Thirteen
WALTER FANE
IG wenda looked across the broad mahogany desk at Mr. Walter Fane.
She saw a rather tired-looking man of about fifty, with a gentle, nondescript face. The sort of man, Gwendathought, that you would find it a little difficult to recollect¹ if you had just met him casually² … A man who, in modernphrase, lacked personality. His voice, when he spoke³, was slow and careful and pleasant. Probably, Gwenda decided⁴, avery sound lawyer.
She stole a glance round the office—the office of the senior partner of the firm. It suited Walter Fane, she decided.
It was definitely old-fashioned, the furniture was shabby, but was made of good solid Victorian material. There weredeed boxes piled up against the walls—boxes with respectable County names on them. Sir John Vavasour-Trench.
Lady Jessup. Arthur ffoulkes, Esq. Deceased.
The big sash windows, the panes⁵ of which were rather dirty, looked into a square backyard flanked by the solidwalls of a seventeenth-century adjoining house. There was nothing smart or up to date anywhere, but there wasnothing sordid⁶ either. It was superficially an untidy office with its piled-up boxes, and its littered desk, and its row oflaw books leaning crookedly⁷ on a shelf—but it was actually the office of someone who knew exactly where to lay hishand upon anything he wanted.
The scratching of Walter Fane’s pen ceased. He smiled his slow, pleasant smile.
“I think that’s all quite clear, Mrs. Reed,” he said. “A very simple will. When would you like to come in and signit?”
Gwenda said whenever he liked. There was no particular hurry.
“We’ve got a house down here, you know,” she said. “Hillside.”
Walter Fane said, glancing down at his notes, “Yes, you gave me the address….”
There was no change in the even

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