Not investigation, then. But it was, surely, possible that there was enough in handwriting for Wildsmith to judge that a writer was steady but unimaginative—not to mention forming a judgement on the content, a detailed and lengthy list of furniture to be sold from Aaron’s father’ cottage—and that he had elaborated the rest of it out of the air from those two points.

As it happened, Roger had proposed with the words, ‘What do you say, old thing?’, and had only ever bought Sarah flowers on her direct orders, but had indeed recently dug their cottage a rose bed. But that was sheer coincidence. Or, perhaps, an indication that Roger was a ‘type’. People were often predictable and behaved with remarkable similarity: much of policework came down to knowing patterns. Graphology—which was to say, quackery—was doubtless the same and it didn’t do to start reading anything more into what were, admittedly, some extremely well-targeted guesses.

“Interesting,” he said. “What about this?”

He handed over the second paper, which he’d written himself. He’d copied out the opening of Bleak House, inspired by last night’s weather. Good luck to Wildsmith wrenching anything personal from that.

The graphologist once again went into a brown study, eyes intent. Aaron sat back, considering him.

Wildsmith was dressed adequately but not well: clean, but without any great effort at smartness. He wouldn’t consider himself poor, but he clearly counted the pennies. That was hardly surprising. It was difficult enough for able-bodied men to find work these days, and maimed ones were common enough that nobody would give him special treatment. If he couldn’t do manual labour and he couldn’t write, he would be in something of a bind. No wonder he’d turned to graphology.

Still, he was personable enough and there were jobs as salesmen. He didn’t have to descend to this rather shabby pretence, and particularly not since it did real harm.

Wildsmith’s assessment of Roger’s letter had been superficially very convincing indeed. A more credulous person would have taken that a string of inferences and lucky guesses as evidence of mystic knowledge or astonishing powers or what-have-you. If Wildsmith had been equally lucky or cunning when he was pronouncing a verdict on Paul’s letter, his fiancée—doubtless an idiot, given she’d agreed to marry him in the first place—might well have taken every word as gospel truth.

In fairness to Wildsmith, an engagement that could be broken on the unsupported word of a third party had probably not been destined to succeed. But that didn’t entitle this man to throw out praise or condemnations based on how people crossed their ts.

His thoughts were broken by Wildsmith’s long exhalation as he looked up.

“Well?” Aaron said, and was annoyed to realise he felt a touch of anticipation.