know.”

  “Of course you’re a very attractive woman—”

  “Do you really think so, Mr. Ehrengraf?”

  “—and you live by yourself, and tongues will wag.”

  “I’m a respectable woman, Mr. Ehrengraf.”

  “I’m sure you are.”

  “And I would never have an affair with anyone who lived here in this building. Discretion, Mr. Ehrengraf, is very important to me.”

  “I sensed that, Miss Mullane.” The little lawyer got to his feet, walked to the window. The afternoon was warm, and the strains of Latin music drifted up through the open window from the street below.

  “Transistor radios,” Agnes Mullane said. “They carry them everywhere.”

  “So they do. When Mrs. Protter made that accusation, Miss Mullane, her husband denied it.”

  “Why, I should hope so!”

  “And he in turn accused her of carrying on with Mr. Gates. Have I said something funny, Miss Mullane?”

  Agnes Mullane managed to control her laughter. “Mr. Gates is an artist,” she said.

  “A painter, I’m told. Would that canvas be one of his?”

  “I m afraid not. He paints abstracts. I prefer representational art myself, as you can see.”

  “And country music.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Nothing. You’re sure Mr. Gates was not having an affair with Mrs. Protter?”

  “Positive.” Her brow clouded for an instant, then cleared completely. “No,” she said, “Harry Gates would never have been involved with her. But what’s the point, Mr. Ehrengraf? Are you trying to establish a defense of justifiable homicide? The unwritten law and all that?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Because I really don’t think it would work, do you?”

  “No,” said Ehrengraf, “I don’t suppose it would.”

  Miss Mullane leaned forward again, not to pour tea but with a similar effect. “It’s so noble of you,” she said, “donating your time for poor Mr. Protter.”

  “The court appointed me, Miss Mullane.”

  “Yes, but surely not all appointed attorneys work so hard on these cases, do they?”

  “Perhaps not.”

  “That’s what I thought.” She ran her tongue over her lips. “Nobility is an attractive quality in a man,” she said thoughtfully. “And I’ve always admired men who dress well, and who bear themselves elegantly.”

  Ehrengraf smiled. He was wearing a pale blue cashmere sport jacket over a Wedgwood blue shirt. His tie matched his jacket, with an intricate below-the-knot design in gold thread.

  “A lovely jacket,” Miss Mullane purred. She reached over, laid a hand on sleeve. “Cashmere,” she said. “I love the feel of cashmere.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And gray flannel slacks. What a fine fabric. Come with me, Mr. Ehrengraf. I’ll show you where to hang your things.”

  In the bedroom Miss Mullane paused to switch on the radio. Loretta Lynn was singing something about having been born a coal miner’s daughter.

  “My one weakness,” Miss Mullane said, “or should I say one of my two weaknesses, along with a weakness for well-dressed men of noble character. I hope you don’t mind country music, Mr. Ehrengraf?”

  “Not at all,” said Ehrengraf. “I find it soothing.”

  * * *

  Several days later, when Arnold Protter was released from jail, Ehrengraf was there to meet him. “I want to shake your hand,” he told him, extending his own. “You’re a free man now, Mr. Protter. I only regret I played no greater part in securing your freedom.”

  Protter pumped the lawyer’s hand enthusiastically. “Hey, listen,” he said, “you’re ace-high with me, Mr. Ehrengraf. You believed in me when nobody else did, including me myself. I’m just now trying to take all of this in. I tell you, I never would have dreamed Agnes Mullane killed my wife.”

  “It’s something neither of us suspected, Mr. Protter.”

  “It’s the craziest thing I ever heard of. Let me see if I got the drift of it straight. My Gretchen was carrying on with Gates after all. I thought it was just a way to get in a dig at her, accusing her of carrying on with him, but actuall
y it was happening all the time.”

  “So it would seem.”

  “And that’s why she got so steamed when I brought it up.” Protter nodded, wrapped up in thought. “Anyway, Gates also had something going with Agnes Mullane. You know something, Mr. Ehrengraf? He musta been nuts. Why would anybody who was getting next to Agnes want to bother with Gretchen?”

  “Artists perceive the world differently from the rest of us, Mr. Protter.”

  “If that’s a polite way of saying he was cockeyed, I sure gotta go with you on that. So here he’s getting it on with the both of them, and Agnes finds out and she’s jealous. How do you figure she found out?”

  “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 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 ver
y 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 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, 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 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;