“You thought the same, Mr. Carleton?”
“Of course; I could not do otherwise than to believe Miss Van Norman had written the message and had then carried out her resolve.”
“I think, Mr. Fessenden,” resumed the coroner, “we may assume this to be the case.”
“Then,” said Fessenden, “I will undertake to show that it is improbable that this paper was written as has been supposed. The message is, as you see, written in pencil. The pencil here on the table, and which is part of a set of desk-fittings, is a very hard pencil, labeled H. A few marks made by it upon a bit of paper will convince you at once that it is not the pencil which was used to write that message. The letters, as you see, are formed of heavy black marks which were made with a very soft pencil, such as is designated by 2 B or BB. If you please, I will pause for a moment while you satisfy yourself upon this point.”
Greatly interested, Mr. Benson took the pencil from the pen-rack and wrote some words upon a pad of paper. Doctor Leonard and Doctor Hills leaned over the table to note results, but no one else stirred.
“You are quite right,” said Mr. Benson; “this message was not written with this pencil. But what does that prove?”
“It proves nothing,” said Fessenden calmly, “but it is pretty strong evidence that the message was not written at this table last night. For had there been any other pencil on the table, it would doubtless have remained. Assuming, then that Miss Van Norman wrote this message elsewhere, and with another pencil, it loses the special importance commonly attributed to the words of one about to die.”
“It does,” said Mr. Benson, impressed by the fact, but at a loss to know whither the argument was leading.
“Believing, then,” went on the lawyer, “that this paper had not been written in this room last evening, I began to conjecture where it had been written. For one would scarcely expect a message of that nature to be written in one place and carried to another. I was so firmly convinced that something could be learned on this point, that just before we were summoned to this room, I asked permission of Mrs. Markham to examine the appointments of Miss Van Norman’s writing-desk in her own room, and I found in her desk no soft pencils whatever. There were several pencils, of gold and of silver and of ordinary wood, but the lead in each was as hard as this one on the library table. Urged on by what seemed to me important developments, I persuaded Mrs. Markham to let me examine all of the writing-desks in the house. I found but one soft pencil, and that was in the desk of Miss Dupuy, Miss Van Norman’s secretary. It is quite conceivable that Miss Van Norman should write at her secretary’s desk, but I found myself suddenly confronted by another disclosure. And that is that the handwritings of Miss Van Norman and Miss Dupuy are so similar as to be almost identical. In view of the importance of this written message, should it not be more carefully proved that this writing is really Miss Van Norman’s own?”
“It should, indeed,” declared Coroner Benson, who was by this time quite ready to agree to any suggestion Mr. Fessenden might make. “Will somebody please ask Miss Dupuy to come here?”