There Was an Old Woman [= The Quick And the Dead]

“Nevertheless.”

Charley located it in the heap and handed it to him. Ellery once more placed it over the confession against the window.

“Look here, Charley. What do you see?”

“You mean the signatures?”

“Yes.”

Charley looked. And then he said in an astonished voice: “No blurriness!”

“Exactly.” Ellery took the papers down. “In other words, the Cornelia Potts signature on this stock-selling memorandum and the Cornelia Potts signature on the confession match perfectly. There are no slightest variations in the formation and size of characters. Line for line, curve for curve, the two signatures are exact duplicates. Twins, like Bob and Mac. Even the dot over the i is in the identical spot.”

“And the signature on the stock-selling memo is the only memo signature that does match exactly?” asked Charley hoarsely.

“That’s why I went through the entire batch — to make sure. Yes, it’s the only one.”

“I think I see where all this leads...”

“But it’s so clear! No one ever writes his name in precisely the same way twice — that’s a scientific fact. There are invariably minor differences in the same person’s signature, and there would be if you had a million samples to compare. Charley, we’ve established a new fact in the Potts case!”

“One of these two signatures is a forgery.”

“Yes.”

“But which one?”

“Come, Charley. The Old Woman signed this stock-selling memo in our presence. Therefore the memo signature must be genuine. Therefore the signature on the confession is the forgery.”

“Somebody got hold of this memo, typed out that phony confession, and then traced the signature of the memo off on the bottom of the confession?”

“Only way it could have produced an identical signature; yes, Charley. The stock memo’s been in the desk in this study since the day the Old Woman typed out all these instructions—”

“Yes,” mumbled Charley. “After I made the various phone calls necessary that day, I put the memos in this desk, as usual...”

“So anyone in the house could have found them and used this one to trace off its signature. It was probably done just the way I’ve illustrated — by slapping the stock memo against the sunny windowpane, placing the typed confession over the memo, and then tracing the memo signature onto the confession by utilizing the sunlight-created translucence of both sheets.”

“And the house is full of those soft pencils the Old Woman used—”

“And it would have been child’s play to slip into the Old Woman’s bedroom and use her portable typewriter for the typing of the ‘confession’ and that note at the bottom of the will. The whole operation was undoubtedly done between the time the Old Woman died alone in her bed and the time we all came back to the house — you, Sheila, Dad, and I — and found her body with the large sealed envelope in her hand. There was about an hour for the criminal to work in — and a few minutes would have been ample.”