“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 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 t
o 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 EHRENGRAF
Nostrum
* * *
“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.”
“Indeed. They seem to believe that you mixed a lethal dose of Cydonex into your wife’s wine at dinner. The poison, tasteless and odorless as it is, would have been undetectable in plain water, let alone wine. What sort of wine was it, if I may ask?”
“Nuits-St.-Georges.”
“And the main course?”
“Veal, I think. What difference does it make?”
“Nuits-St.-Georges would have overpowered the veal,” Ehrengraf said thoughtfully. “No doubt it would have overpowered the Cydonex as well. The police said the wineglasses had been washed out, although the rest of the dinner dishes remained undone.”
“The wineglasses are Waterford. I always do them up by hand, while Alyssa put everything else in the dishwasher.”
“Indeed.” Ehrengraf straightened up behind his desk, his hand fastening upon the knot of his tie. It was a small precise knot, and the tie itself was a two-inch-wide silk knit the approximate color of a bottle of Nuits-St.-Georges. The little lawyer wore a white-on-white shirt with French cuffs and a spread collar, and his suit was navy with a barely perceptible scarlet stripe. “As your lawyer,” he said, “I must raise unpleasant points.”
“Go right ahead.”
‘You have a mistress, a young woman who is expecting your child. You and your wife were not getting along. Your wife refused to give you a divorce. Yo
ur business, while extremely profitable, has been experiencing recent cash-flow problems. Your wife’s life was insured in the amount of five hundred thousand dollars with yourself as beneficiary. In addition, you are her sole heir, and her estate after taxes will still be considerable. Is all of that correct?”
“It is,” Bridgewater admitted. “The police found it significant.”
“I’m not surprised.”
Bridgewater leaned forward suddenly, placing his large and sinewy hands upon Ehrengraf’s desk. He looked capable of yanking the top off it and dashing it against the wall. “Mr. Ehrengraf,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper, “do you think I should plead guilty?”
“Of course not.”
“I could plead to a reduced charge.”
“But you’re innocent,” Ehrengraf said. “My clients are always innocent, Mr. Bridgewater. My fees are high, sir. One might even pronounce them towering. But I collect them only if I win an acquittal or if the charges against my client are peremptorily dismissed. I intend to demonstrate your innocence, Mr. Bridgewater, and my fee system provides me with the keenest incentive toward that end.”
“I see.”
“Now,” said Ehrengraf, coming out from behind his desk and rubbing his small hands briskly together, “let us look at the possibilities. Your wife ate the same meal you did, is that correct?”
“It is.”
“And drank the same wine?”
‘Yes. The residue in the bottle was unpoisoned. But I could have put Cydonex directly into her glass.”
“But you didn’t, Mr. Bridgewater, so let us not weigh ourselves down with what you could have done. She became ill after the meal, I believe you said.”
“Yes. She was headachy and nauseous.”
“Headachy and nauseated, Mr. Bridgewater. That she was nauseous in the bargain would be a subjective conclusion of your own. She lay down for a nap?”
“Yes.”
“But first she took something.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Aspirin, something of that sort?”