Defender of the Innocent: The Casebook of Martin Ehrengraf Read online

  “So it didn’t bother you to pay Speldron his thousand a week.”

  “Not a bit. I figured to have half the stamps sold within a couple of months, and the first thing I’d do would be to repay the fifty thousand dollars principal and close out the loan. I’d have paid eight or ten thousand dollars in interest, say, but what’s that compared to a profit of fifty or a hundred thousand dollars? Speldron was doing me a favor and I appreciated it. Oh, he was doing himself a favor too, two percent interest per week didn’t put him in the hardship category, but it was just good business for both of us, no question about it.”

  “You’d dealt with him before?”

  “Maybe a dozen times over the years. I’ve borrowed sums ranging between ten and seventy thousand dollars. I never heard the interest payments called vigorish before, but I always paid them promptly. And no one ever threatened to break my legs. We did business together, Speldron and I. And it always worked out very well for both of us.”

  “The prosecution argued that by killing Speldron you erased your debt to him. That’s certainly a motive a jury can understand, Mr. Beale. In a world where men are commonly killed for the price of a bottle of whiskey, fifty thousand dollars does seem enough to kill a man over.”

  “But I’d be crazy to kill for that sum. I’m not a pauper. If I was having trouble paying Speldron all I had to do was sell the stamps.”

  “And if you had trouble selling them?”

  “Then I could have liquidated other merchandise from my stock. I could have mortgaged my home. Why, I could have raised enough on the house to pay off Speldron three times over. That car they found the gun in, that’s an Antonelli Scorpion. The car alone is worth more than I owed Speldron.”

  “Indeed,” Martin Ehrengraf said. “But this Walker Murchison. How does he come into the picture?”

  “He killed Speldron.”

  “How do we know this, Mr. Beale?”

  Grantham Beale got to his feet. He’d been sitting on his iron cot, leaving the cell’s one chair for the lawyer. Now he stood up, stretched, and walked to the rear of the cell. For a moment he stood regarding some graffito on the cell wall. Then he turned and looked at Ehrengraf.

  “Speldron and Murchison were partners,” he said. “I dealt only with Speldron because Murchison steered clear of unsecured loans. And Murchison had an insurance business in which Speldron did not participate. Their joint ventures included real estate, investments, and other activities where large sums of money moved around quickly with few records kept of exactly what took place.”

  “Shady operations,” Ehrengraf said.

  “For the most part. Not always illegal, not entirely illegal, but, yes, I like your word. Shady.”

  “So they were partners, and it is not unheard of for one to kill one’s partner. To dissolve a partnership by the most direct means available, as it were. But why this partnership? Why should Murchison kill Speldron?”

  Beale shrugged. “Money,” he suggested. “With all that cash floating around, you can bet Murchison made out handsomely on Speldron’s death. I’ll bet he put a lot more than fifty thousand unrecorded dollars into his pocket.”

  “That’s your only reason for suspecting him?”

  Beale shook his head. “The partnership had a secretary,” he said. “Her name’s Felicia. Young, long dark hair, flashing dark eyes, a body like a magazine centerfold, and a face like a Chanel ad. Both of the partners were sleeping with her.”

  “Perhaps this was not a source of enmity.”

  “But it was. Murchison’s married to her.”

  “Ah.”

  “But there’s an important reason why I know it was Murchison who killed Speldron.” Beale stepped forward, stood over the seated attorney. “The gun was found in the boot of my car,” he said. “Wrapped in a filthy towel and stuffed in the spare tire well. There were no fingerprints on the gun and it wasn’t registered to me but there it was in my car.”

  “The Antonelli Scorpion?”

  “Yes. What of it?”

  “No matter.”

  Beale frowned momentarily, then drew a breath and plunged onward. “It was put there to frame me,” he said.

  “So it would seem.”

  “It had to be put there by somebody who knew I owed Speldron money. Somebody with inside information. The two of them were partners. I met Murchison any number of times when I went to the office to pay the interest, or vigorish as you called it. Why do they call it that?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “Murchison knew I owed money. And Murchison and I never liked each other.”

  “Why?”

  “We just didn’t get along. The reason’s not important. And there’s more, I’m not just grasping at straws. It was Murchison who suggested I might have killed Speldron. A lot of men owed Speldron money and there were probably several of them who were in much stickier shape financially than I, but Murchison told the police I’d had a loud and bitter argument with Speldron two days before he was killed!”

  “And had you?”

  “No! Why, I never in my life argued with Speldron.”

  “Interesting.” The little lawyer raised his hand to his mustache, smoothing its tips delicately. His nails were manicured, Grantham Beale noted, and was there colorless nail polish on them? No, he observed, there was not. The little man might be something of a dandy but he was evidently not a fop.

  “Did you indeed meet with Mr. Speldron on the day in question?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact I did. I made the interest payment and we exchanged pleasantries. There was nothing anyone could have mistaken for an argument.”

  “Ah.”

  “And even if there had been, Murchison wouldn’t have known about it. He wasn’t even in the office.”

  “Still more interesting,” Ehrengraf said thoughtfully.

  “It certainly is. But how can you possibly prove that he murdered his partner and framed me for it? You can’t trap him into confessing, can you?”

  “Murderers do confess.”

  “Not Murchison. You could try tracing the gun to him, I suppose, but the police tried to link it to me and found they couldn’t trace it at all. I just don’t see—”

  “Mr. Beale.”

  “Yes?”

  “Why don’t you sit down, Mr. Beale. Here, take this chair, I’m sure it’s more comfortable than the edge of the bed. I’ll stand for a moment. Mr. Beale, do you have a dollar?”

  “They don’t let us have money here.”

  “Then take this. It’s a dollar which I’m lending to you.” The lawyer’s dark eyes glinted. “No interest, Mr. Beale. A personal loan, not a business transaction. Now, sir, please give me the dollar which I’ve just lent to you.”

  “Give it to you?”

  “That’s right. Thank you. You have retained me, Mr. Beale, to look after your interests. The day you are released from this prison you will owe me a fee of ninety thousand dollars. The fee will be all inclusive. Any expenses will be mine to bear. Should I fail to secure your release you will owe me nothing.”

  “But—”

  “Is that agreeable, sir?”

  “But what are you going to do? Engage detectives? File an appeal? Try to get the case reopened?”

  “When a man engages to save your life, Mr. Beale, do you require that he first outline his plans for you?”

  “No, but—”

  “Ninety thousand dollars. Payable if I succeed. Are the terms agreeable?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Mr. Beale, when next we meet you will owe me ninety thousand dollars plus whatever emotional gratitude comes naturally to you. Until then, sir, you owe me one dollar.” The thin lips curled in a shadowy smile. ‘The cut worm forgives the plow,’ Mr. Beale. William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. ‘The cut worm forgives the plow.’ You might think about that, sir, until we meet again.”

  The second meeting of Martin Ehrengraf and Grantham Beale took place five weeks and four days later.
On this occasion the little lawyer wore a navy two-button suit with a subtle vertical stripe. His shoes were highly polished black wing tips, his shirt a pale blue broadcloth with contrasting white collar and cuffs. His necktie bore a half-inch wide stripe of royal blue flanked by two narrower stripes, one gold and the other a rather bright green, all on a navy field.

  And this time Ehrengraf’s client was also rather nicely turned out, although his tweed jacket and flannels were hardly a match for the lawyer’s suit. But Beale’s dress was a great improvement over the shapeless gray prison garb he had worn previously, just as his office—a room filled with jumbled books and boxes, a desk covered with books and albums and stamps in and out of glassine envelopes, two worn leather chairs, and a matching sagging sofa—just as all of this comfortable disarray was a vast improvement over the prison cell which had been the site of their earlier meeting.

  Beale, seated behind his desk, gazed thoughtfully at Ehrengraf, who stood ramrod straight, one hand on the desk top, the other at his side. “Ninety thousand dollars,” Beale said levelly. “You must admit that’s a bit rich, Mr. Ehrengraf.”

  “We agreed on the price.”

  “No argument. We did agree, and I’m a firm believer in the sanctity of verbal agreements. But it was my understanding that your fee would be payable if my liberty came about as a result of your efforts.”

  “You are free today.”

  “I am indeed, and I’ll be free tomorrow, but I can’t see how it was any of your doing.”

  “Ah,” Ehrengraf said. His face bore an expression of infinite disappointment, a disappointment felt not so much with this particular client as with the entire human race. “You feel I did nothing for you.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. Perhaps you were taking steps to file an appeal. Perhaps you engaged detectives or did some detective work of your own. Perhaps in due course you would have found a way to get me out of prison, but in the meantime the unexpected happened and your services turned out to be unnecessary.”

  “The unexpected happened?”

  “Well, who could have possibly anticipated it?” Beale shook his head in wonder. “Just think of it. Murchison went and got an attack of conscience. The bounder didn’t have enough of a conscience to step forward and admit what he’d done, but he got to wondering what would happen if he died suddenly and I had to go on serving a life sentence for a crime he had committed. He wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize his liberty while he lived but he wanted to be able to make amends if and when he died.”

  “Yes.”

  “So he prepared a letter,” Beale went on. “Typed out a long letter explaining just why he had wanted his partner dead and how the unregistered gun had actually belonged to Speldron in the first place, and how he’d shot him and wrapped the gun in a towel and planted it in my car. Then he’d made up a story about my having had a fight with Albert Speldron, and of course that got the police looking in my direction, and the next thing I knew I was in jail. I saw the letter Murchison wrote. The police let me look at it. He went into complete detail.”

  “Considerate of him.”

  “And then he did the usual thing. Gave the letter to a lawyer with instructions that it be kept in his safe and opened only in the event of his death.” Beale found a pair of stamp tongs in the clutter atop his desk, used them to lift a stamp, frowned at it for a moment, then set it down and looked directly at Martin Ehrengraf. “Do you suppose he had a premonition? For God’s sake, Murchison was a young man, his health was good, and why should he anticipate dying? Maybe he did have a premonition.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Then it’s certainly a remarkable coincidence. A matter of weeks after turning this letter over to a lawyer, Murchison lost control of his car on a curve. Smashed right through the guard rail, plunged a couple of hundred feet, exploded on impact. I don’t suppose the man knew what had happened to him.”

  “I suspect you’re right.”

  “He was always a safe driver,” Beale mused. “Perhaps he’d been drinking.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “And if he hadn’t been decent enough to write that letter, I might be spending the rest of my life behind bars.”

  “How fortunate for you things turned out as they did.”

  “Exactly,” Beale said. “And so, although I truly appreciate what you’ve done on my behalf, whatever that may be, and although I don’t doubt you could have secured my liberty in due course, although I’m sure I don’t know how you might have managed it, nevertheless as far as your fee is concerned—”

  “Mr. Beale.”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you really believe that a detestable troll like W.G. Murchison would take pains to arrange for your liberty in the event of his death?”

  “Well, perhaps I misjudged the man. Perhaps—”

  “Murchison hated you, Mr. Beale. If he found he was dying his one source of satisfaction would have been the knowledge that you were in prison for a crime you hadn’t committed. I told you that you were an innocent, Mr. Beale, and a few weeks in prison has not dented or dulled your innocence. You actually think Murchison wrote that note.”

  ‘You mean he didn’t?”

  “It was typed upon a machine in his office,” the lawyer said. “His own stationery was used, and the signature at the bottom is one many an expert would swear is Murchison’s own.”

  “But he didn’t write it?”

  “Of course not.” Martin Ehrengraf’s hands hovered in the air before him. They might have been poised over an invisible typewriter or they might merely be looming as the talons of a bird of prey.

  Grantham Beale stared at the little lawyer’s hands in fascination. “You typed that letter,” he said.

  Ehrengraf shrugged.

  “You—but Murchison left it with a lawyer!”

  “The lawyer was not one Murchison had used in the past. Murchison evidently selected a stranger from the Yellow Pages, as far as one can determine, and made contact with him over the telephone, explaining what he wanted the man to do for him. He then mailed the letter along with a postal money order to cover the attorney’s fee and a covering note confirming the telephone conversation. It seems he did not use his own name in his discussions with his lawyer, and he signed an alias to his covering note and to the money order as well. The signature he wrote, though, does seem to be in his own handwriting.”

  Ehrengraf paused, and his right hand went to finger the knot of his necktie. This particular tie, rather more colorful than his usual choice, was that of the Caedmon Society of Oxford University, an organization to which Martin Ehrengraf did not belong. The tie was a souvenir of an earlier case and he tended to wear it on particularly happy occasions, moments of personal triumph.

  “Murchison left careful instructions,” he went on. “He would call the lawyer every Thursday, merely repeating the alias he had used. If ever a Thursday passed without a call, and if there was no call on Friday either, the lawyer was to open the letter and follow its instructions. For four Thursdays in a row the lawyer received a phone call, presumably from Murchison.”

  “Presumably,” Beale said heavily.

  “Indeed. On the Tuesday following the fourth Thursday, Murchison’s car went off a cliff and he was killed instantly. The lawyer read of Walker Murchison’s death but had no idea that was his client’s true identity. Then Thursday came and went without a call, and when there was no telephone call Friday either, why, the dutiful attorney opened the letter and went forthwith to the police.” Ehrengraf spread his hands, smiled broadly. “The rest,” he said, “you know as well as I.”

  “Great Scott,” Beale said.

  “Now if you honestly feel I’ve done nothing to earn my money—”

  “I’ll have to liquidate some stock,” Beale said. “It won’t be a problem and there shouldn’t be much time involved. I’ll bring a check to your office in a week. Say ten days at the outside. Unless you’d prefer cash?”

  “A check will be fine,
Mr. Beale. So long as it’s a good check.” And he smiled with his lips to show he was joking.

  The smile gave Beale a chill.

  A week later Grantham Beale remembered that smile when he passed a check across Martin Ehrengraf’s heroically disorganized desk. “A good check,” he said. “I’d never give you a bad check, Mr. Ehrengraf. You typed that letter, you made all those phone calls, you forged Murchison’s false name to the money order, and then when the opportunity presented itself you sent his car hurtling off the cliff with him in it.”

  “One believes what one wishes,” Ehrengraf said quietly.

  “I’ve been thinking about all of this all week long. Murchison framed me for a murder he committed, then paid for the crime himself and liberated me in the process without knowing what he was doing. ‘The cut worm forgives the plow.’”

  “Indeed.”

  “Meaning that the end justifies the means.”

  “Is that what Blake meant by that line? I’ve long wondered.”

  “The end justifies the means. I’m innocent, and now I’m free, and Murchison’s guilty, and now he’s dead, and you’ve got the money, but that’s all right, because I made out fine on those stamps, and of course I don’t have to repay Speldron, poor man, because death did cancel that particular debt, and—”

  “Mr. Beale.”

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t know if I should tell you this, but I fear I must. You are more of an innocent than you realize. You’ve paid me handsomely for my services, as indeed we agreed that you would, and I think perhaps I’ll offer you a lagniappe in the form of some experience to offset your colossal innocence. I’ll begin with some advice. Do not, under any circumstances, resume your affair with Felicia Murchison.”