“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?”
“I’m sure you’re right.
“The important thing 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:
“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 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.”