Lawrence Block - Ehrengraf Settlement

“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:

“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,” she said. “Millard donates to their fund-raising efforts and wields influence on their behalf, and I’d say it paid off for him.”

Ehrengraf listened while Alicia Ravenstock speculated on just how the police, led by a man named Bainbridge, might have constructed a post-mortem 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 seeking a recommendation in that regard.”

She smiled, letting him find his way.

“A pre-nuptial agreement,” he said. “He insisted you sign one and you did.”

“Yes.”

“And you’ve shown it to an attorney, who pronounced it iron-clad.”

“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,” he said, “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 pre-nup 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.”