Ehrengraf for the Defense Read Online Free PDF

motive? Was Mrs.
Gort emotionally involved with anyone else? Did she have another
lover? Had she had any other lovers before you came into the
picture? And how about Mr. Gort? A former mistress who might have
had a grudge against both him and his wife? Hmmm?” Ehrengraf
smoothed the ends of his mustache. “Or perhaps, just perhaps, there
was an elaborate plot hatched by Mrs . Gort.”
    “Ginnie?”
    “It’s not impossible. I’m afraid I must
reject the possibility of suicide. It’s tempting but in this
instance I fear it just won’t wash. But let’s suppose, let’s merely
suppose, that Mrs. Gort decided to murder her husband and implicate
you.”
    “Why would she do that?”
    “I’ve no idea. But suppose she did, and
suppose she intended to get her husband to drive her car and
arranged the dynamite accordingly, and then when she left the house
so hurriedly she forgot what she’d done, and of course the moment
she turned the key in the ignition it all came back to her in a
rather dramatic way.”
    “But I can’t believe—”
    “Oh, Mr. Lattimore,” Ehrengraf said gently,
“we believe what it pleases us to believe, don’t you agree? The
important thing is to recognize that you are innocent and to act on
that recognition.”
    “But how can you be absolutely certain of my
innocence?”
    Martin Ehrengraf permitted himself a smile.
“Mr. Lattimore,” he said, “let me tell you about a principle of
mine. I call it the Ehrengraf Presumption.”
     
    The End

The Ehrengraf Experience

     
    “ He who doubts from what he sees
    Will ne’er believe, do what you please.
    If the Sun and Moon should doubt,
    They’d immediately go out.”
    — William Blake
     
    “Innocence,” said Martin Ehrengraf. “There’s
the problem in a nutshell.”
    “Innocence is a problem?”
    The little lawyer glanced around the prison
cell, then turned to regard his client. “Precisely,” he said. “If
you weren’t innocent you wouldn’t be here.”
    “Oh, really?” Grantham Beale smiled, and
while it was worthy of inclusion in a toothpaste commercial, it was
the first smile he’d managed since his conviction on first-degree
murder charges just two weeks and four days earlier. “Then you’re
saying that innocent men go to prison while guilty men walk free.
Is that what you’re saying?”
    “It happens that way more than you might care
to believe,” Ehrengraf said softly. “But no, it is not what I am
saying.”
    “Oh?”
    “I am not contrasting innocence and guilt,
Mr. Beale. I know you are innocent of murder. That is almost beside
the point. All clients of Martin Ehrengraf are innocent of the
crimes with which they are charged, and this innocence always
emerges in due course. Indeed, this is more than a presumption on
my part. It is the manner in which I make my living. I set high
fees, Mr. Beale, but I collect them only when my innocent clients
emerge with their innocence a matter of public record. If my client
goes to prison I collect nothing whatsoever, not even whatever
expenses I incur on his behalf. So my clients are always innocent,
Mr. Beale, just as you are innocent, in the sense that they are not
guilty.”
    “Then why is my innocence a problem?”
    “Ah, your innocence.” Martin Ehrengraf
smoothed the ends of his neatly trimmed mustache. His thin lips
drew back in a smile, but the smile did not reach his deeply set
dark eyes. He was, Grantham Beale noted, a superbly well-dressed
little man, almost a dandy. He wore a Dartmouth green blazer with
pearl buttons over a cream shirt with a tab collar. His slacks were
flannel, modishly cuffed and pleated and the identical color of the
shirt. His silk tie was a darker green than his jacket and sported
a design in silver and bronze thread below the knot, a lion
battling a unicorn. His cuff links matched his pearl blazer
buttons. On his aristocratically small feet he wore highly polished
seamless cordovan loafers, unadorned with tassels or braid, quite
simple and