“Exactly. And have you not, in such a case, tried the word once or twice on the edge of the blotting-paper, or a spare scrap of paper, to see if it looked right? Well, that is what Mrs. Inglethorp did. You will notice that the word ‘possessed’ is spelt first with one ‘s’ and subsequently with two—correctly. To make sure, she had further tried it in a sentence, thus: ‘I am possessed.’ Now, what did that tell me? It told me that Mrs. Inglethorp had been writing the word ‘possessed’ that afternoon,
“Yes, sir. She brought it down with her every morning, and took it up every night.”
“When did she lose the key of it?”
“She missed it yesterday at lunchtime, sir, and told me to look carefully for it. She was very much put out about it.”
“But she had a duplicate key?”
“Oh, yes, sir.”
Dorcas was