by Ed Park
“I doubt you were ever destined to be friends.”
“No, but I erred in making myself the object of his hostility. I think that’s what may have put Alicia in his sights. I think he stalked me, and I think his reconnaissance got him a good look at Alicia, and of course to see her is to want her.”
Ehrengraf, struck by the matter-of-fact tone of that last clause, touched the tips of two fingers to the Caedmon Society cravat.
“And the police found evidence of his obsession,” Ravenstock said. “A roll of undeveloped film in his sock drawer, with photos for which my wife had served as an unwitting model. Crude fictional sketches, written in Bogue’s schoolboy hand, some written in the third person, some in the first. Clumsy ministories relating in pornographic detail the abduction, sexual savaging, and murder of my wife. Pencil drawings to illustrate them, as ill-fashioned as his prose. The scenarios varied as his fantasies evolved. Sometimes there was torture, mutilation, dismemberment. Sometimes I was present, bound and helpless, forced to witness what was being done to her. And I had to watch because I couldn’t close my eyes. I didn’t read his filth, so I can’t recall whether he’d glued my eyelids open or removed them surgically—”
“Either would be effective.”
“Well,” Ravenstock said, and explained that of course the several discoveries the police had made put paid to any notion that he, Millard Ravenstock, had done anything untoward, let alone criminal. He had not been charged, so there were no charges to dismiss, and what was at least as important was that he had been entirely exonerated in the court of public opinion. “So you can see why I felt moved to make a generous donation to the Policemen’s Benevolent Association. I feel they earned it. And I’ll find a way to express my private appreciation to Walter Bainbridge.”
Ehrengraf waited, and refrained from touching his necktie.
“As for yourself, Ehrengraf, I greatly appreciate your efforts on my behalf, and have no doubt that they’d have proved successful had not Fate and the police intervened and done your job for you. And I’m sure you’ll find this more than adequate compensation for your good work.”
The check was in an envelope, which Ravenstock plucked from his inside breast pocket and extended with a flourish. The envelope was unsealed, and Ehrengraf drew the check from it and noted its amount, which was about what he’d come to expect.
“The fee I quoted you—”
“Was lofty,” Ravenstock said, “but would have been acceptable had the case not resolved itself independent of any action on your part.”
“I was very specific,” Ehrengraf pointed out. “I said my work would cost you nothing unless your innocence was established and all charges dropped. But if that were to come about, my fee was due and payable in full. You do remember my saying that, don’t you?”
“But you didn’t do anything, Ehrengraf.”
“You agreed to the arrangement I spelled out, sir, and—”
“I repeat, you did nothing, or if you did do anything it had no bearing on the outcome of the matter. The payment I just gave you is a settlement, and I pay it gladly in order to put the matter to rest.”
“A settlement,” Ehrengraf said, testing the word on his tongue.
“And no mere token settlement, either. It’s hardly an insignificant amount, and my personal attorney hastened to tell me I’m being overly generous. He says all you’re entitled to, legally and morally, is a reasonable return on whatever billable hours you’ve put in, and—”
“Your attorney.”
“One of the region’s top men, I assure you.”
“I don’t doubt it. Would this be the same attorney who’d have had you armed with a sharp stick to pick up litter in Delaware Park? After pleading you guilty to a murder for which you bore no guilt?”
Even as he marshaled his arguments, Ehrengraf sensed that they would prove fruitless. The man’s mind, such as it was, was made up. Nothing would sway him.
* * *
There was a time, Ehrengraf recalled, when he had longed for a house like Millard Ravenstock’s—on Nottingham Terrace, or Meadow Road, or Middlesex. Something at once tasteful and baronial, something with pillars and a center hall, something that would proclaim to one and all that its owner had unquestionably come to amount to something.
True success, he had learned, meant one no longer required its accoutrements. His penthouse apartment on Park Lane provided all the space and luxury he could want, and a better view than any house could offer. The building, immaculately maintained and impeccably staffed, even had a name that suited him; it managed to be as resolutely British as Nottingham or Middlesex without sounding pretentious.
And it was closer to downtown. When time and good weather permitted, Ehrengraf could walk to and from his office.
But not today. There was a cold wind blowing off the lake, and the handicappers in the weather bureau had pegged rain at even money. The little lawyer had arrived at his office a few minutes after ten. He made one phone call, and as he rang off he realized he could have saved himself the trip.
He went downstairs, retrieved his car, and returned to Park Lane to await his guest.
* * *
Ehrengraf, opening the door, was careful not to stare. The woman whom the concierge had announced as a Ms. Philips was stunning, and Ehrengraf worked to conceal the extent to which he was stunned. She was taller than Ehrengraf by several inches, with dark hair that someone very skilled had cut to look as though she took no trouble with it. She had great big Bambi eyes, the facial planes of a supermodel, and a full-lipped mouth that stopped just short of obscenity.
“Ms. Philips,” Ehrengraf said, and motioned her inside.
“I didn’t want to leave my name at the desk.”
“I assumed as much. Come in, come in. A drink? A cup of coffee?”
“Coffee, if it’s no trouble.”
It was no trouble at all, Ehrengraf had made a fresh pot upon his return, and he filled two cups and brought them to the living room, where Alicia Ravenstock had chosen the Sheraton wing chair. Ehrengraf sat opposite her, and they sipped their coffee and discussed the beans and brewing method before giving a few minutes’ attention to the weather.
Then she said, “You’re very good to see me here. I was afraid to come to your office. There are enough people who know me by sight, and if word got back to him that I went to a lawyer’s office, or even into a building where lawyers had offices—”
“I can imagine.”
“I’m his alone, you see. I can have anything I want, except the least bit of freedom.”
“Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater,” Ehrengraf said, and when she looked puzzled he quoted the rhyme in full:
Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater,
Had a wife and couldn’t keep her.
He put her in a pumpkin shell
And there he kept her very well.
“Yes, of course. It’s a nursery rhyme, isn’t it?”
Ehrengraf nodded. “I believe it began life centuries ago as satirical political doggerel, but it’s lived on as a rhyme for children.”
“Millard keeps me very well,” she said. “You’ve been to the pumpkin shell, haven’t you? It’s a very elegant one.”
“It is.”
“A sumptuous and comfortable prison. I suppose I shouldn’t complain. It’s what I wanted. Or what I thought I wanted, which may amount to the same thing. I’d resigned myself to it—or thought I’d resigned myself to it.”
“Which may amount to the same thing.”
“Yes,” she said, and took a sip of coffee. “And then I met Bo.”
“And that would be Tegrum Bogue.”
“I thought we were careful,” she said. “I never had any intimation that Millard knew, or even suspected.” Her face clouded. “He was a lovely boy, you know. It’s still hard for me to believe he’s gone.”
“And that your husband killed him.”
“That part’s not difficult to believe,” she said. “Millard’s cold as ice
and harder than stone. The part I can’t understand is how someone like him could care enough to want me.”
“You’re a possession,” Ehrengraf suggested.
“Yes, of course. There’s no other explanation.” Another sip of coffee; Ehrengraf, watching her mouth, found himself envying the bone china cup. “It wouldn’t have lasted,” she said. “I was too old for Bo, even as Millard is too old for me. Mr. Ehrengraf, I had resigned myself to living the life Millard wanted me to live. Then Bo came along, and a sunbeam brightened up my prison cell, so to speak, and the life to which I’d resigned myself was now transformed into one I could enjoy.”
“Made so by trysts with your young lover.”
“Trysts,” she said. “I like the word, it sounds permissibly naughty. But, you know, it also sounds like tristesse, which is sadness in French.”
A woman who cared about words was very likely a woman on whom the charms of poetry would not be lost. Ehrengraf found himself wishing he’d quoted something rather more distinguished than Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater.
“I don’t know how Millard found out about Bo,” she said. “Or how he contrived to face him mere steps from our house and shoot him down like a dog. But there seemed to be no question of his guilt, and I assumed he’d have to answer in some small way for what he’d done. He wouldn’t go to prison, rich men never do, but look at him now, Mr. Ehrengraf, proclaimed a defender of home and hearth who slew a rapist and murderer. To think that a sweet and gentle boy like Bo could have his reputation so blackened. It’s heartbreaking.”
“There, there,” Ehrengraf said, and patted the back of her hand. The skin was remarkably soft, and it felt at once both warm and cool, which struck him as an insoluble paradox but one worth investigating. “There, there,” he said again, but omitted the pat this time.
“I blame the police. Millard donates to their fund-raising efforts and wields influence on their behalf, and I’d say it paid off for him.”
Ehrengraf listed while Alicia Ravenstock speculated on just how the police, led by a man named Bainbridge, might have constructed a postmortem frame for Tegrum Bogue. She had, he was pleased to note, an incisive imagination. When she’d finished he suggested more coffee, and she shook her head.
“I have to end my marriage,” she said abruptly. “There’s nothing for it. I made a bad bargain, and for a time I thought I could live with it, and now I see the impossibility of so doing.”
“A divorce, Mrs. Ravenstock . . .”
She recoiled at the name, then forced a smile. “Please don’t call me that,” she said. “I don’t like being reminded that it’s my name. Call me Alicia, Mr. Ehrengraf.”
“Then you must call me Martin, Alicia.”
“Martin,” she said, testing the name on her pink tongue.
“It’s not terribly difficult to obtain a divorce, Alicia. But of course you would know that. And you would know, too, that a specialist in matrimonial law would best serve your interests, and you wouldn’t come to me seeing a recommendation in that regard.”
She smiled, letting him find his way.
“A prenuptial agreement,” he said. “He insisted you sign one and you did.”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve shown it to an attorney, who pronounced it ironclad.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t want more coffee. But would you have a cordial? Benedictine? Chartreuse? Perhaps a Drambuie?”
* * *
“It’s a Scotch-based liqueur,” Ehrengraf said, after his guest had sampled her drink and signified her approval.
“I’ve never had it before, Martin. It’s very nice.”
“More appropriate as an after-dinner drink, some might say. But it brightens an afternoon, especially one with weather that might have swept in from the Scottish Highlands.” He might have quoted Robert Burns, but nothing came to mind. “Alicia,” he said, “I made a great mistake when I agreed to act as your husband’s attorney. I violated one of my own cardinal principles. I have made a career of representing the innocent, the blameless, the unjustly accused. When I am able to believe in a client’s innocence, no matter how damning the apparent evidence of his guilt, then I feel justified in committing myself unreservedly to his defense.”
“And if you can’t believe him to be innocent?”
“Then I decline the case.” A sigh escaped the lawyer’s lips. “Your husband admitted his guilt. He seemed quite unrepentant, he asserted his moral right to act as he had done. And, because at the time I could see some justification for his behavior, I enlisted in his service.” He set his jaw. “Perhaps it’s just as well that he declined to pay the fee upon which we’d agreed.”
“He boasted about that, Martin.” How sweet his name sounded on those plump lips!
“Did he indeed.”
“I gave him a tenth of what he wanted, he said, and he was lucky to get anything at all from me. Of course he wasn’t just bragging, he was letting me know just how tightfisted I could expect him to be.”
“Yes, he’d have that in mind.”
“You asked if I’d shown the prenup to an attorney. I had trouble finding one who’d look at it, or even let me into his office. What I discovered was that Millard had consulted every matrimonial lawyer within a radius of five hundred miles. He’d had each of them review the agreement and spend five minutes discussing it with him, and as a result they were ethically enjoined from representing me.”
“For perhaps a thousand dollars a man, he’d made it impossible for you to secure representation.” Ehrengraf frowned. “He did all this after discovering about you and young Bogue?”
“He began these consultations when we returned from our honeymoon.”
“Had your discontent already become evident?”
“Not even to me, Martin. Millard was simply taking precautions.” She finished her Drambuie, set down the empty glass. “And I did find a lawyer, a young man with a general practice, who took a look at the agreement I’d signed. He kept telling me it wasn’t his area of expertise. But he said it looked rock-solid to him.”
“Ah,” said Ehrengraf. “Well, we’ll have to see about that, won’t we?”
* * *
It was three weeks and a day later when Ehrengraf emerged from his morning shower and toweled himself dry. He shaved, and spent a moment or two trimming a few errant hairs from his beard, a Vandyke that came to a precise point.
Beards had come and gone in Ehrengraf’s life, and upon his chin, and he felt this latest incarnation was the most successful to date. There was just the least hint of gray in it, even as there was the slightest touch of gray at his temples.
He hoped it would stay that way, at least for a while. With gray, as with so many things, a little was an asset, a lot a liability. One couldn’t successfully command time to stand still, any more than King Canute could order a cessation of the tidal flow. There would be more gray, and the day would come when he would either accept it (and, by implication, all the slings and arrows of the aging process) or reach for the bottle of hair coloring.
Neither prospect was appealing. But both were off in the future, and did not bear thinking about. Certainly not on what was to be a day of triumph, a triumph all the sweeter for having been delayed.
He took his time dressing, choosing his newest suit, a three-piece navy pinstripe from Peller & Mure. He considered several shirts and settled on a spread-collar broadcloth in French blue, not least of all for the way it would complement his tie.
And the choice of tie was foreordained. It was, of course, that of the Caedmon Society.
The spread collar called for a double Windsor, and Ehrengraf’s fingers were equal to the task. He slipped his feet into black monk-strap loafers, then considered the suit’s third piece, the vest. The only argument against it was that it would conceal much of his tie, but the tie and its significance were important only to the wearer.
He decided to go with the vest.
And now? It was getting on toward nine,
and his appointment was at his office, at half past ten. He’d had his light breakfast, and the day was clear and bright and neither too warm nor too cold. He could walk to his office, taking his time, stopping along the way for a cup of coffee.
But why not wait and see if the phone might chance to ring?
And it did, just after nine o’clock. Ehrengraf smiled when it rang, and his smile broadened at the sound of the caller’s voice, and broadened further as he listened. “Yes, of course,” he said. “I’d like that.”
* * *
“When we spoke yesterday,” Alicia Ravenstock said, “I automatically suggested a meeting at your office. Because I’d been uncomfortable going there before, and now the reason for that discomfort had been removed.”
“So you wanted to exercise your new freedom.”
“Then I remembered what a nice apartment you have, and what good coffee I enjoyed on my previous visit.”
“When you called,” Ehrengraf said, “the first thing I did was make a fresh pot.”
He fetched a cup for each of them, and watched her purse her lips and take a first sip.
“Just right,” she said. “There’s so much to talk about, Martin, but I’d like to get the business part out of the way.”
She drew an envelope from her purse, and Ehrengraf held his breath, at least metaphorically, while he opened it. This was the second time he’d received an envelope from someone with Ravenstock for a surname, and the first time had proved profoundly disappointing.
Still, she’d used his first name, and moved their meeting from his office to his residence. Those ought to be favorable omens.
The check, he saw at a glance, had the correct number of zeroes. His eyes widened when he took a second look at it. “This is higher than the sum we agreed on,” he said.
“By 10 percent. I’ve suddenly become a wealthy woman, Martin, and I felt a bonus was in order. I hope you don’t regard it as an insult . . .”
Money? An insult? He assured her that it was nothing of the sort.
“It’s really quite remarkable,” she said. “Millard is in jail, where he’s being held without bail. I’ve filed suit for divorce, and my attorney assures me that the prenup is essentially null and void. Martin, I knew the evidence against Bo was bogus. But I had no idea it would all come to light as it has.”