Defender of the Innocent: The Casebook of Martin Ehrengraf by Lawrence Block Read Free Book Online Page A

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.”
    Beale stared.
    “You should have told me that was why you and Murchison didn’t get along,” Ehrengraf said gently. “I was forced to discover it for myself. No matter. More to the point, one should not share a pillow with a woman who has so little regard for one as to frame one for murder. Mrs. Murchison—”
    “Felicia framed me?”
    “Of course, Mr. Beale. Mrs. Murchison had nothing against you. It was sufficient that she had nothing for you. She murdered Mr. Speldron, you see, for reasons which need hardly concern us. Then having done so she needed someone to be cast as the murderer.
    “Her husband could hardly have told the police about your purported argument with Speldron. He wasn’t around at the time. He didn’t know the two of you had met, and if he went out on a limb and told them, and then you had an alibi for the time in question, why, he’d wind up looking silly, wouldn’t he? But Mrs. Murchison