Sleeping Murder - Agatha Christie [36]
Mr. Kimble came in from the scullery and ignoring all matters of lesser moment demanded if his supper was ready.
“I’ll just drain the chips … Wait, I’ll get another paper. Better keep this one. ’T wouldn’t be likely to be police—not after all this time. Maybe it’s lawyers—and money in it. It doesn’t say something to your advantage … but it might be all the same … Wish I knew who I could ask about it. It says write to some address in London—but I’m not sure I’d like to do a thing like that … not to a lot of people in London … What do you say, Jim?”
“Ar,” said Mr. Kimble, hungrily eyeing the fish and chips.
The discussion was postponed.
Thirteen
WALTER FANE
I
Gwenda 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, Gwenda thought, that you would find it a little difficult to recollect if you had just met him casually … A man who, in modern phrase, lacked personality. His voice, when he spoke, was slow and careful and pleasant. Probably, Gwenda decided, a very 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 were deed 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 panes of which were rather dirty, looked into a square backyard flanked by the solid walls of a seventeenth-century adjoining house. There was nothing smart or up to date anywhere, but there was nothing sordid either. It was superficially an untidy office with its piled-up boxes, and its littered desk, and its row of law books leaning crookedly on a shelf—but it was actually the office of someone who knew exactly where to lay his hand 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 sign it?”
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 tenor of his voice.
“It’s a very nice house,” said Gwenda. “We love it.”
“Indeed?” Walter Fane smiled. “Is it on the sea?”
“No,” said Gwenda. “I believe the name has been changed. It used to be St. Catherine’s.”
Mr. Fane took off his pince-nez. He polished them with a silk handkerchief, looking down at the desk.
“Oh yes,” he said. “On the Leahampton road?”
He looked up and Gwenda thought how different people who habitually wear glasses look without them. His eyes, a very pale grey, seemed strangely weak and unfocussed.
It makes his whole face look, thought Gwenda, as though he isn’t really there.
Walter Fane put on the pince-nez again. He said in his precise lawyer’s voice, “I think you said you did make a will on the occasion of your marriage?”
“Yes. But I’d left things in it to various relatives in New Zealand who have died since, so I thought it would be simpler really to make a new one altogether—especially as we mean to live permanently in this country.”
Walter Fane nodded.
“Yes, quite a sound view to take. Well, I think this is all quite clear, Mrs. Reed. Perhaps if you