The Ehrengraf Alternative

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“What’s most unfortunate,” Ehrengraf said, “is that there seems to be a witness.”

Evelyn Throop nodded in fervent agreement. “Mrs. Keppner,” she said.

“Howard Bierstadt’s housekeeper.”

“She was devoted to him. She’d been with him for years.”

“And she claims she saw you shoot him three times in the chest.”

“I know,” Evelyn Throop said. “I can’t imagine why she would say something like that. It’s completely untrue.”

A thin smile turned up the corners of Martin Ehrengraf’s mouth. Already he felt himself warming to his client, exhilarated by the prospect of acting in her defense. It was the little lawyer’s great good fortune always to find himself representing innocent clients, but few of those clients were as single-minded as Miss Throop in proclaiming their innocence.

The woman sat on the edge of her iron cot with her shapely legs crossed at the ankle. She seemed so utterly in possession of herself that she might have been almost anywhere but in a jail cell, charged with the murder of her lover. Her age, according to the papers, was forty-six. Ehrengraf would have guessed her to be perhaps a dozen years younger. She was not rich — Ehrengraf, like most lawyers, did have a special fondness for wealthy clients — but she had excellent breeding. It was evident not only in her exquisite facial bones but in her positively ducal self-assurance.

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