Agnes Mullane managed to control her laughter. “Mr. Gates is an artist,” she said.
“A painter, I’m told. Would that canvas be one of his?”
“I’m afraid not. He paints abstracts. I prefer representational art myself, as you can see.”
“And country music.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Nothing. You’re sure Mr. Gates was not having an affair with Mrs. Protter?”
“Positive.” Her brow clouded for an instant, then cleared completely. “No,” she said, “Harry Gates would never have been involved with her. But what’s the point, Mr. Ehrengraf? Are you trying to establish a defense of justifiable homicide? The unwritten law and all that?”
“Not exactly.”
“Because I really don’t think it would work, do you?”
“No,” said Ehrengraf, “I don’t suppose it would.”
Miss Mullane leaned forward again, not to pour tea but with a similar effect. “It’s so noble of you,” she said, “donating your time for poor Mr. Protter.”
“The court appointed me, Miss Mullane.”
“Yes, but surely not all appointed attorneys work so hard on these cases, do they?”
“Perhaps not.”
“That’s what I thought.” She ran her tongue over her lips. “Nobility is an attractive quality in a man,” she said thoughtfully. “And I’ve always admired men who dress well, and who bear themselves elegantly.”
Ehrengraf smiled. He was wearing a pale blue cashmere sport jacket over a Wedgwood blue shirt. His tie matched his jacket, with an intricate below-the-knot design in gold thread.
“A lovely jacket,” Miss Mullane purred. She reached over, laid a hand on Ehrengraf’s sleeve. “Cashmere,” she said. “I love the feel of cashmere.”
“Thank you.”
“And gray flannel slacks. What a fine fabric. Come with me, Mr. Ehrengraf. I’ll show you where to hang your things.”
In the bedroom Miss Mullane paused to switch on the radio. Loretta Lynn was singing something about having been born a coal miner’s daughter.
“My one weakness,” Miss Mullane said, “or should I say one of my two weaknesses, along with a weakness for well-dressed men of noble character. I hope you don’t mind country music, Mr. Ehrengraf?”
“Not at all,” said Ehrengraf. “I find it soothing.”
Several days later, when Arnold Protter was released from jail, Ehrengraf was there to meet him. “I want to shake your hand,” he told him, extending his own. “You’re a free man now, Mr. Protter, I only regret I played no greater part in securing your freedom.”
Protter pumped the lawyer’s hand enthusiastically. “Hey, listen,” he said, “you’re ace-high with me, Mr. Ehrengraf. You believed in me when nobody else did, including me myself. I’m just now trying to take all of this in. I’ll tell you, I never would have dreamed Agnes Mullane killed my wife.”
“It’s something neither of us suspected, Mr. Protter.”
“It’s the craziest thing I ever heard of. Let me see if I got the drift of it straight. My Gretchen was carrying on with Gates after all. I thought it was just a way to get in a dig at her, accusing her of carrying on with him, but actually it was happening all the time.”
“So it would seem.”
“And that’s why she got so steamed when I brought it up.” Protter nodded, wrapped up in thought. “Anyway, Gates also had something going with Agnes Mullane. You know something, Mr. Ehrengraf? He musta been nuts. Why would anybody who was getting next to Agnes want to bother with Gretchen?”
“Artists perceive the world differently from the rest of us, Mr. Protter.”
“If that’s a polite way of saying he was cockeyed, I sure gotta go along with you on that. So here he’s getting it on with the both of them, and Agnes finds out and she’s jealous. How do you figure she found out?”
“It’s always possible Gates told her,” Ehrengraf suggested. “Or perhaps she heard you accusing your wife of infidelity. You and Gretchen had both been drinking, and your argument may have been a loud one.”
“Could be. A few boilermakers and I tend to raise my voice.”
“Most people do. Or perhaps Miss Mullane saw some of Gates’s sketches of your wife. I understand there were several found in his apartment. He may have been an abstract expressionist, but he seems to have been capable of realistic sketches of nudes. Of course he’s denied they were his work, but he’d be likely to say that, wouldn’t he?”
“I guess so,” Protter said. “Naked pictures of Gretchen, gee, you never know, do you?”
“You never do,” Ehrengraf agreed. “In any event, Miss Mullane had a key to your apartment. One was found among her effects. Perhaps it was Gates’s key, perhaps Gretchen had given it to him and Agnes Mullane stole it. She let herself into your apartment, found you and your wife unconscious, and pounded your wife on the head with an empty beer bottle. Your wife was alive when Miss Mullane entered your apartment, Mr. Protter, and dead when she left it.”
“So I didn’t kill her after all.”
“Indeed you did not.” Ehrengraf smiled for a moment. Then his face turned grave. “Agnes Mullane was not cut out for murder,” he said. “At heart she was a gentle soul. I realized that at once when I spoke with her.”
“You went and talked to Agnes?”
The little lawyer nodded. “I suspect my interview with her may have driven her over the edge,” he said. “Perhaps she sensed that I was suspicious of her. She wrote out a letter to the police, detailing what she had done. Then she must have gone upstairs to Mr. Gates’s apartment, because she managed to secure a twenty-five caliber automatic pistol registered to him. She returned to her own apartment, put the weapon to her chest, and shot herself in the heart.”
“She had some chest, too.”
Ehrengraf did not comment.
“I’ll tell you,” Protter said, “the whole thing’s a little too complicated for a simple guy like me to take it all in all at once. I can see why it was open and shut as far as the cops were concerned. There’s me and the wife drinking, and there’s me and the wife fighting, and the next thing you know she’s dead and I’m sleeping it off. If it wasn’t for you, I’d be doing time for killing her.”
“I played a part,” Ehrengraf said modestly. “But it’s Agnes Mullane’s conscience that saved you from prison.”
“Poor Agnes.”
“A tortured, tormented woman, Mr. Protter.”
“I don’t know about that,” Protter said. “But she had some body on her, I’ll say that for her.” He drew a breath. “What about you, Mr. Ehrengraf? You did a real job for me. I wish I could pay you.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I guess the court pays you something, huh?”
“There’s a set fee of a hundred and seventy-five dollars,” Ehrengraf said, “but I don’t know that I’m eligible to receive it in this instance because of the disposition of the case. The argument may be raised that I didn’t really perform any actions on your behalf, that charges were simply dropped.”
“You mean you’ll get gypped out of your fee? That’s a hell of a note, Mr. Ehrengraf.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it,” said Ehrengraf. “It’s not important in the overall scheme of things.”
Ehrengraf, his blue pinstripe suit setting off his Caedmon Society striped necktie, sipped daintily at a Calvados. It was Indian Summer this afternoon, far too balmy for hot apple pie with cheddar cheese. He was eating instead a piece of cold apple pie topped with vanilla ice cream, and had discovered that Calvados went every bit as nicely with that dish.
Across from him, Hudson Cutliffe sat with a plate of lamb stew. When Cutliffe had ordered the dish, Ehrengraf had refrained from commenting on the barbarity of slaughtering lambs and stewing them. He had decided to ignore the contents of Cutliffe’s plate. Whatever he’d ordered, Ehrengraf intended that the man eat crow today.