赖盖特之谜16（在线收听）

“But very superficial,” said Holmes. “We come now, however, to a point which  is of importance. You may not be aware that the deduction of a man's age from  his writing is one which has been brought to considerable accuracy by experts.  In normal cases one can place a man in his true decade with tolerable  confidence. I say normal cases, because ill-health and physical weakness  reproduce the signs of old age, even when the invalid is a youth. In this case,  looking at the bold, strong hand of the one, and the rather broken-backed  appearance of the other, which still retains its legibility although the t's  have begun to lose their crossing, we can say that the one was a young man and  the other was advanced in years without being positively decrepit.”

“Excellent!” cried Mr. Acton again.

“There is a further point, however, which is subtler and of greater interest.  There is something in common between these hands. They belong to men who are  blood-relatives. It may be most obvious to you in the Greek e's, but to me there  are many small points which indicate the same thing. I have no doubt at all that  a family mannerism can be traced in these two specimens of writing. I am only,  of course, giving you the leading results now of my examination of the paper.  There were twenty-three other deductions which would be of more interest to  experts than to you. They all tended to deepen the impression upon my mind that  the Cunninghams, father and son, had written this letter.

“Having got so far, my next step was, of course, to examine into the details of  the crime, and to see how far they would help us. I went up to the house with  the Inspector, and saw all that was to be seen. The wound upon the dead man was,  as I was able to determine with absolute confidence, fired from a revolver at  the distance of something over four yards. There was no powder-blackening on the  clothes. Evidently, therefore, Alec Cunningham had lied when he said that the  two men were struggling when the shot was fired. Again, both father and son  agreed as to the place where the man escaped into the road. At that point,  however, as it happens, there is a broadish ditch, moist at the bottom. As there  were no indications of bootmarks about this ditch, I was absolutely sure not  only that the Cunninghams had again lied, but that there had never been any  unknown man upon the scene at all.

“不过这是显而易见的，”福尔摩斯说道，“然而，我们现在要谈到重要的一点。可能，你 们不知道，专家们可以根据一个人的笔迹，相当准确地推断他的年龄，在正常情况下，可以 相当有把握地断定一个人的岁数。我说，‘在正常情况下’，这是因为不健康和体质弱是老 年人的特点，如果年轻人是一个病人，他的字迹也就带有老年人的特点。在这件案子里，只 要看看一个人的笔迹粗一壮有力，另一个人的笔迹虽然软弱无力，却依然十分清楚，不过‘ ｔ’字少了一横，我们就可以说，其中的一个人是一个年轻人，另一个人虽未十分衰老，却 也上年纪了。”

“妙极了！”阿克顿先生又大声说道。

“还有一点，是非常微妙而有趣的。这两人的笔迹有某些相同之处。他们是属于同一血统的 人，对你们来说，最明显的可能就是那个‘ｅ’写得象希腊字母‘ε’。不过，在我看来， 很多细小的地方都可以说明同样的问题。我毫不怀疑，从书写的风格上看，这两种笔迹是出 于一家人的手笔。当然，我现在对你们讲的，只是我检查这张纸的主要结果。还有二十三点 别的推论结果，专家们大概比你们更感兴趣。而所有这一切加深了我的印象，坎宁安父子二 人写了这封信。

“我既得到这样的结论，当然，下一步就是调查犯罪的细节，看看它们对我们能有多大帮助 。我和警官来到他们的住所，看到我们所要看的一切。我绝对有把握断定：死者身上的伤口 是在四码开外用手槍打的。死者衣服上没有火药痕迹。

因此，很明显，亚历克-坎宁安说什么凶手在搏斗中开了槍，完全是撒谎。还有，父子二人 异口同声指出这个人逃往大路经过的地方。然而，碰巧，这地方有一条宽阔的沟，沟底是潮 一湿的。由于沟的附近并没有发现脚印，我不仅绝对相信坎宁安父子又一次撒了谎，而且肯 定现场谤本没有来过任何来历不明的人。