"All right. I'll meet you there in one hour with the accessories and balance of payment for the previous order."
After hanging up the phone, he opened his briefcase and extracted a small packet of bright blue, Belmont Student Feedback Forms and a sheet with the typewritten messages that had been created to be forged onto them. He looked to see that the rest of the contents were in place, then returned everything to the briefcase and left the room carrying it.
The document examiner was seated, sworn and proceeded to give her qualifications which were concerned with her training, the number of years in the profession and clients.
Alice Stebbins was quite short. Her features gave her age as around fifty and holding. She dressed severely, in browns and blacks which made her look perky and birdlike. Peering at the hearing panel over her half glasses enhanced the bird image, but it was destroyed when she opened her mouth.
Her voice, far from a peep-peep one might expect, was deep and strong. She had learned well that when one was giving expert testimony, one presented a confident, assured bearing.
Further questions from the chair led her through the evidence and she readily identified all but two of the seven 'suspicious' critiques as being written by Trenchant. Her language was laced with the correctness of one accustomed to giving court appearances. She prefaced much of her testimony with the caveat, 'in my opinion'. Her attitude of selfassuredness belied this qualification.
"Also, in my opinion, those two most probably were written by her. Certainty was not possible since they contained printing and I was not given enough or recent enough exemplars of Dr. Trenchant's printing."
Using two large easels, she demonstrated various letters and combination of letters photographed and enlarged from the standards or exemplars and from the 'suspect' documents.
This kind of testimony was familiar to Janet. She faithfully recorded the words being spoken and knew that standards or exemplars are writing and printing that are authenticated. That is, that are definitely established to be written or printed by the person in question. Customarily, they are taken in the presence of the document examiner so the examiner can swear to their authenticity.
Using these visual aids, the document examiner pointed out the similarities existing in the way the letters were formed—making her case that the documents in question, the 'suspect' SmurFFs, had indeed been written by Trenchant.