Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

“I was framed, Mr. Ehrengraf.”

“And cleverly so, it would seem.”

“I never bought Cydonex. I never heard of Cydonex — not until people started dying of it.”

“Oh? You worked for the plastics company that discovered the substance. That was before you took employment with the Darnitol people.”

“It was also before Cydonex was invented. You know those dogs people mount on their dashboards and the head bobs up and down when you drive?”

“Not when I drive,” Ehrengraf said.

“Nor I either, but you know what I mean. My job was finding a way to make the dogs’ eyes more realistic. If you had a dog bobbing on your dashboard, would you even want the eyes to be more realistic?”

“Well,” said Ehrengraf.

“Exactly. I quit that job and went to work for the Darnitol folks, and then my previous employer found a better way to kill rats, and so it looks as though I’m tied into the murders in two different ways. But actually I’ve never had anything to do with Cydonex and I’ve never so much as swallowed a Darnitol, let alone paid good money for that worthless snake oil.”

“ Someone bought those pills.”

“Yes, but it wasn’t—”

“And someone purchased that Cydonex. And forged your name to the ledger.”

“Yes.”

“And planted the bottles of Darnitol on drugstore and supermarket shelves after fatally tampering with their contents.”

“Yes.”

“And waited for the random victims to buy the pills, to work their way through the bottle until they ingested the deadly capsule, and to die in agony. And planted evidence to incriminate you.”

“Yes.”

“And made an anonymous call to the police to put them on your trail.” Ehrengraf permitted himself a slight smile, one that did not quite reach his eyes. “And there he made his mistake,” he said. “He could have waited for nature to take its course, just as he had already waited for the Darnitol to do its deadly work. The police were checking on ex-employees of Triage Corporation. They’d have gotten to you sooner or later. But he wanted to hurry matters along, and that proves you were framed, sir, because who but the man who framed you would ever think to have called the police?”

“So the very phone call that got me on the hook serves to get me off the hook?”

“Ah,” said Ehrengraf, “would that it were that easy.”

Unlike Gardner Bridgewater,young Evans Wheeler proved a model of repose. Instead of pacing back and forth across Ehrengraf’s carpet, the chemist sat in Ehrengraf’s overstuffed leather chair, one long leg crossed over the other. His costume was virtually identical to the garb he had worn in prison, although an eye as sharp as Ehrengraf’s could detect a different pattern to the stains and acid burns that gave character to the striped overalls. And this denim shirt, Ehrengraf noted, had no patch upon its elbow. Yet.

Ehrengraf, seated at his desk, wore a Dartmouth-green blazer over tan flannel slacks. As was his custom on such occasions, his tie was once again the distinctive Caedmon Society cravat.

“Ms. Joanna Pellatrice,” Ehrengraf said. “A teacher of seventh- and eighth-grade social studies at Kenmore Junior High School. Unmarried, twenty-eight years of age, and living alone in three rooms on Deerhurst Avenue.”

“One of the killer’s first victims.”

“That she was. The very first victim, in point of fact, although Ms. Pellatrice was not the first to die. Her murderer took one of the capsules from her bottle of Darnitol, pried it open, disposed of the innocent if ineffectual powder within, and replaced it with the lethal Cydonex. Then he put it back in her bottle, returned the bottle to her medicine cabinet or purse, and waited for the unfortunate woman to get a headache or cramps or whatever impelled her to swallow the capsules.”

“Whatever it was,” Wheeler said, “they wouldn’t work.”

“This one did, when she finally got to it. In the meantime, her intended murderer had already commenced spreading little bottles of joy all over the metropolitan area, one capsule to each bottle. There was danger in doing so, in that the toxic nature of Darnitol might come to light before Ms. Pellatrice took her pill and went to that big classroom in the sky. But he reasoned, correctly it would seem, that a great many persons would die before Darnitol was seen to be the cause of death. And indeed this proved to be the case. Ms. Pellatrice was the fourth victim, and there were to be many more.”

“And the killer—”

“Refused to leave well enough alone. His name is George Grodek, and he’d had an affair with Ms. Pellatrice, although married to another teacher all the while. The affair evidently meant rather more to Mr. Grodek than it did to Ms. Pellatrice. He had made scenes, once at her apartment, once at her school during a midterm examination. The newspapers describe him as a disappointed suitor, and I suppose the term’s as apt as any.”

“You say he refused to leave well enough alone.”

“Indeed,” said Ehrengraf. “If he’d been content with depopulating the area and sinking Triage Corporation, I’m sure he’d have gotten away with it. The police would have had their hands full checking people with a grudge against Triage, known malcontents and mental cases, and the sort of chaps who get themselves into messes of that variety. But he has a neat sort of mind, has Mr. Grodek, and so he managed to learn of your existence and decided to frame you for the chain of murders.”

Ehrengraf brushed a piece of lint from his lapel. “He did a workmanlike job,” he said, “but it broke down on close examination. That signature in the poison-control book did turn out to be a forgery, and matching forgeries of your name — trials, if you will — turned up in a notebook hidden away in a dresser drawer in his house.”

“That must have been hard for him to explain.”

“So were the bottles of Darnitol in another drawer of the dresser. So was the Cydonex, and so was the little machine for filling and closing the capsules, and a whole batch of broken capsules which evidently represented unsuccessful attempts at pill-making.”

“Funny he didn’t flush it all down the toilet.”

“Successful criminals become arrogant,” Ehrengraf explained. “They believe themselves to be untouchable. Grodek’s arrogance did him in. It led him to frame you, and to tip the police to you.”

“And your investigation did what no police investigation could do.”

“It did,” said Ehrengraf, “because mine started from the premise of your innocence. If you were innocent, someone else was guilty. If someone else was guilty and had framed you, that someone must have had a motive for the crime. If the crime had a motive, the murderer must have had a reason to kill one of the specific victims. And if that was the case, one had only to look to the victims to find the killer.”

“You make it sound so simple,” said Wheeler. “And yet if I hadn’t had the good fortune to engage your services, I’d be spending the rest of my life in prison.”

“I’m glad you see it that way,” Ehrengraf said, “because the size of my fee might otherwise seem excessive.” He named a figure, whereupon the chemist promptly uncapped a pen and wrote out a check.

“I’ve never written a check for so large a sum,” he said reflectively.

“Few people have.”

“Nor have I ever gotten greater value for my money. How fortunate I am that you believed in me, in my innocence.”

“I never doubted it for a moment.”

“You know who else claims to be innocent? Poor Grodek. I understand the madman’s screaming in his cell, shouting to the world that he never killed anyone.” Wheeler flashed a mischevious smile. “Perhaps he should hire you, Mr. Ehrengraf.”