The Night Desk · Season 1 · Case 27 · Forged document ·
The Lease of Fogbell Point
An old lease that gives away the Point, a seal too sharp for its age, and four people who could have made it.
The case file
Saturday. At Friday's Harbor Board meeting, a Saltholm solicitor laid a lease on the table: dated 1902, signed by the late Mayor Trounce, granting Fogbell Point and the Merrow Light to the Fairweather Shipping Company for ninety-nine years, and now assigned to its successor. If it is genuine, the light belongs to a private firm. The Board has lent it to the desk until Monday. It is Exhibit A.
Cass Rendle wrote this morning that the lease is a fake. Four people had the skill and the chance to make it, each working last night in one of four places: an engraver's workshop, a solicitor's chambers, the town muniment room and the lobby of the Grand Marine Hotel. Each had one tool to hand: a newly cut seal die, a portable typewriter, a mapping pen or a stick of sealing wax.
Who was there
- Jasper Wick, engraver, of Fore Street. The loupe on its ribbon, black fingertips, and a client book he guards like a priest.
- Pelham Tregarthen, solicitor, of Chapel Row. Silk hat, soft voice, and a gift for saying nothing in a great many words.
- Cass Rendle, gazette columnist and inquiry agent. Ink on her glove, a portable typewriter in its case, and a story she has chased all season.
- Miss Dorothy Hammett, secretary to the late Mayor Trounce. Seventy-two, gray tweed, and the old mayor's handwriting in her own.
The places: the engraver's workshop, the solicitor's chambers, the muniment room and the hotel lobby.
The means: a newly cut seal die, a portable typewriter, a mapping pen and a stick of sealing wax.
Case 27 · Saturday, November 21
The questioning room
This case's night is Saturday, November 21, from midnight your time. The questioning room plays here with JavaScript on; the case file above reads without it.
The inspector's note: Date the document against itself
A document claims a date, and everything on it must be possible on that date: the names, the paper, the seal, the wear, the people who signed and where they were that day. Check each against what you know of the year. One thing that could not exist yet is enough to sink the whole, and the thing that gives it away is usually the part the forger thought least about.
How to solve a Night Desk case, with a worked example.
The solution
The night desk's write-up appears here once you solve the case, or from Sunday, November 22, the night after it opens.