Robin gnawed a thumbnail. “The police are pretty sure he did it,” she said. “The fire ax was missing from the hallway of our building and the glass case where it was kept was smashed open. And Janice Penrose, he used to live with her before he met me — well, they say he was still going around her place sometimes when I was working at the diner. And they never found the fire ax, but Bill came home with his jeans and shirt covered with blood and couldn’t remember what happened. And he was seen in Jan’s neighborhood, and he’d been drinking, plus he smoked a lot of dope that afternoon and he was always taking pills. Ups and downs, like, plus some green capsules he stole from somebody’s medicine chest and we were never quite sure what they were, but they do weird things to your head.”
“The artist is so often the subject of his own experiment,” Ehrengraf said sympathetically. “Think of DeQuincey. Consider Coleridge, waking from an opium dream with all of Kubla Khan fixed in his mind, just waiting for him to write it down. Of course he was interrupted by that dashed man from Porlock, but the lines he did manage to save are so wonderful. You know the poem, Miss Littlefield?”
“I think we had to read it in school.”
“Perhaps.”
“Or didn’t he write something about an albatross? Some guy shot an albatross, something like that.”
“Something like that.”
“The thing is,” William Telliford said, “the more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that I must have killed Jan. I mean, who else would kill her?”
“You’re innocent,” Ehrengraf told him.
“You really think so? I can’t remember what happened that day. I was doing some drugs and hitting the wine pretty good, and then I found this bottle of bourbon that I didn’t think we still had, and I started drinking that, and that’s about the last thing I remember. I must have gone right into blackout and the next thing I knew I was walking around covered with blood. And I’ve got a way of being violent when I’m drunk. When I lived with Jan I beat her up a few times, and I did the same with Robin. That’s one of the reasons Robin’s father hates me.”
“Her father hates you?”
“Despises me. Oh, I can’t really blame him. He’s this self-made man with more money than he can count and I’m squeezing by on food stamps. There’s not much of a living in poetry.”
“It’s an outrage.”
“Right. When Robin and I moved in together — well, her old man had a fit. Up to then he was laying a pretty heavy check on her the first of every month, but as soon as she moved in with me that was the end of that song. No more money for her. Here’s her little brother going to this fancy private school and her mother dripping in sables and emeralds and diamonds and mink, and here’s Robin slinging hash in a greasy spoon because her father doesn’t care for the company she’s keeping.”
“Interesting.”
“The man really hates me. Some people take to me and some people don’t, but he just couldn’t stomach me. Thought I was the lowest of the low. It really grinds a person down, you know. All the pressure he was putting on Robin, and both of us being as broke as we were, I tell you, it reached the point where I couldn’t get any writing done.”
“That’s terrible,” Ehrengraf said, his face clouded with concern. “The poetry left you?”
“That’s what happened. It just wouldn’t come to me. I’d sit there all day staring at a blank sheet of paper, and finally I’d say the hell with it and fire up a joint or get into the wine, and there’s another day down the old chute. And then finally I found that bottle of bourbon and the next thing I knew” — the poet managed a brave smile — “well, according to you, I’m innocent.”
“Of course you are innocent, sir.”
“I wish I was convinced of that, Mr. Ehrengraf. I don’t even see how you can be convinced.”
“Because you are a poet,” the diminutive attorney said. “Because, further, you are a client of Martin H. Ehrengraf. My clients are always innocent. That is the Ehrengraf presumption. Indeed, my income depends on the innocence of my clients.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“It’s simple enough. My fees, as we’ve said, are quite high. But I collect them only if my efforts are successful. If a client of mine goes to prison, Mr. Telliford, he pays me nothing. I’m not even reimbursed for my expenses.”
“That’s incredible,” Telliford said. “I never heard of anything like that. Do many lawyers work that way?”
“I believe I’m the only one. It’s a pity more don’t take up the custom. Other professionals as well, for that matter. Consider how much higher the percentage of successful operations might be if surgeons were paid on the basis of their results.”
“Isn’t that the truth. Hey, you know what’s ironic?”
“What?”
“Mr. Littlefield. Robin’s father. He could pay you that eighty thousand out of petty cash and never miss it. That’s the kind of money he’s got. But the way he feels about me, he’d pay to me to prison, not to keep me out of it. In other words, if you worked for him you’d only get paid if you lost your case. Don’t you think that’s ironic?”
“Yes,” said Ehrengraf. “I do indeed.”
When William Telliford stepped into Ehrengraf’s office, the lawyer scarcely recognized him. The poet’s beard was gone and his hair had received the attention of a fashionable barber. His jacket was black velvet, his trousers a cream-colored flannel. He was wearing a raw silk shirt and a bold paisley ascot.
He smiled broadly at Ehrengraf’s reaction. “I guess I look different,” he said.
“Different,” Ehrengraf agreed.
“Well, I don’t have to live like a slob now.” The young man sat down in one of Ehrengraf’s chairs, shot his cuff and checked the time on an oversized gold watch. “Robin’ll be coming by for me in half an hour,” he said, “but I wanted to take the time to let you know how much I appreciated what you tried to do for me. You believed in my innocence when I didn’t even have that much faith in myself. And I’m sure you would have been terrific in the courtroom if it had come to that.”
“Fortunately it didn’t.”
“Right, but whoever would have guessed how it would turn out? Imagine old Jasper Littlefield killing Jan to frame me and get me out of his daughter’s life. That’s really a tough one to swallow. But he came over looking for Robin, and he found me drunk, and then it was evidently just a matter of taking the fire ax out of the case and taking me along with him to Jan’s place and killing her and smearing her blood all over me. I must have been in worse than a blackout when it happened. I must have been passed out cold for him to be sure I wouldn’t remember any of it.”
“So it would seem.”
“The police never did find the fire ax, and I wondered about that at the time. What I’d done with it, I mean, because deep down inside I really figured I must have been guilty. But what happened was Mr. Littlefield took the ax along with him, and then when he went crazy it was there for him to use.”
“And use it he did.”
“He sure did,” Telliford said. “According to some psychologist they interviewed for one of the papers, he must have been repressing his basic instincts all his life. When he killed Jan to frame me, it set something off inside him, some undercurrent of violence he’d been smothering for years and years. One night he couldn’t keep the lid on, and he went and killed his wife and son while they slept.”
“At least they didn’t suffer,” Ehrengraf murmured.
“That’s something. Then he realized what he’d done and made a phone call to the police, and at the same time he told them how he’d murdered Jan.”