Good grief, you've been off and on more than the Smothers Brothers.

By the way, is it just me or is the evil secretary in today's L.L. a really hot little minx?
Good luck with the jury, Lucrezia.

GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY!

...then maybe they could try something like this:

Now, I realize this pitch was made about two years before I was born (around 20 years after you were, of course), so I don't know if anything came of it, but if it worked for Wichita's Towne East Square, then it could certainly work for an amusement park posing as a mall.

Also, I think you forgot one of these [hands you an ellipses] when you were closing your third paragraph. It happens to the best of us.

Have fun on your hiatus!

Putting aside the obvious jurisdictional issues that would be involved here, shouldn't you finish your suicide note BEFORE you drink the poison? It's not like you're going to have time to take care of it later or anything...

I'm going to guess the clue has something to do with the ink blot at the end, but it looks like it's high time someone ran a remedial course on how to properly off yourself...

True, the note ended with a scrawl...

True, the police move nothing except the body on the moving train...

True, a pen was sitting at the writing table, closed... as by someone who hadn't just died scrawling his last words.

But alas, this was the spare pen that the secretary would be convicted of using to fake the suicide note. In fact the pen her suicidal employer had penned his last penning with had fallen out of his hand and rolled under something because the train was, alas, moving.

Lance didn't realize that pens, even back then, were not so costly that one couldn't have a couple. And so the hot secretary was convicted unjustly.

Yep, she's a looker, all right. And right now, she's looking at twenty-five-to-life. The prison matrons are going to give each other a big wink-wink when she walks through the door...

She's such a compulsive that she couldn't help but re-cap the pen. A wonderful trait in a secretary, but not so good when you're a MURDERESS!!!

First, the letter would have been completed before he drank the poison. Second, the pen would not be closed.

PatrickRsGhost

Maybe the Abu Dhabi folks can support the world's largest mall, a cavalcade of footstep echoes. but if the business case won't support a business loan to build up, it isn't worth doing.

"We didn't touch a (blotch) thing." Note the similarity of the blotch in his speech balloon and the blotch in the suicide note. He was in on it, and it won't be long before McLean throws him under the bus. She's not going down alone.

I do believe that I see a cap on that pen....

Lance Lawson Wednesday? I am struggling to get my mind around this strange new concept. And a three Lance Lawson Wednesday at that!

It seems the capped fountain pen is the giveaway here.

If the conductor is telling the truth, then the pen on the train desk would not have been moved. If it was used to scrawl the note, as others have noted, it would be in the dead man's hand, on the floor, etc. Therefore the note is a bad forgery, and Hotsy McLean poisoned him and badly covered her tracks.

OTOH, what if the conductor is lying? Maybe he knew that Mr. Turner (the railroad owner and his boss) was planning to fire everyone and convert the line to hauling pork bellies or something. He figured he could kill his boss, keep his job, and then be able to 'make time' with Miss Hotsy before she ran away with Mr. Turner. He could just have easily poisoned the coffee in the train dining car, and then botched the murder scene. Perhaps he and Miss McLean are secret lovers and plotted badly together...

Here are a couple of interesting quotes from the ana-
gram generator which ,by the way, speaks "Anagramese".

The suicide note: "I'm the fine, arch-foe sublime."

Lance's dialogue ballon: "Juicier, weeviled, oily,
ideal buddy." (What a great pick-up line for the
secretary.)

Our host is taking tomorrow off, so he is giving us our Lance fix a day early. (It was either that or make us wait until next week.)

Mr. Turner was known for his goofy and often morbid sense of humor... He had not yet taken the poison when he wrote the letter, and he actually just dragged out the end of the last "e" as a joke. He was thinking to himself "This'll make some people wonder..." Little did he realize, he was actually getting his beloved secretary (with whom he was having an affair) in big trouble. He had no idea the trouble he was causing as he capped the pen with a smirk on his face, moments before downing the poison.

Lance needs to stop jumping to conclusions...

That pen might not be capped. With fountain pens, it is common to "post" the cap onto the end of the barrel while you are writing. That way, you don't lose it. If so, and if he was writing with his right hand, the pen would look just like that if it dropped out of his hand. (I just tried it).

Where was the victim sitting? I assumed it was on the far side of the table (to the left side of panel 3). If so, where was he writing this letter? The stack of paper still has the ink bottle on it, so the note must have been under the pen. Also, the spoon is all the way to the back of the cup, in a position that a left-handed person would have used it. But the pen is in a position that a right-handed person would have used it.

But look at the ink dripped on the paper. It is to the right of the bottle, where the ink would have dripped had he been sitting on the right of the table. Which means that somebody moved that pen. Like, when she was sitting on the other side of the table from the body when she wrote the note.

Also, it doesn't look like he drank any of the coffee.

I think someone already added the Monty Python reference so, I'll carry it on:

Maybe he was dictating the suicide note.

It's hard to tell, but is that a bottle of ink, or a jar of EV-ER-DOZE pills?

If it's pills, then most people would take the pills and wash them down with lots of coffee. The cup looks almost full.

Also the spoon is facing away from the recently demised, as if someone else did the stirring.

Also the writing looks waaaay too neat to be a man's writing.

Also how did the train conductor know Lance was the right person to look things over?

And why does the conductor look so much like Lance?

And how many "secretaries" traveled in va-va-voom evening wear?

Three Lance Lawson's on a WEDNESDAY?! It took a while to get over that shock.

FreeState is on to something. The boss was left handed and should have ink stains on his palm from using a fountain pen. All us lefties get them. The "secretary"-- if that's what she was -- was STANDING as she wrote the note. Observe the ink stains moving horizontally across the page, not vertically. She made her big mistake when she capped the pen and left it to the right.

So long baby!

"I believe a jury will decide you did!"

Especially since my "machine" will be "talking" to the jurors. Unless, that is, you feel like coming back to my compartment so we can discuss a way out of this mess for you!

Lori would be the next murderess if Lance pulled that stunt.

I don't know. Depends on how anal-retentive the guy was.

First, the note looks like it was written by a right-handed person, since the line drags off to the lower right. But the coffee cup is turned the way a lefty would have held it, and the pen is laying on the left side of the table.

Secondly, the victim died too suddenly to finish the note, yet somehow managed to put the cap back on the pen??? Don't think so.

Wasn't there a vavoom blonde not too long ago, same face, same cleavage, exact same Snow-White's-wicked-stepmother's collar on her dress? I think the storyline had to do with pearls, or the telephone cord or something....

"It reads, 'Here may be found the last words of Joseph of Aramathia. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the holy grail in the Castle of Aaauuuggghhh...'"

"What?"

"'The Castle of Aaaauuuggghhhh'"

"What is that?"

"He must have died while carving it."

"Oh come on!"

"Well, that's what it says."

"Look, if he was dying, he wouldn't have bothered to carve 'Aaaauuuggghhhh'. He'd just say it."