“A day that should come in short order,” Ehrengraf said.
“That’s your department,” Evelyn Throop said, and smiled serenely.
Ehrengraf smiled now, recalling her smile, and made a little tent of his fingertips on the desk top. An exceptional woman, he told himself, and one on whose behalf it would be an honor to extend himself.
It was difficult, of course. Shot with the woman’s own gun, and a witness to swear that she’d shot him. Difficult, certainly, but scarcely impossible.
The little lawyer leaned back, closed his eyes, and considered alternatives.
Some days later, Ehrengraf was seated at his desk reading the poems of William Ernest Henley, who had written so confidently of being the master of one’s fate and the captain of one’s soul. The telephone rang. Ehrengraf set his book down, located the instrument amid the desk top clutter, and answered it.
“Ehrengraf,” said Ehrengraf.
He listened for a moment, spoke briefly in reply, and replaced the receiver. Smiling brightly, he started for the door, then paused to check his appearance in a mirror.
His tie was navy blue, with a demure below-the-knot pattern of embroidered rams’ heads. For a moment Ehrengraf thought of stopping at his house and changing it for his Caedmon Society necktie, one he’d taken to wearing on triumphal occasions. He glanced at his watch and decided not to squander the time.
Later, recalling the decision, he wondered if it hinted at prescience.
“Quite remarkable,” Evelyn Throop said. “Although I suppose I should have at least considered the possibility that Mrs. Keppner was lying. After all, I knew for a fact that she was testifying to something that didn’t happen to be true. But for some reason I assumed it was an honest mistake on her part.”
“One hesitates to believe the worst of people,” Ehrengraf said.
“That’s exactly it, of course. Besides, I rather took her for granted.”
“So, it appears, did Mr. Bierstadt.”
“And that was his mistake, wasn’t it?” Evelyn Throop sighed. “Dora Keppner had been with him for years. Who would have guessed she’d been in love with him? Although I gather their relationship was physical at one point.”
“There was a suggestion to that effect in the note she left.”
“And I understand he wanted to get rid of her—to discharge her.”
“The note seems to have indicated considerable mental disturbance,” Ehrengraf said. “There were other jottings in a notebook found in Mrs. Keppner’s attic bedroom. The impression seems to be that either she and her employer had been intimate in the past or that she entertained a fantasy to that effect. Her attitude in recent weeks apparently became less and less the sort proper to a servant, and either Mr. Bierstadt intended to let her go or she feared that he did and—well, we know what happened.”
“She shot him.” Evelyn Throop frowned. “She must have been in the room when he went to freshen the drinks. I thought he’d put the gun in his pocket but perhaps he still had it in his hand. He would have set it down when he made the drinks and she could have snatched it up and shot him and been out of the room before I got there.” The gray eyes moved to encounter Ehrengraf’s. “She didn’t leave any fingerprints on the gun.”
“She seems to have worn gloves. She was wearing a pair when she took her own life. A test indicated nitrite particles in the right glove.”
“Couldn’t they have gotten there when she committed suicide?”
“It’s unlikely,” Ehrengraf said. “She didn’t shoot herself, you see. She took poison.”
“How awful,” Evelyn Throop said. “I hope it was quick.”
“Mercifully so,” said Ehrengraf. Clearly this woman was the captain of her soul, he thought, not to mention master of her fate. Or ought it to be mistress of her fate?
And yet, he realized abruptly, she was not entirely at ease.
“I’ve been released,” she said, “as is of course quite obvious. All charges have been dropped. A man from the District Attorney’s Office explained everything to me.”
“That was considerate of him.”
“He didn’t seem altogether happy. I had the feeling he didn’t really believe I was innocent after all.”
“People believe what they wish to believe,” Ehrengraf said smoothly. “The state’s whole case collapses without their star witness, and after that witness has confessed to the crime herself and taken her life in the bargain, well, what does it matter what a stubborn district attorney chooses to believe?
“The important thing,” Ehrengraf said, “is that you’ve been set free. You’re innocent of all charges.”
“Yes.”
His eyes searched hers. “Is there a problem, Miss Throop?”
“There is, Mr. Ehrengraf.”
“Dear lady,” he began, “if you could just tell me—”
“The problem concerns your fee.”
Ehrengraf’s heart sank. Why did so many clients disappoint him in precisely this fashion? At the onset, with the sword of justice hanging over their throats, they agreed eagerly to whatever he proposed. Remove the sword and their agreeability went with it.
But that was not it at all.
“The most extraordinary thing,” Evelyn Throop was saying. “I told you the terms of Howard’s will. The paintings to Leona, a few thousand dollars here and there to various charities, a modest bequest to Mrs. Keppner—I suppose she won’t get that now, will she?”
“Hardly.”
“Well, that’s something. Though it doesn’t amount to much. At any rate, the balance is to go to me. The residue, after the bequests have been made and all debts settled and the state and federal taxes been paid, all that remains comes to me.”
“So you explained.”
“I intended to pay you out of what I received, Mr. Ehrengraf. Well, you’re more than welcome to every cent I get. You can buy yourself a couple of hamburgers and a milkshake.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s the damned paintings,” Evelyn Throop said. “They’re worth an absolute fortune. I didn’t realize how much he spent on them in the first place or how rapidly they appreciated in value. Nor did I have any idea how deeply mortgaged everything else he owned was. He had some investment reversals over the past few months and he’d taken out a second mortgage on his home and sold off stocks and other holdings. There’s a little cash and a certain amount of equity in the real estate, but it’ll take all of that to pay the estate taxes on the several million dollars’ worth of paintings that go free and clear to that bitch Leona.”
“You have to pay the taxes?”
“No question about it,” she said bitterly. “The estate pays the taxes and settles the debts. Then all the paintings go straight to America’s favorite cook. I hope she chokes on them.” Evelyn Throop sighed heavily, collected herself. “Please forgive the dramatics, Mr. Ehrengraf.”
“They’re quite understandable, dear lady.”
“I didn’t intend to lose control of myself in that fashion. But I feel this deeply. I know Howard had no intention of disinheriting me and having that woman get everything. It was his unmistakable intention to leave me the greater portion, and a cruel trick of fate has thwarted him in that purpose. Mr. Ehrengraf, I owe you one hundred thousand dollars. That was our agreement and I consider myself bound by it.”
Ehrengraf made no reply.
“But I don’t know how I can possibly pay you. Oh, I’ll pay what I can, as I can, but I’m a woman of modest means. I couldn’t honestly expect to discharge the debt in full within my lifetime.”
“My dear Miss Throop.” Ehrengraf was moved, and his hand went involuntarily to the knot of his necktie. “My dear Miss Throop,” he said again, “I beg you not to worry yourself. Do you know Henley, Miss Throop?”
“Henley?”
“The poet,” said Ehrengraf, and quoted:
“In the fell clutch of circumstance,
I have not winced nor cried aloud:
br /> Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
“William Ernest Henley, Miss Throop. Born 1849, died 1903. Bloody but unbowed, Miss Throop. ‘I have not yet begun to fight.’ That was John Paul Jones, Miss Throop, not a poet at all, a naval commander of the Revolutionary War, but the sentiment, dear lady, is worthy of a poet. ‘Things are seldom what they seem, Skim milk masquerades as cream.’ William Schwenk Gilbert, Miss Throop.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Alternatives, Miss Throop. Alternatives!” The little lawyer was on his feet, pacing, gesticulating with precision. “I tell you only what I told you before. There are always alternatives available to us.”
The gray eyes narrowed in thought. “I suppose you mean we could sue to overturn the will,” she said. “That occurred to me, but I thought you only handled criminal cases.”
“And so I do.”
“I wonder if I could find another lawyer who would contest the will on a contingency basis. Perhaps you know someone—”
“Ah, Miss Throop,” said Ehrengraf, sitting back down and placing his fingertips together. “Contest the will? Life is too short for litigation. An unlikely sentiment for an attorney to voice, I know, but nonetheless valid for it. Put lawsuits far from your mind. Let us first see if we cannot find”—a smile blossomed on his lips—“the Ehrengraf alternative.”
Ehrengraf, a shine on his black wing-tip shoes and a white carnation on his lapel, strode briskly up the cinder path from his car to the center entrance of the Bierstadt house. In the crisp autumn air, the ivy-covered brick mansion in its spacious grounds took on an aura suggestive of a college campus. Ehrengraf noticed this and touched his tie, a distinctive specimen sporting a half-inch stripe of royal blue flanked by two narrower stripes, one of gold and the other of a particularly vivid green, all on a deep navy field. It was the tie he had very nearly worn to the meeting with his client some weeks earlier.
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 by 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 one?”
“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 sighed. “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 guilty 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?”