Will Forgery

Will forgery in the novel is not simply a dispute over handwriting or inheritance. A codicil presented as Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe’s final instruction seems to redirect her fortune to Olga Seminoff, but its exposure as a forgery—and the discovery that a genuine document had also been signed and witnessed—turns the estate into the machinery of a murder plot. The distinction between a document being written and witnessed, and the forged document actually submitted for probate, is central to the mystery.

The established inheritance and the suspicious codicil

For many years, Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe’s wills followed a familiar pattern. Charitable bequests and gifts to old servants might change, especially when a legacy became void through a beneficiary’s death, but the bulk of her fortune remained for 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 pattern made the supposed final change striking: a codicil made about three weeks before Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe’s death left the residue of her considerable fortune to Olga, in gratitude for her service and affection.

The change extended beyond the residue. The purported codicil included fewer charitable bequests than before and gave nothing to the old servants. Earlier accounts of Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe’s estate also described a provision for her bungalow and the upkeep of the Quarry Garden: the landscape designer, Michael Garfield, could live in the bungalow and was to maintain the garden for public walks. Against this history of recurring arrangements and particular legacies, the sudden transfer of the residue to Olga seemed not merely generous but unlike Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe’s established testamentary habits.

That apparent departure created immediate legal and personal suspicion. One possibility raised was that the family might challenge the document on grounds of impaired judgment or undue influence. The lawyers, however, identified forgery quickly; the document was reportedly unconvincing. The question was not only whether Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe could have made such a change, but whether the writing and the document presented as her codicil were authentic.

Handwriting, testimony, and two documents

The codicil submitted for probate was described as handwritten, but handwriting experts found that it bore only a faint resemblance to Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe’s writing. It was a complete forgery. There was a plausible explanation for why Olga might be suspected: Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe disliked typewriters and had often asked her to write personal letters, imitating her employer’s handwriting and sometimes signing Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe’s name. Olga had therefore practised the very skills that could make her seem capable of producing the forged codicil. That history supplied an apparent route from opportunity to guilt, but it did not authenticate the document or prove who had forged it.

Harriet Leaman’s recollection appeared, at first, to complicate the experts’ conclusion. She remembered being called to Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe’s room on a day when her employer was unwell, along with Jim, a young man who helped in the garden and carried in household supplies. Olga was asked to leave because, Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe said, she must not be involved in that part of the business. With a blotter covering the top of the paper, Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe wrote two or three lines, signed her name, and asked Harriet and Jim to write their names and addresses as witnesses. Harriet said she had seen Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe write and sign the paper herself.

The account was significant, but it did not establish that the paper Harriet witnessed was the codicil later submitted for probate. Poirot’s distinction was precise: Harriet’s testimony supported the existence of a genuine document, while the lawyers’ evidence established that the probate codicil was forged. When Poirot checked with the solicitor, he learned that the forged codicil had been witnessed not by Harriet Leaman but by Mary Doherty, a former servant who had died, and James Jenkins, who had gone to Australia. Jim’s and Harriet’s signatures belonged to the document they had witnessed; they were not the witnesses to the forged codicil.

The contrast exposes a crucial evidentiary limit. Seeing Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe write and sign one document could not authenticate another document bearing a similar purpose or apparent effect. Nor did the two accounts cancel each other out: a genuine codicil and a forged codicil could both exist. Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe had hidden the original document, while a different, deliberately forged document was produced for probate. The facts thus separate the physical act of witnessing from the identity and legal use of the document at issue.

From legal challenge to a frame-up

Once handwriting experts identified the probate codicil as forged, proceedings were about to be brought to contest it. A legal delay followed before the case could come to court. During that interval, Olga lost her nerve and disappeared. Her disappearance intensified the suspicion that the document appeared to invite: she seemed to have both a motive, since the codicil named her as residuary beneficiary, and the practical ability to imitate Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe’s hand. The forgery’s apparent beneficiary could therefore be made to look like its author.

Poirot’s eventual account reverses that interpretation. Olga was to be removed because she knew about the codicil and used as a scapegoat, branded as a forger. The plan did not depend on successfully proving her guilt in court. It depended on suspicion: the codicil appeared to benefit her, she had practised copying her employer’s handwriting, and her disappearance could be read as an admission. In that sense, the forgery’s weakness was useful. A document obvious enough to attract scrutiny could direct that scrutiny toward Olga and make the intended accusation credible without requiring the conspirators to secure a conviction.

Lesley Ferrier was drawn into producing a similar forged document. He had a prior forgery offence, his first, for which extenuating circumstances were said to have earned him a light outcome; the local solicitor had taken him on in the hope of making an honest man of him. Poirot concluded that Michael Garfield paid Lesley to produce the forgery. The document’s role was therefore not just to alter an inheritance on paper. It was a staged piece of evidence, designed to exploit both Lesley’s vulnerability and Olga’s history of copying Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe’s writing.

Consequences and significance

The forged codicil helped make Olga’s disappearance seem like flight from a forgery charge, while concealing the more serious fact that she had been murdered. In Poirot’s reconstruction, Rowena Drake and Michael planned to benefit from the estate and used the codicil to cast suspicion away from themselves. Michael had also encouraged Olga’s affections, speaking of possible marriage and warning her to keep quiet, while treating her as a future victim whose death would allow the money to come to him and Rowena. The forged document thus connected a disputed inheritance to the removal of a witness and the construction of a false account of her guilt.

The case also demonstrates why a testamentary instrument must be assessed through more than its apparent wording or a witness’s general recollection. The established pattern of bequests made the purported change suspicious; handwriting expertise exposed the submitted codicil as false; Harriet’s testimony established that Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe had signed a different, genuine document; and the identity of the probate witnesses showed that Harriet and Jim had not witnessed the forgery. Taken together, these distinctions undo the easy equation of Olga’s apparent benefit with her authorship.

As a recurring device in the mystery, will forgery turns ordinary legal particulars—handwriting, signatures, witnesses, probate, and delay—into instruments of misdirection. Its force lies in the gap between what the document seems to say and what its history can prove. The forged codicil does not merely threaten to redirect an inheritance: it manufactures a plausible suspect, gives a murder the appearance of an escape from prosecution, and makes the separation of the genuine document from the forged one essential to uncovering the conspiracy.