He turned to Miss Macpherson, said “Do you think you can have those figures ready by lunch-time tomorrow?” received her affirmative; asked if she knew the names and addresses of Simpson’s executors; wrote them down in his note-book. “Ready now,” he told Patricia: and, as an afterthought, “How much petrol have you got?” “I filled up just before coming out.” “Good.” He looked at his wrist-watch. “Then I think, if you don’t mind, we’ll run down to Harrow to see Mrs. Simpson.” § 3 The drive to Harrow, through traffic and tramlines for the most part, gave little opportunity for conversation. “Are you very worried?” she managed to ask. “Yes,” he confessed, “I am.” They drew up, at about six in the afternoon, before an unpretentious, comfortable villa in an unpretentious, comfortable side-street. It was the usual English suburban home, a doll’s house of red-brick and stucco: two lime trees sheltered the little iron gate; on either side of the gravelled path which led to the front door, tiny well-clipt lawns gave on to laurel-bushes. As they came up the path, a half-seen figure moved behind the muslin curtains of the dining-room window. Ringing the ivory knob of a well-polished brass bell-push, they were welcomed by a maid in cap-and-apron; ushered, through a marble-papered hall with a mahogany hat-stand, into an over-furnished room (piano and sofa prominent) whose long French windows looked out on “the garden”—a narrow strip of lawn ending in a fence crowned with trellis-work and scant ivy. “Mrs. Simpson will be down in a moment,” announced the maid. She came in, a little faded woman, light-haired—the pallor of her accentuated by the obviously new black dress. An open-faced gold locket with the miniature of her dead husband hung from a gold chain at her breast. “This is very good of you,” began Mrs. Simpson. Condoling with her, Peter felt—for the first time—a real sorrow at loss of his partner. He remembered “Tom” bringing his wife to dinner at Lowndes Square, remembered how Pat had laughed at his calling her “mother.” “Won’t you sit down?” said Mrs. Simpson; and began to talk about the illness, the funeral. “Poor man, he was worried you know. Worried! The work got too much for him. I used to say to him, ‘Tom, don’t go to the office today.’ But he would go. And the trains are so crowded now—these soldiers. Often, he’d have to stand up the whole way home. Then the raids used to keep him awake.” To Patricia, she seemed a pathetic figure; to Peter, she grew rapidly irritating. Sorrow disappeared. He had come there to talk money-matters, not to hear about the “dear departed.” The front had hardened him to death: death was just an incident, a daily incident: one did not mention the dead. “Tell me, Mrs. Simpson,” he interrupted, not unsympathetically. “About money? Are you all right? You know it will take some little time to get the estate settled up. I thought of going to see the executors tomorrow.”