Michael Garfield and Lesley Ferrier's criminal relationship

Michael Garfield and Lesley Ferrier’s relationship was a criminal arrangement concealed behind a misleading story about Ferrier and Olga Seminoff. Poirot’s final reconstruction identifies Garfield as the person who paid Ferrier to make a forged codicil: the document helped cast Olga as a forger and potential beneficiary, while concealing the scheme’s real purpose of removing her and clearing the way for Garfield and Rowena Drake.

The inheritance and the two codicils

For many years, Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe’s estate had been destined principally for her nephew, Hugo Drake, and his wife, Rowena, with the survivor inheriting if the other died first. Her final alleged codicil, made about three weeks before her death, instead left the residue of her considerable fortune to Olga, while reducing the earlier pattern of charitable and servant bequests. The striking departure from her established arrangements made the document immediately consequential to the family and to anyone seeking control of the estate.

The evidence eventually distinguished an authentic codicil from the forged one submitted for probate. Harriet Leaman recalled witnessing Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe write and sign a document while Olga was sent from the room; Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe had covered the upper part of the paper, so Leaman could not see its full contents. Poirot later learned from the solicitor that the probate document was not witnessed by Leaman, but by Mary Doherty, who had died, and James Jenkins, who had gone to Australia. The existence of a genuine document therefore did not authenticate the separate codicil put forward in its place.

Garfield’s use of Ferrier

Poirot initially reasoned that Ferrier was capable of forging a document and had become close to Olga, who stood to inherit most of the fortune if the codicil were accepted. He considered the possibility that Ferrier and Olga had acted together, but treated that as an inference rather than established fact. The final explanation reverses the apparent alliance: Poirot says Garfield paid Ferrier to produce a document resembling the hidden original, and that Ferrier had no arrangement or love affair with Olga.

The forged codicil was useful precisely because it appeared to incriminate Olga. She had often written personal letters for her employer, copying Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe’s hand, and had sometimes signed them in her employer’s name. That practice gave the suspicion of forgery a plausible basis, even though handwriting experts found that the probate codicil bore only a faint resemblance to Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe’s writing. The lawyers detected the problem, and proceedings to contest the document were expected; during the delay before a court hearing, Olga disappeared.

A scapegoat and a misleading story

In Poirot’s reconstruction, Olga’s removal served two purposes: she knew about the codicil, and the forged document could make her appear responsible for it. She did not need to be convicted or even formally accused for the device to work; suspicion alone could make her disappearance seem like flight by a forger, while also encouraging suspicion that she had helped bring about her employer’s death. Ferrier’s forgery thus furnished the appearance of evidence against the very person whose supposed inheritance made the document seem credible.

Garfield had supplied a different account of Ferrier’s connection to Olga, presenting them as friends and suggesting a love affair. Poirot ultimately identifies that account as a false lead, not the truth of their relationship. The contrast matters: what looked like a private alliance between the young woman and the forger was, in the final explanation, a story introduced by Garfield, while Ferrier’s actual connection to him was payment for criminal work.

Exposure and consequences

The false codicil did not secure the estate. Handwriting experts recognized the forgery, the lawyers moved to contest it, and Olga vanished before the legal proceedings could reach court. The document nevertheless helped make her an immediate object of suspicion, diverting attention from those who stood to benefit under the older testamentary arrangement.

Poirot’s final account places Ferrier inside Garfield’s broader plan, but does not describe the payment as proof that Garfield personally killed him. It does establish that Ferrier was later killed and that a knife found in the well closely corresponded to his wounds. The criminal tie therefore ends not with a surviving partnership but with Ferrier’s death, while the forged codicil remains the instrument that connected his work to Garfield’s effort to implicate Olga and protect the intended beneficiaries.