Half an hour later Alvin Gort was still sitting on the edge of his cot. Martin Ehrengraf, however, was pacing briskly in the manner of a caged lion. With the thumb and forefinger of his right hand he smoothed the ends of his neat mustache. His left hand was at his side, its thumb hooked into his trouser pocket. He continued to pace while Gort smoked a cigarette almost to the filter. Then, as Gort ground the butt under his heel, Ehrengraf turned on his own heel and fixed his eyes on his client.
“The evidence is damning,” he conceded. “A man of your description purchased dynamite and blasting caps from Tattersall Demolition Supply just ten days before your wife’s death. Your signature is on the purchase order. A clerk remembers waiting on you and reports that you were nervous.”
“Damn right I was nervous,” Gort said. “I never killed anyone before.”
“Please, Mr. Gort. If you must maintain the facade of having committed murder, at least keep your illusion to yourself. Don’t share it with me. At the moment I’m concerned with evidence. We have your signature on the purchase order and we have you identified by the clerk. The man even remembers what you were wearing. Most customers come to Tattersall in work clothes, it would seem, while you wore a rather distinctive burgundy blazer and white flannel slacks. And tasseled loafers,” he added, clearly not approving of them.
“It’s hard to find casual loafers without tassels or braid these days.”
“Hard, yes. But scarcely impossible. Now you say your wife had a lover, a Mr. Barry Lattimore.”
“That toad Lattimore!”
“You knew of this affair and disapproved.”
“Disapproved! I hated them. I wanted to strangle both of them. I wanted—”
“Please, Mr. Gort.”
“I’m sorry.”
Ehrengraf sighed. “Now your wife seems to have written a letter to her sister in New Mexico. She did in fact have a sister in New Mexico?”
“Her sister Grace. In Socorro.”
“She posted the letter four days before her death. In it she stated that you knew about her affair with Lattimore.”
“I’d known for weeks.”
“She went on to say that she feared for her life. ‘The situation is deteriorating and I don’t know what to do. You know what a temper he has. I’m afraid he might be capable of anything, anything at all. I’m defenseless and I don’t know what to do.’”
“Defenseless as a cobra,” Gort muttered.
“No doubt. That was from memory but it’s a fair approximation. Of course I’ll have to examine the original. And I’ll want specimens of your wife’s handwriting.”
“You can’t think the letter’s a forgery?”
“We never know, do we? But I’m sure you can tell me where I can get hold of samples. Now what other evidence do we have to contend with? There was a neighbor who saw you doing something under the hood of your wife’s car some four or five hours before her death.”
“Mrs. Boerland. Damned old crone. Vicious gossiping busybody.”
“You seem to have been in the garage shortly before dawn. You had a light on and the garage door was open, and you had the hood of the car up and were doing something.”
“Damned right I was doing something. I was—”
“Please, Mr. Gort. Between tasseled loafers and these constant interjections—”
“Won’t happen again, Mr. Ehrengraf.”
“Yes. Now just let me see. There were two cars in the garage, were there not? Your Buick and your wife’s Pontiac. Your car was parked on the left-hand side, your wife’s on the right.”
“That was so that she could back straight out. When you’re parked on the left side you have to back out in a sort of squiggly way. When Ginnie tried to do that she always ran over a corner of the lawn.”
“Ah.”
“Some people just don’t give a damn about a lawn,” Gort said, “and some people do.”
“As with so many aspects of human endeavor, Mr. Gort. Now Mrs. Boerland observed you in the garage shortly before dawn, and the actual explosion which claimed your wife’s life took place a few hours later while you were having your breakfast.”
“Toasted English muffin and coffee. Years ago Ginnie made scrambled eggs and squeezed fresh orange juice for me. But with the passage of time—”
“Did she normally start her car at that hour?”
“No,” Gort said. He sat up straight, frowned. “No, of course not. Dammit, why didn’t I think of that? I figured she’d sit around the house until noon. I wanted to be well away from the place when it happened—”
“Mr. Gort.”
“Well, I did. All of a sudden there was this shock wave and a thunderclap right on top of it and I’ll tell you, Mr. Ehrengraf, I didn’t even know what it was.”
“Of course you didn’t.”
“I mean—”
“I wonder why your wife left the house at that hour. She said nothing to you?”
“No. There was a phone call and—”
“From whom?”
Gort frowned again. “Damned if I know. But she got the call just before she left. I wonder if there’s a connection.”
“I shouldn’t doubt it. Who was your wife’s heir, Mr. Gort? Who would inherit her money?”
“Money?” Gort grinned. “Ginnie didn’t have a dime. I was her legal heir just as she was mine, but I was the one who had the money. All she left was the jewelry and clothing that my money paid for.”
“Any insurance?”
“Exactly enough to pay your fee,” Gort said, and grinned this time rather like a shark. “Except that I won’t see a penny of it. Fifty thousand dollars, double indemnity for accidental death, and I think the insurance companies call murder an accident, although it’s always struck me as rather purposeful. That makes one hundred thousand dollars, your fee to the penny, but none of it’ll come my way.”
“It’s true that one cannot profit financially from a crime,” Ehrengraf said. “But if you’re found innocent—”
Gort shook his head. “Doesn’t make any difference,” he said. “I just learned this the other day. About the same time I was buying the dynamite, she was changing her beneficiary. The change went through in plenty of time. The whole hundred thousand goes to that rotter Lattimore.”
“Now that,” said Martin Ehrengraf, “is very interesting.”
Two weeks and three days later Alvin Gort sat in a surprisingly comfortable straight-backed chair in Martin Ehrengraf’s exceptionally cluttered office. He balanced a checkbook on his knee and carefully made out a check. The fountain pen he used had cost him $65. The lawyer’s services, for which the check he was writing represented payment in full, had cost him considerably more, yet Gort, a good judge of value, thought Ehrengraf’s fee a bargain and the pen overpriced.
“One hundred thousand dollars,” he said, waving the check in the air to dry its ink. “I’ve put today’s date on it but ask you to hold it until Monday morning before depositing it. I’ve instructed my broker to sell securities and transfer funds to my checking account. I don’t normally maintain a balance sufficient to cover a check of this size.”
“That’s understandable.”
“I’m glad something is. Because I’m damned if I can understand how you got me off the hook.”
Ehrengraf allowed himself a smile. “My greatest obstacle was your own mental attitude,” he said. “You honestly believed yourself to be guilty of your wife’s death, didn’t you?”
“But—”
“Ah, my dear Mr. Gort. You see, I knew you were innocent. The Ehrengraf Presumption assured me of that. I merely had to look for someone with the right sort of motive, and who should emerge but Mr. Barry Lattimore, your wife’s lover and beneficiary, a man with a need for money and a man whose affair with your wife was reaching crisis proportions.