Forged-Codicil Scheme to Frame Olga

The Forged-Codicil Scheme to Frame Olga is the plot by which Michael Garfield and Rowena Drake sought to turn a suspicious will into both a scapegoat and a route to inheritance. The document presented for probate appeared to leave Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe’s fortune to Olga Seminoff, but Poirot concludes that its obvious defects were deliberate: once challenged, it would fail, leaving the earlier will in force and Rowena as the beneficiary.

The inheritance and the genuine codicil

For many years, Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe’s estate had been left jointly to her nephew, Hugo Drake, and his wife, Rowena, who was also Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe’s first cousin. If either spouse died before her, the survivor was to receive the money. Her wills also provided for charities and old servants, with changes over time to particular legacies, but the principal arrangement remained stable. Her bungalow and an income for maintaining the public Quarry Garden had separately been left to landscape designer Michael Garfield.

That settled pattern was disrupted by a handwritten codicil made about three weeks before Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe’s death. Unlike the earlier documents drawn up by her solicitors, this one left the residue of her considerable fortune to Olga, in gratitude for her service and affection. Its provisions were strikingly unlike Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe’s longstanding testamentary choices, prompting immediate suspicion. Handwriting experts later judged the codicil produced for probate to be a complete forgery, with only a faint resemblance to her writing.

A separate account of a possible genuine codicil complicated the case. Harriet Leaman recalled being called into Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe’s room with a young garden worker while Olga was sent out. Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe said she was writing her will, covered the upper part of the paper with blotting paper, and had the two visitors sign beneath the lines and her signature. Poirot later learned from the solicitor that the document submitted for probate had different witnesses: Mary Doherty, who had died, and James Jenkins, who had gone to Australia. The discrepancy supported his distinction between the suspicious document used to frame Olga and a separate codicil that Mrs Leaman had witnessed.

A forgery designed to fail

Olga had been able to imitate aspects of her employer’s handwriting for an apparently innocent reason. Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe disliked using a typewriter and often asked Olga to write personal letters, sometimes signing them in her employer’s name. That practice gave Olga experience copying the handwriting, and thus made her a plausible suspect when a forged codicil leaving her the estate appeared.

But the forgery was not meant to survive expert examination. Poirot’s explanation is that it was so blatant that the lawyers would contest it, the experts would expose it, and the earlier will would then govern the inheritance. Because Rowena’s husband had recently died, Rowena would take the estate under that earlier arrangement. The false document therefore did not need to secure Olga’s inheritance; it needed to look as if it might benefit her, while being certain to collapse under scrutiny.

Making Olga the scapegoat

Poirot surmises that Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe discovered that Rowena and Michael were having an affair, probably before Rowena’s husband died, and responded by making the genuine codicil in Olga’s favour. Olga may have told Michael about it while hoping to marry him. In Poirot’s reconstruction, Michael encouraged that hope, warned Olga to keep quiet, and spoke of possible marriage while treating her as someone to be used in the plan.

Olga had to be removed because she knew about the codicil, and the forged version supplied a way to cast suspicion on her. Since the document appeared to benefit Olga, her experience copying Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe’s handwriting could be turned against her. Poirot stresses that the scheme did not require a prosecution: suspicion alone could make her seem responsible for forgery and possibly implicated in her employer’s death. After the codicil was challenged, legal delays gave Olga time to lose her nerve and disappear. Poirot concludes that she was murdered and hidden in the wishing well in Quarry Wood.

The false document also implicated Lesley Ferrier in the scheme. Poirot believed Michael paid Lesley to produce a similar forgery, despite suggesting that Lesley had been involved with Olga. The forged paper was so conspicuously false that it helped set suspicion in motion, but making it also left Lesley able to expose what had happened. Poirot connects his murder to the plan to silence him: the knife found in the well closely matched his wounds.

Exposure and significance

The case turns on keeping three questions separate: whether a paper was signed in Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe’s presence, whether the document submitted for probate was genuine, and what inheritance would follow if that document were rejected. Harriet Leaman’s recollection of witnessing writing did not authenticate the codicil later produced for probate; its witness names and handwriting evidence pointed elsewhere. The distinction revealed how the appearance of a will benefiting Olga could be used not to enrich her, but to make her look like a forger.

By making the forged document easy to discredit, the scheme converted a legal challenge into part of its intended outcome: the old will would stand, Rowena would inherit, and suspicion would fall on the missing Olga. Its failure was not simply that experts recognized the forgery. The larger design depended on controlling what people believed about Olga, the genuine codicil, and the disappearances that followed. Poirot’s reconstruction links that manipulation of testamentary evidence to the removal of Olga and the silencing of Lesley.