Submission of forged will appendix for authentication

The forged codicil produced for probate is central to the novel’s distinction between a document that was witnessed and one that was genuine. It claimed to redirect Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe’s considerable fortune to Olga Seminoff, her former companion, but handwriting experts identified it as a complete forgery. Its conspicuous defects were not merely evidence of deception: Poirot eventually interprets the document’s likely defeat in court as the very outcome its maker needed.

The Testamentary Background

For many years, Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe’s wills followed a stable pattern. Charitable legacies and gifts to old servants could change, but the bulk of her estate went jointly to her nephew, Hugo Drake, and his wife, Rowena Drake, who was also Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe’s cousin and niece. If one spouse died before her, the survivor was to inherit. The estate plan had thus been consistent enough that a dramatic change in its principal beneficiary immediately seemed suspect.

The alleged final disposition was made about three weeks before Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe’s death and, unlike the earlier documents, was not drawn up by her usual solicitors. It was said to be in her own handwriting. It retained some charitable gifts, omitted legacies to the old servants, and left the entire residue to Olga in gratitude for her service and affection. The contrast with years of previous arrangements made the supposed change striking; the solicitor described it as wholly unlike Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe’s established practice.

The Forgery and Its Detection

The document’s apparent handwritten form had a plausible source. Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe disliked the typewriter and often asked Olga to write personal letters, imitating her employer’s hand. Olga had sometimes signed those letters with Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe’s signature, giving her repeated practice in copying it. That familiarity could explain how a forged document might be attempted, but it did not make the result convincing to experts: the codicil bore only a faint resemblance to Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe’s handwriting.

The distinction between an apparent signature and an acceptable legal document becomes crucial when Harriet Leaman recounts witnessing Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe write something. On a day when the older woman was unwell, she summoned Harriet and a young garden worker, Jim, to her room, while asking Olga to leave so that she would not be involved. A piece of blotting paper covered the upper part of the papers on the desk. Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe said she was writing part of her will, wrote several lines with her usual scratchy pen, signed, and asked each visitor to add a name and address as a witness. Harriet’s account therefore concerned a witnessed act of writing, but it did not establish that the document later presented for probate was that same paper.

Poirot confirms the distinction by checking with the solicitor. The forged codicil submitted for probate was witnessed not by Harriet Leaman, but by Mary Doherty, a former servant who had since died, and James Jenkins, the garden worker who had gone to Australia. The mismatch between Harriet’s remembered witnessing and the probate document’s named witnesses prevents her account from authenticating the forgery. A separate genuine codicil may have existed; it does not turn the document submitted to probate into a genuine one.

Legal Consequences and the Hidden Purpose

Once experts established the forgery, proceedings to contest the document were expected. The legal process would take time, and during that delay Olga lost her nerve and disappeared. The document thus generated suspicion not only through what it said, but through the pending challenge to its authenticity and the disappearance that followed.

At first the layered documents seem to make the case needlessly complicated. Poirot’s explanation turns the forgery’s obviousness into the key to its purpose. Because a lawyer would recognize the document as forged, it would be contested; expert evidence would overturn it, leaving the original will in force. By then Hugo Drake had recently died, so the original arrangement would make Rowena the sole survivor entitled to inherit the fortune. The forged codicil’s extravagant gift to Olga could therefore be a trap designed to fail, not a serious route by which Olga would receive the estate.

The Other Codicil and the Document’s Significance

The document Harriet remembered witnessing belongs to a different strand of the evidence. Poirot treats it as genuine and surmises that Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe had made it after discovering that Michael Garfield and Rowena were having an affair, probably before Hugo’s death. In anger, Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe may have redirected her estate to the au pair girl. That girl may then have told Michael about the provision while hoping to marry him. This proposed genuine codicil and the forged one that named Olga are not interchangeable: one may have embodied Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe’s reaction to the affair, while the other was designed to be exposed and defeated.

The probate document consequently works as a misleading imitation whose legal weakness matters as much as its apparent message. Its handwriting invokes Olga’s real experience copying her employer, while its false witness details separate it from Harriet’s account. Its effect depends on inviting people to confuse the existence of a witnessed document with the authenticity of the one presented in court. Once those questions are disentangled, the apparent attempt to give Olga the fortune becomes part of a plan that would restore Rowena’s inheritance.