Defender of the Innocent: The Casebook of Martin Ehrengraf

by Lawrence Block

  “Perfectly ridiculous,” said Maureen McClintock. “As I didn’t do any of the things with which I’m charged, there’s nothing for the Devil to have made me do.”

  “I know,” Ehrengraf said.

  “I’m supposed to be the worst woman since Lucrezia Borgia,” she said, “with the possible exception of that woman who drowned her two little boys, and she at least was clearly demented. Is that how you propose to save me? Because I’m not crazy.”

  “I know.”

  “Though how can I be sure? ‘I’m not crazy’ is, after all, one of the things crazy people say. And what’s the point of saying it? The people who already know you’re sane don’t require reassurance, and the others won’t find your proclamation convincing.” She frowned. “One can almost see the Devil’s hand in it, can’t one? Because the whole affair is truly diabolical. All the evidence in the world points to my guilt as a multiple murderess. And yet I’m innocent.”

  “I know.”

  She looked at him, as if seeing him for the first time. Ehrengraf, his usual natty self in a gray flannel suit, a French blue shirt, and a navy tie, took the opportunity to look at his new client, and liked what he saw. Her drab outfit notwithstanding, she was a fine-looking woman, and he could see strength and purpose in her facial features.

  His recent experience in his office provided him with an interesting image—Maureen McClintock, divested of her garments, stretched out upon his brown leather sofa.

  All in due time, he told himself.

  “‘I know,’” she echoed him. “You keep saying that, Mr. Ehrengraf.”

  “I suppose I do.”

  “I said I was innocent, and you said, ‘I know.’”

  “I did.”

  “Were you acknowledging my remark? As if nodding to keep the conversation moving?”

  He shook his head. “I was acknowledging your innocence. Because I know you didn’t kill anybody, my dear Ms. McClintock, nor did you persuade anyone else to do so, through hypnotism or another of the dark arts. You were artfully—one might even say diabolically—framed, by someone whose intent was to commit murder and get away with it.”

  “Cheryl Plumley.”

  “Certainly not,” said Ehrengraf. “Ms. Plumley was my client.”

  “But—”

  “And my clients are innocent, Ms. McClintock. I did not endure the tedium of law school or brave the rigors of the bar exam in order to serve as cup bearer to the guilty. I represent—gladly, proudly—the innocent.”

  “You’re saying that Cheryl and I are both innocent.”

  “I am.”

  “And someone else—”

  “Framed you both, so arranging matters that Ms. Plumley appeared to have committed the murder while you appeared to have hovered in the background pulling the strings. Those books on hypnotism, Ms. McClintock. Did you buy them? Study them in detail?”

  “I never even laid eyes on them,” she said, “until the police searched my home and pointed them out to me.” She frowned at a memory. “I was hypnotized once,” she remembered, “if that’s what it was. I wanted to lose a few pounds, and a friend had gone to a hypnotherapist, and she said it helped. So I went, and I guess he hypnotized me, but I can’t say I felt any different afterward. I picked up a pint of ice cream on the way home.”

  “So it didn’t work.”

  “Well, maybe it did,” she said, “because two weeks later I joined a gym and booked sessions with a personal trainer, and that worked. Maybe that man put me in a trance and told me to join a gym.” She straightened in her chair. “I didn’t buy those books, I didn’t hypnotize Cheryl, I didn’t do any of those things.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that, Ms. McClintock.”

  “But how can you prove it in court?”

  “I am rarely called upon to prove anything in court, Ms. McClintock. I find courtrooms airless and joyless venues, and make a point of staying out of them. What I intend to do, my dear woman, is so arrange matters that the facts of the case become known. When that happens, the innocence which is now so obvious to me will become evident to one and all.”

  And toward that end, he told her, he’d need to know something about her life and the people in it.

  “Whitley Pleskow,” Maureen McClintock said, on their next meeting. “Why, I can barely picture what he looks like. It’s been years since I saw him, and our relationship never amounted to much of anything. I’m not even sure you can call it a relationship. We had a couple of dates, and I should have ended it at that point because I knew the chemistry wasn’t there.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “No, and the next time I saw him I went to bed with him, and that confirmed what I’d already realized.”

  “The lack of chemistry.”

  “And when it’s not there, it’s never going to be there, is it? But that’s not knowledge one is born with. You have to learn it, and Whit was part of my education. I saw him a few more times, and we went to bed, and I guess he liked it enough to want to keep on seeing me, but I didn’t.”

  “And you broke it off.”

  “In a pleasant and painless way,” she said, “or at least that’s what I always thought. But I guess it wasn’t that pleasant or painless for him.”

  Ehrengraf fingered the knot in his Caedmon Society necktie. “Swinburne,” he said.

  “Swinburne?”

  “The Nineteenth Century British poet, Ms. McClintock. ‘One love grows green when one turns grey.’ But it seems to have been Mr. Pleskow who turned green.”

  “With jealousy?”

  “Or envy,” he said, “or something of the sort. To all appearances, Mr. Pleskow went on with his life. He dated other women, and eventually he married one of them. The marriage failed, and again he went on with his life. And yet, throughout it all, he remained fixated on one woman. And that would be you, Ms. McClintock.”

  She shuddered. “It seems impossible,” she said. “And yet I saw that photograph.”

  “The little shrine. Photographs of you, and newspaper clippings. A little altar, on which he’d burned black candles.”

  “What does it mean, burning a black candle?”

  “It can’t mean anything good,” Ehrengraf said. “He was entirely obsessed with you. The police found notebooks filled with letters he wrote to you but never sent. They found little stories of his. Fantasies, really, in which you were a principal player.”

  “I read about them.”

  “But the press couldn’t reproduce them, because they were relentlessly obscene. And violent as well—in some of his writings you were abused and tortured and murdered, while in others you were the villain, having your way with men or women and dispatching them horribly once you were done with them.”

  “How awful.”

  “In one particularly inventive episode,” Ehrengraf recalled, “you and Cheryl Plumley were lesbian lovers, and the two of you impaled a young woman upon a sharpened stake and made love while she slowly bled to death. Your victim is referred to only as Patsy, but her description is that of poor Patricia Munk.”

  “I never had any idea. I’d forgotten him, and I assumed he’d forgotten me. It’s harrowing to think I could have played that sort of unwitting role in his personal mythology.” She drew a breath. “I guess we’ll never know how he managed to do what he did. Putting Cheryl in the Kuhldreyer house, planting incriminating material in my home. It’s amazing he worked it all out, let alone carried it off.”

  “It’s unfortunate,” Ehrengraf said, “that he’s not able to give an account of his actions. It pains me to say it, but I blame myself.”

  “You? But why, Mr. Ehrengraf?”

  “When my investigations began to bear fruit,” he said, “I should have gone straight to the police. But one hesitates to do so while the possibility of innocence still exists. And so I’m afraid I had a conversation with Mr. Pleskow. I hoped to secure information without divulging any myself, but I fear I left him aware that he was under suspicion.
And thus, after I left him—”

  “He took the easy way out.”

  Easy, thought Ehrengraf, may not have been the most appropriate word for Whitley Pleskow’s fitful little dance at the end of a rope. But he let it go.

  “In a sense,” Ehrengraf said, “he may be said to have done us a favor. Some unscrupulous defense attorney could have turned the courtroom into a circus arena. Why, for all we know Pleskow could have fabricated an alibi, could have chipped away at the mountain of evidence against him. But his final act, bolstered by a suicide note in his own hand, removes all doubt. While we may now know precisely how he brought it off, we know that the triple homicide on Woodbridge Avenue was his work and his work alone. Cheryl Plumley is entirely innocent. And so, my dear Ms. McClintock, are you.”

  Her hand fastened on his arm. “Mr. Ehrengraf,” she said, not quite purring. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

  Ehrengraf, waiting for his client to return from the lavatory, tried to remember what he’d paid for the leather sofa. Whatever the price, it had been money well spent. And it seemed to him that the piece of furniture improved with use, as if it were seasoned like a fine meerschaum pipe by the sport conducted upon it.

  “That was lovely,” Maureen McClintock said upon her return. “But I still owe you a fee, and I’m sure it must be a substantial one, because you deserve no less.”

  Ehrengraf named a figure.

  The woman’s face fell. “It’s about what I expected,” she said, “and I’d write a check for the full amount, and even tag on a bonus. But—”

  “But you’re in no position to do so.”

  “I’m solvent,” she said, “and I’ve always been able to meet my expenses. But I’ve never been able to put money aside, and I don’t have any reserves to draw upon.”

  “Ah,” said Ehrengraf. “My dear Ms. McClintock, you have an asset of which you may not be aware.”

  “Oh?”

  “You have a story, Ms. McClintock. A very valuable story. And I’m acquainted with a woman who can help you share it with the world.”

  Nan Fassbinder sat back in the red leather chair and crossed her long legs at the ankle. “I’ve never been involved in anything like this,” she said. “I’ve hunted for le mot juste, and the best I can come up with is fandango.”

  “Isn’t that a dance?”

  “A Spanish dance,” she said. “Figuratively, it has several meanings. According to Wikipedia, where I looked it up just hours ago, it may mean a quarrel, a big fuss, or a brilliant exploit.”

  “And when you use it now—”

  “A brilliant exploit, of course. I’m in awe.”

  “Well,” said Ehrengraf.

  “I’m also hugely grateful,” she said. “I have to thank you for Cheryl Plumley and Maureen McClintock. The publisher’s over the moon, you know. Two women, both of them wonderfully articulate and deliciously attractive, and each with a gripping story to tell. And of course the two stories reinforce one another, and anyone who reads one of the books is impelled to reach for the other.”

  “Which can only be good for all concerned.”

  “Good for the publisher, who’ll sell a ton of books. Good for Cheryl and Maureen, both of whom are getting media coaching even as we speak. They’re competitive, but in a good way, and they can’t wait to chase separately around the country on their book tours, with a few joint appearances in major cities as a highlight.”

  “I suspect they’ll be good at it.”

  “No kidding,” Nan Fassbinder said. “So it’ll be good for them, and I guess it’ll be good for you, because the advances they got enabled them to pay for your services.”

  “Almost beside the point,” Ehrengraf said. “Still, one does like to be adequately compensated for one’s efforts.”

  “And good for me, Martin. May I call you Martin?”

  “Of course, my dear Nan.”

  “Good for me, because I’ll do very well as the co-author of both of these books, and if they’re as successful as I think they’ll be, it’ll boost my stock for future projects. You might say I owe you a debt of gratitude, Martin.”

  “No more than the one I owe you, Nan.”

  “Hmmm,” she said. “You know, both of those women speak very highly of you, Martin. And I got the definite impression that it was more than your legal acumen that they appreciated.”

  “Oh?”

  “That sofa,” Nan Fassbinder said. “Can it possibly be as comfortable as it looks?”

  Afterword

  * * *

  In 1978, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine published “The Ehrengraf Defense,” the debut appearance of the dapper little lawyer who never loses a case. In 1994, Jim Seels published a deluxe small-press edition of the eight Ehrengraf stories. Edward D. Hoch, surely the reigning contemporary master of short crime fiction, provided the following introduction:

  When Lawrence Block asked me to prepare this introduction to his eight stories about criminal lawyer Martin H. Ehrengraf, I’m sure he was unaware how ironic the request was. Back in the early 1950s, when I was still struggling to make my first sale, I began corresponding with Ben Abramson, a bookseller and Sherlockian who had previously published The Baker Street Journal. I even met with him on one of my trips to New York.

  Abramson had discussed with Fred Dannay (the half of “Ellery Queen” who was actively editing Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine) an idea for a series of stories about a criminal lawyer, in both senses of the phrase. This lawyer, patterned after the character of Randolph Mason created in 1896 by Melville Davisson Post, would be an unscrupulous attorney using the weaknesses of the law to defeat justice. Dannay was eager to run such a series, and suggested that Abramson seek out some young writer to tackle the project.

  I had never read any of the Randolph Mason stories, but armed with a couple of plot suggestions from Ben Abramson I hurried home to write the first story. I sent the finished product off to Abramson and he liked it. Fred Dannay didn’t, and the project quickly died.

  A quarter of a century later Lawrence Block wrote a story about a criminal lawyer named Martin H. Ehrengraf and submitted it to EQMM. “The Ehrengraf Method” (later reprinted as “The Ehrengraf Defense”) was published in the February 1978 issue of the magazine, with a headnote by Dannay which spoke of filling the footprints of Post’s Randolph Mason. Like me, Block had never read the Mason tales, but with the encouragement of Fred Dannay the new series lasted through eight stories, all but one of which appeared in EQMM. (“The Ehrengraf Appointment” didn’t quite catch Dannay’s favor, apparently, and found a home in Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine.)

  What was there about Martin Ehrengraf, and Randolph Mason before him, that so fascinated readers? Perhaps it was the idea of outwitting the law, of finding some clever way around the firm structures of our legal system. In the first and best of the Mason books, The Strange Schemes of Randolph Mason (1896), the title character usually springs his surprises in the courtroom, baffling judge and jury alike as murderers, forgers and embezzlers walk free. Ehrengraf, on the other hand, prefers that his cases never even come to trial, that the charges against his clients be dropped. Ehrengraf says, “I prefer to leave that to the Perry Masons of the world.” In a later story he explains, “I’m always happiest when I can save my clients not merely from prison but from going to trial in the first place.”

  Of course Ehrengraf goes further than Randolph Mason ever did. If Mason might advise a client to commit murder, and then free him on a technicality, Ehrengraf actually commits murder himself to aid a client and collect his fee. As Francis M. Nevins has observed, “(Block’s) protagonist serves clients not by taking advantage of glitches in the system but by breaking the law in whatever way will work.” The fact that Ehrengraf’s felonies usually occur offstage and are only inferred does little to lessen their effect.

  Randolph Mason developed in later stories into a sort of moral champion, defending clients victimized by villains using the legal system. Block, in the i
ntroduction to his 1983 collection Sometimes They Bite, pretty much assures us that this won’t happen to Ehrengraf. But the dapper little attorney does love poetry, quoting at times from William Blake, Andrew Marvell, Christopher Smart, Arthur O’Shaughnessy and others. Like Shelley he believes that “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the universe.” Once he even speaks of himself as a “corrector of destinies” using the title of the very book in which Randolph Mason completed his metamorphosis into a force for good.

  There has been no new Ehrengraf story now for ten years. Perhaps the little attorney with the neat mustache and a liking for poetry really has gone over to the side of rectitude. But somehow I doubt it.

  Lawrence Block was recently a recipient of the Grand Master award from the Mystery Writers of America, one of the youngest writers to be so honored. It is a well-deserved tribute to an author who has proven adept in creating memorable series characters in both the novel and short story forms. With the current popularity of both the Matthew Scudder and Bernie Rhodenbarr novels, along with the Keller short stories, I’m pleased to see that Ehrengraf hasn’t been forgotten.

  Edward D. Hoch

  Rochester, NY, 1994

  And here’s my afterword to that volume:

  Amazing what you find out. To think that Fred Dannay was once interested in a continuation of Melville Davisson Post’s Randolph Mason stories! To think that Ed Hoch once undertook to provide it!

  I of course had no idea. When I wrote the first Ehrengraf story in 1977, I didn’t know anything more about Melville Davisson Post than his name. Fred Dannay was crazy about the story, and heralded Ehrengraf as a lineal descendant of Randolph Mason.

  I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. And I may have been just a tiny bit sensitive on the subject. Because, while I hadn’t pilfered any ideas from Post, the first Ehrengraf story was an example of what I’ve elsewhere called Creative Plagiarism.