Ehrengraf for the Defense (11)

This, the fifth story about Martin H. Ehrengraf, presents the criminous criminal lawyer with a different sort of problem. He’s engaged to defend a man who anticipates being charged with homicide. But no one has been murdered.

Yet.

In the beleaguered but resourceful Ethan Crowe, Ehrengraf has a client who sees the wisdom of hedging his bets before he places them. In Terence Reginald Mayhew, the little lawyer has an adversary with the terrifying power of madness housed in the body of a housebound cripple.

Ehrengraf, a great fan of poetry, has cited William Blake and Winthrop Mackworth Praed in earlier stories; in he finds the opportunity to quote two of his favorites, Christopher Smart and Thomas Hood.

The Ehrengraf Reverse is the last of ten stories about the dapper little defense attorney who rarely sees the inside of a courtroom because he never is encumbered with a guilty client. It was requested by Otto Penzler for an anthology of football stories; for all the weekend afternoons I spend in front of the TV, this would seem to be the only story of mine with a gridiron setting.

The difficulty, with Ehrengraf, is finding appropriate variations on the theme. I’m pleased with the one that shaped up for this story, and hope you enjoy it.

This is the fourth story about Martin H. Ehrengraf, the dapper little lawyer whose clients always turn out to be innocent. Unlike Perry Mason, Ehrengraf rarely sees the inside of a courtroom, but like that fellow, he never loses a case.

Ehrengraf charges high fees, and has the good sense to represent individuals able to pay them. But in the present story he accepts a court appointment to defend a hapless indigent who has evidently beaten his wife to death in a drunken argument.

A fellow attorney assumes Ehrengraf will have his client plead guilty to manslaughter, accept his $175 fee, and go on to other matters. But how could Ehrengraf allow an innocent man to plead guilty? And why should he be content with $175, when there are other ways to make a case profitable?

Martin Ehrengraf, the criminal defense attorney who takes cases on a contingency basis, made his debut in 1978; by 2003 he’d successfully demonstrated the innocence of ten clients. Now he’s back for the first time in almost a decade, in The Ehrengraf Settlement.

A pillar of the community, a rich man with a trophy wife, exceeds his authority as a leader of the local Vigilance Commission and shoots a man down on a neighbor’s lawn. Ehrengraf, convinced of his client’s innocence, works his subtle magic, and charges are dropped. But the client makes a fatal mistake: he pays Ehrengraf only a tenth of the agreed-upon fee.

And Ehrengraf realizes that he himself has made a tragic mistake. The client he presumed innocent must have been guilty all along...

When I finished writing in 1976, I knew I had found a character I’d like to revisit. But it was Frederic Dannay’s immediate enthusiasm for Ehrengraf that made me write one story after another about the diminutive attorney. Fred, of course, was one of the pair of cousins who wrote the Ellery Queen mysteries, and it was Fred who edited , and he snapped up the stories as quickly as I wrote them.

Ehrengraf’s debut grew out of a plot device; in the course of my writing the story, Martin Ehrengraf came into being. In his second appearance, we see him more fully realized, tailoring his approach to the case to suit circumstances, and altering them to his purposes.

“The Ehrengraf Presumption. Any client of Martin H. Ehrengraf is presumed by Ehrengraf to be innocent, which presumption is invariably confirmed in due course, the preconceptions of the client himself notwithstanding.”

Words to live by...

Martin Ehrengraf, the criminal defense attorney who takes cases on a contingency basis, made his debut in 1978; by 2003 he’d successfully demonstrated the innocence of ten clients. Now he’s back for the first time in almost a decade, in The Ehrengraf Settlement.

A pillar of the community, a rich man with a trophy wife, exceeds his authority as a leader of the local Vigilance Commission and shoots a man down on a neighbor’s lawn. Ehrengraf, convinced of his client’s innocence, works his subtle magic, and charges are dropped. But the client makes a fatal mistake: he pays Ehrengraf only a tenth of the agreed-upon fee.

And Ehrengraf realizes that he himself has made a tragic mistake. The client he presumed innocent must have been guilty all along...

This is the third story about Martin H. Ehrengraf, the diminutive defense attorney who rarely sees the inside of a courtroom. In the preceding story, , he spells out his core principle thus:

“The Ehrengraf Presumption. Any client of Martin H. Ehrengraf is presumed by Ehrengraf to be innocent, which presumption is invariably confirmed in due course, the preconceptions of the client himself notwithstanding.”

In his first two appearances, Ehrengraf would certainly appear to have been saddled with clients who in fact committed the crimes of which they stood accused. But in Grantham Beale, the little lawyer is cursed with a genuinely innocent client, innocent not only of the murder for which he has been convicted but hopelessly innocent in the ways of the world.

It’s a challenge for Ehrengraf, and one to which he rises with zeal and dispatch.

The Ehrengraf Nostrum is the eighth of ten stories about the determined and resourceful attorney, Martin H. Ehrengraf.

Ehrengraf’s cases, while refashioned by the perverse imagination of his biographer, sometimes draw their inspiration from the real world. Such is clearly the case in the present instance, and readers with good memories will surely recall the rash of pointless deaths that have burdened us to this day with containers of patent medicine that only a child can open.

But I digress...

The Ehrengraf Alternative is the seventh of ten stories about the little lawyer whose resourcefulness on behalf of an innocent client is unparalleled.

It seems to me that a couple of real-life cases inspired this story, but I find I can’t call them to mind; the story seems to have outlived its inspiration. Ehrengraf would probably quote Hippocrates. “Ars longa, vita brevis,” he would remark, smiling his little smile.

This is the sixth story about Martin H. Ehrengraf, diminutive attorney who represents criminal defendants on a contingency basis. In earlier appearances, the little lawyer has quoted William Blake, Winthrop Mackworth Praed, Thomas Hood, and Andrew Marvell, so it’s clear that he sees poetry as a sacred calling.

However vile the crime, however damning the evidence, Ehrengraf knows with utter certainty that young William Telliford is innocent. And nothing can keep him from establishing that innocence beyond dispute.

Then again, circumstances alter cases, don’t they?