The Alienist - Caleb Carr [106]
“There are two general areas involved in the study of handwriting,” he said, his voice dry with excitement. “First, there’s document examination, in the traditional legal sense—meaning strictly scientific analysis with a view toward comparison and establishing authorship; and second, a group of techniques that are more—well, speculative. This second group isn’t considered scientific, by most people, and it doesn’t carry much weight in court. But we’ve found it very useful in several investigations.” Marcus glanced at Lucius, who nodded without speaking. “So—let’s start with the basics.”
Marcus paused long enough to order a tall glass of Pilsener to keep his throat from drying up, then continued:
“The man—and the attack of the pen in this case is undoubtedly masculine—who wrote this note had at least several years of schooling that entailed penmanship. This schooling occurred in the United States, no more recently than fifteen years ago.” I could not help a befuddled look, to which Marcus explained, “There are clear signs that he was trained, hard and regularly, in the Palmer system of penmanship. Now, the Palmer system was introduced in 1880, and was quickly taken up by schools all over the country. It remained what you might call dominant until just last year, when it began to be replaced in the East and in some big western cities by the Zaner-Blosser method. Assuming that our killer’s primary education ended at no later than age fifteen, he can’t now be any older than thirty-one.”
It seemed a sound line of reasoning; and with small scratching sounds, Kreizler put these points on his pad, to be transferred later to the big chalkboard at Number 808 Broadway.
“All right, then,” Marcus went on. “If we assume that our man’s about thirty now, and that he finished school at fifteen or younger, then he’s had another fifteen years to evolve both his writing and his personality. It doesn’t look like that’s been a particularly pleasant time. To begin with, and as we’ve already guessed, he’s an inveterate liar and schemer—he actually knows his grammar and his spelling, but he’s gone pretty far out of his way to try to make us think that he doesn’t. See, up here, at the top of the note, he’s written ‘straten,’ along with ‘figger’ and ‘occashun.’ He’s had the idea that maybe he can get us to believe that he’s ignorant, but he’s slipped up—at the bottom, he writes that after he snatched Giorgio he took him ‘straight to the bridge,’ and he has no trouble spelling it.”
“One can only assume,” Kreizler mused, “that by the end of the letter he’s concerned with making his point, rather than with playing games.”
“Exactly, Doctor,” Marcus said. “So his writing is extremely natural. The fact that the misspellings are intentional is also indicated by his script—the false passages are much more hesitating and less certain. The t’s in particular lack the hard, slashing definition that they have in the rest of the writing. His grammar reveals the same point: in some spots he tries to mimic the talk of an uneducated farmhand—‘I seen your boy,’ and whatnot—but then he can let off a sentence like, ‘He died unsoiled by me, and the papers ought to say so.’ It’s completely inconsistent—but, assuming he checked back over the thing after writing it, he failed to spot the inconsistency. That indicates that, while he’s unquestionably a capable planner, he may have an exaggerated opinion of his own cleverness.”
After another sip of Pilsener Marcus lit a cigarette and continued, his words finally starting to emerge at a relaxed pace: “Up to this point, we’re on pretty solid ground. All this is good science, and would stand up in a court of law. Age about thirty, several years of decent schooling, a deliberate attempt at deception—no judge would reject it. Now, however, things become less clear-cut.