Ehrengraf for the Defense (14 page)

Now, he trusted, it would be rather more
appropriate. He eschewed the doorbell in favor of the heavy brass
knocker, and in a matter of seconds the door swung inward. Evelyn
Throop met him with a smile. “Dear Mr. Ehrengraf,” she said. “It’s
kind of you to meet me here. In poor Howard’s home.”

“Your home now,” Ehrengraf murmured.

“Mine,” she agreed. “Of course, there are
legal processes to be gone through, but I’ve been allowed to take
possession. And I think I’m going to be able to keep the place. Now
that the paintings are mine, I’ll be able to sell some of them to
pay the taxes and settle other claims against the estate. But let
me show you around. This is the living room, of course, and here’s
the room where Howard and I were having drinks that night—”

“That fateful night,” said Ehrengraf.

“And here’s the room where Howard was killed.
He was preparing drinks at the sideboard over there. He was lying
here when I found him. And—” Ehrengraf watched politely as his
client pointed out where everything had taken place. Then he
followed her to another room where he accepted a small glass of
Calvados.

For herself, Evelyn Throop poured a pony of
Benedictine.

“What shall we drink to?” she asked him.

To your spectacular eyes, he thought, but
suggested instead that she propose a toast.

“To the Ehrengraf alternative,” she said.

They drank.

“The Ehrengraf alternative,” she said again.
“I didn’t know what to expect when we last saw each other. I
thought you must have had some sort of complicated legal maneuver
in mind, perhaps some way around the extortionate tax burden the
government levies upon even the most modest inheritance. I had no
idea the whole circumstances of poor Howard’s murder would wind up
turned utterly upside down.”

“It was quite extraordinary,” Ehrengraf
allowed.

“I had been astonished enough to learn that
Mrs. Keppner had murdered Howard and then taken her own life.
Imagine how I felt to learn that she wasn’t a murderer and that she
hadn’t committed suicide but that she’d actually herself been
murdered.”

“Life keeps surprising us,” Ehrengraf
said.

“And Leona Weybright winds up hoist on her
own soufflé. The funny thing is that I was right in the first
place. Howard was afraid of Leona, and evidently he had every
reason to be. He’d apparently written her a note, insisting that
they stop seeing each other.”

Ehrengraf nodded. “The police found the note
when they searched her quarters. Of course, she insisted she had
never seen it before.”

“What else could she say?” Evelyn Throop took
another delicate sip of Benedictine, and Ehrengraf’s heart thrilled
at the sight of her pink tongue against the brim of the tiny glass.
“But I don’t see how she can expect anyone to believe her. She
murdered Howard, didn’t she?”

“It would be hard to establish that beyond a
reasonable doubt,” Ehrengraf said. “The supposition exists.
However, Miss Weybright does have an alibi, and it might not be
easily shaken. And the only witness to the murder, Mrs. Keppner, is
no longer available to give testimony.”

“Because Leona killed her.”

Ehrengraf nodded. “And that,” he said, “very
likely can be established.”

“Because Mrs. Keppner’s suicide note was a
forgery.”

“So it would appear,” Ehrengraf said. “An
artful forgery, but a forgery nevertheless. And the police seem to
have found earlier drafts of that very note in Miss Weybright’s
desk. One was typed on the very machine at which she prepares her
cookbook manuscripts. Others were written with a pen found in her
desk, and the ink matched that on the note Mrs. Keppner purportedly
left behind. Some of the drafts are in an imitation of the dead
woman’s handwriting, one in a sort of mongrel cross between the two
women’s penmanship, and one—evidently she was just trying to get
the wording to her liking—was in Miss Weybright’s own unmistakable
hand. Circumstantial evidence, all of it, but highly
suggestive.”

“And there was other evidence, wasn’t
there?”

“Indeed there was. When Mrs. Keppner’s body
was found, there was a glass on a nearby table, a glass with a
residue of water in it. An analysis of the water indicated the
presence of a deadly poison, and an autopsy indicated that Mrs.
Keppner’s death had been caused ingesting that very substance. The
police, combining two and two, concluded not illogically that Mrs.
Keppner had drunk a glass of water with the poison in it.”

“But that’s not how it happened?”

“Apparently not. Because the autopsy also
indicated that the deceased had had a piece of cake not long before
she died.”

“And the cake was poisoned?”

“I should think it must have been,” Ehrengraf
said carefully, “because police investigators happened to find a
cake with one wedge missing, wrapped securely in aluminum foil and
tucked away in Miss Weybright’s freezer. And that cake, when thawed
and subjected to chemical analysis, proved to have been laced with
the very poison which caused the death of poor Mrs. Keppner.”

Miss Throop looked thoughtful. “How did Leona
try to get out of that?”

“She denied she ever saw the cake before and
insisted she had never baked it.”

“And?”

“And it seems to have been prepared precisely
according to an original recipe in her present
cookbook-in-progress.”

“I suppose the book will never be published
now.”

“On the contrary, I believe the publisher has
tripled the initial print order.” Ehrengraf drew a breath. “As I
understand it, the presumption is that Miss Weybright was desperate
at the prospect of losing the unfortunate Mr. Bierstadt. She wanted
him, and if she couldn’t have him alive she wanted him dead. But
she didn’t want to be punished for his murder, nor did she want to
lose out on whatever she stood to gain from his will. By framing
you for his murder, she thought she could increase the portion due
her. Actually, the language of the will probably would not have
facilitated this, but she evidently didn’t realize it, any more
than she realized that by receiving the paintings she would have
the lion’s share of the estate. In any event, she must have been
obsessed with the idea of killing her lover and seeing her rival
pay for the crime.”

“How did Mrs. Keppner get into the act?”

“We may never know for certain. Was the
housekeeper in on the plot all along? Did she actually fire the
fatal shots and then turn into a false witness? Or did Miss
Weybright commit the murder and leave Mrs. Keppner to testify
against you? Or did Mrs. Keppner see what she oughtn’t to have seen
and then, after lying about you, try her hand at blackmailing Miss
Weybright? Whatever the actual circumstances, Miss Weybright
realized that Mrs. Keppner represented either an immediate or a
potential hazard.”

“And so Leona killed her.”

“And had no trouble doing so.” One might call
it a piece of cake, Ehrengraf forbore to say. “At that point it
became worth her while to let Mrs. Keppner play the role of
murderess. Perhaps Miss Weybright became acquainted with the nature
of the will and the estate itself and realized that she would
already be in line to receive the greater portion of the estate,
that it was not necessary to frame you. Furthermore, she saw that
you were not about to plead to a reduced charge or to attempt a
Frankie-and-Johnny defense, as it were. By shunting the blame onto
a dead Mrs. Keppner, she forestalled the possibility of a detailed
investigation which might have pointed the finger of guilt in her
own direction.”

“My goodness,” Evelyn Throop said. “It’s
quite extraordinary, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Ehrengraf agreed.

“And Leona will stand trial?”

“For Mrs. Keppner’s murder.”

“Will she be convicted?”

“One never knows what a jury will do,”
Ehrengraf said. “That’s one reason I much prefer to spare my own
clients the indignity of a trial.”

He thought for a moment. “The district
attorney might or might not have enough evidence to secure a
conviction. Of course, more evidence might come to light between
now and the trial. For that matter, evidence in Miss Weybright’s
favor might turn up.”

“If she has the right lawyer.”

“An attorney can often make a difference,”
Ehrengraf allowed. “But I’m afraid the man Miss Weybright has
engaged won’t do her much good. I suspect she’ll wind up convicted
of first-degree manslaughter or something of the sort. A few years
in confined quarters and she’ll have been rehabilitated. Perhaps
she’ll emerge from the experience with a slew of new recipes.”

“Poor Leona,” Evelyn Throop said, and
shuddered delicately.

“Ah, well,” Ehrengraf said. ‘Life is bitter,’
as reminds us in a poem. It goes on to say:

“
Riches won but mock the old, unable
years;

Fame’s a pearl that hides beneath a sea of tears;

Love must wither, or must live alone and weep.

In the sunshine, through the leaves, across the
flowers,

While we slumber, death approaches through the hours
...

Let me sleep.

“Riches, fame, love—and yet we seek them, do
we not? That will be one hundred thousand dollars, Miss Throop,
and—ah, you have the check all drawn, have you?” He accepted it
from her, folded it, and tucked it into a pocket.

“It is rare,” he said, “to meet a woman so
businesslike and yet so unequivocally feminine. And so
attractive.”

There was a small silence. Then: “Mr.
Ehrengraf? Would you care to see the rest of the house?”

“I’d like that,” said Ehrengraf, and smiled
his little smile.

The End

“
In the world’s broad field of battle,

In the bivouac of Life,

Be not like dumb, driven cattle!

Be a hero in the strife!”

—
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Gardner Bridgewater paced to and fro over
Martin Ehrengraf’s office carpet, reminding the little lawyer
rather less of a caged jungle cat than—what? He doth bestride the
narrow world like a Colossus, Ehrengraf thought, echoing
Shakespeare’s Cassius. But what, really, did a Colossus look like?
Ehrengraf wasn’t sure, but the alleged uxoricide was unquestionably
colossal, and there he was, bestriding all over the place as if
determined to wear holes in the rug.

“If I’d wanted to kill the woman,”
Bridgewater said, hitting one of his hands with the other, “I’d
have damn well done it. By cracking her over the head with
something heavy. A lamp base. A hammer. A fireplace poker.”

An anvil, Ehrengraf thought. A stove. A
Volkswagen.

“Or I might have wrung her neck,” said
Bridgewater, flexing his fingers. “Or I might have beaten her to
death with my hands.”

Ehrengraf thought of Longfellow’s village
blacksmith. “‘The smith, a mighty man is he, with large and sinewy
hands,’” he murmured.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Nothing important,” said Ehrengraf. “You’re
saying, I gather, that if murderous impulses had overwhelmed you,
you would have put them into effect in a more spontaneous and
direct manner.”

“Well, I certainly wouldn’t have poisoned
her. Poison’s sneaky. It’s the weapon of the weak, the devious, the
cowardly.”

“And yet your wife was poisoned.”

“That’s what they say. After dinner Wednesday
she complained of headache and nausea. She took a couple of pills
and lay down for a nap. She got up feeling worse, couldn’t breathe.
I rushed her to the hospital. Her heart ceased beating before I’d
managed to fill out the questionnaire about medical insurance.”

“And the cause of death,” Ehrengraf said,
“was a rather unusual poison.”

Bridgewater nodded. “Cydonex,” he said. “A
tasteless, odorless, crystalline substance, a toxic hydrocarbon
developed serendipitously as a by-product in the extrusion-molding
of plastic dashboard figurines. Alyssa’s system contained enough
Cydonex to kill a person twice her size.”

“You had recently purchased an eight-ounce
canister of Cydonex.”

“I had,” Bridgewater said. “We had squirrels
in the attic and I couldn’t get rid of the wretched little beasts.
The branches of several of our trees are within leaping distance of
our roof and attic windows, and squirrels have quite infested the
premises. They’re noisy and filthy creatures, and clever at
avoiding traps and poisoned baits. Isn’t it extraordinary that a
civilization with the capacity to devise napalm and Agent Orange
can’t come up with something for the control of rodents in a man’s
attic?”

“So you decided to exterminate them with
Cydonex?”

“I thought it was worth a try. I mixed it
into peanut butter and put gobs of it here and there in the attic.
Squirrels are mad for peanut butter, especially the crunchy kind.
They’ll eat the creamy, but the crunchy really gets them.”

“And yet you discarded the Cydonex.
Investigators found the almost full canister near the bottom of the
garbage can.”

“I was worried about the possible effects. I
recently saw a neighbor’s dog with a squirrel in his jaws, and it
struck me that a poisoned squirrel, reeling from the effects of the
Cydonex, might be easy prey for a neighborhood pet, who would in
turn be the poison’s victim. Besides, as I said, poison’s a sneak’s
weapon. Even a squirrel deserves a more direct approach.”

A narrow smile blossomed for an instant on
Ehrengraf’s thin lips. Then it was gone. “One wonders,” he said,
“how the Cydonex got into your wife’s system.”

“It’s a mystery to me, Mr. Ehrengraf. Unless
poor Alyssa ate some peanut butter off the attic floor, I’m damned
if I know where she got it.”

“Of course,” Ehrengraf said gently, “the
police have their own theory.”

“The police.”